Mayor Kevin McCarty and Sacramento City Council,

Sacramento cannot continue pretending these are isolated incidents.

This week, in South Sacramento, an armed security guard at a marijuana dispensary shot and killed one robbery suspect and critically wounded another during an attempted robbery. Burglary detectives, homicide investigators, crime scene units, and numerous law enforcement personnel responded to the scene after multiple calls from nearby residents and businesses reporting spillover impacts and fear throughout the surrounding area.

This occurred in Council District 6.

Cannabis businesses are not coffee shops or ordinary retail stores. They contain high-value cash and product and have become repeated targets for armed robberies, burglaries, vehicle rammings, organized criminal activity, and violent crime.

The industry has been warning the City about this for years.

In 2022, CBS Sacramento reported on more than 100 public records and law enforcement documents tied to cannabis-related robberies, burglaries, and public safety incidents throughout Sacramento. Operators openly stated the City knew these problems were escalating but failed to take meaningful action.

Yet despite these ongoing incidents, the City is now considering:• Weakening sensitive-use buffers• Reducing spacing requirements between dispensaries• Expanding cannabis consumption lounges• Increasing reliance on discretionary Conditional Use Permits instead of hardline protections

This is backwards public policy.

Hardline sensitive-use buffers and anti-clustering protections exist for a reason. Sacramento should not weaken protections around schools, parks, youth centers, daycare facilities, rehabilitation centers, churches, residential neighborhoods, and other vulnerable community spaces while violent crime tied to these uses continues escalating.

When dispensaries cluster too closely together, they create concentrated robbery targets and increase the likelihood of violence spilling into surrounding neighborhoods.

This is no longer just a District 2 or District 6 issue. It is becoming a Sacramento-wide public safety issue.

The City cannot continue ignoring the reality that residents, surrounding businesses, employees, security guards, pedestrians, and nearby families are increasingly being placed in harm’s way.

Protect neighborhood safety first. Maintain and strengthen buffer protections before Sacramento creates long-term public safety consequences that cannot easily be reversed. Protect our youth. This is youth prevention at its finest.

Mayor of Sacramento and Sacramento City Council Members
City of Sacramento: City Manager
RE: Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign’s Public Comment on the Proposed City Budget
The Sacramento City Council is currently discussing the draft budget in light of a $66.2 million deficit. Any necessary cuts must prioritize equity to avoid further disinvestment in historically underserved areas. In the diverse city of Sacramento, potential budget reductions often disproportionately impact marginalized communities and high-poverty neighborhoods and devote wasteful expenditures to the Police Department.

Therefore, the Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign (Sac PPC) firmly believes that any cuts and reductions in services and programs must be focused and rooted in equity across all departments, including policing, rather than continuing to disinvest in historically underserved areas.

The Sacramento City Police Department is the most significant contributor to the budget deficit. According to Roger Dickinson, dozens of vacant positions in the budget are used to fund overtime for the department – overtime that atypically expended to conduct sweeps of unhoused residents, whose belongings are destroyed as they are driven from place to place.

Police overtime funds dedicated to homeless encampment "sweeps" or enforcement vary significantly by city, but in many areas, they represent a high and growing cost, often running into millions of dollars annually. The city should audit these costs and focus its budgetary reductions on them.

For example, in San Francisco, as of 2025, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has been facing scrutiny over its total overtime spending, which exceeded $108 million in the 2022-2023 fiscal year. A 2022 report found that the city spent $20.6 million on quality-of-life ordinance enforcement against homeless people.

A 2024 report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that city-funded "sweeps" are a massive financial burden, with costs ranging from $1,672 to $6,208 per unsheltered person in cities like San Jose and Tacoma.

Sacramento must reassess how our money is spent by the Police Department, and curb the rising share of the budget that is devoted to these wasteful and expensive operations. Sweeps cause incalculable hardship and lead to trauma and even death. Instead, the city must focus on creating “safe ground” campuses and stabilize our unhoused neighbors with trash pickup, sanitation, and healthy assistance, as interim measures as housing options come online.

Moreover, budgetary and policy decisions—like those associated with Measure G—have faced significant scrutiny for favoring wealthier, predominantly white neighborhoods. This has adversely affected communities of color, particularly in Del Paso Heights and in parts of Arden, Fruitridge, Meadowview, and Oak Park.

The City Council and the City Manager’s office must demonstrate leadership and courage as they navigate budget cuts while maintaining services that support all Sacramentans, but particularly the unhoused, families, youth, parks, libraries, and our environment. Reducing funding for services in specific districts only exacerbates inequity.

We oppose the following:

1. Cuts to community pools, including positions and pool hours
• Meteorologists and climatologists predict that this summer will be extremely hot for both people and animals. Reducing the hours or closing community pools will not help children, youth, and families stay safe and cool this summer. Clearly, this cut would impact low-income families, and disproportionately people of color that depend on community pools.

2. Reduced discounts for community center and clubhouse fees for qualifying organizations
• Many community-based organizations (CBOs) cannot afford the rental fees or liability insurance needed to rent and use local community centers. The city should consider a sliding scale of charges based on organizational income.

3. Reduction in funding and potential relocation of the X Street Navigation Center for unhoused residents. Homelessness is a top concern of the city as a whole.
• Sacramento is facing an ongoing homeless crisis, and cutting funding or relocating the X Street Navigation Center is not a viable solution.
• We oppose any reduction or elimination of homeless services including divestment to the Department of Community Response

4. Cuts that affect some of the city’s lowest-paid employees—parks maintenance workers
• Cuts impacting these essential workers will disproportionately affect many individuals from marginalized communities. If we reduce funding for park maintenance, how will the city's beautiful neighborhood parks and green spaces be maintained? Many community members cannot afford to volunteer or are already experiencing burnout from volunteering.

These proposed cuts often have a disproportionate effect on low-income communities and communities of color, leaving very few options for our children, youth, and families. Additionally, with Sacramento facing a housing affordability and homelessness crisis, the idea of reducing funding for the potential relocation of the X Street Navigation Center is particularly unacceptable.

The call for "Public Safety" is often used to avoid reducing the police budget and create divisive issues amongst our community members in Sacramento.
However, public safety also means proactively investing in and supporting programs for our youth, families, and neighbors in under-resourced areas. This includes funding for parks, libraries, swimming pools, and community centers that should provide affordable, accessible programming.

Thank you for your consideration, attention, and cooperation.


Sacramento Poor People’s Campaign (Sac PPC)
sacppcunited@gmail.com

It is heinous that the city is considering a new fee on seniors subject to homelessness. Especially when the police department is not anywhere near the 15% budget cut.
The police are not even comming to this discussion in good faith. The fire department mad several suggestions and cuts that almost achieved their goal while the police continue to black mail with the thought of overtime. There should be an audit of police overtime at all levels as officers are getting paid double their salary and bleeding the city dry.

Business owner opposes parking rate increases.

I was concerned to hear that the city is planning to close Southside Park's pool for the summer due to the current budgetary conditions. I am opposed to this proposal as indicated in the budget.

1. It is unfair that we had our pool closed for years, to finally have it reopen last year, just to take it away from us again.

2. Sacramento summers are extremely hot! It's dangerous to walk long distances in these conditions and the pool provides a welcome respite to those living near it. It is incredibly easy to fall victim to heatstroke here with 110 degree days.

3. I understand that the pool near McKinley park has been proposed as a hub pool. My opinion is that if the city were to close any pool, they should close the one at McClunie and use the Southside Park pool as a hub pool (open 5 days a week) instead. East Sacramento is a financially affluent neighborhood that has never had their pool closed in the last few years. The people in that neighborhood have the ability to fend for themselves just fine. It is also much easier to reach Southside Park's pool via public transit due to our proximity to the 13th St light rail station which all three lines go to, and the bus 51 route which has the highest ridership in the SacRT service area. We also have made great strides with protected bike lanes in our neighborhood.

Southside Park is an incredibly diverse community with a high amount of BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) low income residents who depend on access to our pool to survive. This is especially relevant as our Latiné neighbors are dealing with the fear of ICE and may feel uncomfortable traveling far from home due to the risks associated with that. With the above in mind, I believe the proposed Southside Park pool closure is both unethical and inequitable.

4. The other proposed hub pools at Meadowview and Natomas should remain as proposed to benefit their respective communities. I would just like to point out that these are both too far away for Southside Park residents, many of whom do not have cars like myself or cannot afford a rideshare (i.e. Uber, Lyft).

Reaching Meadowview requires either biking through some sketchy areas (and risk getting hit by a car) or taking the blue line train which often breaks down in the summer due to the heat, and is currently experiencing frequent service disruptions due to updating the SacRT light rail stations to work with the new low floor trains.

Journeying to Natomas requires again biking through some unsafe areas or taking bus 11. As I'm sure many other Southside Park, Natomas, and Land Park residents can tell you, bus 11 does NOT pick us up. Despite our best efforts (being at the stop on time, hailing the driver even though SacRT says you shouldn't need to) the driver just goes right on past you and leaves you behind at the stop. She only stops when someone is getting OFF the bus, not when someone is trying to get on. This combination of factors make it nearly impossible to reach Natomas.

Please keep Southside Park's pool open as a hub pool this summer.

Thank you!