The City Fired 26 Park Workers. The Office of Diversity and Equity Cost the Same.

On April 29, 2026, Sacramento City Manager Maraskeshia Smith released her first proposed operating budget. Smith took office on January 5, 2026, after being hired and celebrated as Sacramento's first Black woman city manager. The 570-page document closes a $66.2 million structural deficit through what the city calls "$61.7 million in reduction strategies" and the elimination of 144 full-time equivalent positions, of which 46 are filled. The cuts hit park workers, pool lifeguards, senior center coordinators, the mounted police unit, and dozens of other frontline staff. The Office of Diversity and Equity is not on the cut list.

Three separate proposals to reduce the office's three positions were submitted during budget development. The City Manager rejected all three. The office grew from $517,019 to $568,059, a 9.9 percent increase, while 26 Park Maintenance Workers were fired and replaced with a contractor, saving the city $567,428. The two numbers are $631 apart.

The story isn't one line item. It's an institutional structure in which equity-coded bureaucracy is treated as untouchable while real labor is treated as discretionary. The same budget that fires the park crew and closes the wading pools also funds two separate diversity recruiting operations for one fire department, one of them brand-new in this cycle. Add up every office, project, and program in the budget whose stated purpose is to advance "diversity," "equity," "inclusion," "anti-displacement," "racial equity," "social equity," or related framings, and the figure comes to roughly $48 million. The structural deficit is $66 million. Eliminating that spending alone would close most of the gap without firing a single park worker.

I. What was cut

The budget identifies the cuts directly. The largest filled-position eliminations, and the savings each generates, are listed below in the city's own language and amounts.

The mounted police unit, which the budget eliminates entirely, has been part of the Sacramento Police Department since the 1970s. The four city wading pools, the only summer swim option in several lower-income neighborhoods, are closed. The Hart Senior Center loses four Program Coordinators. The Magnet Academy was proposed for elimination and partially restored only after community pushback. ShotSpotter is removed from South and East Sacramento commands but maintained in the North.

II. The bureaucracy that was protected

The city's equity infrastructure is not one office. It is a layered system of departments, projects, advisory bodies, and resolutions that together represent ongoing operating costs in the millions and active project balances in the tens of millions. The following is a partial inventory taken directly from the budget document, with each office's stated mission paraphrased from the city's own language.

That figure does not include the Police Department's Office of Strategy and Compliance, which exists primarily to manage compliance with reform-era mandates including the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (AB 953), Senate Bills 1421 and 16, body-worn camera audits, force review, and engagement with the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission. That division now totals $29.6 million across 47 positions, expanded from its pre-2020 footprint.

Nor does it include the Department of Community Response, a $41.5 million homelessness-services operation with 39 positions, much of which is structured around community outreach contracts rather than direct shelter or housing.

III. The slush funds

Beyond ongoing operations, the budget identifies dozens of multi-year operating projects with explicit equity, inclusion, anti-displacement, or racial-justice naming. Many of these projects sit on substantial unspent balances, even as the city declares a deficit. The figures below are taken from the budget's Existing Operating Projects schedule (pages 413, 415):

IV. The resolution that makes it permanent

The city's equity infrastructure is not optional. Section 20.5 of the FY2026/27 Budget Resolution, which the Council will vote to adopt on June 9, 2026, codifies an "equity lens" requirement on every future budget recommendation:

"The City Manager shall begin using an equity lens in the review of all budgetary recommendations to Council including the annual budget, midyear budget and staff reports as soon as practical after development of a shared definition of equity in coordination with the community, development of associated outcomes and measures and Council's creation and adoption of an Equity Resolution." FY2026/27 Budget Resolution, Section 20.5, page 562

This is the binding text that converts equity programming from a discretionary line item into a procedural requirement. The May 12, 2026 Council meeting agenda includes a formal presentation titled "Budget Equity Lens." The Office of Diversity and Equity is currently developing three new tools for departmental use: an "Online Sac Equity Impact Planner & Assessment Tool," a "Sac Equity Mapping Atlas," and an "Equity Impact Statement For Staff Reports" requirement.

From the budget's own description of the Office of Diversity and Equity, on page 285:

"The Office of Diversity and Equity (ODE) expanded the Race and Gender Equity Action Plan (RGEAP) outcomes to include workforce equity and internal and external equity performance measures related to programs, services, and processes. ODE also facilitated ongoing capacity building for City department equity teams to learn and apply the Results-Based Accountability Framework... In collaboration with the Racial Equity Committee, City Manager's Office, and Racial Equity Alliance, ODE developed the Sacramento Centered on Racial Equity Initiative (SCORE) Work Strategy and Plan. This plan serves as a living roadmap for the implementation of the deliverables outlined in the Operationalizing Racial Equity Resolution 2025-0354." FY2026/27 Proposed Budget, page 285

V. The deficit math

The City declared a $66 million structural deficit. The cuts above in Section I total $13 million. The equity-coded spending the City Manager left in place totals $48 million across the two ledgers in Sections II and III. The cuts that hurt workers were small. The protected equity bureaucracy was almost four times bigger.

The argument is simple. The City Manager could have eliminated every cut in Section I three times over by redirecting the $48 million in equity-coded spending she chose to protect. The headline cuts that fired park workers and closed wading pools save $13 million. The bureaucracy and project balances she left in place are $48 million. She had a choice and she made it. The numbers above are not contested figures; they are taken directly from the budget document the City released, with project codes preserved.

The remaining gap between the cuts and the deficit, roughly $4.5 million, is closed by fund balance use and small revenue adjustments. The budget also leans on $13 million of one-time strategies that cannot repeat next year. When those are gone, the same fight returns. Without the slush funds to liquidate.

VI. The bill kicked to next year

The City's own budget document admits, in plain language, that one-time strategies do not help future years. The strategy of choice this cycle is one-time. The strategy not chosen, cutting the ongoing equity bureaucracy, is the only one that would have actually reduced next year's deficit.

"The City partially addressed the structural budget deficit during the FY2024/25 and FY2025/26 budget processes by closing funding gaps with a combination of one-time and ongoing budget balancing strategies. The ongoing strategies reduced projected deficits in future fiscal years while the one-time strategies only applied to one fiscal year and did not reduce projected deficits in subsequent years." FY2026/27 Proposed Budget, Budget Message, page 17

Translated, the City's own analysis says that one-time strategies do not fix the structural problem. They buy time. The Office of Diversity and Equity at $568,059 a year is an ongoing cost. The Fire Department's new diversity unit at $338,620 a year is an ongoing cost. The Measure U community engagement positions at $1.36 million a year are an ongoing cost. Cutting any of them reduces next year's deficit and the year after that. By contrast, sweeping a $320,000 unspent balance from the Truth and Reconciliation Project is a one-time win that closes this year's gap and contributes nothing to fixing the next one.

The City Manager picked the one-time path. The unspent project balances she did sweep, the Truth and Reconciliation balance, the unspent Mayor's Office Limited-Term Positions money, smaller commission stipend rollbacks, total roughly one million dollars of equity-coded liquidations. She left $39 million in equity-named project balances untouched, including the full Stockton Boulevard Anti-Displacement Fund, the full AFSCME Anti-Displacement Fund, and the bulk of the cannabis equity grants. Those balances will continue to sit on the books, available for the same one-time treatment in future cycles, until they're gone too.

Next year the bureaucracy will be back asking for the same money. The slush funds will be smaller. The structural problem will be larger. The City Manager's own budget says so.

VII. What the priorities reveal

A budget is the most honest document a government produces. It strips away mission statements and resolutions and reduces a city to two columns: what it pays for, and what it does not. The FY2026/27 budget pays for the Office of Diversity and Equity. It pays for the Race and Gender Equity Action Plan. It pays for the Sacramento Centered on Racial Equity Initiative. It pays for an "equity lens" on every staff report going forward. It pays for community engagement coordinators, community investment managers, anti-displacement programs whose funds sit unspent for years, reparations commissions, and a Truth, Reform, and Reconciliation Project that never spent a dollar.

It does not pay for 26 Park Maintenance Workers. It does not pay for four wading pools. It does not pay for the Hart Senior Center's full programming. It does not pay for the mounted police unit. It does not pay for ShotSpotter coverage in South or East Sacramento. It does not pay for Police Records staff, traffic enforcement, or eleven of the seventeen sworn vacancies originally proposed for elimination.

The city's stated framing is that the budget "minimizes service impacts on Sacramentans." The choice of which services count, and which Sacramentans count, is the budget itself.

Sacramento's first Black woman city manager arrived in January. The Office of Diversity and Equity, the Race and Gender Equity Action Plan, the Sacramento Centered on Racial Equity Initiative, the Fire Department's brand-new diversity recruiting unit, and the $39 million in equity-named project balances all survived her first budget. Twenty-six park workers, the four wading pools, the mounted police unit, the Hart Senior Center coordinators, and ShotSpotter coverage in South and East Sacramento did not. Those were her choices. The two numbers in the headline are $631 apart.