The city says the police department is short-staffed. Short compared to what — and short compared to a number somebody picked in 2015? If you're just joining: San Francisco's trying to rebuild public-safety staffing after police and sheriff ranks hit historic lows. The strain's been showing up in response times — SoMa residents and supervisors pushed SFPD after Mission Local found Southern Station's lower-priority calls running up to 55 percent slower than the citywide pace, even after the station got 20 extra patrol officers. This is San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: a benchmark problem. We've got the city's own report on what a staffed department looks like — and it's eleven years old. Plus a budget the size of a small country and a zoning tool that's just a search box. Let's start with that 2015 report. So here it is — the Controller's police staffing benchmarking report. The oldest thing in today's rundown by a decade, and it's the most useful, because the workload-based method everyone treated like it was new this year? It's right there in 2015. Right, and that's the part that gets me. This is the city's own auditing arm doing the math eleven years ago — not some activist white paper. The 2025 Prop E analysis we covered Monday used the same framework. Which answers something we left open Monday: did the staffing analysis use rigorous methodology? At least partly, yes. The workload framework was the recommended standard back then. The department had no excuse to wait. So what happened between 2015 and now? Either the benchmarks moved, or the city hit them and lost ground, or City Hall just kept citing the same target and never closed the gap. My money's on door three. Here's my one caution, Mark — a workload model is only honest if it sets a target response time and then tells you the staffing to hit it. Does the 2015 report actually do that, or just name a headcount? That's the exact question. And the SoMa numbers are the tell — 55 percent slower at Southern Station after you add 20 officers means the headcount isn't the whole story. Where those officers go matters as much as how many you have. Now put the Blueprint figure next to all this. $15.9 billion a year. Roughly $19,000 per resident. And SFPD is still hundreds of officers below its own recommended level. And yesterday the chief economist gave us a housing gap — somewhere between 14,600 and 36,000 units. Hold that against $19,000 a head. The city's not broke. No. The city's choosing. If you've got the methodology and you've got the money, political will is the only thing left explaining the staffing gap. City Hall should treat that as budget accountability, not hand-wringing. Right — that reframes the whole week. The math may close on paper; the issue is what the $19,000 is actually buying. Last thing — SF Planning's 'Find My Zoning' tool. All week we've asked whether the Family Zoning Plan actually unlocks construction, and the city's answer to 'where do I begin' is a search box. It ends at 'select Zoning Information from the list.' That's one click from 'email us or come down here.' Same shrug we flagged June 12th, now with a URL. A legal rezoning and a working permitting machine are two very different things — and this webpage shows the daylight between them. We'll leave it there. We're staying on SFPD and sheriff staffing recovery — follow the show and you won't miss what comes next. City and County of San Francisco Office of the Controller writes:
The City and County of San Francisco Charter requires the City Services Auditor (CSA) to monitor the level and effectiveness of City services. Specifically, CSA shall review performance and cost benchmarks and conduct comparisons of the cost and performance of San Francisco City government with other cities, counties, and public agencies performing similar functions. This report compares police staffing of San Francisco to that of nine other peer city’s police departments.
The oldest thing in today's stack is a 2015 benchmarking report from the Controller's City Services Auditor — the office voters created back in 2003 to tell us whether the city's getting what it pays for. June 10th, 2015. Keep that date in your head. And here's what jumps out — Monday we walked through the 2025 Prop E staffing analysis, which used a workload-based method. The Controller was recommending that same framework eleven years ago. So the department had no excuse to wait. Eleven years, Sarah. The city's own auditing arm did this benchmark — not some councilmember with napkin math. So what happened between 2015 and 2026? Did the targets move, or did City Hall keep citing them and never close the gap? And that's the harder charge. The methodology was fine, and it sat in a PDF for a decade while we argued about whether SFPD was short-staffed. Somebody had to bother forcing the formula onto the table. A good honest test for the report — did it set a target, like a response time, and then tell you the staffing that hits it? Because that's the difference between a benchmark and a wish list. Right — and the question for today is whether SFPD's current ask is still tethered to that 2015 math, or whether it's drifted into a political number somebody picked because it sounded reassuring. We should know that before we sign a budget. When city officials say SFPD is understaffed, I always wonder — understaffed compared to what, exactly? Is that a number tied to actual 911 calls, or is it just a political ask for more budget? It's actually a few different benchmarks layered on top of each other, and they don't all move together. The most concrete is SFPD's own recommended staffing level — and per the San Francisco Chronicle, the department is still hundreds of officers short of that target, even after recent hiring gains. Then there are 911 response times: the city hit a high point for slow responses in 2023, and a Chronicle analysis this spring found that for medium- and low-priority calls, residents in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin still wait roughly twice as long as people in other parts of the city. The gap varies by geography. On hiring, SFPD says it just achieved a net positive increase in sworn officers on the street for the first time since the 2020 pandemic, with four straight full academy classes and a fifth starting in December. Separately, SF.gov announced in April that the city is now consistently meeting state standards for 911 call-answer times for the first time in years, driven by dispatch staffing increases. Put it together and you get this: raw headcount is still short of the department's own goal, dispatch performance is genuinely improving, and street-level response times in specific neighborhoods are more complicated than either the optimistic or the pessimistic headline. So if response times are the more honest signal, what should residents actually look at to know whether adding more officers is translating into faster help on their block? Watch response-time data by neighborhood and call priority — not citywide averages, which can hide the Tenderloin-versus-Marina split the Chronicle documented. And keep the money in view: police and fire labor contracts already consume roughly half the city's discretionary budget, per the Standard, and a new tentative contract includes a 14 percent raise over four years, while the city faces an $877 million deficit. So going forward, don't just ask whether there are more officers. Ask whether the budget can sustain the hiring surge and everything else the city still needs to fund. From Blueprint:
Yet despite this enormous level of spending and years of rapid budget growth, many of the City's most pressing problems such as homelessness remain unresolved. As San Francisco now faces a projected deficit of more than $1 billion by 2030, it is critical for residents to understand where the money is going, how the system works, and why the current trajectory is unsustainable.
Blueprint's numbers are right there: $15.9 billion budget, $19,000 per resident, a workforce of 34,000. And we just spent a whole segment on a police department that's still hundreds of officers short of its own benchmark. So where's the money going? For listeners: Blueprint's a local reform group, and that $19,000 figure is per resident, per year. Hold that up against yesterday's housing math — a city this flush couldn't make even one modeled project pencil out. And Blueprint also flags a projected billion-dollar deficit by 2030. So we're spending state-sized money, missing staffing targets the Controller drew up in 2015, and still heading into the red. You can't explain that by revenue alone. Right — the chief economist put the housing gap somewhere between 14,600 and 36,000 units. Pair that with $19,000 a head, and 'does San Francisco have money?' feels like the wrong argument. What is the money buying? This one's from SF Planning:
Knowing the zoning of a property will clarify what limits may apply to a residential or commercial project. To find the zoning of a property: Type an address or Assessor's Block and Lot number (e.g., 0787/001) in the Search field below and Enter/Return on your keyboard, or click on search icon.
And here's where the week lands: SF Planning's 'Find My Zoning' tool. You want to know what you can build on a parcel? Type an address, hit enter, and select 'Zoning Information' from a menu on the left. After a week of the Family Zoning Plan, the city's front door for 'where do I start' is a search box. And read the bottom of that page — for actual questions, call the Planning Counter at 628.652.7300, or email pic@sfgov.org. The digital tool ends exactly one click before it helps you. A homeowner who wants to add a unit gets a zoning code, an impact fee schedule, and a phone number. That's the machine we keep saying is streamlined. The lookup itself is fine — and the language support's genuinely good: Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese. But they tell you upfront the department needs at least one business day to respond. One business day to answer a question about a rezoning the city already passed. The legal map changed. The counter behind it did not. From City Attorney's Office, City and County of San Francisco:
City officials who are required to file a Statement of Economic Interest (“Form 700”) must report all gifts of $50 or more, or a series of gifts totaling $50 or more in a calendar year, from sources specified in their disclosure category. An official may not accept a gift or gifts totaling more than $590 in a calendar year from a source the official is required to report on their Form 700.
Closing out the rundown: a 2023 joint reminder from the City Attorney, Ethics Commission, and Controller about — holiday party gift rules. Yes, in June. The mechanics matter, though. A gift is any benefit you take without giving equal value back — and they're explicit that a discount or rebate counts unless the whole public gets it. Officials filing a Form 700 have to report anything fifty bucks or up. And here's the part I can't get over — the same Controller's office that issued a rigorous police staffing benchmark back in 2015, the one we opened the show with, is also the office reminding people not to pocket a fifty-dollar gift basket. City Hall acts on the gift rules every single year, like clockwork. The staffing benchmark sat on a shelf for eleven years. Tells you exactly what this building takes seriously. The holiday party FAQ gets an annual refresh. The staffing methodology gets relitigated a decade later. Priorities. If you follow San Francisco politics, you might also like California Governor’s Race — daily 2026 coverage of the candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy, for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, if you want to dig further into the pieces that caught your ear.
That’s San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.