Despite the financial hurdles, the San Francisco's Department of the Environment has amassed an impressive track record.
Last week, the Department of the Environment announced that it would be requesting approximately $3.2 million from the City’s General Fund – the first time it’s asked for such funding in nearly two decades.
“This is not just some extra, like-to-have department,” said Elena Engel of the environmental nonprofit 350 San Francisco. “This is part of The City.” The request is also poised to test Mayor London Breed’s willingness to bolster San Francisco’s reputation as a climate leader with dollars and cents. Despite being viewed as one of the greenest cities in the nation, San Francisco failed to fund the department tasked to protect residents and infrastructure against rising seas, worsening wildfires and warming temperatures.
“We’re basically jumpstarting the mayor’s Climate Action Plan,” said Debbie Raphael, the Department of Environment’s director. “What we ultimately need to do is get off of fossil fuels in buildings, cars and trucks. That’s the bottom line. This money is going to help us.”The Department of Environment was created by voters in the late 90s and was originally what Vietor called an unfunded mandate, tasked mainly with public outreach, pest management and greening buildings.
“I always tell people it’s a bit of a blessing and a curse,” said Raphael. “The blessing is when the economy’s really bad, and general fund departments get hit hard, we don’t generally have those kinds of setbacks. But the curse, the challenge, is that all of our revenue has some sort of nexus. It has some sort of obligation associated with who’s giving it to us.”
Still, signals of urgency are building among city leaders. Last year, the department received $1 million from the General Fund, requested by supervisors Rafael Mandelman, Gordon Mar and Matt Haney to conduct long-term analysis of the costs required to address climate change impacts and kickstart a Climate Equity Hub which would provide workforce training, outreach to support the transition to electric construction and technologies.
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