{"id":844917,"date":"2026-06-05T00:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T00:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/844917\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T00:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T00:22:18","slug":"san-diegos-transportation-department-goes-over-budget-on-overtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/844917\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego’s transportation department goes over budget on overtime"},"content":{"rendered":"

All eyes are on the city budget<\/a>, knowing cuts are coming to close a $120 million budget deficit. Residents and council members alike have been told that if they want to reverse a budget cut in one area, arts grants for instance<\/a>, they need to pull the money from another program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frequently, residents point at the Transportation Department, and more specifically new bike lanes, as a place those cuts can be made.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the independent budget analyst has another concern in the transportation budget: overtime. The cost of overtime has exploded in recent years as city workers address a backlog of streets that need repaving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Transportation department\u2019s budget to backlog <\/p>\n

Money allocated to the department as a whole has increased too. It accounted for $200 million in last year\u2019s budget, a $70 million increase from two years prior.<\/p>\n

Of that $200 million, $184.2 million came from the general fund, making transportation the fourth-most expensive department in the general fund in last year\u2019s budget<\/a>, behind police ($703.5 million), fire-rescue ($378.3 million) and parks and recreation ($188.8 million).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"potholes\"<\/a>City crews repair potholes. (File photo courtesy of city of San Diego)<\/p>\n

That budget increase has helped the city put a dent in its pothole backlog and make other delayed infrastructure repairs to sidewalks, streetlights and more \u2013 all of which are popular with the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have the staffing or resources to keep up with the ever-increasing requests from the public,\u201d said Naomi Chavez, interim director of the Transportation Department. \u201cThe core baseline services that transportation provides are also among the most frequent requests the city receives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overtime over budget<\/p>\n

But the independent budget analyst has raised concerns about transportation spending, particularly that overtime costs keep going over budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, the concern is that if transportation is overspending on overtime overall, that could require reductions elsewhere in the budget,\u201d said Jordan More, the city\u2019s principal fiscal and policy analyst.<\/p>\n

The independent budget analyst\u2019s mid-year budget review<\/a> predicted transportation overtime would go $4.6 million over budget, an expense the department made up by cutting planned tree-trimming services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the department\u2019s overtime \u2014 typically about $2 million per year \u2014 comes from emergency infrastructure fixes at night and on weekends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rest is what Bethany Bezak, the city\u2019s chief performance and logistics officer, described as an \u201cexpansion of the day,\u201d by letting workers extend their regular working hours. In the second half of this fiscal year, most of that overtime went toward resurfacing and adding slurry to streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The highest paid transportation staffer brought in $73,000 in overtime in calendar year 2025, with two others making over $70,000 in overtime.<\/p>\n

Bezak told the council\u2019s budget review committee that this overtime saves money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOvertime of our existing staff, if it continues to be sustainable and there continues to be interest in it, is the best approach that we have,\u201d Bezak said.<\/p>\n

The public\u2019s budget priorities<\/p>\n

\"Todd<\/a>Todd Gloria presents his proposed budget with a man holding his thumbsdown behind him. (Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Hiring new staff means buying new vehicles and equipment for them, which has ripple effects in other departments too. General services, which handles vehicle maintenance, is already understaffed and facing backlogs, city staff said at a budget review meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gloria\u2019s budget prioritized the more public-facing backlogs \u2014 infrastructure and road repair \u2014 based on resident surveys.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir priorities are very clear: Public safety, neighborhood infrastructure and homelessness,\u201d Gloria said during his April budget unveiling. \u201cThis budget invests in the basics by committing funding for more than 311 miles in road resurfacing and nearly $60 million for safety improvements at key intersections, sometimes known as the Fatal 15.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s budget survey, with 11,000 respondents, found most residents rank poor street or sidewalk conditions as the issue they are most concerned about, over homelessness and housing costs. In addition, street repair or resurfacing was the most-clicked option when residents were told to pick the top three areas they wanted to protect in the budget, beating out police and fire-rescue (both police<\/a> and fire<\/a>, as it turns out, have overtime issues of their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cutting bike lane designers<\/p>\n

The transportation department is facing some cuts. Gloria wants to eliminate a team that designs restriping and bike lanes when the city repaves its streets.<\/p>\n

Some city council members worry the decision is not based on balancing the budget, but to end controversy over the bike lanes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A cyclist traveling south on 30th Street in North Park. (File photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what I\u2019m concerned about, that the mayor\u2019s office heard one too many complaints<\/a> about bike lanes and just decided to make a sharp left turn and say, \u2018we\u2019re not doing them anymore,\u2019\u201d said Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera at a budget review meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does feel like a complete retreat,\u201d added Councilmember Kent Lee. \u201cAnd that is perplexing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gloria\u2019s proposal to eliminate the transportation\u2019s 14-person multimodal team would save the city $2.4 million in the next fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it could also cost the city, by making it harder for affordable housing developments to compete for state grants that prioritize projects near bike lanes.<\/p>\n

Charles Modica, the city\u2019s independent budget analyst, emphasized during an initial city budget hearing that bike lanes are not to blame for the city\u2019s budget deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be clear that the city spends a fraction of a percent of its budget on bike lanes in any given year, and that amount is generally associated with striping streets after repaving,\u201d Modica said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was concerned that critics had conflated multi-million dollar bike lane projects<\/a> that were designed, built and paid for by the San Diego Association of Governments \u2014 like the $14 million Pershing Bikeway<\/a> \u2014 with city projects that are far more modest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The council is set to adopt the budget by June 9.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All eyes are on the city budget, knowing cuts are coming to close a $120 million budget deficit.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":844918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[44544,5229,10870,1582,276,61008,46590,3549,11881,7264,166209,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-844917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-bike-lanes","tag-america","tag-budget-cuts","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-overtime","tag-potholes","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-budget","tag-sandiego","tag-transportation-department","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116694650273759510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}