Bailey says the city should ‘return to 2015 staffing levels’ by cutting 1,054 employees and the services they provide.
By Michael Zucchet / Voice of San Diego / Aug. 19, 2026
City Council candidate Richard Bailey continues to promise budget fantasyland to San Diegans. He says the answer to San Diego’s persistent budget shortfalls includes no new fees, no increased taxes, and no service cuts whatsoever – in fact he claims that somehow service levels will magically improve – if we simply “return to 2015 staffing levels” in the city of San Diego.
Bailey moved to San Diego last year, changed his political party affiliation this February, and within days announced that he was running for City Council. Since then, and again last week in an interview with NBC’s “Politically Speaking,” he has repeatedly claimed that if we just “return to 2015 staffing levels,” the city’s general fund budget will swing from what he says is a $100 million annual deficit to more than a $300 million surplus with “no need to cut any services.”
Sounds too good to be true? Well of course it is. And yet it is the cornerstone talking point of his entire campaign platform.
The city’s fiscal year 2015 general fund budget had 6,975 employees. In FY 2026 it was 8,261, which represents a growth of 1,286 budgeted general fund employees, an increase of 18.4 percent. Bailey says “much of that was fueled by middle management growth” but that is simply not true. The reality is there are five areas where the vast majority of that growth actually comes from:
- Police Department – From 2,588 employees in FY 2015 to 2,680 in FY 2026, an increase of 92 employees
- Fire Department – From 1,204 to 1,457 employees, an increase of 253
- City Attorney – From 348 to 423 employees, an increase of 75
- Parks & Recreation – From 897 to 1,169 employees, an increase of 272
- Transportation and Stormwater – From 483 to 845 employees, an increase of 362
If you take Bailey at his word, he is saying he wants to “return to 2015 staffing levels” by cutting these 1,054 employees and the services they provide: 92 police officers and other Police Department personnel; 253 firefighters, lifeguards, and other employees in the Fire-Rescue Department; 75 City Attorney’s office employees; 272 Parks & Recreation Department employees; and 362 employees servicing our transportation and storm drain infrastructure.
That would be a curious move given that Bailey repeatedly says that his top priorities for additional spending are, you guessed it, “public safety, parks, and infrastructure.” Employees in these areas make up more than 80 percent of all general fund employees in the city. He can’t have it both ways – either Bailey wants to cut these services or his plan to “fix” the city’s budget is a fiction and a scam.
In addition, despite Bailey’s refrain that San Diego only has slightly more residents today as we did in 2015 (and therefore it would be “no problem” to return to those staffing levels), actually a lot has changed in terms of the services citizens demand and receive today.
For instance, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department personnel responded to 142,288 calls for fire, rescue and medical emergencies in 2015. In 2025 that number was 186,472 calls, an increase of 31 percent in emergency response call volume even though Fire Department personnel only increased 21 percent over the same period.
We also have substantially more parks and park and recreation center programming than we did in 2015, so cutting those additional employees will absolutely force the closure of neighborhood parks and park services. Same for the other departments that are the primary source of general fund personnel growth that Bailey says he wants to cut.
So Bailey, do you really want to “return” to 2015 staffing levels and cut these 1,054 public safety, parks, and infrastructure employees and the services they provide? If not, why are you misleading voters about your plan and the more than $400 million in “savings” you say you will generate?
Finally, there is some significant irony in Bailey’s attack on staffing levels and personnel growth in the city of San Diego. In the 12 years Bailey was an elected official in the city of Coronado, personnel expenses for that city grew more than 80 percent. And today the city of Coronado has one employee for every 78 residents. The city of San Diego only has one employee for every 107 residents.
Enticing – but baseless – talking points and rhetoric do not equal actual facts, and they certainly don’t translate into real solutions. Voters in City Council District 2 deserve better.
Michael Zucchet is the general manager of the San Diego Municipal Employees Association, a former city councilmember and a resident of Point Loma.
Shucks & gosh & gee whiz, yet another reason to “Don’t Vote for Bailey.” He’s fifth column right wing person.
Thanks, Michael Z.
Whenever the budget is “discussed”, we are presented with a morass of alleged “facts” that seem to almost always rely heavily on percentages. Why is that ? Because while most think a percentage is easily understood (ie a 50-50 split), when you compare percentages they become increasingly confusing and irrelevant.
If you start with a teenager’s weekly budget of say $30, a 100% increase yields a $60 budget, easily understood.
But if you start with a city’s budget of $3 BILLION (2015), a 100% increase to $6.1 BILLION (2026) is a tremendous, unimaginable amount of increase.
Percentages are the preferred tools of those who would confuse, because they are radically affected by initial size, as in the budget example above. They are also strongly affected by direction. Consider that you start with 100 apples. An increase of 100% yields 200 apples, but a decrease of 100% does not get you back to where you started, it removes ALL of the apples. An increase of 50% yields 150 apples, but to get back to where you started you need only a 33% reduction.
So let’s drop the percentages and deal with straight numbers.
San Diego’s 2015 approved budget was $3.0 billion. San Diego’s approved budget for 2026 is $6.1 billion.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about some real money.
Who can visualize exactly 1 billion of anything ? You can’t – it exceeds normal comprehension, which is why large numbers are so ripe for exploitation.
Does anyone believe that the cost of providing City services has doubled in 11 years ? I am skeptical, but maybe it has. I guess I’ll have to sit down with the 1,848 page 2015 budget, and the 1,305 page 2026 budget and see what the differences are. Specifically, where are we spending 3 billion dollars more than we were 11 years ago ?
Maybe it’s not staffing. Without examining the documents it is impossible to tell. No doubt Bailey has an agenda.
But you obviously have one as well. As “general manager of the San Diego Municipal Employees Association”, a labor union “dedicated to being a strong and effective advocate for San Diego City employees” it is not surprising that you take exception to any claims that San Diego is over-staffed.
Appropriate staffing levels of the City may be debatable, what is NOT debatable is the the fact that the San Diego City budget is $118 million in the hole.
What is also not debatable is that the budget for San Diego in 2015 was 3.0 billion dollars and is now 6.1 billion dollars. That is not merely inflation.
So perhaps if you spent less time saying “It’s not us!” and more time pointing to where the overspending lies, we might get a meaningful dialogue going instead of the ever-familiar one politician denigrating another.
Back of hand math suggests an equivalent budget would be about $4.5 billion in 2026 taking into account population growth and inflation. The question is, what is the extra $1.6 billion? Paying for poor pension choices going all the way back to Jack McGrory? More services being provided? Waste? Not really sure.
Well said Robert.
What I found on the SDPD website is..
2015 total = 2, 588 (cops and admin staff)
Sworn Cops= 2000+ budgeted) Staff deficit 150-160 cops
Admin staff= 478
——————————————————————————————————–
2026 Total = 2,542 (cops and admin staff)
Sworn cops=1822 (no mention of deficits)
Admin Staff= 720
So tell me what is wrong with having a couple hundred more cops in 2015, and fewer Admin Staff in 2015.
The mayor alone has about 150 staffers, the most ever and it used to be each Council Rep had a handful of staffers, ^6-7. Now they have about 15. Both Mayor and City Council staffs could be trimmed as well as staffs and upper management in most departments long before Cops and Firefighters get trimmed.
Why is Transportation mixed with Storm Water, so it makes it quieter for the Bike folks to install more bike lanes, while replacing sewer lines? There employees doubled, I think it’s possible whatever Dept. Transportation employees came from, were simply transferred to the merge.
Voters need to vote for qualified people to manage the city of SD and stop voting by gender, race, age, religion, smiles, best dressed, etc. Those are not qualifications for a serious job.
Robert
Awesome response and you nailed it. There would few people more biased than Mr Zucchet. His advocacy position renders his thesis suspect and as you say, understanding the real areas of waste fraud and abuse is a lot more difficult than cherry-picking talking points. Said differently, I trust Bailey more than Zucchet. He has been a successful Mayor and Zucchet has been a political wannabe in SD for decades, one of the innumerable minor leaguers who have just enough clout and connections to stay employed by or consulting to government, as they move from one shill to another.
Sure Zucchet cherry picked & I saw the interview. But I hope that trust in Bailey is low. He voted for the president 3 times, and only the first time, before the 30000+ documented lies & disastrous policies, is even partially excusable.
Bailey has found a very soft target for his campaign, City employees. It is a lot easier to target City staff than it is to face the reality of taxes and fees. The issue is not whether San Diego needs more revenue; it is to identify the sources that are most fair. San Diego ranks among the leaner large cities on this metric-lower than New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and several Texas peers, and higher than San Jose.
Note that cities differ in what they directly staff (e.g., some have more enterprise functions, hospitals, airports, or transit under the city umbrella; others contract out more services). San Francisco (city-county) is a notable outlier with far higher staffing intensity (often cited in the range of 20-25+ per 1,000 for core functions).
I’m sorry, Zucchet is running a scare tactic here that gives cover to Crosby. City employee pension alone is 9% of budget (563M of 6.1 B). You have to double that outlay over the next 8 years to get the pension obligation back to 100%. The repeal of prop B from the court effectively reversed any gains in the pension problem. Todd’s middle manager hiring exacerbated the issue. Zucchet wants to keep Bailey out of his territory plain and simple. In order to do this, the angle is either higher taxes or more financed debt.