San Francisco’s most significant challenge in 2025 and the coming years will be balancing the City’s budget and addressing its underlying structural deficit. Key city priorities, including increasing housing supply, revitalizing downtown and maintaining transportation operations, will remain difficult to tackle unless the underlying budgetary issues are fundamentally resolved. While San Francisco’s expenditures have skyrocketed due to inflation and increased fixed costs related to wages, benefits and retirement, revenue growth has not kept pace. Learn more about how San Francisco’s budget works, including where its money comes from and how it is spent, the difference between departments that are supported by the general fund and enterprise departments, and how decisions are made.
- Moderator: Annie Gaus, Senior Politics Editor, The San Francisco Standard
- Anna Duning, Budget Director, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
- Bree Mawhorter, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
- Nicole Neditch, Governance & Economy Policy Director, SPUR
- Ben Rosenfield, Former City Controller, City and County of San Francisco