San Francisco’s budget by the numbers: A population perspective

Part 1 in a 13-part series on San Francisco’s budget

It’s budget season in San Francisco — and things are about to get spicy. This is the first in a 13-part series of bite-sized columns aimed at equipping all San Franciscans with the facts needed to form opinions about the city’s budget and what it will take to put San Francisco on solid financial footing so that we can thrive once again.

Let’s start with a clear, if uncomfortable, truth: San Francisco’s budget is too high. At approximately $16 billion for a city of just 830,000 residents, that might seem obvious — but the numbers back it up. There are several lenses through which we can examine the budget, and in this series, we’ll explore a few. Each one reinforces the same conclusion: San Francisco government’s spending is unsustainable and needs to be cut significantly.

Today, we begin with the population lens.

From 2012 to 2019, San Francisco’s city/county budget — adjusted for inflation and excluding operations like the airport, the Public Utilities Commission, the Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Port of San Francisco — grew with population growth. That trend made sense at the time.

Let’s start with a clear, if uncomfortable, truth: San Francisco’s budget is too high.

But in 2020 and 2021, San Francisco government spending spiked dramatically — and those inflated levels of spending have continued. One might assume that was due to Covid-related emergency funding, and in part, it was. But more critically, the Board of Supervisors in 2020 made a fateful decision: over public objections (including my own, as a citizen speaking during public comment), they dipped into city reserves to give raises to city employees.

Yes, during a time when residents were losing jobs and businesses were shuttering, our city leaders handed out raises to themselves and their colleagues on the public payroll.

Meanwhile, the city’s population was shrinking. Since 2020, San Francisco’s resident count has dropped by at least 6 percent, with most of the departures coming from young adults aged 20 to 35, which means fewer families forming and fewer children born to drive our city’s growth going forward.

So where does that leave us? With a 22 percent increase in the budget and a 6 percent decrease in population, San Francisco is now at least $2.4 billion out of alignment.

It’s time to face the facts: this level of spending isn’t sustainable for the population we have today.

Sources: US Census, CA Department of Finance, SFGov.org, Association of Bay Area Governments, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Standard. Full cites available on request. 

Marie Hurabiell, Esq., is an eighth-generation San Franciscan and a founder and board member of a mental health technology company. She was previously a vice chair of the Presidio Trust board, ran her own law firm, and was general counsel. She is currently the executive director of ConnectedSF.

Originally published on The Voice of San Francisco on May 6, 2025 by Marie Hurabiell