2020 San Francisco Ballot Measures
Making sense of the thirteen propositions on the ballot is daunting, but thankfully easier this year. Props A through L are fairly straightforward, almost universally-supported pieces of legislation put before voters to approve. Vote yes on all of them except the one mentioned below. The props mentioned are ones that deserve additional context beyond a simple endorsement and improving our city as a whole means gaining an appreciative understanding of the nuances of local policy.
Prop B - NO
I know the author of this legislation, Matt Haney, personally so I need to preface this by saying my opposition to this is not personal, nor is it political. It’s on principle.
The San Francisco Department of Public Works, DPW for short, was once headed by Mohamed Nuru who loved to call himself “Mr. Clean”. Nuru was anything but. Every week seems to be a new story from Joe Eskenazi at Mission Local or Joe Fitz Rodriguez at The Examiner detailing more lurid details about public corruption charges brought by the FBI against Nuru. At its core, the charges and stories outline a storied history of Nuru using the trappings of his office to benefit himself personally - all, of course, at taxpayer expense.
But Nuru is gone as well as several of his associates and several others at City Hall who were slammed with FBI corruption charges. San Francisco is not immune to bad apples in ministerial positions because of its size and corruption is usually a systemic issue, but this seems like a unique position. DPW is responsible, essentially, for keeping things clean: emptying city trash bins at bus stops and on sidewalks, street sweeping, graffiti abatement, etc. and the head of DPW having DPW staff clean his car for him or neglecting whole swaths of the city unless personally catered seems as if it’s more a Nuru problem than a DPW-as-beholden-to-private-interests-abound issue.
Ballooning city government by cleaving the street cleaning responsibilities into an entirely separate agency with its own funding and corresponding oversight commission seems like overkill. This is a burden that doesn’t seem fair to ask of taxpayers when what the Board of Supervisors can do is just enhance its vetting whenever the Mayor appoints a department head and routinely call in agency leaders for appropriate scrutiny and oversight. I don’t think we need something akin to an investigatory ombudsman (whom would more than likely be elected; a position some have longed for) but we could use stronger exercise of existing oversight power. Vote no on B.
Prop C - YES
In 2016, voters approved Prop. N which expanded the franchise to non-citizen residents to participate in school board elections. This was a smart and compassionate move; after all, if you’re risking your life to raise your child in SFUSD schools and they will only know this country as their own, you should have a right to weigh in on who will make the critical decision from funding to policy over your child’s schooling.
2020’s Prop C extends that informed, compassionate understanding to allow non-citizen residents to serve on city board and commissions - of which the city has several, vital ones - as appointed to by the Mayor. Vote yes.
Prop D - YES
As it stands, SFPD has a corresponding oversight body: the Police Commission. But as San Francisco is a consolidated city-county and retains its elected Sheriff, there is no comparable entity. Nor is there an Inspector General to look into in-custody deaths or Deputy misconduct. SF’s Sheriff’s Department essentially only has three responsibilities: guard City property like City Hall and the courts; operate the County Jail like the one at 850 Bryant in SOMA and on land in San Bruno; and execute eviction orders - a sordid and abhorrent task that in itself deserves some reevaluation.
Yet none of these duties face any oversight that is independent and unbiased. While I am generally against expanding City government for useless and often superfluous endeavors, independent accountability is not something from which I and voters like me should shy away. Vote yes.
Prop E - YES
Existing City Charter language mandates SFPD staff itself with 1,971 sworn officers. It’s a weirdly-specific and, even in normal times, unusually inflexible standard that binds both SFPD, the Board of Supervisors, and taxpayers to maintain a level of service that fails to adapt to changing needs. Prop E is NOT a defund the police measure. Instead it will grant flexibility for SFPD to request lower or greater staffing levels subject to Board of Supervisors approval. Vote yes.
Prop H - YES
Measure RR
On the ballot in San Francisco, San Mateo County, and Santa Clara County.
If COVID taught us one thing, let it be flexibility. Opening and operating a restaurant in the times of COVID is quite possibly one of the hardest business tasks one would have to endeavor, but in normal times, doing so in San Francisco is downright impossible. Onerous permitting requirements and regulations inhibit the natural growth of foodspaces in our city and that has consistently kept the cost of dining out prohibitively expensive for working families. Pair that with strict zoning regulation limiting formula retail even for food establishments and the options are slim for those who can afford to order food delivery or go out.
COVID safety means maintaining the presence around others to be not only distanced but free from enclosed spaces that could help ease the transmission of the virus from person to person. This meant having to reclaim outdoor pavement or patio space for restaurants across the country, something which under normal circumstances in San Francisco is excruciatingly difficult. If the prospect of adding outdoor table space is daunting in itself, think of the cost and burden to open up literally any other part of the restaurant. Prop H seeks to remedy that by easing restrictions for business owners without sacrificing vital protections to the surrounding neighborhood. We can and will strike a balance between accommodating businesses sorely-needed changes and improvements to their physical spaces while also keeping communities safe. Vote yes.
Caltrain, like all transit systems during COVID, faced the potential for failure as a result of commuters shifting to work from home. Absent regular funding from the state, Caltrain received 70% of its operating funds from farebox revenue. While generally, this would be a good thing to see this level of financial independence and profit for a public agency facing year after year of sustained, measured growth, it was never sustainable.
In 2020, Caltrain wanted to put a measure on the ballot that would raise taxes to help fund Caltrain, moving the system to be in more line with others receiving public funding. After all, Caltrain is the backbone of the three counties it runs through and is a major driver to the economic success of the Silicon Valley and the region as a whole. But over a governance dispute from San Francisco Supervisors Shamann Walton and Aaron Peskin and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo who were upset that Caltrain was 1) being operated as an extra-governmental super agency beyond their jurisdiction, 2) an imbalanced binding agreement that directed Caltrains governance structure to the whims of SamTrans’ (San Mateo County’s bus system) governing board, and 3) a desire to rig the tax measure to redirect some of most of its funds raised to the SF and San Jose respectively, the Caltrain relief measure almost never saw the light of day.
The brinksmanship shown this summer over holding Caltrain hostage was as dangerous as it was blithely idiotic. A system that moves hundreds of thousands of people and is a vital backbone to the economy of the Peninsula and Silicon Valley at large faced near death because of male egos and power trips. It was embarassing, but Measure RR got on the ballot thanks to some finagling by more responsible leaders.
Measure RR asks voters to approve a 1/8 cent sales tax levied on products sold within all three Peninsula Counties - San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara - and would raise $108 million annually for Caltrain. There are some ill-informed, self-ascribed progressive politicians in all the counties, especially San Francisco, that consistently argue against sales tax hikes. Their opposition is to the regressive nature of consumption taxes and while there is economic reasoning to the marginally dissuasive effects a sales tax hike could potentially create, one-eighth of a penny is not at all going to hurt working people and small businesses. This reasoning is absurd. The benefits to the public far outweigh any personal thought on the regressivity of tax hikes.
While we deserve to see greater investment from the state and federal government into public transit and while the governance question is still up for deliberation, saving Caltrain should not be. Vote yes.