By Sarah Phelan
It wasn’t pretty at Board President Aarom Peskin’s mid-year budget cuts hearing.
(For starters, there wasn’t enough room for all the people who showed up at today’s meeting. Apparently, months ago, long before “Financial Armageddon” was a nationwide buzz word, the California Coastal Commission booked the Board’s Chambers for today. Unfortunately, as a result, only a small percentage of folks managed to squeeze physically into today’s budget hearing, while a huge crowd was left lingering discontentedly outside. This led to chants of “Let us in! Let us in!” until some burly not-to-be-messed-with Sheriff’s Deputies shepherded them to a nearby “spill over” room.)
The meeting itself felt surreal, set yards away from the huge Tree of Hope on CIty Hall’s second floor.
(At various moments throughout the proceedings, as red faced Department heads tried to explain the rationale behind the Mayor’s proposed $118 million package of solutions, or defend themselves against cuts in Peskin’s competing proposal, we could hear angelic voices trilling, as choirs sang carols under the City’s rotunda. )
But for all the social unrest and financial gloom and doom, there were a few positive moments.
Peskin managed to pull off a beautifully finessed legislative move. (By combining the Mayor’s proposal with his own, he was able to introduce a piece of legislation that allows everyone impacted to voice comments publicly.)
This was not true under Newsom’s original proposal, which he introduced during a surprise Dec. 9 Board visit.
“But now there’s a de facto collaboration,” Peskin told me, during a brief recess, after which the hearing was relocated to the Board’s chambers for the remainder of today’s hearing.