San Diego’s transportation budget is taking heat as overtime costs soar right when the City Council is set to lock in a final spending plan next week. The city’s independent budget analyst says overtime, not bike-lane striping, is the real drain on the department’s finances, and officials warn the projected overages could trigger cuts elsewhere just as the council heads toward a Tuesday vote.
Independent Budget Analyst Flags Overtime Overrun
The Office of the Independent Budget Analyst found the Transportation Department is on track to blow past its FY 2026 overtime budget by about $4.6 million, which would push total overtime toward $6.6 million if current trends hold, according to the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst. The report notes that much of the extra pay is going to night and weekend work for pothole patches, slurry sealing and emergency repairs, rather than flashy new programs. It urges the department to hold overtime to Priority 1 emergencies and storm response in order to avoid further pressure on the General Fund.
Department Budget Has Swelled To About $200 Million
City budget records show the Transportation Department’s total expenditures climbed to roughly $201 million in the FY 2026 adopted budget, about a $70 million jump from two years earlier, reflecting restored hiring and expanded operations, according to the City of San Diego. That added capacity has helped speed up pothole and sidewalk repairs that residents have repeatedly ranked as top priorities, but it also brought bigger equipment and fleet demands that feed directly into personnel costs and overtime.
Gloria Proposal Would Cut The Multimodal Team
Mayor Todd Gloria’s draft budget would wipe out the Transportation Department’s 14-person multimodal team, pitched as a cost-saving move that still shields resurfacing and targeted safety projects. The cut is projected to save about $2.4 million next fiscal year, and it has prompted councilmembers and street-safety advocates to warn that the city could lose critical in-house expertise for designing bike lanes and other “complete streets” upgrades, as reported by Times of San Diego. Local groups, including the Vision Zero Coalition, have labeled the proposal “a step back” and urged the council to restore the team and keep street-safety planning intact, per Circulate San Diego.
Big Regional Projects, Small City Line Items
Some of the splashiest bikeways are actually regional projects, not big line items in the city’s transportation budget. The Pershing Bikeway, for example, came out of SANDAG with a roughly $14 million price tag rather than a simple city striping job. SANDAG lists Pershing as a multi-million dollar regional investment. Independent budget analyst Charles Modica told the council that the city spends a fraction of a percent of its budget on bike lanes in any given year, a reminder that high-visibility capital projects sit on top of far larger and less glamorous maintenance and staffing costs.
Council Faces A Tight Choice
With Tuesday’s budget vote looming, councilmembers are being forced to choose between leaning on short-term overtime to chew through the backlog and preserving the design capacity that makes future safety upgrades possible. The independent budget analyst recommended limiting overtime to emergencies or tying extra hours to revenue-generating work, an approach that could rein in the projected overrun but might also slow some of the very repairs residents have identified as top priorities, according to the IBA review.
