You never go broke over estimating the incompetence and corruption of government.
“As the committee soon learned, it was more than a few years. The job was initially created on an emergency basis — under the previous administration of Mayor Kevin Faulconer, in 2019.
The job pays $175,427 annually to Program Manager Stephen Bilecz, who has occupied the position since its inception. With fringe benefits, including pension costs, the line item cost for the coming years comes to $238,000.
Since 2019 when the position was created, the total pay including benefits has totaled $1.4 million.
Yet it was never formally budgeted. Year after year the position was paid for through “vacancy savings” — money budgeted for other positions that were not filled, and were instead shifted over.”
When you are in a deficit, there are no “vacancy savings” when you secretly fill a position. Now you know why San Diego, with no Republicans on the City Council, has a $238 million deficit—it is fast going down the toilet.
San Diego has spent $1.4 million since 2019 for a job that has never officially appeared in the city budget
by Greg Moran and San Diego Documenters, inewsource, 6/5/25 https://inewsource.org/2025/06/05/san-diego-clean-sd-program-position-budget/?utm_source=Master+List&utm_campaign=6ff901875d-RSS_NEW_STORY_ALERT&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c99e73181c-0f117c3216-134721873&mc_cid=6ff901875d&mc_eid=dbb333bf07
Why this matters
The city of San Diego is cutting services and increasing fees to close a $258 million budget deficit. Yet in the past decade hundreds of managers have been added to the payroll through a budget workaround.
They were four hours in at a San Diego City Council budget review meeting when the discussion got around to the mystery worker of the Environmental Services department.
“In regards to Clean SD,” Councilmember Henry Foster III began, a note of exasperation in his voice. He was referring to the program within the department that cleans sidewalks, picks up piles of trash that were illegally dumped, cleans up homeless encampments and scrapes up road kill.
“It looks like we are looking at adding a program manager, and I am just curious as to — this program seems to have been around for quite some time,” he continued. “I believe it was started under the Faulconer administration.”
From the Documenters
This story came in part from notes taken by Simon Mayeski, a San Diego Documenter, at a city of San Diego Budget Review Committee meeting last month. The Documenters program trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings. Read the note here.
“Why are we now, so many years in, today being presented — having to add an additional management position in regards to this program.”
“It was a true mistake,” Deputy Chief Operating Officer Alia Khouri responded at the May meeting, startling Foster and other councilmembers. “It was left off a few years of requesting to formally budget it.”
As the committee soon learned, it was more than a few years. The job was initially created on an emergency basis — under the previous administration of Mayor Kevin Faulconer, in 2019.
The job pays $175,427 annually to Program Manager Stephen Bilecz, who has occupied the position since its inception. With fringe benefits, including pension costs, the line item cost for the coming years comes to $238,000.
Since 2019 when the position was created, the total pay including benefits has totaled $1.4 million.
Yet it was never formally budgeted. Year after year the position was paid for through “vacancy savings” — money budgeted for other positions that were not filled, and were instead shifted over.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera asked how that could happen.
“They were not aware it wasn’t budgeted,” Khouri replied. “It had been in the system for so long as an emergency that they actually weren’t aware.”
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Elo-Rivera seemed stunned that the city could employ someone and not have the employee’s cost included in the city’s annual spending plan drawn up by the mayor — for more than a half-decade.
“Does the budget matter?” he asked at one point.
The exchange in the middle of what would be a nine-hour meeting highlighted a little-known employment practice in the city, one that has grown exponentially since 2015 and added tens of millions of dollars to the budget.
For years, city departments have increasingly created a position on a “supplemental” basis or — as in the case of Bilecz — as an emergency, and then paid for it by using money allocated for other hires.
Often these positions do not show up in a formal budget for a year or two. By that time, they’re baked into the city spending plan.
The practice has become a source of tension between city hall and the Municipal Employees Association, which represents the majority of city workers.
In December at a council budget meeting, MEA President Michael Zucchet said the number of program managers or program coordinators grew from 70 in 2015 to 393 now.
That’s a 461% increase for jobs that typically pay in six figures. At the same time employment of frontline workers increased 20%, he said. In the past two years alone more than 100 positions have been added.
Those 323 additional middle management positions added since 2015 account for $80 million in new personnel costs, Zucchet said.
The Clean SD program manager position was created to handle the demands of the city’s growing homeless population. These include abating homeless encampments and overseeing the sidewalk sanitizing program, among other tasks.
For several years it was paid for through vacancy savings. In the 2024 and 2025 budget years, the position was inserted into the department’s spending plan. But for some reason it never made it to the formal budget.
The job was so important it continued on the books, city Communications Director Nicole Darling said — but “the critical nature of the position was not adequately relayed to those involved in the City’s formal budget process.”
“This was an administrative oversight and once identified, ESD has been working to express the need for the position and request funding through the City’s formal budget approval process,” she said.
The city faces a yawning budget deficit of at least $260 million this year, leading Mayor Todd Gloria to propose slashing services at libraries, parks and budget cuts in nearly every department. But the council is pushing back on those proposed cuts, setting up a showdown with the mayor at a June 10 meeting when the budget is scheduled to be approved.
Elo-Rivera in an interview said the growth in the manager-coordinator positions has not been justified by the mayor’s office. “That lack of explanation has been frustrating because it makes it much more difficult for us to understand what’s driving the proposal that’s in front of us,” he said, referring to the budget review.
Gloria is also proposing reducing the workforce, cutting about 400 positions from the spending plan. However, just 160 of those are actually filled.
Those vacant positions — funded, but unfilled — have fueled a rise in mid-level supervisor and manager positions and altered the nature and cost of the workforce, Zucchet said.
“I would say it’s a shadow way of changing the type of workforce that the city’s written budget says,” he said. “So it says you’re gonna have this many employees, and these are their job classifications.”
Many of those positions remain unfilled, though a pot of money is attached to each of them.
“These are unfunded positions that are being funded through the back door,” he continued. “And that back door is called vacancy savings.”
The budget sleight of hand used to create supplemental positions is not limited apparently to program managers and coordinators.
Department deputy directors and assistant deputy directors in Parks and Recreation, Communications, and Purchasing and Contracting have been added just in the past couple of years, Zucchet said.
Elo-Rivera said that the growth of these positions points to a larger question about the city budget.
“Why has the preservation of the program manager positions taken priority over the preservation of the assistant rec center director positions?” he said. “That’s the kind of more important question to me. And I didn’t receive an answer during the budget review committee, nor have I since, that I found adequate.”
