San Diego’s proposed budget would hollow out many arts and library offerings as the city confronts a $146 million deficit, an approach that has drawn protests from arts and culture advocates and pushed the City Council toward additional hearings. In a budget plan released last week, Mayor Todd Gloria outlined a “barebones” spending approach that, the administration said, would prioritize public safety, homelessness response and road repair while reducing other services.
Chief Financial Officer Rolando Charvel said the city’s position reflected a wider pattern in recent years, when costs rose faster than revenue. “What we’ve been seeing over the last several years after COVID and inflationary pressures, is that it has affected prices across the nation, across the world,” Charvel said. He added, “Costs are going up faster than our revenue growth,” describing how inflation and spending increases have strained operations.
Charvel also said the squeeze comes from both sides of the ledger. He described higher costs for items such as city vehicle parts and asphalt used for street repair, while inflation suppresses consumer spending, tourism and home sales—factors tied to local taxes. Economists in the report echoed that framing, with Alan Gin saying, “We’re being hit both on the cost side and the revenue side,” and Jeffrey Clemens pointing to outside pressures, including federal immigration policy, tariffs and other trade-policy dimensions that put cost pressure on service providers and local governments.
Gloria’s proposed $6.4 billion budget plan set up a fight over “quality of life” services. In remarks attributed to council President Joe LaCava, council members were described as pleased with public safety funding but uncomfortable with “dramatic cuts to the arts.” LaCava said, “People will pull out their pencils and start scouring the mayor’s budget to see if we can tackle that going forward.”
The most severe cuts in the plan would target arts funding, advocates said. According to the report, Gloria’s budget proposes to zero out an $11.8 million arts and culture grant program, leaving only $2 million in a separate account. Jessica Hanson York, described as executive director of the Mingei Museum and president of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, said, “The mayor is proposing decimating a long-standing, critical source of revenue for what is now nearly 200 organizations across San Diego.” She also said the cuts would affect free events, performances and education offered by member organizations at the cultural center.
Library supporters said the proposal would also reduce access to services. Patrick Stewart, CEO of the San Diego Library Foundation, said the budget would eliminate nearly all arts funding and curtail hours and programs at libraries, parks and recreation centers, and he warned in the report that the cuts would undermine what makes cities great. Stewart said, “When we cut the things that make San Diego or any city great, the things that bring us together as a community… I shudder to think what we end up with.” He later described the library impacts more specifically, saying the city’s 37 branches would have to trim $2.5 million in hours of service as well as programming, books and materials.
The report said San Diego also planned staffing changes as part of closing the gap, with the city intending to eliminate 101 jobs and place employees on furlough for one week per year. It also described the budget as set up to “shored up” public safety, homelessness and road repair and traffic safety, while Gloria said the plan reflected “tough decisions now—including targeted reductions to staffing and support functions—to protect the services San Diegans rely on and keep the city on solid footing,” in a statement attributed to the mayor.
Across California, the budget crisis is not limited to San Diego, the report said. It described Los Angeles as facing a $200 million deficit, Sacramento with a $66 million shortfall and San Francisco facing a $643 million gap over the next two years. In San Francisco, the report said workers protested the first wave of layoff notices after Mayor Daniel Lurie’s budget office warned departments to prepare to eliminate 500 jobs, and it also said the city planned cuts to disability assistance, environmental programs and legal aid. It added that in Los Angeles, City Controller Kenneth Mejia wrote the city was projected to overspend by $200 million, citing wildfires and “tariff levels unseen since the Great Depression,” along with “aggressive federal immigration enforcement,” and he previously warned that overspending and stagnant revenue were contributing to “crumbling infrastructure and deteriorating services.”
As cities attempt to close budget gaps, Clemens said officials and advocates should consider who bears the burden of cuts. Clemens said, “We should be worried that when cuts are being considered, the cuts will be to things that don’t have voices among well-organized stakeholder groups, that are the easiest, from a political perspective, to pull back on.” The report also said San Diego’s City Council planned additional public hearings to refine the spending plan. LaCava said, “Nobody is going to be happy with the budget as it’s going to be adopted in June,” and he said his job as council president was to make the process “open and transparent,” with the goal that people would feel they had a “fair chance to make their case.”