By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / April 15, 2026
San Diego would sharply reduce funding for local arts organizations, city libraries, recreation centers and many other programs in a proposed budget for the new fiscal year Mayor Todd Gloria will release Wednesday.
The proposed $2.2 billion spending plan would close a projected $146 million deficit with $26 million from worker furloughs, $44 million in new revenue and $76 million in service cuts that would come with about 130 layoffs.
The budget, which will be debated and adjusted by the mayor and the City Council between now and June, also merges three city departments into others and eliminates entirely the Office of Child and Youth Success.
Other cuts include homeless services, facilities maintenance, zoning enforcement, park rangers, restroom closures in some parks and elimination of a team that adds bike lanes across the city.
The cuts are required because of recent employee pay raises, including 23% hikes over three years awarded to most workers in 2023, and relatively sluggish growth in city revenue.
Hotel tax revenue is projected to decrease 3% when it usually goes up about 6% per year, sales tax revenue is expected to rise 2% instead of its usual 4% and property tax revenue is projected to rise 4% instead of its usual 6%.
This would be the second consecutive year of deep budget cuts for San Diego following the narrow rejection by city voters of a one-cent sales tax hike in November 2024 that would have boosted annual revenue by about $400 million.
Aides to Gloria said Tuesday that the $76 million in cuts proposed by the mayor would bring total budget cuts over two fiscal years to $189.2 million — nearly 9% of the city’s annual budget.
The mayor said Tuesday that he prioritized public safety, homelessness and transportation funding in what might be the bleakest city budget since San Diego took some fire engines offline 15 years ago after the Great Recession. [ed.: Who was mayor in 2010? Jerry Sanders]
He said those priorities appear to match up with what city residents want based on recent surveys submitted online by more than 10,000 residents.
“We are prioritizing what San Diegans say they want us to do with the limited resources we have,” the mayor said by phone.
The budget would dramatically reduce annual arts funding from $13.8 million to just under $2 million, crippling many local nonprofit arts groups that rely heavily on city funding and use it to secure matching grants.
In a news release Tuesday afternoon, leaders of the local arts community called the proposed cuts unacceptable and vowed to fight them before a final budget is adopted.
“Cutting funding to arts and culture at this level will have decimating, long-term consequences for San Diego’s economy and identity,” said Christine Martinez, manager of Arts and Culture San Diego. “These organizations are small businesses, employers, educators and community anchors.”
The City Council could reverse or significantly shrink the proposed arts cuts. Council members frequently express strong support for arts funding, including recent efforts to guarantee a certain amount of hotel tax funding goes to the arts.
Gloria’s proposal would also cut funding for library hours by $2.4 million, wipe out a $1 million program that matches private donations to library branches and slash money for recreation center hours by $5.4 million.
Aides to Gloria said specifics of which libraries and rec centers would lose hours won’t be revealed until next month, but they noted that two libraries will close for many months for renovations: Ocean Beach and Rancho Peñasquitos.
The mayor said it’s highly upsetting for him to propose cuts to arts, libraries and rec centers. But he said the only alternative was cuts to public safety or transportation projects such as paving and streetlights and sidewalks.
“It’s a very unfortunate choice to have to make,” Gloria said.
He noted that some services provided by libraries and rec centers are also provided by local nonprofits. That’s in contrast to the services provided by city police officers and firefighters, who respond to 911 calls.
The budget would reduce homelessness funding by $4.5 million. Gloria is proposing $97.1 million, including $72.9 million from the city’s general fund and $24 million in state money and grants.
Aides to Gloria said they will provide specifics about what cuts will be made to homelessness programs next month, similar to the proposed cuts to libraries and recreation centers.
Because the council made such significant changes to Gloria’s proposed cuts last spring, the mayor’s aides said Tuesday that they chose this spring to simply pick targeted amounts of savings from libraries, rec centers and homelessness and then allow the details to be part of budget negotiations.
While public safety funding would increase, there would be some targeted cuts, including changes to the city’s bomb squad and other programs. The city would also save $5.6 million by not filling several open police sergeant and lieutenant positions.
Another proposed cut, which the council is likely to reverse, is Gloria’s plan to entirely wipe out the $100,000 that each of the city’s nine council members gets to support community events and organizations.
The $44 million in new revenue would come from a wide variety of sources, including backfilling the city’s annual pension payment in a new way to increase interest earnings and $5.3 million more that would be transferred from ambulance transport reimbursements to the general fund — $16.3 million in fiscal year 2027 versus $11 million in the ongoing fiscal year.
In addition, Gloria’s aides are characterizing the $11.8 million cut to arts funding as a revenue increase because hotel tax revenue that has gone to arts would now be used to cover other expenses.
The deficit Gloria had to close increased from $118 million to $146 million this spring because of some new spending that couldn’t be avoided, aides to the mayor said.
That included personnel for new parks expected to open, $1.9 million to study levees along the San Diego river to potentially preserve federal funding and another $1.9 million to fund temporary service for customers newly ineligible for city trash pick-up.
The proposed budget seeks to shrink the city’s often-criticized cadre of middle managers.
The mayor says he will save $9 million by eliminating dozens of highly paid program manager and program coordinator positions. Consolidating departments also eliminates middle managers.
The proposed budget would merge the Office of Emergency Services, which handles disaster preparedness and homeland security, into the Fire-Rescue Department.
Also, the Office of Special Events and Filming would be merged into Parks and Recreation and the Compliance Department would be spliced up and merged into three other departments.
The budget would actually increase $71 million, from $2.167 billion to $2.238 billion — a nearly 3.3% increase. But that would come with no service increases.
The overall city budget would be $6.4 billion. That goes beyond the operations budget, known as the general fund, to include the capital projects budget, the sewer and water divisions and the golf enterprise fund.
Golf supporters had expressed concerns this spring that the new budget would take away golf revenues to close budget gaps elsewhere in the city. While Gloria’s proposal doesn’t do that, the council could use golf money to cancel or shrink some of the mayor’s proposed cuts.
The budget would eliminate 198 jobs in the general fund, including about 130 that are now filled and about 70 that are vacant.
The budget includes $500,000 for a study that could allow the city to increase the revenue it receives from its contracted private trash haulers, a move the city auditor strongly recommended.
There is no contribution to the city’s reserves, ignoring a longstanding city commitment to increase reserves to national standards. The reserves remain at $207.1 million, far below the $362 million recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association.
The mayor said he included in the budget development process this spring Council President Joe LaCava and the city’s independent budget analyst to possibly avoid a repeat of acrimonious negotiations last spring, when the mayor used his line-item veto and council members partially overrode that veto.
“I took last year as a lesson,” Gloria said, expressing optimism for a smoother process this spring.
But he said the collegiality he’s seeking could be at risk because of the many painful cuts proposed in the budget, which could attract more frustrated city residents to budget hearings than usual.
Gloria said the deep cuts in the last two budgets have come close to eliminating what he calls a “structural” budget deficit — a large gap between ongoing city revenues and ongoing city expenses.
“The austerity of this budget is intended to set a new baseline,” he said.
The mayor is scheduled to formally release the new budget at a news conference scheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday at City Hall, 201 C St.
Oh those pension payments just keep on keeping on. Let the lame duck mayor eat this. Clean house and reconfigure.