The budget is done!

I spent the last two weeks, and almost all of the last three days in City Hall in the budget hearings and the budget is finally done.

I look forward to seeing how the reporters view what happened tomorrow since I can't be totally objective at this point. Plus I'm too tired to even try to form sentences. There were a ton of victories for the community, privatization efforts were staved off, and public health nurses got restored. Sup Ammiano pledged to find money to stop the closure of the worker's comp clinic and then the budget was put to rest.

Tempers were definitely flaring in the last few hours of the budget battle and I am really pleased it is all over, but one really great thing happened. Public Defender Jeff Adachi was there waiting to hear about the fate of several new positions for his office and I talked him into giving me one of his t-shirts from the Pride Parade which read, "SF Public Defender--Getting You Off Since 1921."

Angela Calvillo staffed Sup Ammiano for the budget committee and did a great job, as did Tom. Also, props to Betty Chan, aide to Sup McGoldrick for her excellent, persistent advocacy for the public health nurses and to Boris, aide to Mirkarimi, who got up to speed very quickly on key issues. Mirkarimi was solid on all the progressive items on the budget and also fought to stave off privatization efforts. And McGoldrick? Well, I love the guy. And man did he do some heavy lifting over the last 24 hours.


And on a final note, John Avalos, aide to Sup Daly, did a fantastic job of herding all the progressive/labor/non-profit cats into a good coalition--Coleman Advocates, Senior Action Network, HSN, ACORN, and SEIU Local 790 all worked very well together to bring about a balanced budget.