Welcome back to our weekly โMeet the Candidatesโ series, where District 2 supervisor candidates respond to a question in 100 words or fewer.ย District 2 includes the Marina District and Pacific Heights.
Muni is facing a $307 million deficit, and if it doesnโt get filled, the agency may soon have to make large cuts to service. More than a dozen bus lines could be cut, and regular service could end at 9 p.m, instead of around midnight.ย
The deficit is spurred by the expiration of COVID-era emergency federal funding, and a slow recovery in ridership since the pandemic. City Hall officials are proposing a $183 million parcel tax for Novemberโs ballot to help patch Muniโs budget and prevent service cuts.
The two candidates have differed in their approach to transit.
Stephen Sherrill has emphasized the importance of Muni. A โfully-functioning Muni,โ he said in a Feb. 3 debate, is โso importantโ because it means fewer cars on the road. In this week’s response, Sherrill said he supports the measure.
Lori Brooke has been more circumspect. She said the city should not prioritize any โsingle modeโ of transportation, and that the โtransit ideologyโ of Muni has caused problems with traffic and parking for cars. (Both Brooke and Sherrill support bringing cars back to Market Street.)
Brooke did not answer this weekโs question directly, but spoke about Muniโs โwasted funds,โ and said a parcel tax would not โsolve all of our problems.โ
Under the proposed tax, homeowners would pay an additional $129 a year (more, if their home is more than 3,000 square feet). Owners of apartment buildings would start at $249 a year, and commercial landlords would start at $799 a year. Both would pay more if their buildings are larger than 5,000 square feet.ย
The most a commercial landlord would pay is $400,000 a year, versus a cap of $50,000 for apartment building owners. Apartment landlords would be allowed to pass up $65 a year onto tenants.
The parcel tax is one of two proposed taxes on Novemberโs ballot that seek to stabilize Muni. The other, a sales tax that will affect several Bay Area counties, would fund other local transit systems such as BART and Caltrain in addition to Muni.
This weekโs question: There are currently plans to put a parcel tax on November’s ballot to address Muni’s deficit. Do you support the tax? Why or why not?
Mission Local color codes the answers to yes/no questions. A green background means the candidate answered yes, a red background means no, and a yellow background means that the candidate dodged the question.
Stephen Sherrill
- Job: Appointed District 2 Supervisor
- Age: 39
- Residency: Homeowner, has lived in District 2 since 2015
- Transportation: Driving, public transportation, biking
- Education: Bachelorโs degree from Yale University
- Languages: English
I support the Muni parcel tax because robust, reliable transit is essential to San Franciscoโs everyday needs and long-term success.
This isnโt a nice-to-have. This is about preventing deep, deep cuts that would hurt working families, seniors, small businesses, kids getting to school, and our downtown economy.
Healthy Muni benefits everyone: Riders, drivers, everyone. Every rider is one less car on the street or competitor for a parking spot. Itโs good for the economy, for the environment, and for the future of San Francisco.
Endorsed by: Mayor Daniel Lurie, GrowSF, Nor Cal Carpenters Union, San Francisco Police Officers Association … read more here.
Lori Brooke
- Job: President, Cow Hollow Association
- Age: 62
- Residency: Homeowner, moved to the district 31 years ago
- Transportation: Driving and walking
- Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara
- Languages: English
A lot of residents are concerned that SFMTA has wasted funds on many high-salaried positions and unpopular projects, instead of investing in drivers and strengthening transit lines.ย
Residents do not want to have their taxes increased, because they have lost trust in how funds are being spent. I also do not think a parcel tax will solve all of our problems. We need to take a serious look at how this money is being spent and make cuts that do not affect the riders.ย
We must continue to fund and improve transit while ensuring fiscal responsibility.
See Brooke’s full response here.
Endorsed by: Former District 2 Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, former State Senator and Supervisor Quentin Kopp, AFT 2121, Local 38 (#2) … read more here.
Waiting for the Tooth Fairy to fall out of the sky is not a solution. We could shut everything down, fire all personnel, and still owe $ billions. There are no magic wands to fix or fund anything.
It takes decades to plan & create stuff and decades to pay the debt & maintenance. 1978 Prop 13 severely restricts property tax, forcing State & local governments to look for other means to pay for stuff. Raising Statewide taxes requires 2/3rds of both chambers of the Legislature…good luck with that. That leaves local gimmick taxes.
Gnash your teeth all you like, there’s no other way. `
Thank the gods for Prop 13. It did create a budget problem, and needs to be reformed, but without 13, newly discovered working-class communities would gentrify overnight because of the property tax burden. But this was 1978, so decades have passed, and still, California remains underfunded.
People forget that back in the 1970s, some municipalities were dishing out annual property tax increases of up to 100%!
And it is a reasonable question to ask now: If Prop 13 were abolished tomorrow, by what percentage would SF increase its property tax bills the very next year?
Not a huge fan of either of these candidates, but Lori Brooke is showing she can’t be taken seriously with this stance. Even if you yourself never ride transit, downtown SF can’t function without Muni. SF’s economy can’t work without Muni. And your car is going to be stuck in apocalyptic congestion if you force the people taking Muni today to switch to cars.
The parcel tax is not perfect: I wish Mayor Lurie hadn’t insisted on capping the amount per parcel, which was a giveaway to owners of big buildings like Salesforce Tower. But it is still relatively progressive in its structure, and Muni doesn’t have a Plan B. The reality is that a vote against the transit funding measures this November is a vote for San Francisco to fail.
We should never be quick to consider tax increases! That should be a last resort after examining any fraud, waste and abuse. No one would or could run their private business this way. We need to run our public offices in the same manner. Efficient, effective, lean, and accountable Iโm against the parcel tax.
This is a truly ignorant take for so many reasons. But thanks for flaunting the fact youโre a card-carrying MAGA with that โfraud, waste, and abuseโ nonsense. (You donโt even know how to use an Oxford comma so why am I even bothering.)
Please show us how Caltrans is being run like a private business. Seeing how it most certainly is notโit consistently fails to deliver any โcongestion reliefโ despite the billions it spends on road wideningโthen why does it get a rubber-stamped $20B budget per year? Transit depends on city, state, and federal funding and keeps the roads clear, and at least a third of San Franciscans over the age of 10 depend on it, but somehow society thinks itโs ok to keep letting the funding yo-yo at the whims of administrations. Thatโs the only โabuseโ that I can think of. Waiting to see your evidence of waste and fraud.
Illegal double taxation on renters via pass-through since already paid in rent, so hello, City Attorney’s office? This’ll get interesting (if it passes) with this unnecessary flaw. Isn’t transit important enough to draft the legislation properly, or was this error intentional?
I know of no law that makes it illegal to do tenant passthrus on parcel tax measures.
In fact they happen routinely so where are the lawsuits against that?
Muni should be free
It pretty much already is. When was the last time you saw fare enforcement outside of downtown?
What about also increasing the sales tax and allocating that toward MUNI?
I have a couple friends and family living near above-ground Muni light rail. Somehow Muni managed to make the new Siemens cars even noisier than the old Bredas. They’d be delighted to see Muni end service at 9p and I know they vote accordingly.
We used to be able to fund transit before covid without raising relatively regressive taxes such as parcel and sales taxes. Can the people in charge of transit and ballot measure proponents tell us what’s changed and why?
Could it be that the route alignments of Muni’s radial lines mean that we’re spending money for an intensity of transit service to serve office jobs downtown that no longer exist?
Muni has never been close to being self-sustaining. Even in the pre-Covid era, revenues from fares only covered about 25% of the operating costs of Muni. The other 75% was in subsidies i.e. Muni was bailed out by taxes.
But now the situation is much worse and fares cover barely 10% of Muni costs. Part of that is because of the growth of concessionary fares for the young, old, disabled etc. But there are other factors too, such as the growth of ride-sharing services that can cheaply and flexibly take you anywhere in the city for a few dollars.
The other elephant in the room is of course that Muni is widely seen as slow, unreliable, uncomfortable, dirty and, at times, dangerous.
Marc, as always, your fake populism is just so very very tiresome. Not to mention weirdโso you fancy yourself as some kind of socialist but deem parcel taxes as โrelatively regressive?โ I guess as long as it doesnโt affect you itโs โtax the richโ but if you have to cough up a bit more to offset the incredible windfall you benefit from as a longtime gentrifier under Prop 13 now itโs โregressive?โ Oh and alsoโthereโs never been a time in the 25 years Iโve lived here that Muniโs operations havenโt suffered from underinvestment so who knows what youโre on about. Yes, they scraped by before without needing to float a tax increase but thereโs a thing called the Trump Administration happening and there are zero federal funds to help us regain footing after Covid anymore. And finally, regarding routes: You mightโve missed this because you probably donโt even take Muni, but non-downtown non-radial T-Chinatown, Van Ness BRT, and other crosstown routes have seen a lot of investment which turned out to be wise (albeit flawed in execution). It would be great to see more of this which is why it might behoove you to support any way it can to rescue Muni from the fiscal cliff it faces.
MUNI remains stuck around 80% Ridership vs 2019, a 20% hole which would require outsized cuts in service because there’s no way to cut debt & maintenance.
The problem is that you can’t trust SFMTA to use money to actually improve transit. They’re more interested in capital projects that make life difficult for anyone who drives, and creating traffic jams to justify congestion pricing.
so cynical! heh.
Do you even take Muni? I have lived here for over 25 years and in that whole time there has been only one mayoral campaign that didnโt center on promises to โfix Muniโ – the most recent one. Why? Because while all you car-brained complainers continue to parrot old tropes about Muni being โbad,โ Jeff Tumlin and Julie Kirschbaum quietly got to work and fixed it with the paltry resources it has, plus made it free for youth 18 and under (which it shouldโve always been)
If MUNI needs more money they should Raise fares. Property owners should not be the piggy bank for renters.
Prop 13 has been a Santa Claus to most property owners. So, there’s that, before you complain too much about the ‘renters’.
I have been riding the 38 Geary and 1 Califirnia Muni buses for years.
I have noticed that more than 75% of riders (excluding the young and elders) don’t pay their fair share. They just walk into the bus like they own it. Shameful behavior!! And we wonder why MUNI is flat broke. I have written to MUNi on this on many occasions to no avail.
In the decades I have been a paying customer on Muni, I have witnessed only one instance where a Muni official accosted the offender. Lack of enforcement and moral integrity are the causes that need to be addressed. Giving tickets to drivers going over posted MPH on bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge would also help promote better safety and garner revenue as well.
The peasants that ride Muni should
pay higher fares.
Knave, you pretend at nobility! Youโre no gentleman. Iโll box your ears!
No MUNI or BART TAXES to San Mateo County Residents! The Entire Coastside from Linda Mar to Loma Mar has deficient Transit and S.F. would get the Lionโs Share if this Tax were it to pass, leaving us as the โHave Notsโ once again! Let San Francisco fund their own Transit issues. It doesnโt serve enough of San Mateo County as it is, to put it on our Ballot, so if you do, it will get voted down. The people in Millbrae have expressed that BART only brings homeless to their City. (Of course thatโs not true, but that issue was raised when the County wanted to purchase a hotel for transitional housing near the BART Station.) If BART went From Daly City to Half Moon Bay, now THAT would be a selling point, to clear up the weekend traffic and get folks from the City to the Beaches and out to the Fresh Air and Farmersโ Markets etc. But it doesnโt yet. Probably not ever. If Muni wasnโt perceived as dangerous or BART as bloated in upper management I โmightโ consider voting for it, but l am a senior on a fixed income, so itโs a NO!
In the time it took for you to write that bizarre screed (with extra capitalizations of random nouns, even) you could have followed the link to the article explaining more in detail what this tax measure is and who itโs for. Cliffโs Notes: If you donโt live or own property in SF, none of this applies to you. We also are not talking about regional funding or BART or SamTrans here. Just Muni, which only operates in SF and a small sliver of Daly City. And finally, if you want BART to go to the sparsely populated coast, have fun convincing your county and transit district to pay for it. But in the meantime, you could try taking the bus once or twice before you deem it unworthy. The service is pretty good given the population density and it runs on time.