SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Mayor Todd Gloria will give the first State of the City address of his second term Wednesday, where he must grapple with a looming $258 million deficit.
A one-cent sales tax measure which could have shored up that deficit narrowly failed in November. As a result, Gloria and the city will have to determine how to maintain service levels and what must be cut.
Gloria led last year's address with his intention to build at least 1,000 new shelter beds for homeless people -- banking on projects such as H Barracks near San Diego International Airport. That project, as well as a large shelter at Kettner and Vine in the Midway area, have not come to fruition. In fact, the city faced the loss of several hundred shelter beds at the end of 2024, leaving officials scrambling to replace them.
In an era of austerity (Gloria will present his address at City Hall rather than Balboa Theatre as he did last year), the homelessness and housing crisis remain as important as ever, as does maintaining police, fire and stormwater services.
"We will have to cut existing city services in order to meet our city's legal obligation to balance our city's budget," Gloria told Fox5 last week. "That said, I'm very clear that public safety is our city's number one responsibility of the government. When it comes to choosing between cutting things like our police department, or fire department, or lifeguards, or our paramedics, or another service -- we will be cutting another service."
Torrential downpours highlighted the city's long under-funded stormwater system last winter, when damaging floods forced hundreds to leave their homes. Then-City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera had proposed a stormwater funding measure for the November 2024 election, but withdrew it to lend support to the aforementioned sales tax measure. With neither becoming reality, it is unclear how the lengthy list of stormwater projects will be completed before the next major rain event.
In last January's speech, Gloria also announced a labor agreement for all major construction projects in the city. That was passed by the City Council and signed into law in February.
"Project labor agreements help the city of San Diego build major infrastructure projects on time, on budget, and in a way that benefits our local workers and economy," Councilman Raul Campillo said before voting for the agreement. "In 2022, I spearheaded the city's move to put Measure D on the ballot because it was long past time that we got rid of San Diego's outdated ban on project labor agreements."
The State of the City address will begin at 3 p.m. Wednesday and can be viewed on the city's website at sandiego.gov/sotc.
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