Important Supervisors Meeting Tuesday on Saving SF Public Health and Human Services

Extremely Important Supervisors Meeting Tuesday
on Saving SF Public Health and Human Services

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
1:00 – rally on, City Hall steps
2:00 Hearing Before Full Board of Supervisors
City Hall, Room 250


The Coalition to Save Public Health and Human Services is pressing SF Supervisors to approve measures (1) re-directing cuts in this year's budget to less vital services and (2) placing revenue-generating measures on the June ballot to prevent even worse cuts next year. The current year's cuts are set to take place in February, so this Board meeting is our last chance to stave them off. This may also be the last chance to raise revenues for next year's budget.

Tuesday's meeting will be a hearing where patients, providers, and advocates testify about the devastating effects of the cuts, followed by Supervisors debate and vote on the two measures. After hearing this testimony, it should be a moral no-brainer for the Supervisors to pass these measures, but powerful business forces like the Mayor, the Committee on Jobs and the Chamber of Commerce would let seniors, the poor, and working families fall from the trees like dead leaves. If you cannot attend the meeting, please contact the Supervisors and press them to pass these measures. You can use http://home.comcast.net/~mlyon01/publichealth/contactcity.htm for your convenience.

San Francisco is cutting $112 million in spending from this year's budget, and for the fiscal year beginning in July, the City’s shortfall is half its disposable income. Newsom is determined to cut public health and human services for seniors, the mentally ill, people with substance disorders, and poor working families, while opposing raising revenues.

Examples of cuts from this year's budget: (1) Healthy San Francisco, the City’s barely-started universal healthcare program, will be gutted. (2) SF General will compromise care by eliminating RNs, replacing certified with non-certified staff, and moving clerks with some clinical training to non-patient areas. (3) New Leaf will cut therapy for 50 gay clients with both mental health and addictive disorders. (4) Hundreds of non-English-speakers in Chinatown and Richmond will lose services and General Hospital may lose competency for half of its Asian languages. (5) Half our acute diversion units, empowering alternatives to confinement for 1,400 mentally ill patients, will close. (6) Health and hygene supplies will not be supplied to shelters. The impacts of these cuts are deep, and the real impact on human lives is not even known yet, as community based organizations struggle to figure out what they will have to close to make up for lost funds.