Middle Managers and Missing Services: Where San Diego's Budget Really Goes
If you want to understand what a city values, follow the money. San Diego says it's committed to equity, to vibrant neighborhoods, to serving every community. But when you look at the budget—not the press releases—you find a different story.
In this second installment of our series, we're peeling back the layers on one of the most overlooked truths in local governance: the rise of administrative bloat and the quiet erosion of frontline services.
The Middle Management Explosion
Between 2012 and 2022, San Diego saw a 461% increase in middle management roles. These weren’t firefighters, librarians, or parks staff. These were project managers, coordinators, analysts, consultants—people hired to oversee, report on, or coordinate the work of others.
In theory, these roles bring efficiency. In practice, they often create layers of redundancy, delay, and internal complexity. They rarely deliver value to the residents paying the bills.
A city struggling with basic service delivery should not have hundreds of high-salary administrative roles outpacing the growth of public-facing staff.
What’s Missing on the Ground
While middle management grew, here’s what declined or stagnated:
Library hours were cut across neighborhoods.
Recreation centers reduced hours from 60 to 40 per week.
Park maintenance fell behind, especially in working-class communities.
Youth programming was slashed or consolidated.
Communities aren’t asking for miracles. They're asking for clean parks, safe streets, open libraries, and a few places where kids can learn, rest, and grow. But somehow, the budget keeps finding money for a new layer of administrative oversight instead.
A Case Study in Priorities
Let’s compare two positions:
A Strategic Initiatives Program Manager can earn up to $170,000 annually.
A Youth Program Leader earns about $45,000 to $60,000.
One writes reports and attends meetings. The other makes a direct difference in a child’s life. One is funded. The other is often frozen, defunded, or replaced with temp staff.
This isn’t about attacking individuals. It’s about questioning a system that sees more value in management than in mentorship.
How Did We Get Here?
Part of this comes from how government budgets are shielded from public input. The internal functions are opaque, while external-facing services are the first to be cut because they’re easiest to quantify and move politically. Nobody sees the project coordinator in a Zoom meeting. Everyone sees the locked library doors.
Hiring freezes don’t hit management. They hit street-level workers. And year by year, the city gets more top-heavy and less responsive.
Rebalancing the Budget Equation
Fixing this starts with a simple idea: Public money should serve the public.
That means:
Conducting a department-by-department audit of middle management roles.
Publishing a public-facing breakdown of admin vs. service costs.
Capping administrative growth until core services are restored citywide.
A vibrant city doesn’t grow from behind a desk. It grows in the neighborhoods. At the rec centers. In the classrooms. On the streets.
San Diego needs to choose: more managers, or more community.
In the next post in our series, we’ll examine how the language of city budgets—"maintain," "preserve," "address"—masks a failure to fix anything. Stay tuned for Blog 3: Band-Aids and Buzzwords: The Politics of Non-Solutions.
