San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie on Friday unveiled his proposed 2025-26 balanced budget of $15.9 billion that closes an $800 million deficit and sets aside $400 million in reserves. The Board of Supervisors will now review the spending plan and offer its changes in the coming weeks.
Layoffs of city workers are expected, according to the mayor and budget officials. Other vacant city positions will not be filled.
The Board of Supervisors needs to approve the two-year budget by August 1. (It also includes funding for 2026-27.)
Speaking on a livestream announcement May 30, Lurie said that public safety spending will be preserved, as well as legal services to help immigrants, including those from the LGBTQ community. Public safety has been Lurie’s top priority since taking office in January. He said the city will continue to invest in police officers, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, and 911 workers, as well as other core services, such as street cleaning and Muni operators.
The full proposed budget has not been released as of press time. After the news conference, a Microsoft Teams meeting between reporters and the mayor’s staff revealed that 1,400 city positions being eliminated are spread across 40 city departments. Many of these are unfilled, but those that are filled are spread across 17 departments, officials said.
The mayor’s staff was not able to give specifics, citing the need to inform those departments in a timely manner. Officials did not indicate which departments would see the most layoffs.
At the news conference, Lurie was not able to say which LGBTQ immigrant legal services he was able to spare. The mayor’s office has not responded to requests for comment regarding that; whether the city will be able to backfill potential cuts of federal HIV/AIDS dollars; the fate of two Castro Community Benefit District grants that were reportedly on the chopping block; and whether there would be cuts to LGBTQ youth service providers like LYRIC and Larkin Street Youth Services.
The budget book containing the proposed spending plan was released later May 30. It states that the San Francisco Public Defender's office saw a 3% budget increase, and that the office helps immigrants who lack legal representation in deportation fights.
"San Francisco protects immigrant communities by investing in legal services, including establishing PDR’s Immigration Unit. This created a crucial safety net for immigrant communities and substantially reduced deportations, as represented immigrants are five times more likely to win their cases," the book states. "The Public Defender’s Office is actively responding to the federal administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies. Deportation constitutes one of law’s severest penalties – causing exile, family separation, income loss, and community disconnection. Despite having legal rights to contest deportation, many immigrants accept removal simply because they lack legal representation."
The office is currently handling between 150 and 200 cases, the book states.
The book also states that the 2025-2026 budget is $15.9 billion and the 2026-2027 budget is $16.3 billion.
The Department of Children, Youth and their Families would see a cut of $955,156 out of a budget of almost $350 million. The Human Rights Commission would see a cut of $16,803,083 from last year's funding total of $44,751,345. The Office of Economic and Workforce Development would see a cut of $56,989,417 from last year's funding total of $140,623,065. The Department of Public Health would see an increase of $144,896,544 out of an over $3 billion budget.
The Human Rights Commission oversees the troubled Dream Keeper Initiative. Already, the Transgender District is out nearly $1 million because two Dream Keeper grants were canceled.
Gay Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman had previously told the Bay Area Reporter that the San Francisco LGBT Community Center will see at least a few hundred thousand dollars in cuts.
Also unknown are any cuts to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, which oversees the city’s cultural districts.
“Here’s the bottom line: we have to stop spending more than we can afford. The era of soaring city budgets and deteriorating street conditions is over,” Lurie said. “The budget I’m introducing today faces the $800 million dollar deficit head-on. A crisis of this magnitude means we cannot avoid painful decisions, and I am prepared to make those decisions.”
He indicated that there will be reductions in the city’s workforce and contracts with nonprofit providers.
“There are no easy fixes,” he said, referring to the deficit.
The Office of Economic and Workforce Development is among those that will be seeing cuts, officials said.
The city is putting aside $1 million for city attorney litigation efforts, but Lurie said at the news conference that how the $400 million in reserves will be spent depends on the depth of Trump administration cuts to federal services the city relies on, which is as yet unknown. That number could be as high as $2 billion, he has previously said.
“I was elected to make hard choices, and that is reflected in today’s budget,” he said.
Speaking of homeless services in his livestreamed remarks, Lurie noted that the city now has “the lowest number of encampments since 2019,” and that the city will continue to address the behavioral health crisis by “unlocking critical funds to build the type of housing and treatment we need right now.” A news release from Lurie’s office indicated that figure is $90 million over three years.
Lurie was short on specifics during his brief address. Additional information was provided to reporters following the online presentation.
“The road to recovery is long,” the mayor said. “Data shows that for the first time in five years, the city is headed in the right direction.”
Lurie also acknowledged Mandelman, who represents District 8 that includes the Castro, and Supervisor Connie Chan, a straight ally who is the budget committee chair and represents the Richmond district.
In a statement, Chan was blunt about the fiscal situation the city finds itself in this year, warning, “We have no good options.” Nonetheless, she pledged that she and her colleagues will “fight and protect” their constituents from whatever decisions the Trump administration makes that harms the city. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday that the White House may try to claw back $140 million that the city received to help cover costs associated with the COVID pandemic, while two of the city’s more prominent LGBTQ service providers could lose their federal contracts if their lawsuit against the Trump administration isn’t successful in unfreezing the funds.
“We will be faced with some very difficult decisions, especially given the federal government’s attacks on our critical safety net programs and threats of funding cuts to our city budget,” Chan stated. “But we will meet this moment head on. We will focus on the core mission of city government and ensure we create guardrails for our future including placing an estimated $400 million on reserve against federal cuts.”
Several unions are already planning a protest June 4 at noon at City Hall. These include the San Francisco Labor Council, Service Employees International Union Local No. 1021, and International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local No. 21.
“This is the budget that Airbnb wants. None of these job cuts should be on the table, but the mayor has decided that tax breaks for Airbnb are more important than public services,” said Sarah Perez, San Francisco City Employee and SF vice president for IFPTE Local 21. “And, this budget is a big payday for private contractors. Cutting public jobs often means handing over important work to for-profit companies, increasing costs and inviting corruption.”
The labor groups are working in tandem with the People’s Budget Coalition, which issued a statement the afternoon of May 30.
“The mayor’s office continues to evade this accountability he himself demands by not even releasing the budget following his budget release announcement,” the coalition stated. “As of this release, we are told the budget is still hours from being publicly available. This follows an unfortunate trend of the community, service providers, and the public being the last to know the real details.
“We appreciate the mayor’s dedication to address this budget crisis head on, but we are concerned at who these cuts target and who they spare,” continued the coalition, which includes Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “The city is balancing the budget on the backs of essential workers and the communities they serve. Difficult choices have to be made in unprecedented times, but the mayor is taking familiar routes: balancing the budget on the backs of working-class San Franciscans while protecting the wealthy and powerful. Someone always has to pay, and it’s always us.”
Updated, 5/30/25: This article has been updated with more information from the budget book, which was released later on May 30.
