Mayor Gloria’s Budget Cuts Fund for Underserved Neighborhoods

Money to help underserved residents protect themselves against climate change is once again threatened under San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget. 

Gloria’s budget moves $7 million earmarked for climate projects in disadvantaged communities into the city’s general fund and spent elsewhere. These communities, which experience the worst effects of human-caused climate change, are typically lower-income, have a higher population of people of color and suffer historical wrongs like discriminatory housing practices or highways built through their neighborhoods. 

 
The Climate Equity Fund, where that money was supposed to go, was first proposed by Councilmember Vivian Moreno in 2021 to funnel money from San Diego Gas and Electric and state gas and transportation taxes toward those neighborhoods for infrastructure projects.  Gloria proposed cuts across all the city’s departments since the city faces a deficit north of $100 million. 

Gloria’s budget suspends those funds “in order to maintain existing city services,” wrote Peter Kelly, a spokesperson for the city’s Planning Department.  

Kelly said the city “will continue to prioritize infrastructure investments” in these communities. But the Climate Equity Fund, according to Gloria’s Administration, is no longer the primary way the city goes about doing that. He pointed to Council Policy 800-14, passed in December of 2022, which says the city should prioritize projects to eliminate disparities and sets up another definition for these communities called “structurally excluded community.”  

The Climate Equity Fund currently has $13 million dedicated to completing projects like traffic signal improvements in Barrio Logan, and stormwater drainage upgrades in City Heights. 

Gloria’s office did not respond to questions and instead directed them to the department facing the proposed cuts. 

It’s not the first time Gloria tried to move money away from climate equity. In 2024, he proposed moving the $8.5 million in the fund so it could be used elsewhere, before city councilmembers restored it. 

Gloria also proposed eliminating positions responsible for accomplishing pieces of the Climate Action Plan, called program coordinators.  

“We … found that these two Program Coordinator positions were not in alignment with other management positions in the department,” Kelly wrote.  

Instead, Gloria’s budget would add a new senior planner and principal planner positions that would take over this work, according to Kelly. 

Since taking office, Gloria has eliminated the Sustainability and Mobility Department which was focused on climate action work and making communities more bikeable, walkable and have better public transit access. He moved remaining staff from that department under the city’s planning department run by Heidi Vonblum.  

In October, Gloria sacked the former leader of the Sustainability and Mobility Department, Shelby Buso. As part of the reorganization, the mayor eliminated seven vacant positions in Buso’s department, touted as a savings of $914,000.  

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