Leaders at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency say the department is in the red and like other city departments, it's trying to figure out how to fill funding gaps without significantly cutting services.
SFMTA has already announced proposals to cut Muni service by about 4% this summer.
During its meeting on Tuesday, the board will be considering three ideas on how this will work. If implemented, the agency will save about $15 million. But that's a drop in the bucket compared to the budget gap the agency is facing over the next few years.
"Our job is that we have a projected $320 million deficit for the MTA. And we're here to talk about and prioritize policy options for how to address that," SFMTA said.
They are hosting several meetings to brainstorm ideas for filling the gap, including a hope that the state would chip in to help ease the pain.
But a local or regional tax ballot measure next year is the most likely scenario.
"We would really like a lot of the discussion focused on the larger ballot measures because the small ballot measures are almost as much work as the large measures and they are small,” said Julie Kirschbaum, acting direct of transit at SFMTA.
The overall problem for the SFMTA is that ridership and other revenues streams haven't returned to pre-pandemic levels and for the city, the vacancy, the in-office lease revenue and the uncertainty of federal funding means projections of $1 billion overall city deficit by 2027.
If the SFMTA isn't able to raise more revenue through their preferred method, which is a new tax. They're currently floating ideas for other revenue streams.
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The SFMTA working group is also exploring the possibilities of extending parking meter times to as late as 10 p.m. across the city, adding Sunday parking meter times from noon to 6 p.m. and increasing neighborhood parking permits.
None of these options are popular with the public. Pedro Galetti operates Mozzarella de Buffalo Pizzeria in San Francisco's West Portal neighborhood.
"I never seen anything like this. And I am from Brazil, the highest taxing country in the world and San Francisco is getting very close to it,” he said.
SFMTA leaders said one big goal is hang on to as much public transit service as possible because they say that will be essential for the city to rebound and expensive to re-instate if cut.
Riders NBC Bay Area talked to said they don't want to see service cuts either but recognize some services will likely have to be trimmed.