Richard Bailey’s Budget Fix: Cut Cops, Fire Fighters and Other Critical City Employees

Michael Zucchet is the general manager of the San Diego Municipal Employees Association.

City Council candidate Richard Bailey continues to promise budget fantasyland to San Diegans.  He says the answer to San Diego’s persistent budget shortfalls includes no new fees, no increased taxes, and no service cuts whatsoever – in fact he claims that somehow service levels will magically improve – if we simply “return to 2015 staffing levels” in the city of San Diego.

Bailey moved to San Diego last year, changed his political party affiliation this February, and within days announced that he was running for City Council.  Since then, and again last week in an interview with NBC’s “Politically Speaking,” he has repeatedly claimed that if we just “return to 2015 staffing levels,” the city’s general fund budget will swing from what he says is a $100 million annual deficit to more than a $300 million surplus with “no need to cut any services.”  

Sounds too good to be true?  Well of course it is. And yet it is the cornerstone talking point of his entire campaign platform.

The city’s fiscal year 2015 general fund budget had 6,975 employees. In FY 2026 it was 8,261, which represents a growth of 1,286 budgeted general fund employees, an increase of 18.4 percent.  Bailey says “much of that was fueled by middle management growth” but that is simply not true. The reality is there are five areas where the vast majority of that growth actually comes from:

• Police Department – From 2,588 employees in FY 2015 to 2,680 in FY 2026, an increase of 92 employees
• Fire Department – From 1,204 to 1,457 employees, an increase of 253
• City Attorney – From 348 to 423 employees, an increase of 75
• Parks & Recreation – From 897 to 1,169 employees, an increase of 272
• Transportation and Stormwater – From 483 to 845 employees, an increase of 362

If you take Bailey at his word, he is saying he wants to “return to 2015 staffing levels” by cutting these 1,054 employees and the services they provide: 92 police officers and other Police Department personnel; 253 firefighters, lifeguards, and other employees in the Fire-Rescue Department; 75 City Attorney’s office employees; 272 Parks & Recreation Department employees; and 362 employees servicing our transportation and storm drain infrastructure. 

That would be a curious move given that Bailey repeatedly says that his top priorities for additional spending are, you guessed it, “public safety, parks, and infrastructure.”  Employees in these areas make up more than 80 percent of all general fund employees in the city.  He can’t have it both ways – either Bailey wants to cut these services or his plan to “fix” the city’s budget is a fiction and a scam. 

In addition, despite Bailey’s refrain that San Diego only has slightly more residents today as we did in 2015 (and therefore it would be “no problem” to return to those staffing levels), actually a lot has changed in terms of the services citizens demand and receive today. 

For instance, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department personnel responded to 142,288 calls for fire, rescue and medical emergencies in 2015.  In 2025 that number was 186,472 calls, an increase of 31 percent in emergency response call volume even though Fire Department personnel only increased 21 percent over the same period.

We also have substantially more parks and park and recreation center programming than we did in 2015, so cutting those additional employees will absolutely force the closure of neighborhood parks and park services.  Same for the other departments that are the primary source of general fund personnel growth that Bailey says he wants to cut.

So Bailey, do you really want to “return” to 2015 staffing levels and cut these 1,054 public safety, parks, and infrastructure employees and the services they provide?  If not, why are you misleading voters about your plan and the more than $400 million in “savings” you say you will generate?

Finally, there is some significant irony in Bailey’s attack on staffing levels and personnel growth in the city of San Diego.  In the 12 years Bailey was an elected official in the city of Coronado, personnel expenses for that city grew more than 80 percent.  And today the city of Coronado has one employee for every 78 residents. The city of San Diego only has one employee for every 107 residents.

Enticing – but baseless – talking points and rhetoric do not equal actual facts, and they certainly don’t translate into real solutions.  Voters in City Council District 2 deserve better.