Back in the early 1970s, when San Francisco was beginning to shed its provincial stature to join what were then considered the elite cities of the U.S. – Boston, Chicago and New York – annual city expenditures hovered below $800 per citizen. In 1972, in fact, city budget expenditures were $751 per capita for a population of a little over 715,000. By 2010, the population had increased to 805,000 (up 7.1 percent), but city expenditures ballooned to over $8,152 per person – an increase of 985 percent!

Are San Franciscans better off than they were in 1972? Are we better educated? Happier? Can we travel across town faster? Are we safer? No is probably the answer to all of these questions. So is it the demand for city services or the demand for better wages and benefits that have exploded our budgets?

It is interesting to compare San Francisco with New York City. Not that S.F. needs to measure up to any city, but NYC, like S.F., is also a city and county within the same borders and certainly has most, if not more, of the same urban challenges. New York City’s 2011 budget is balanced, however. And with a 2010 census count of 8.17 million people and a budget of $46.5 billion, their expenditures are $5,688 per person, or about two-thirds of San Francisco’s per capita spending.

In the mid-1970s, NYC’s expenditures were so out of control that the city teetered dangerously toward bankruptcy. Banks refused to finance even rudimentary city functions. NYC was suddenly looking to New York State or the federal government for financial help. How did NYC get there? They had too many elected officials who were focused on providing services to everyone, and not enough officials who understood the need to balance the city checkbook. Fortunately, for New York City, both the state and federal governments were in good shape financially and could offer help.

Gorging on Free Federal Money

San Francisco may not be so lucky. Financially, our city is obese and the state and federal governments are in no better shape. So what has our city been doing about this problem? Rather than make painful budget reductions to match revenues, city officials have sought state and federal funding by the bucketfuls to prop up our addictive spending.

If you look closely, you will see many examples of this irrepressible search for and use of free federal funds all around San Francisco. Newly installed parking meters now found in many of our commercial areas (with their Big Brother tracking systems) are a good example. These replaced an earlier set of functioning meters, but like a new electronic war game, the older set did not have all of the electronic revenue-producing features found in the new meters. The proposed congestion fee is another example. This fee, which will really fall on city residents despite hundreds of pages of MTA arguments, is being planned as another excellent revenue source laden with dollars for our obese city.

There may be many more revenue plans coming. On March 24, 2011, the San Francisco Planning Commission certified the new Housing Element of the General Plan. If you look closely at the changes adopted by the commission, you can see a similar pattern of searching for free federal dollars. In short, the new Housing Element eliminates density limits for RH-1 and RH-2 neighborhoods throughout the city and extends transit-oriented development one-quarter mile each side of all major bus lines instead of merely on major routes or areas already built up. These measures all expedite the flow of federal dollars and allow San Francisco to make the argument that it has a General Plan that calls for mindless neighborhood expansion – one that cannot be met without billions in federal dollars.

 It is ill-conceived planning like this that drives middle-class families out of San Francisco. The problem is not in using federal funds, but in relying on these “free” dollars to such an extent that it reshapes city policy for the worse. This year, these funds comprise about 23 percent of our total revenues and are already starting to disappear. When they slow to a trickle, we will not be prepared.

Just as NYC was forced to do, our city officials must cut back on our runaway expenses. How about a yearly, 7 percent across-the-board cut for three years, including salaries and pensions? Get rid of ideas like bonds for street maintenance and pothole repairs. Discard concepts such as congestion fees, which are thinly disguised taxing programs. Tourists will not continue to pay 16 percent room taxes, either.

It doesn’t take smarts – it takes guts.

Geoff Wood is a 40-year resident of San Francisco and a board member of the Cow Hollow Association.