At a Sunday meeting to discuss rising youth violence, Mayor Newsom called for increased funding for small schools, youth job training, and universal health care. The Mayor’s pledge parallels Coleman Youth Advocates drive to increase funding for childcare, family support and other services critical to keeping families in San Francisco. But where will this new money come from? Given the defeat of recent tax increase measures, the city’s best option is to direct millions of dollars in new property tax revenue to our top priorities . New developments in the Mid-Market alone raised $12.5 million in taxes in the past year, and other projects slated for the neighborhood will alone bring in enough money to fulfill the Mayor’s funding pledge. But this will not happen if the Mayor and Board of Supervisors diverts new property tax revenue to the Redevelopment Agency, rather than to our schools or youth services. ##M:[more}##
In trying to fund programs to help stop the exodus of families from San Francisco
Mayor Newsom faces a choice: he can try to win voter support for raising taxes, or he can ensure that new property tax revenue generated by the city’s development boom is allocated for schools and youth services.
Some would argue the Mayor also has the option of reallocating existing city funding. But most of the city budget is not subject to change, the Mayor’s Budget Office has previously stated that all of the potential “pots” of administrative savings have been exhausted, and passage of Prop F means that new money may have to be found for increased Fire Department staffing.
Progressives have long preferred the “expand the pie” approach, which means raising revenue through a tax increase. But the electoral track record of such measures is dismal.
Voters handily rejected a real estate transfer tax increase in November 2002, and defeated proposed business and sales tax increases two years later. It is hard to see why a tax measure next November would have a different outcome, particularly if the massive SF General Hospital bond is on the same ballot.
Moreover, proponents of future tax increase measures will have a hard time convincing voters to pay more taxes while San Francisco is continuing to increase the amount of money it diverts to the Redevelopment Agency. Voters on the city’s Westside are not going to vote for higher taxes when their own tax dollars are being diverted from their neighborhoods to the Agency.
Unfortunately for those concerned about school and youth funding, much of the new property taxes generated in San Francisco—from the condos being constructed in Bayview and, SOMA —will go to the Agency rather than the general fund. The neighborhood with the greatest potential to raise new revenue to meet family’s needs is Mid-Market—-which is why the Agency is seeking to control this money as well.
Early next year the Mayor and Board will decide on whether Mid-Market development revenue will benefit schools, health services, and the city as a whole, or instead go to the Agency. If past history is any guide, few if any groups pushing for more school and social service money will be part of the debate, as Redevelopment is erroneously viewed as a “neighborhood” issue.
Redevelopment is a “neighborhood” issue in that the Agency targets communities with limited political and economic clout, and feels safe in running roughshod over those living and working in low-income communities. No community has seen residents flock down to City Hall demanding to become a Redevelopment Area—this supplanting of a neighborhood’s power to control its land use decisions has always been imposed from the outside.
The great irony of Mid-Market Redevelopment is that nearly 3000 housing units have already been proposed for the neighborhood without the need for the Agency to “spur” investment. But despite the lack of any Agency connection to these projects, the tens of millions in tax revenue to be generated will still be diverted from schools and the general fund to the Agency.
Those who saw the silver lining of increased revenue in the city’s massive new condo developments need to take a second look. Instead of helping keep families in San Francisco, these millions in tax dollars will go the Agency with a long track record of gentrifying neighborhoods and forcing low-income families from their homes.
