By Christin Evans, HANC Board

With the Presidential race around the corner, it’s time we turn to highlight the numerous local ballot measures you will see on your vote-by-mail ballot this November. 

Bond Measure (Proposition A):  The nearly $500 million bond measure supported by both the Mayor and the Supervisors includes $207M in funds for acquisition and rehabilitation of real property to house those experiencing homelessness and behavioral health challenges, $239M for parks and $41M for street repair.

Charter Amendments: The Board of Supervisors proposed six total changes to the city charter this election including removing citizenship requirements for members of city bodies (Proposition C), removing mandated police staffing levels (Proposition E) and increasing Sheriff Department oversight (Proposition D).  There is also a charter amendment (Proposition B) to decrease the scope of the Department of Public Works (DPW) currently mired in a corruption scandal by carving out a new department whose focus would be Sanitation and Streets maintenance -- both departments also get a new oversight commission with appointees from both the mayor and BOS.

Social Housing Measure (Proposition K):  This ballot measure championed by Supervisor Dean Preston seeks to authorize, under the limitations of State Constitution Article 34, the creation of 10,000 affordable housing units.  While the measure doesn’t detail the plan for the creation of those additional units, it's a necessary first step towards creating that plan given the Article 34 State requirement for local electorates to explicitly approve public housing expansion in their communities.

Tax Measures:  Much of the focus in this year’s election cycle will be on a number of tax measures primarily targeting the city’s wealthy business interests. They include:

• Overpaid CEO tax (Proposition L) - this creates a new tax for businesses which pay their highest paid executive more than 100 times more than median compensation paid to the company’s employees in the city. The tax itself is progressive and charges a higher rate for ratios of 200 times up to 600 times median employee pay. The funds raised (estimated to be up to $140M annually) will go to the general fund and have been earmarked for Mental Health SF.
• Transfer tax (Proposition I) – Also championed by Supervisor Preston, this measure creates a pool of funds (estimated to be $100M-$150M) for affordable housing and another pool for rent relief for renters unable to pay rent during the Covid crisis, and seeks to reduce the real estate speculation by increasing the transfer tax on residential and commercial transactions over $10 million.
• Business Tax Overhaul (Proposition F) - The Mayor and Supervisors compromised on an overhaul to the Gross Receipts and Payroll taxes paid by the city’s businesses. This measure gives smaller businesses making less than $2M in annual receipts a break by increasing their business registration fee but exempting them from paying the Gross Receipts tax. For larger businesses however, the Gross Receipts tax will increase through 2024, variable by industry so that companies in historically higher profit industries such as Finance, Professional Services and Technology pay a higher tax rate than lower margin industries such as Retail.  This measure also will allow the Controller to unlock the Prop C funds (homeless services and childcare) which have been held in reserve since the measure passed in 2018 by the Controller by backfilling the lost revenue in case the city loses the lawsuit challenge to those measures.  The Business Tax Overhaul measure is expected to increase the total amount of funds collected by $70M-$180M+ over the next three years.
• Parcel Tax for Schools (Proposition J) - The Mayor proposed a measure nearly identical to Proposition G which the voters passed in June 2018 and has been held up in the courts. This measure will unlock the $50M in funds for the San Francisco Unified School District.