Mayor Darrell Steinberg Tuesday released a $36-million plan to fund the City’s effort to reduce homelessness over the next two years and a $2.1 million investment in catalytic projects for youth in Sacramento’s underserved neighborhoods.

The Mayor made his recommendations to the City Council, meeting as the Budget & Audit Committee, as his proposal for spending items to include in the City’s mid-year budget. The mid-year budget includes expenditures deemed too urgent to wait until the new fiscal year begins July 1.

Mayor Steinberg noted that the City currently has about $35.1 million in non-allocated revenue at its disposal, including carry-over funds from the existing Measure U.

“It is vital at this moment to intensity our focus in two key areas….One is homelessness and one is early wins for youth,” Mayor Steinberg said.

A vote on his proposal is expected on Feb. 5. The Council, acting as the Budget committee, voted unanimously Tuesday to move the plan along to the Council for consideration.

Following is the Mayor’s budget proposal, as submitted to the City Council on Tuesday:

RECOMMENDATION

The purpose of this memo is to recommend that the City Council direct the City Manager to allocate funding to the following budget priorities outlined in this memo. I. INTRODUCTION

As I embark on my third year as your Mayor, it is remarkable to think of the progress we have made together as a City over the last two years. I would like to sincerely thank all of my City Council colleagues and our City Manager Howard Chan for helping foster a new spirit of collaboration and partnership in City Hall as we attempt to solve some of Sacramento’s most pressing challenges together. I strongly believe that in our first two years together we have laid a solid foundation on every key challenge and opportunity facing our changing City.

2019 must be the year we shift from foundations to breakthroughs. This is the year we will we will finally kickstart our Downtown Railyards, invest in transformative projects on our waterfront, dramatically increase our shelter capacity for our homeless population, and we will begin fulfilling the promise of Measure U’s commitment to make real change for neighborhoods and our youth.

II. OUR CITY’S BUDGET PRIORITIES

With the passage of Measure U last November, our City sits firmly on sound financial footing. Even before our next budget cycle begins, this year we as a City Council have the unique opportunity to have approximately $35M of resources at Midyear. This unique opportunity precedes our longer-term investment decisions we have to make in the upcoming annual fiscal year budget. Even after investing these one-time resources, we will still maintain an Economic Uncertainty Reserve of over 10%.

I have worked closely with the City Manager over the past few weeks on how best to maximize the impact of these one-time resources at Midyear.

I am aware of many additional Council priorities not included within this budget memorandum. However, I pledge to work with all of you beginning on February 6 to address and fund as many of these priorities as we possibly can.

With that said, I recommend that we invest Midyear resources in the following three categories:

i. Improving Essential Core City Services- Our City Manager and his excellent team have proposed a list of worthy recommendations that will enhance an array of essential core city services. These services are critical to the public and the City Council such as making significant investments in both our Police and Fire Departments, improving our 3-1-1 response times, bolstering our code enforcement staffing, and expanding our illegal dumping services. The City Manager’s recommendations include other important items that we should all support such as the FUEL Network contract and funding for Transitional Housing for Single Women and Families with Children. The vast majority of this category represent key City Council priorities. (This is an $11.2M expenditure proposed by our City Manager in the Midyear Report.)

ii. Addressing Our Homelessness Crisis- For the first time, we now have the City resources available to dramatically increase our shelter capacity and tackle our homelessness crisis in a real way. In the coming months we must implement major pieces of our collective 8 x 100 strategy, led directly by each City Councilmember in your districts.

I want to assure that each of you have all the tools needed to be successful, most importantly, the resources available for one-time capital expenditures and ongoing operational funding to successfully site and open new shelters.

To that end, I propose we set-aside $16M of one-time resources into our Homeless Housing Multi-Year Operating Project (MYOP) as part of a two-year plan to shelter 2,400 homeless people per year.

I will propose at our upcoming Council workshop session on February 12 that we approve a two-year budget plan of $36M for additional shelter and related services. The $36M will include the $16M of City funding mentioned above, a conservative estimate of $12M of current and anticipated state dollars, and $8M of private sector funding. I have raised over $6M of private funding thus far and $2M remains unspent.