Local advocates are taking action to prevent the cancellation of SF’s popular long-running neighborhood street festival series, Sunday Streets, due to budget cuts, urging residents to sign their petition, contact local officials, and attend a rally at City Hall Monday.
As Streetsblog SF reports, the San Francisco Department of Public Health announced earlier in January the agency’s plan to gut the city’s popular Sunday Streets program after a 17-year partnership in order to reallocate the funds toward covering department deficits. Per Streestsblog, the funds were originally appropriated for Sunday Streets by the SF Board of Supervisors through the health department's Equity & Promotion program.
Per the SF Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco is a healthier and more connected city because of Sunday Streets, which launched in 2008 and often serves neighborhoods with limited access to open space community events.
Livable City, the nonprofit that runs Sunday Streets, has created an advocacy toolkit for residents interested in pushing the city to keep the program going and find ways to stabilize it. The toolkit includes an email template for contacting officials, a petition urging SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors to restore funding, and a guide to giving public comment at the Health Commission hearing in Room 408 at City Hall at 4 pm Monday, preceded by a rally on the City Hall steps at 3 pm.
Per Streetsblog, the Department of Public Health is moving to cut $17 million in funding to community-based organizations. Livable City receives a mere 1.3% of the budget to fund Sunday Streets — $215,758 per year.
Per Streetsblog, Sunday Streets is a hugely popular program that continually exceeds its metrics in providing the community with outlets for physical fitness and wellness each year, while offering a platform for more than 120 city and nonprofit groups to connect with the community through direct services, educational resources, and outreach.
Image: Sunday Streets, Excelsior; throgers/Flickr
