Budget committee outlines calendar and five priority topics for April hearings

The Full Budget and Finance Committee convened March 20 to review the schedule and scope for the city’s 2019–20 and 2020–21 budget hearings and to direct staff on research priorities.

Chair Sandra Lee Fewer opened the meeting and asked Dan Goncher of the Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) office to brief the committee on the BLA’s plan for analyzing board priorities. Goncher said supervisors identified 13 priority issues through an informal survey and that the BLA will research five primary areas, including public safety, housing, homelessness, and mental health and substance abuse. "A total of 13 priority issues were identified by supervisors through an informal survey," Goncher said.

Goncher outlined a preliminary hearing schedule: public safety on April 10, housing and homelessness on April 17, and mental health and substance abuse on April 24. He described the BLA’s planned approach: compiling program backgrounds, historical spending (with emphasis on general fund budgeting), existing performance measures reported by the controller’s city performance unit and the mayor’s budget book, and identifying funding‑impact opportunities.

On public safety, Goncher said the office will examine crime rates, clearance and response times, and service completion for temporary restraining orders. For housing, the BLA will compare assessed need under the regional housing needs assessment (RHNA) with recent construction and review goals in the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development strategic plan. For homelessness, planned measures include counts of families receiving rental subsidies, placements into permanent supportive housing, and shelter‑bed utilization. For mental health and substance abuse services, the BLA will look at client counts, service units, and program‑level measures including crisis residential and outpatient services.

Supervisors used the Q&A to direct specific follow‑ups. Supervisor Catherine Stefani pressed for the BLA to examine step‑down beds such as Hummingbird Place and to provide comparative analyses with other counties, and to break down substance abuse capacity by detox, residential treatment and sober‑living environments. Supervisor Shamann Walton asked that the BLA explicitly frame the housing priority as affordable housing. Supervisor Rafael Mandelman requested measures that track people who cycle through the criminal justice and 51/50 systems and asked for race‑disaggregated data where relevant. Supervisor Marr asked for the geographic distribution of affordable housing projects and funding by district; he noted that some West‑side districts had received less investment under recent preference programs.

Chair Fewer added several follow‑ups for public safety: a report on how many sworn positions have been civilianized, an update on Vision Zero in light of what she said were "8 fatalities already on our streets," and information on the size of the narcotics unit (which she said had been six people previously). The chair also asked for demographic and language‑capacity information for proposed multilingual community ambassadors and community officers.

The committee recorded two procedural motions on the record: an early motion to excuse Supervisors Hillary Ronon and Norman Yee, moved by Supervisor Catherine Stefani and seconded by Supervisor Shamon Walton, and a motion to continue the item to the call of the chair, moved by Chair Fewer and seconded by Supervisor Mandelman; the continuation was accepted without objection. The clerk reported no other business and the meeting was adjourned.

The BLA said detailed program descriptions, historical spending by program and proposed performance measures will be provided in advance of the April hearings; supervisors asked for those materials "a couple weeks before the hearing."