As the dust settles on another contentious budget battle, Mayor Todd Gloria joins NBC 7 Political Reporter Joey Safchik on Politically Speaking for an in-depth analysis of what the budget delivers, what it leaves behind and how the city can regain the public’s trust. A transcript of the conversati on is below. Transcript: Safchik: Mr. Mayor, thank you for chatting with us this morning.  Gloria: It’s my pleasure. Safchik: We’re about a week out from this budget cycle. This vote dust has settled a little bit. What are you proudest of? Gloria:  I’m proud of the way that the process went this year. I think that despite the extreme challenges of a large budget deficit, on top of the one that we closed last year, that we could find consensus in a really polarized environment and adopt a budget that is balanced on time and delivers on the key priorities. I have around safety, infrastructure and housing and homelessness. Safchik: It seems like you signed this council approved budget somewhat begrudgingly. Is that fair? Gloria: Well, it’s a recognition of the reality. The proposed budget that I put forward is not my favorite thing. You know, I don’t like making reductions to services and things that I prioritize and care deeply about. But adopting a budget that is balanced in this environment does require tradeoffs. And I want to be really frank with San Diego about that. I think that we have to be honest with the public about the real challenges the city faces, which are very similar to the ones that San Diego families faced themselves. And so there’s a lot of trade offs. There’s stuff that I wouldn’t personally support as an individual matter, but in a collective $6 billion budget, what we kind of came down to is arguing about roughly $21 million in spending. And I think in the spirit of compromise of collaboration and moving this city forward, I signed the budget. Safchik: What would you have done differently? Gloria: Well, I would like to have seen less spending. On the day of the council’s adoption of this budget. They added roughly $21 million in additional spending beyond what I proposed. Safchik: Where does that money come from? Gloria: Well, that’s part of the problem is that in some cases, that comes from one time or fairly limited resources. And what that means is that we will have a deficit to deal with next year. So that’s part of the reluctance. You know, my strategy was to try and deal with as much of the structural deficit this year, establish a new baseline for city services, and then responsibly grow the organization back, prioritizing the service. That’s, I think, saying the most about because we were already looking at a slight shortfall for next year. This adds more to that. It is certainly not as large as what we’ve seen in the last two years. So we are making steady progress on reducing the structural deficit. But ultimately, I think San Diegan are sick and tired of hearing about what we don’t have at City Hall in terms of resources and want us to get about the business of serving our neighborhoods. While this budget does get us closer to that, it does not go as far as I would have liked. And, we will deal with what comes next year. Safchik: In your original budget proposal, you suggested slashing the Arts and Culture grant funding. Is that something you do so that later you can come in with a compromise and everyone looks like a hero? Gloria: Well, there is sometimes a strategy knowing that the council will always restore some level of services. And when they restore them for things that I very much support, like arts and culture. You know, I’m not that mad about it. In this particular case, I quibble with the resources that they used, basically diverting funds from the convention center to arts and culture. It’s allowable. It’s fine. They built a consensus. They adopted it unanimously. So I understand where they’re coming from. But the strategy overall often is to know that they will add more spending. And to the extent that we can hopefully point them in directions that I won’t oppose or they won’t feel badly about. I mean, there’s, you know, not supporting everything that’s in there. But on the whole, what they restored in terms of some neighborhood services and arts and culture, I’m absolutely, very comfortable with those restorations, if not the manner in which they did it. Safchik: Is the system, the set up of how the budget process works, is it serving the people of San Diego? Gloria: You know, that is an excellent question. And I think it’s because, and you heard some of this at budget adoption, we do this every year. What we do, because that’s the process that’s set up. And in many ways, the mayor is sort of set up for the villain in this conversation because we have to go first. I have to propose something. And the council gets roughly two months to look at it and let it throw stones at it, criticize it. Obviously, folks whose interests are impacted will come out as well. You know, and so it’s just the nature of the process itself. Could it be improved? Surely it could. It could always, where that is a part of what I’m proud of in this year. You know, last year was absolutely not a pleasant experience. This one was a better experience. And so we are doing an iterative process where we’re looking and learning from past experience and doing better going forward. We can and probably should do that. But a situation where the mayor doesn’t go first, I don’t really foresee that happening. And I hope that people and council members will understand. This isn’t about any mal intent. This is about taking the available information that we have and making the best possible choices amongst often really unfortunate options. It’s just the nature of the process. I would also say that when the council restores spending, as they often do, when they lament that we do this every year, it’s in part because they restore that spending and further add to the deficit in further years. So while they feel like it’s, you know, part of the mayor, offering the same cuts year after year, it’s in many ways about what they choose to spend or increase spending on. That puts us in a position where we have to come back with cuts the next year. Safchik: You mentioned those restorations. It feels like last Tuesday, that’s what we were hearing about– restoration and restoration. I’m still murky about where those dollars are coming from. Gloria: Well, so a part of this process, which is a good thing, is that in the process of discussing where our revenue is coming from and what are we spending them on. You know, you can come across new resources that weren’t there. So for example, the city attorney modified their opinion on the utilization of our Golf Enterprise Fund that resulted in millions of dollars that we could put towards running rec centers across the city. That’s a change of circumstance. That was not true in April when I proposed a budget, but was true by the time June came. And so that became an available resource. Another thing that happens is the budget that I propose in April is based off of November financial data, ultimately stale information. Over the course of the process, we get new financial information, and this is a good case, but we are seeing some small improvements to our revenues, such that we have a little bit more money to work with again. We’re talking about a couple of million dollars here or there in a multibillion dollar budget. But the point is that those additional dollars here and there can be used for restorations, and that’s a very reasonable thing to do. Although, of course, as the person that’s often most directly held accountable, I would love to see those resources funneled towards more basic neighborhood services or conserve for a rainy day. Safchik: Do the restorations go too far this year? Gloria: No. I think that they’re okay. What I’m concerned about is the source of funds that are being utilized. And, you know, so in the case of rec centers and libraries and arts and culture, I think those are reasonable restorations. There are some restorations that I sort of scratch my head at, you know, council, you know, resurrected, their, individual discretionary accounts, which seems like a nice to have in a difficult budget year. The restorations to many of the independent departments. So, you know, I, as mayor, asked every department to contribute to our budget solution. And to the extent that there are a handful of departments that do not report to me that are independent of my administration, largely speaking, those folks are not experiencing any cuts. And that kind of creates a situation of some haves and have nots. I don’t know that the average San Diegan would say that they’re okay with the police department or the fire department taking a cut. But our city auditor, our ethics commissioner, is not making a commensurate cut. Safchik: Do you think that the stench of some of the new revenue generation attempts from last year linger over this budget discussion? Gloria: There’s no question. There’s no question there. Last year, a part of that, again, very difficult and unpleasant budget year. The council’s mantra to me was go find resources, go find new revenue. I went and did that. And some of them actually criticized me, feeling as though that I wasn’t being as aggressive as they wanted. What I think they came to find out was that it wasn’t as easy as they suggested, and that many of those things either were not achievable or were not well received. So the message last year was all about go find new revenue. The message this year to me was, you know, make this an all cuts budget. Safchik: Did the new revenue items backfire? Would you categorize it that way? Gloria: You know what, To the extent that I think that when these things are done in a rushed fashion, when the council says, you know, you’re saying it takes six months to do that. We want it in three. Well, generally speaking, when you do something fast, the quality isn’t what you’d like it to be. But, you know, I’m responsive to the legislative branch of this city and did our very best to implement things. But in that process, I do think that, you know, folks, you know, certainly didn’t have the time to maybe absorb some of the changes that we’re doing, and we’re doing many of them all at once. That said, you know, what that did was allow us to continue to maintain certain levels of service that I think, frankly, are well supported by the public. And absent that new revenue we would have in having a conversation about cuts that residents and neighborhoods would have been very, very upset about. Some of what we heard this year as we looked at a budget process that is really much more focused on reductions than any form of new revenue. Safchik: You have said time and time again that at some point, the city is going to have to hold its nose and make some really tough cuts. Did you accomplish that this year? Gloria: Yeah. I mean, there are cuts that are in this budget. You know, the focus is again the way this process plays out. Mayor comes in with tough budget. Council comes in and saves the day. We adopt a budget. Everyone holds hands and and rejoices right. That narrative that’s seen most years often overlooks that. We still had to make $100 million worth of reduction, and you will see and experience that. And those are difficult choices. Those are hard conversations. Those are the tough calls that people like me often talk about. The question is, are they sufficient to put us where we would like to go? And the answer, based on our current five year outlook, is now that we will need to make additional reductions or find new revenues going forward. And that’s really to maintain our current posture. I think if you talk to most San Diegans, they would say they need to pave more roads. We want more library hours, we want more neighborhood services. And quite frankly, we’re not funded to do that. Now, we could do that with existing resources, but that means radically reducing services in other areas. And again, when you look at some of the service registrations in, by the city council, where we’re adding more money to things like our auditor, our ethics commission, we’re, we’re putting more money towards, granting out to outside nonprofit organizations. That necessarily means that those are dollars that we don’t have for road repair. Well, I personally disagree with that. We continue to make progress in this budget. It does have millions of dollars for hundreds of miles of road repair, but we really ought to be spending, I think, three times more on road repair. And that money is simply not going to come easily and generally probably unlikely to be possible without new revenue. Safchik: When we hear these deficit numbers, sometimes staggering deficit numbers. Where are they coming from? Is this a wish list? Is this to match up to last year’s spending? Can you explain that? Gloria: Absolutely. So what it looks like is you take the current fiscal year service level and then match it with next year’s service level. But then you overlay inflation on top of it. And so you have a situation where in order to get the policing services that we have this year, you actually have to spend more because fuel costs more, electricity costs more, salary and benefits, health care costs go up. These are all costs that San Diego has experienced. And sometimes they think that they don’t impact the city, but they absolutely do. So these deficits that we’re talking about really are about trying to maintain service levels from one year to the next. The very same ones, not increases. And but that results generally in a deficit. Safchik: When you say that service level, it’s core services, but also whatever pet projects were funded in the last budget? Gloria: That’s fair to say. And unless we recognized a particular spending as a one time, you know, does it contribute to the deficit. Safchik: It’s assumed it’s ongoing. Gloria: Correct. Sometimes it’s explicit that something is, sometimes it’s explicit it isn’t so explicit. My job is to try and gauge out what do I think’s going to happen? So, you know, in the case of the council members, discretionary grants, arts and culture, you know, you still put those in. Does it mean we have to. And that’s again, where the tough decisions often may come, but ultimately it’s about maintaining the current service levels. And I go back to what I believe and what I hear all the time. We want less homeless people on our streets. We want more housing that’s affordable to everyday people. We want lower emergency response times. And that is not achievable without, again, major reductions to other services or new revenue from somewhere else. Safchik: Yes, this was objectively from where we sit at least a less contentious budget cycle than last year. It still sounds like there is tension between you and the council. Gloria: Well, that’s inherent to the process, right. And people are very familiar with the federal level where we have different branches of government. It is very similar. At the city level. You have an executive branch, a legislative branch, and we have to work in concert with one another. They have certain priorities. I have priorities, and we try to work together to move forward. That’s what this year’s budget’s about. But inherently, there are always disagreements. And, you know, I try to provide grace to the council, recognizing that they have individual districts, they often aren’t focused on the citywide needs of all 1.4 million San Diegan. It’s the person that oversees the organization, the operations, the 12,000 employees that do the work of getting water to your house and paramedics to your door. They don’t always have all the information, but I think a part of why this year went better is that we engaged with them earlier. We provided more information than ever. Really walked hand in hand through this process so that by the time we got to budget adoption day, I think we’d answered many of the questions, understood some of their priorities, and tried to incorporate them in what I ended up putting forward, And again, out of the 6 billion or so in spending that I proposed, they ultimately adjusted roughly 20 million of it. And I think that that’s what consensus looks like in 2026. Safchik: We pulled some numbers that showed the city’s payroll has grown to 15% over the last decade. Why? Gloria: A couple of reasons. Number one was that early in my time as mayor, we had all of our labor contracts expire, and so we had to go to the bargaining table and provide adjustments. As you may know, my predecessors held city pay flat for roughly a decade. And as a consequence, we lost a lot of good folks to other cities, other governments, other professions. Simply because, you know, their rent didn’t stay flat for ten years, but their pay did. So those adjustments were relatively significant. It’s also true that as we become more competitive in the marketplace in terms of paying benefits, people have chosen to stay. One of the ways that my predecessors often balanced the budget was understanding and knowing that people would be exiting the organization and their positions would stay vacant. Well, that doesn’t generally work, particularly to see like ours. It’s growing. It’s adding population. It’s adding new facilities. We need the people, the bodies, the employees to do that work. So, it’s a combination of those new labor agreements coupled with people choosing to stay at the city. Safchik: Did the population grow a commensurate 15% though?  Gloria: No, you know, and I’ve seen that criticism. But I also– that comes from the people that really perpetrated the past sins that we’re still dealing with. You know, when folks, the previous mayor said, you know, we don’t have to make our full pension bill, but we can provide pay increases. That didn’t work out so well for the city. And I’m the guy that’s still cleaning up that mess from 20 plus years ago. But those folks who did that are usually pretty open about their criticism about how the city’s operating today with seemingly no self-consciousness, about the fact that our pension bill is so high because of their poor decision making. So that’s that’s just interesting with regard to where we’re at today, when you hold the pay flat in when people exit the organization, you know, if you end up with 9000 employees, which is essentially where we were when I became mayor, you know, I don’t think anyone was happy with the service levels then. And so in many ways, it’s not about making up for population growth. It’s about trying to staff the size of the city that we are for many, many years. We just simply haven’t been that and San Diegans can see that in the condition of our roads. How long it takes us to fix a streetlight, things of that nature, you know, when you have the staffing to do that work, some of these things get better. But we still have a long way to go to get to the service levels that people want, in part because rebuilding after a decade of disinvestment is rough. But it’s also true that we don’t necessarily have the resources to do everything that people want. Safchik: Is the city staff bloated? Are you looking for efficiencies? Do you know that every single person on the city’s payroll is doing the job that they were hired to do, and that is necessary. Gloria: So we’re a very large organization of 12,000 people. And so in any large organization, there’s always going to be variation. But here’s the thing. Our folks do show up to work every day to run the eighth largest city in the country. And I believe that they are working their tails off to do right by the people and the taxpayers of the city. That said, I think this, this kind of narrative that’s been out there for years, you heard it a ton through this budget process about middle managers, right? Well, they’re often referencing data from almost ten years ago. And what I need is for folks to understand, where are we at today? It is true that we staffed up a great deal, particularly around the pandemic response. So when people were referencing positions that may have existed five years ago, if you look, they’re not here anymore, that the pandemic is over and those positions were eliminated. So when you look at contemporary information, information today, I believe that we’re in a much leaner posture than we were just a couple of years ago, but still making up for that decade of sort of holding things back. The other thing that I would say is that– We have to have staff here to do the work. And, the days of telling you that you can have everything you want and it’s not going to cost you a dime, that does not make sense. And, I would, I would take this opportunity to say that there’s always criticism of the spending, but there’s very little attention paid to the efficiencies that happen. So in this budget that was just adopted, we are consolidating our brush management efforts, our tree maintenance efforts to actually get more bang for our buck. You saw our homelessness budget was right sized around cost efficiency. So some of our most expensive programs are sunsetting and the savings are going to expand, shelter capacity over 200 beds in this new year despite our budgetary challenges. So there is a commitment to efficiency. My favorite one was just the other day. We have a requirement under state law to send every San Diegan a report on the condition of our water quality. It is a paper report that we pay for post, printing and postage that costs a ton of money. City staff wisely said, why don’t we send a postcard with a QR code? Save a bunch of money? Did it. Done. Money saved. That happens all the time, but that rarely makes headlines. Safchik: How do you regain the public’s trust in this city’s fiscal operations? Gloria: We have to do the work. We have to be transparent and honest. I don’t feel that the city has always been as transparent or as honest as folks, and that includes telling people what they don’t necessarily want to hear. And, that’s part of it. I think the best way we can have trust from the people that we’re honored to serve is to fix the damn roads, to repair the streetlights, to get a trained professional to their door on the worst day of their lives when they need a police officer, a firefighter, a paramedic. That’s how you do it. Safchik: And does this budget allow you to? Gloria: More of it than would have been absent my presence here. I mean, quite honestly, I think when you look at a lot of politicians, they don’t have the priorities of the people in this particular budget. First time ever again, transparency and honesty. We asked San Diegan to give us their opinion. 13,000 of them sent in their priorities, and I was heartened to see that they matched my parents. They want to be kept safe. They’re proud that we’re a safe city. They want to keep it that way. They want to fix the roads. They want less homeless people, and they want housing costs to come down this budget, despite the reductions that are necessary to balance, as is our legal responsibility to balance. Maintaining those priorities will continue to get a trained professional to your door and remain a safe city. We’re going to continue to do our best to reduce homelessness. We just got our numbers in a few weeks ago. The number went down again. Housing starts are up, meaning costs are coming down. And we’re going to continue to fix the roads. Is it all that I’d like it to be? No. But do I think a different mayor with a different set of priorities would do what was in this budget? I don’t think so. I don’t think we previously saw the commitment to roads, to homelessness, to housing development, to safety. And in fact, we had some of those fights with the city council. Right. The suggestions around removing the automated license plate readers, I think that would have been disastrous. For making sure that we can hold criminals accountable in our city. I’m grateful that a majority of the council stood with me and said no to that. A different mayor might have a different outcome, but I think that we have to stay focused on those key priorities, allow the results to speak for themselves, and know that this is a multi-year process. You know, you only get to be mayor for 4 to 8 years, and you can’t undo a generation’s worth of underinvestment and all the issues I just mentioned in that period of time. But what you can do is make sure that the trend line is going in the right direction. And what we have is crime is down, housing costs are going down, homelessness is going down and road repair is going up. I think those are positive things. Safchik: Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for your time today. Gloria: My pleasure. Thank you. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less