Mayor London Breed quietly signed a $15.9 billion budget July 30 — a proposal that restored tens of millions of dollars in cuts from her initial proposal, including to nonprofits serving LGBTQ youth. However, some fiscal reductions remain in the spending plan.
Breed's press office told the Bay Area Reporter July 30 she'd sign the budget before the end of the month but without a ceremony, and confirmed July 31 it'd been signed the prior day. The Board of Supervisors had approved the budget July 23.
Political leaders, community groups, and activists all knew balancing a financial shortfall that could approach $1 billion by Fiscal Year 2028 was going to lead to a difficult budget year, as the city has seen declining tax revenues as businesses leave the downtown core post the COVID pandemic.
As the B.A.R. previously reported, the approximately $100 million in budget cuts did not include cuts to public safety.
Two of three agencies serving LGBTQ youth that'd been anticipating cuts from the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families told the B.A.R. back in June that an $11 million add-back from Breed's office restored those cuts despite a 10% general fund cut from DCYF.
Maria Su, the DCYF's executive director, maintained that in the most technical sense this was not an "add-back," per se, because each year's grant funding is contained within that fiscal year. "In theory there are no cuts," Su told supervisors in June.
These agencies — the San Francisco LGBT Community Center and Larkin Street Youth Services — had told the B.A.R. the anticipated cuts would have led to youth drop-in services and workforce and youth leadership programs being reduced.
The third agency, the LYRIC Center of LGBTQQ Youth in the Castro neighborhood, had some DCYF funding restored, but not all, according to gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.
LYRIC Executive Director Gael Lala-Chávez confirmed this to the B.A.R.
"We did not receive our entire gap back," Lala-Chávez stated. "We lost a total of $1,013,110 of funding via DCYF and we only received $330,000 back from the mayor's augmentation. Nothing else from DCYF, unfortunately. Additionally, LYRIC lost additional $380,000 in funding in other city departments totaling $1.3 [million], which forced us to lay off some of our amazing staff and scale back programs."
LYRIC did receive funds raised at the June 30 Pride party held by drag queen Juanita MORE! Over $127,000 was netted for the agency at the annual fundraising celebration More! hosts on the Sunday of the city's Pride parade.
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