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Mayor Vincent Gray unveiled his $9.4 billion proposed budget last week, which outlines millions of dollars in cuts to social services.

The city anticipates a $172 million shortfall next year, and Mayor Gray wants to fill the gap mostly through cuts — about $102 million worth of them — while raising the remaining $70 million. The D.C. Council will spend the next couple of months digesting, debating and changing the budget before finally voting on it.

Let’s take a look at a few highlights:

No new taxes
Last year’s budget battle included a debate over whether to create a new tax bracket for wealthier residents. The council eventually approved a new tax bracket for households making more than $350,000 a year. This time around, Mayor Gray isn’t suggesting further raising taxes on the wealthy to balance the budget. Instead, he’s looking to make money by extending the hours alcohol can be sold and expanding the traffic camera program.

Healthcare
The DC Healthcare Alliance provides insurance for the approximately 20,000 low-income D.C. residents not covered by Medicaid. Mayor Gray proposes cutting $23 million from the program, transforming it from offering comprehensive coverage to just primary, preventative care.

Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images

Mayor Vincent Gray.

Housing
The money to build and renovate affordable housing units comes from the Housing Production Trust Fund. It’s also where tenants turn to for low-cost loans to purchase their buildings when landlords put them up for sale. Tenant purchase is often cited as a way to prevent displacement of low-income renters in the face of gentrification. Mayor Gray proposes taking $19.9 million from the trust fund and using it for low-income rent subsidies instead, which is in really high demand.

Economic development and jobs
Mayor Gray proposes boosting economic development funding, including $58 million of infrastructure investments at St. Elizabeths in Ward 8, future home the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The redevelopment is expected to reinvigorate the economically depressed area by bringing in thousands of jobs.

The District has also had problems training residents for jobs; Mayor Gray proposes a $1.6 million pilot program intended to better connect residents with jobs.

The wish list
The budget does include a “revised revenue priority list,” essentially a wish list of items that will be funded if more money is brought in than projected. And most of those programs benefit the city’s neediest residents, including $7 million for homeless services, $14.7 million to pay for Temporary Aid for Needy Families (formerly known as welfare) job programs and restoring the cuts made to healthcare and housing.

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

D.C. Fair Budget Coalition's Janelle Treibitz pushes for protecting social service funding during a Monday rally.

Sandra Williams, 58, takes classes at a D.C. nonprofit in pursuance of a GED certificate. She eventually wants to become a social worker, but she’s unemployed for now and said she has can’t get a job because of her poor credit.

Anthony Hunter, 27, recently became homeless. The single father said that he needs a little help to get back on his feet. He currently lives off of $623 a month, he said.

Karima Weathers, 39, a single mother raising three children, recently lost her eyesight. She’s been in and out of shelters and has spent winter nights in her car.

They all turned out to a rally on the Wilson Building’s steps Monday morning, calling for Mayor Vincent Gray to spare funding cuts to social service programs and initiatives that help low-income D.C. residents. The rally was organized by the advocacy group D.C. Fair Budget Coalition. Mayor Gray is expected to release his proposed budget March 23.

Advocates say the situation is dire; one in three D.C. children lives in poverty and the waiting list for affordable housing is more than 37,000 people long.

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

"I'm not asking for you to take care of me for the rest of my life," Anthony Hunter said at Monday's rally.

The numbers seem simple: the city has $240 million left over from the fiscal 2011 budget, and projections show a $164 million shortfall in the coming year. But a D.C. law requires all leftover money to be put into the city’s savings. The impetus behind saving the money is improving D.C.’s financial footing and its bond rating, after years of surplus money being spent, leaving budget gaps.

Coalition leader Janelle Treibitz said Mayor Gray could change the law and propose to save half of the surplus, while spending the other half to cover the budget gap. That, she said, would help prevent cuts to programs.

“All this takes is the Mayor’s will,” Treibitz said.

Last year, Mayor Gray proposed $187 million in cuts, 60 percent of which were to social services. Some of the cuts were in response to a loss of federal funding.

“In a way, [this year] is kind of worse because we’re facing another year of cuts after a year of cuts,” Farah Fosse of the Latino Economic Development Corporation said.

Mayor Gray’s spokesman confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the coalition met with the Mayor last week. Councilmembers Michael Brown (At-large) and Tommy Wells (Ward 6) spoke before the rally, stating their support for protecting affordable housing and social service funding.

Flickr: Andrew Magill

Reading city budgets are boring undertakings, but boy are they important documents. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s proposed fiscal 2012 budget has been out for a few days now, and it includes $187 million in cuts, 60 percent of which come from social services. Ouch. If you haven’t had time to comb through the pages and pages of proposed cuts, here are a few that would affect the District’s most vulnerable residents:

• $4,373,927 cut from Child and Family Services

• $30,655,447 cut from the Department of Health

• $8,802,107 cut from the Department of Mental Health

• $18,628,455 cut from the Disability Compensation Fund

Wealthy D.C. residents are being tasked with bearing the burden of the city’s financial woes, too — a tax hike for households bringing in $200,000 or more a year is on the table.

It should be noted that some of those proposed cuts are in response to loss of federal funds, such as $12,518,000 of federal grant money gone from the Department of Health’s budget. Also, some of these cuts represent large chunks of an agency’s relatively small budget (a $1,625,000 cut from the Children and Youth Investment Collaborative represents a 35 percent cut).

In response to some of these proposed cuts, D.C. Behavioral Health Association executive director told Washington City Paper:

“D.C. already under-spends on children’s mental health treatment: we spent $13 million on our children’s mental health program while Vermont, which has a similar population size, spent $72 million.  Now Mayor Gray’s proposed FY2012 further reduces the mental health services that keep children out of hospitals and out of the juvenile delinquency system.  It reduces the treatment funds that help parents improve their parenting skills.  Perversely, while cutting these effective programs, Mayor Gray proposes spending significantly more on the expensive interventions that don’t have the proven track record of efficacy.”