San Francisco’s budget is in the danger zone, and Fleet Week is squarely in the crosshairs.
The city may yank the bulk of its funding for the event, The Standard has learned, giving organizers a scant four months to secure new backing.
Cue the most forlorn “Top Gun” tracks.
Fleet Week won’t crash and burn like Goose, though. The event’s spokesperson, David Cruise, said the Blue Angels will still fly.
The annual $100,000 from San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management represents only a portion of the program’s total funding, Cruise said, but is critical to the event’s resilience and safety exercises between the city and the Department of Defense.
The event’s organizer, the nonprofit San Francisco Fleet Week Association, may need to secure more private funding, Cruise said.
“Hearing it’s going to get cut was shocking, surprising. We weren’t expecting it, but we understand it,” he said. “The event will continue on in some form. The question is what will that cut mean? Will we cancel certain events? That’s the question if we can’t find other funding sources.”
The organization learned of the possible funding loss from The Standard, Cruise said.
Fleet Week began in 1981, the brainchild of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein during her mayoral tenure. The event isn’t just an air show. It honors sea-based military members and has become one of the largest celebrations of the U.S. armed forces.
Not everyone loves Fleet Week — peaceniks and fans of undamaged eardrums tend to complain annually. Despite the slings and arrows, Fleet Week brings an estimated annual $10 million to the local economy.
The Department of Emergency Management flagged its Fleet Week exercises as a possible cut in an email to the mayor’s budget office that The Standard obtained in a public records request.
“Please refer to the attached spreadsheet, ‘2 – Contract Review_DEM,’ which reflects our review of existing contracts and identifies 2 contracts (SF Fleet Week & EMS Fellows) for termination,” William Lee, deputy director of administration and support at the Department of Emergency Management, wrote in an April 25 email to Sophia Kittler, the mayor’s budget director.
To address an estimated $782 million deficit, Mayor Daniel Lurie has asked all departments to submit proposals to cut upward of 15% from their budgets. Numerous cuts have been proposed; eliminating some street cleaning, laying off fentanyl prosecutors, and slashing transit service are all on the table.
The city has long funded the Fleet Week events, but in 2012 the late Mayor Ed Lee capped the annual amount at $300,000 to stabilize the nonprofit’s fundraising efforts; this was later lowered to $100,000. The city’s final funding reduction would represent a symbolic divestment by the city.
The San Francisco Fleet Week Association depends on $500,000 to $700,000 in annual contributions to organize the event, according to its most recently available IRS filings. The event provides funding for the air show through its own revenues, including tickets sold at the Marina Green.
The show’s sponsors include United Airlines. The Port of San Francisco, an enterprise agency with a budget separate from the city, confirmed that it will continue to contribute $50,000 toward the show this year.
The cuts aren’t settled — the mayor’s office and departments frequently communicate to determine what programs will get knocked off. Lurie’s deadline to deliver a city budget proposal is June 1.
While Fleet Week resiliency exercises may fall by the wayside, the mayor is committed to ensuring San Franciscans are safe, his spokesperson Charles Lutvak stressed.
Despite the need to make tough decisions in a dire budget season, Lurie told The Standard he has fond childhood memories of the Blue Angels soaring over his school during Fleet Week. Like many other young San Franciscans, the roar of the jets sent him running to the windows to catch a glimpse of the pilots’ derring-do.
To this day, he still dashes to nearby windows when he hears them.
“Every year, from 5 to 48, and I loved it,” Lurie said.