Tarin’s Last Minute 2016 San Francisco Ballot Measure Cheat Sheet
For California state ballot measures, see this page.
For greater detail on these propositions, see the guides from the League of Pissed off Voters, Sasha Magee’s CA/SF Slate, and the SF Bay Guardian.
A — Yes — School Bonds — funds safety, classrooms, two new schools in the SE, move SOTA to Civic Center — raises property taxes, $16 per $100K value — put on by School Board, needs 55% to pass. Will invest in part in moving those temporary trailers indoors. Project Labor Agreement expires next year. Transparency has been historically good on previously raised funds.
B — Yes — CCSF Parcel Tax — Renews an annual parcel tax, would go from current $79 to $99 per parcel over next Local funds provide budget that the state can’t ding. One excellent provision: dedicated resources for student academic counseling.
C — Yes — Affordable Housing Bond reassignment — Would take the authorization for an unused home loan bond from 1992 and authorize the City to issue bonds for the City to buy at-risk properties and convert them to affordable housing. This does not change the city’s balance sheet since these funds were already encumbered.
D — Yes — Elected Officials Act — When an elected official leaves office midterm the Mayor can appoint to fill a vacancy. 1) Vacancy appointments must agree not to run for reelection in the next special election; 2) This appointment would be up for election in the next regular or special election. Method is to prevent mayor from accruing and distributing and hoarding more power. Note: This would go into effect for Kim/Wiener; whoever wins State Senate, the Mayor’s interim appointment would not be an incumbent if this passes.
E — Eh — Street Trees & sidewalk damage. The City used to take care of street trees on residential streets but put the burden on the homeowners during the recession. Having the city do this but creating a set-aside for funds that come from the General Fund with a ballot measure is bad practice.
F — Yes — Youth Voting in Local Elections — Citizens 16 and up who register can vote in local elections for local candidates and local ballots. The youth would stay registered and not have to start over when they turn 18. The one con is that this conflicts with the state constitution and so it’s unclear how it will be interpreted and whether it will go into effect if passed.
G — Eh — Police Oversight — The Office of Citizen Complaints, currently ineffective, would become Dept of Police Accountability. This measure doesn’t do much and may actually cause complacency around police reform, which this is decidedly not. Creates separate budget so that Police Commission doesn’t oversee this dept, which is pretty good.
H — Yes — Public Advocate. Adds new elected position. There are pros (an office with power to subpoena witnesses and records) and cons (adds bureaucracy and requires heavy staffing/budget), but it seems to have had a net positive effect in New York.
I — Yes — Funding for Seniors and Adults with Disabilities. I have the same questions about ballot-box budgeting and set-asides here, but this is a massively underserved population and in this instance the $38M til 2037 carved out for programs and services is a good use of money.
J — Yes — Funding for Homelessness and Transportation. What it creates: Homeless Housing and Services Fund. Transportation Fund. Programs: Housing, prevention of homelessness, eviction defense, rental assistance, transitional housing, MUNI funds for low income youth & senior passes, pedestrian & bike safety, streets. My one concern with this is that it’s not clear whether all of this will be new money or if currently budgeted funds through, say, the Department of Homelessness will remain unchanged and be allocated from this fund only on paper.
K — Yes — General Sales Tax — I’m generally against regressive taxes but since the CA tax expires at the end of this year, no one’s net sales tax will go up for now. It raises roughly $150M/year for what’s suggested in Prop J.
L — Yes — MTA Appointments and Budget — I’m personally for distributing power away from the Mayor, who holds an awful lot in SF, but I also see the side that the Supes shouldn’t have line-item veto power in the MTA budget; that could be a good or bad thing.
M — Yes — Housing and Development Commission. This is another ballot measure to weaken the power of the Mayor’s office; would create a new commission with jurisdiction over the Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. This is partly designed to provide better streamlining to the way SF applies for and spends Federal housing dollars.
N — No — Non-Citizen Voting in School Board Elections. While well-meaning, I have massive reservations about creating a list of undocumented citizens. These separate rolls would also be difficult to maintain when, say, a person on this list no longer has a child in school.
O — No — Prop M — Office Development in Candlestick Point. This is too complex and wonky to explain in a couple lines, but basically it’s to the benefit of Lennar projects, and I’m not a fan.
P — NO NO NO — Competitive Bidding for Affordable Housing Projects on City-Owned Property. This will slow down affordable housing development.
Q — NO NO NO NO NO — Prohibiting Tents on Public Sidewalks. This is another form of criminalizing homeless people, and at the most pragmatic, it’s in defiance of recent Federal mandates that cities and states not prohibit sleeping on the street unless they can provide housing for everyone that does so. This law provides no funding or staff to put people in shelters or housing. It’s an ugly law that’s only on the ballot so Scott Wiener can claim that Jane Kim wants people to keep living in tents.
R — NO — Neighborhood Crime Unit — Voters should not be legislating how the police department allocates its resources, and it is not police reform; it’s more like making a law so that your neighbors on NextDoor splain to the cops.
S — YES YES YES — Allocation of Hotel Tax Funds (for arts and housing). Once upon a time, the Hotel Tax funded the arts in San Francisco. This allocation would also put some toward low-income housing.
Hotel tax — was already put between arts & low-income housing. (Currently funds go to the General Fund and to paying off the renovation of Moscone Center.)
T — No — Restricting Gifts and Campaign Contributions from Lobbying. Good intent, but a poorly worded law. Restricts any gift of any value, like, say, a fruit basket May restrict ability of elected officials to attend events put on by nonprofits. No one can SAY they’re against campaign reform, but this isn’t it.
U — NOOOOO — Affordable Houring Requirements for Market-Rate Development Projects. This changes income eligibility limit to 110 percent of area median income. What this means in practical terms is that the current two tracks for subsidized housing (low-income and affordable) would be put into one pool, so that now people who make less than $20K/year would be competing in the same application process against families who make $100K/year. This would only create misery and not help anyone, least of all our poorest residents.
V — Yes — Tax on Distributing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages. This a regressive tax and a nanny tax and I’m for it anyway. This would tax beverage distributors, and raise prices only on sodas, not on your grocery bill. Whenever a giant arm of capitalism lies to try to defeat legislation, it’s a good sign that one should vote for it.
W — YES — Real Estate Transfer Tax on Properties Over $5MM. This is not an earmark; it could go toward street trees; it could go toward subsidizing City College student fees.
X — ?? Preserving Space for Neighborhood Arts, Small Businesses, and Community Services in Certain Neighborhoods. I love the idea of this, but it might actually be an impediment to building new housing. Replacing PDR (light industrial) and arts spaces that get bulldozed is a great goal, but 1:1 replacement will be expensive and maybe even unfeasible.
Regional law: RR — YES YES YES -BART Safety, Reliability and Traffic Relief.
