(a) Establishment and Purpose of Budget Savings Incentive Fund. The Budget Savings Incentive Fund (“the Fund”) is hereby established as a category eight fund for the purpose of encouraging City departments to implement cost-saving strategies and to allow for the reinvestment of those savings in one-time expenditures. Disbursements from the Fund shall be made only to those departments that generated net year-end expenditure savings at the close of the most recent prior fiscal year, as certified by the Controller, and only for the purpose of supporting one-time costs, including but not limited to expenditures that improve the efficiency of departmental operations, reduce the cost of service delivery, generate additional revenue, or meet deferred maintenance needs.
(b) Funding of Budget Savings Incentive Fund. It shall be the policy of the City and County of San Francisco that the Fund will be annually funded and available by November 1 of each year. At the end of each fiscal year, up to 25% of the total appropriation closed to General Fund balance by General Fund departments and the Department of Public Health’s hospital funds shall be appropriated into the Fund (the “carry forward amount”) and placed on Controller’s reserve. The Controller may suspend the carry forward amount in years when the Controller determines that the City’s financial condition cannot support deposits into the Fund.
(c) Request and Approval of Appropriation. Any department funded in whole or in part from the General Fund may submit a request in writing to the Controller’s Office for a disbursement from the Fund. Requests shall be reviewed and recommended for funding by a working group comprised of the Mayor’s Budget Director, the City Controller, and the President of the Board of Supervisors, or their designees. Recommendations of the working group shall be submitted to the Board of Supervisors, and the Board may appropriate monies from the Fund by ordinance. The Controller shall not release the reserve on monies deposited to the Fund until the City has finally enacted such an ordinance.
(d) Upon approval of funding requests, the Controller shall have the authority to administratively transfer appropriations from the Fund to the department(s) for which requests were approved.
(Added by Ord. 210-06, File No. 060768, App. 8/2/2006; Ord. 150-09, File No. 090723, App. 7/10/2009; amended by Ord. 181-20, File No. 200845, App. 10/1/2020, Eff. 11/1/2020)
Editor’s Note:
Former subsection 10.20(e), authorizing use of funds for COVID-19 response purposes during FY2020-2021 and FY2021-2022, expired on 7/1/2022 per the terms of its sunset clause and was removed from the Code at the direction of the Office of the City Attorney.