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Mayor’s budget director outlines five‑year plan, warns of $500 million gap and sequester effects
Summary
Kate Howard, the mayor’s budget director, told the Budget & Finance Committee the city’s joint five‑year financial plan projects roughly 13% revenue growth and 25% expenditure growth over five years, producing an estimated $500 million shortfall; she flagged a special focus on Department of Public Health and preliminary $25 million federal sequester impacts.
Kate Howard, the mayor’s budget director, told the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Budget & Finance Committee on March 6 that the city’s new five‑year financial plan projects 13% revenue growth ("nearly $600,000,000") and about 25% growth in expenditures (about $1,100,000,000), producing a shortfall of roughly $500,000,000 over the five‑year period. The plan, she said, must be balanced "with or without amendments" before the board’s May 1 deadline.
Howard said the three plans introduced by the mayor — the five‑year financial plan, the 10‑year capital plan and the five‑year information and communications technology plan — are intended to work together as a framework for future budgets and capital decisions. She identified the Department of Public Health as an area with a “significant structural shortfall” that will be addressed in more detail in upcoming briefings.
On federal spending cuts, Howard gave preliminary estimates of the sequester’s local impacts, saying initial projections put the combined effect on the housing authority and the school district at about $25,000,000. She told supervisors the city projects approximately $3,600,000 in reductions to the school district (including nutrition programs, Head Start and IDEA funding) and at least $1,600,000 in combined capital and operating impacts to the housing authority, while noting these figures are preliminary and subject to revision as federal and state agencies provide more information.
Supervisors pressed Howard for more detail about the classifications and dollar amounts behind the market-review work and how proposed changes might affect city employees and services. Howard said the five‑year projection is a shared product of the mayor’s office, the controller’s office and the board’s budget analyst, and that staff will return with more detailed briefings in subsequent hearings.
The committee moved to continue item 2 to the call of the chair so staff could provide updated analyses; Chair Mark Farrell announced the continuation without opposition. The committee did not take a final vote on the financial plan at this session; Howard said the plan and related documents will appear before the full board for adoption by May.
