Trauma Recovery Center Brought Back From the Dead. Yes, Again.

Same old, same old at the Trauma Recovery Center

​We wrote a week ago about the city's Trauma Recovery Center needing some trauma recovery itself after facing death by budget ax three times in two years. The center that helps crime victims in San Francisco has been saved by the Board of Supes each time. This time, the mayor has stepped in to save the center, though it will have to limp on with just 64 percent of its prior budget, says the center's director Alicia Boccellari.

The center was on the Department of Public Health's list of programs to cut in the fiscal year starting July 1, but the mayor has until June 1 to restore funds to any of the programs. Apparently, Gavin Newsom decided this cost-efficient program that has a track record of getting crime victims back to work and willing to cooperate with the police and district attorney in prosecuting crime was worth saving.

"It is good news," says Boccellari. "It's not the full amount but at this point at least the doors will stay open, and we'll just have to continue to find other sorts of funding."
Boccellari is hoping to not have to fire staff, which would decrease the number of crime victims whom the center serves, currently 750 people a year on a $1.1 million budget. That budget will be cut by $394,000.

But at least the center will be able to stay open long enough for the state assembly to vote on Sen. Mark Leno's bill to fund the San Francisco center and replicate it in other counties around the state (Yes, the city was initially proposing to cut all funding from a program the state may soon step in and fund).

If the program had shut down, that would have been like trying to protect an endangered species that had already died out. 

Follow us on Twitter at @TheSnitchSF and @SFWeekly