Town hall focuses on California’s budget and benefits to San Mateo County

Bay Area organizations Becker was able to directly benefit include $5 million toward the Job Training Center for Economic Mobility in East Palo Alto, $1 million toward The Big Lift, a San Mateo County program focusing on getting every kid to grade level by third grade, $8 Million for Mountain View’s “Lot 12” affordable housing development, and $500,000 for the Pacifica Pier Repair project.

“I’m proud about so many things about this budget, but the ways that we’ve expanded pathways for education, which can then be an opportunity for every Californian,” said Skinner, D-Berkeley, also chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.

California is in the top 10% of all states with this budget in per pupil funding. Providing two meals a day for all kids in schools, having child savings accounts for low-income kids in the K-12 system, bettering broadband to provide digital equity, and creating more spaces for students in the UCs and CSUs were among the investments in education, Becker said.

“When I talk about quality of life for the Peninsula and our families across California, major investments in affordable housing and especially homelessness, we now have to spend that money wisely,” he said.

Over two years, $12 billion is allocated to focus on those experiencing homelessness to have housing.

“We have to connect our homeless crisis with our housing crisis. And if we don’t, then we’re never going to solve it,” Skinner said.

She said more housing needs to be developed and affordable units need to be included in market rate housing. Becker added people in his area want to make sure that if more jobs are added, companies should be responsible for including some of that housing.

There was also increased funding to Project Roomkey, an initiative helps officials buy properties such as motels, former dormitories or former apartment buildings that can be converted relatively quickly to permanent housing.

“We also increased the funding to our large cities because over 50% of California’s homeless reside in our 12 largest cities,” she said.

Numerical goals were not included in this investment yet, she said.

The total package of investment for wildfire and drought is $7 billion over a couple of years which will be used for fuel reduction, removal of dead trees and such, to fund creating defensible space and provide more resources to Cal Fire and other fire support services, Skinner said.

State funding will also go toward land conservancy and various entities created to provide for wildfire protection and prevention, which will then give grants to different districts.

The current progressive tax structure helped raise the income tax rate on the wealthiest Californians, which only affected less than 10% of the total population of California, Skinner said.

“That measure not only got us out of the deficit of the recession, but is partly why we have such great revenues today,” she said.

More topics discussed include having $6 billion go toward broadband as the pandemic exposed the vulnerability of those who did have reliable internet or access to it as people depended on everything online including work and school from home and school. Over five years, $4.4 billion will go to creating an innovative behavioral health system for those under 25 to address mental health. More than $1 billion was allocated for building up electric vehicle infrastructure. And $75 million was allocated for partnerships with California’s workforce programs and community colleges.

Other areas of the budget include funding toward development disability services, special education, in-home health care, child care services, increased financial aid, transportation infrastructure and a guaranteed income program for foster youth.

The budget has $25 billion in reserves that would be used for a “rainy day.”

The Town Hall can be viewed here: https://sd13.senate.ca.gov/?utm_campaign=senator-josh-becker-see-you-soon-budget-town-hall-with-sen-nancy-skinner&utm_medium=email&utm_source=E-News&utm_content=link

julia@smdailyjournal.com

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