By San Diego Monitor News / December 5, 2025
San Diego officials are tightening the city’s belt once again, confronting a financial hole that continues to widen despite a wave of new fees and rate increases approved earlier this year. Mayor Todd Gloria has instructed every department to clamp down on spending immediately, warning that the coming budget cycle will demand even tougher decisions.
City leaders have been reviewing virtually every line of spending, from overtime to contracts that provide everything from homeless services to rented construction equipment. The mayor’s financial team issued the directive after discovering that equipment rentals alone cost the city more than six million dollars last year — often without full council review. Now, department managers must justify each contract and revisit their cost projections ahead of next year’s budget process.
Even with new revenue from trash pickup fees, parking charges in Balboa Park, and other rate adjustments, the city still faces a projected deficit nearing ninety million dollars for the fiscal year that starts next July. That number could swell past one hundred million if the city loses expected one-time homelessness funding or must expand staffing to meet operational needs. Roughly half of the gap represents long-term, structural problems that will require permanent fixes.
City finance analysts say it may take several years before revenues stabilize enough to match the city’s obligations. Their long-term forecast suggests relief may not arrive until around 2029, assisted partly by a decrease in pension debt payments. In the meantime, officials are preparing for a series of difficult budget cycles marked by disputes over service reductions and staffing levels. Some suggested cuts have already been rejected, and recent departures among top administrators have added more uncertainty.
San Diego relies heavily on four major revenue sources — property taxes, sales taxes, hotel taxes, and franchise fees — to fund most city services. Early financial reports show mixed performance. Property tax receipts are running higher than anticipated, but sales and hotel taxes, both closely tied to the local economy, have fallen short. Franchise fee revenue remains steady.
Another complication: the rollout of Measure C, the voter-approved hotel-room tax increase earmarked for homelessness programs, Convention Center upgrades, and street improvements. Although the city has collected more than twenty-six million dollars so far, the City Council has not yet approved the rules governing how and when the money can be used. Meanwhile, the city’s new paid-parking program at Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo is generating far less than projected, leaving an eight-and-a-half-million-dollar gap in anticipated revenue.
City officials say they will reevaluate spending and revenue trends throughout the year and may present additional proposals to keep the budget in balance. Still, as San Diego enters another uncertain budget season, the question remains: could these cost-cutting measures — now deemed essential — have been deployed first, before turning to fee hikes and new charges for residents?
Toad just wants money to gloss over his errors. Plain and simple. That’s why there’s more sales tax increases on the city and county budget. Incompetency at it’s finest.
Right out of the gate this mayor started his tenure with the purchase of the now-infamous purchase of the asbestos-filled, obsolete 101 Ash Street; followed by many other such things as squandering our taxpayer dollars on over-engineered, unsafe bikeways.
Add to that a lengthy list of long neglected maintenance of aging infrastructure, thereby creating such problems as the massive flooding on I-5 downtown beginning of his first term, and the devastation in the Chollas Creek neighborhood rounding out the ending of that term. There are so many other items of ongoing neglect to mention but we don’t have space to list.
So here we are. Under this administration, it seems that things are never so bad they can’t get worse. Voters were right to hold back on the one cent sales tax increase. Taxpayers need to stay strong. Any new penny in revenue will be treated as play money and squandered.
At this point, choking the budget to within an inch of its life may be the only way to force real discipline and give our city a fighting chance to right the ship before it fully capsizes.
Faulconer’s name has to be mentioned when speaking of 101 Ash St.
Yes, it’s important to remember that it was Mayor Faulconer who first pushed the lease-to-own deal for 101 Ash Street. But just as important, Todd Gloria – then council president and chair of the so-called “Smart Growth and Land Use” subcommittee (an oxymoron) – helped drive this Faulconer deal forward. At that meeting he sold it to the council as a “great deal,” a “class A building” that “only needs a $10,000 power wash.” The committee recommendation then went to the full council, which approved it. We now pay roughly $18,000 per day for an empty downtown building.
A link to the “Smart Growth and Land Use” subcommittee video from September 21, 2016 can be found here (start around 36:00):
https://sandiego.granicus.com/player/clip/6785?view_id=12&redirect=true
It’s also important to recognize that when Sean Elo-Rivera was council president, he then pushed for the outright purchase of this albatross of a building – in large part to make one of the incriminating lawsuits against the mayor go away. To facilitate the purchase, about $15 million in already-earmarked CIP funds was raided. As Jeff McDonald of the Union-Tribune reported, part of that $15 million had been set aside for clearing Chollas Creek – which never happened, causing more homelessness in San Diego.
Everything this administration does seems to work against its own “affordability crisis” battle cry. Their decisions waste public money, create more expensive repairs, and trigger costly lawsuits – all of which further burden the economically challenged residents of San Diego.
On Thursday, I parked near the Rueben Fleet Center to visit the Mingei Museum and found signs all over the park stating that Parking on December 5, 2025 will be $35 for December Nights, as I noted yesterday about the Toad Gloria price gouging. But then it hit me that this will adversely hit all the evening events, such as the dances in the War Memorial Building. Further research revealed Toad Gloria cut a deal for the San Diego Zoo to only charge $8 a day in the Zoo Parking lots, but they will close when the Zoo closes. Yes, you heard it here. There will be zero parking for night events in the War Memorial Building in Balboa Park.
Back to December Nights, I guestimated that 250,000 cars will use the parking lots of Balboa Park. My calculator shows 250,000 times $8 = $2,000,000 each day/night. Three nights means the City of San Diego will rake in $6,000,000. Will the City Council re-invest that cash harvest in up-grading the Balboa Park buildings and landscaping?
I wonder how many belts could be tightened if we eliminated or reassigned to street duty a large chunk of middle managers working on absurd projects like curb extensions, street calming, bike lanes, surplus park land, and… Fill in the blank_______________ !
Ditto, ditto, ditto. Gloria and the council majority refuse to consider eliminating at least some of the positions of 400 middle managers all making six figures and not covered by union contract, such as the 12 who “oversee” the city’s bike lane program.
don’t forget the middle managers who work on “special projects….
While the ill-conceived purchases of 101 Ash St. and the sky-diving facility intended for homeless services continue to be a drag on the General Fund (both thanks to Faulconer), the problem goes even farther back to when an earlier Republican mayor borrowed from the Pension fund for the 1996(?) Republican National Convention in San Diego. As noted in this article, the City of San Diego continues to pay principle and interest to the city’s pension fund until at least 2029.
A decade or so later, a former SD Chief of Police and Republican voices convinced San Diegans to change from a City Manager to a Strong Mayor; problems seem to have increased from there. Proposition B (2012) is a case in point, now costing the city more than $200 million to ‘unwind’ the measure after courts invalidated it. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/07/11/with-fix-for-cops-pensions-san-diego-takes-key-step-to-unwind-prop-b-and-measures-cost-tops-200m/
As for pay parking in Balboa Park: “Meanwhile, the city’s new paid-parking program at Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo is generating far less than projected, leaving an eight-and-a-half-million-dollar gap in anticipated revenue.” Many of us will not be surprised to find, over time, that the new park-wide paid parking requirements will not only cost the city more than it takes in, but it will have negative effects on the museums and restaurants in the park as people decide not to come to the park for lunch or dinner or to visit the museums.
I’m sure others can come up with other boondoggles such as the city’s failure to plan for how to utilize the revenue pursuant to Prop. C (hotel taxes). That, of course, includes the expenditures by the city to pay for several levels of litigation to finally gain courts’ approval.