Deliberating San Francisco ballot propositions: 2022 edition
Proposition D-E: Affordable Housing
Because our Board of Supervisors is incredibly functional it put two competition affordable housing measures on the ballot. I can’t even.
Prop D would streamline housing project approval. Prop E would streamline housing project approval. The difference is how they define affordable housing and how much of it they require. That’s pretty much it.
What the fuck are we even doing here? This is exactly the kind of thing I expect competent elected officials to figure out without my help. But that’s not what we have in San Francisco.
We have two factions on the housing debate. One wants some “affordable” housing (more on how this is defined in a minute) and the other wants only “affordable” housing. Or do they? The later group wants so much affordable housing that they make it nearly impossible to build any housing. Enter Prop E. It requires so much affordable housing that no reasonable (read: evil profiteering) developer would be able to build any because it would not be profitable. For extra protection against building new housing it also subjects every project to lengthy environmental review (always a good place for activists to kill progress) and sets a labor standard that only 10 percent of construction workers can meet.
About the affordable housing criteria. They set this based on the median income for each household size. That means a single resident making $116,400 per year would qualify for below market rate (BMR) housing in San Francisco. Readers, Deliberatus’ first tech salary was below that number. The fact that I could have qualified for affordable housing is so messed up. Yes rent was high. But I am not and should not be the target of affordable housing criteria.
Admittedly I do not have a solve for this. Lower the income thresholds and you also lower the rent a BMR unit can charge, which makes it harder to offer. Whattya gonna do? I don’t know. That’s just how out of control things are here in San Francisco.
Prop D is put forth by the housing faction that actually wants to see some housing get built. Not nearly enough for Deliberatus’ preference, but some. Prop E is put forth by people who either want no housing built or are so stubbornly pigheaded they think they will someday win if they just keep being stubborn enough for long enough.
Vote yes on Prop D. Vote no on Prop E.
It is so deliberated.
Proposition F: Library Preservation
Prop F renews an existing tax that funds library stuff. For some idiotic, control freak reason the measure would also mandate how often libraries have to be open. This seems stupid, but if you’ve been deliberating with me this long you aren’t surprised.
Proponents like to say these measures to extend an existing tax “do not raise taxes.” Technically not true. Our taxes are what current law says they are, and current law says we won’t pay this tax starting in July 2023. So yes, this raises our taxes.
This tax will take about $83 million from San Francisco property owners. As we emerge from a pandemic and likely head into a recession, wouldn’t that money do an awful lot of good back in peoples’ pockets?
Deliberatus is not a fan of earmarks via tax levies. As much as I distrust the people in charge of San Francisco, they should have the full flexibility to spend our dollars where they see fit. Taxes like this one take that away from them and shield accountability behind the convenient curtain of “we had no choice.
Vote no on Prop F to send a message that government should not tie its own hands.
It is so deliberated.
Proposition G: Student Success Fund
Prop G requires you to understand how public schools work in San Francisco. The School District and the City are separate governments, but the City gives the District about a hundred mil a year because the Board of Supervisors wants as much power as it can grab. With that context, Prop G would create a new fund the City can use to give “grants” to schools. That money would come from the City’s General Fund.
The extremely prescriptive nature of Prop G should concern all voters. It hard-codes into the Charter how much the Board has to put in the grant fund and only allows those amounts to be changed if the city is more than $200 million in the hole or when the fund is overflowing with money.
The proper way to read this is it would give the Board of Supervisors more power over the School District. If they put this on the ballot with a long track record of competent management of their existing responsibilities they may have a case. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors does not have that track record. Its record is one of incompetence and mismanagement.
Vote no on Prop G. Don’t let incompetent government officials buy their way into our schools.
Proposition H: Moving city elections to even-numbered years.
Deliberatus doesn’t care.
Propositions I and J
Here we arrive at one of the stupidest debates in San Francisco: Should we drive on our roads or not? TL;DR the City permanently closed two roads on the west side of town during the pandemic. Prop I would re-open them, Prop J would keep them closed.
Jesus H. Christ. Here we are again with dueling ballot measures. The tricky thing here is the two roads are closed for very different reasons, making it hard to evaluate Prop I as a whole. I guess I’ll have to evaluate each road on its own and then weigh them against each other.
JFK Drive
JFK Drive cuts through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and has been closed to cars on weekends for a long time. The City temporarily closed it 24/7 during the pandemic and then—as governments tend to do—made its temporary policy permanent earlier in 2022. Prop I would undo that and let people drive on the road during the week.
Deliberatus doesn’t much care about JFK Drive being open or not. Part of me says it’s a park, why does it need a road. The other part of me says it’s a big park so obviously people gotta drive thru it. That part of me would ordinarily win. Golden Gate Park is enormous, bigger than Central Park, in fact. There should be enough space for cars and people.
Great Highway
San Francisco’s Great Highway (that’s its name) runs for a few miles along the Pacific Ocean. It’s basically the last thing before Japan. To its immediate right is the Lower Great Highway (for local traffic) and, at the northernmost points, Golden Gate Park.
Stop me if you heard this one before, but Great Highway was temporarily closed during the worst of the pandemic. People needed more space to play outside next to an expansive beach and the largest urban park in America, according to the Board of Supervisors. Ah but there’s a catch: Only a little bit was closed between the southern corner of GGP and the San Francisco Zoo.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The City decided to re-open GH during the week. Ah but there’s a catch: It wants to permanently remove the very bottom of the highway between the Zoo and Lake Merced. There’s a water treatment plant down there that needs protected from rising sea levels and the highway is in the way of doing that.
Good god. Could we just build a fucking wall around the water plant? That’s a joke. Wait, it’s actually what would happen in Prop I passes.
Prop I would stop the City from removing this short portion of Great Highway. Deliberatus recognizes that would be a pain for the small number of residents who live on what would become the permanent detour route. Sorry. Maybe we can throw them a bone by way of some money to insulate their windows. The reality is that’s easier than re-doing a water treatment facility. Deliberatus would vote no on a clean proposal to re-open this portion of Great Highway.
Whereas I am indifferent on JFK Drive and opposed to re-opening this short portion of Great Highway, I am voting no on Proposition I.
Where does that leave us on Proposition J? It would super approve the Board’s closure of JFK Drive and not touch Great Highway. I’m going to vote no on this also. Not because I want JFK Drive re-opened (I don’t care) but because decisions like that should be left with the Board no matter how little I trust it.
In case you are wondering, if Prop I and J pass the one with the most Yes votes will go into effect and the other will disappear. I give up.
You can see what’s happening here as these deliberations get shorter and shorter. The never-ending stream of ballot measures wears down even the greatest minds. I’m so worn out that I can't even write about the most heinous proposition on the ballot this year. One that would undercut the very meaning of private property and give an incompetent, power-mad government control of and the right to examine what happens inside your walls. A terrifying prospect that could go unimaginably wrong. One that would have this city marching in the streets if Donald Trump proposed it. But a people so sure that they can wield government’s power so much better, that their motives are pure and good is to storm right through our front door to make sure our private property is being used how they want it used.
Unconscionable. That is San Francisco government.