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So the commercial real estate problem is real, but this article also is concerned with the impacts to the municipal government. How important are those really?

by abeppu 4y ago

So the commercial real estate problem is real, but this article also is concerned with the impacts to the municipal government. How important are those really? > The city’s budget office expects property tax revenues to continue to grow. But Howard Chernick, an economics professor at Hunter College and co-author of the report that forecast an up to 43% decline in SF’s property values, paints a much worse picture: His team sees a decline of up to 15% in property tax collections amounting to a roughly 4% drop in total revenues. This data is several years old, but in a ranking of large American cities by budget per citizen, SF was at #2 only behind DC which is a kind of special case. At that time, the SF budget was 7.9B, whereas now it's 14B, which put it near $15.8K per person. I have to believe that our problem isn't actually fluctuations in property tax revenue but how we spend. https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America%27s_largest_cities https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America%27s_... https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/AAO%20FY2022-23%20%26%20FY2023-24%20-%20FINAL%2020220727.pdf https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/AAO%20FY2022-23%2... https://sf.gov/news/mayor-breed-signs-balanced-budget-sets-san-francisco-path-recovery https://sf.gov/news/mayor-breed-signs-balanced-budget-sets-s...

inferiorhuman 4y ago
This data is several years old, but in a ranking of large American cities by budget per citizen That is an incredibly disingenuous metric and it's not surprising at all that DC and SF are at the top of the list. Washington DC is a quasi-state masquerading as a city and San Francisco is a consolidated city and county. The budgets of those two cities encompass things that are externalized in other cities.
- abeppu 4y ago
  Ok, but San Francisco also seems to be spending a lot more per person than any other consolidated city and county, so while that may explain part of SF's budget, it doesn't seem like a complete explanation. In that list, the next consolidated city/county is Honolulu, and SF was at that point spending close to 50% more per person. (I think that specific example also suggests that SF's spending is not just because local cost of living is high.) Other large city/county examples like Denver, Philadelphia and New Orleans are nowhere close.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    First off – nobody, not even me, is claiming that San Francisco spends a small amount of money. However you're not comparing like for like here. The San Francisco expenditures are a combination of factors including high cost of living, high level of infrastructure and social services, and state funding. Honolulu is expensive mainly because of the Jones Act, not because they're providing a particularly high level of services. If you check out Ballotpedia you'll see that the states chip in a much smaller portion of the expenditures in San Francisco and New York than they do in the other consolidated cities. On that list Philly comes close with transit but SF and NY are far, far more comprehensive. Muni's goal is that every SF resident is within a quarter mile of a stop that's served for something like 18 hours a day. Honolulu? lol. Denver has about the same number of library branches as San Francisco and a tenth the number of items in circulation. San Francisco PUC (which oversees water distribution and some power generation/distribution) is part of the city government, Denver Water is not. Two of the most prominent museums in San Francisco are owned by the city and run in a public-private partnership. The San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center is publicly owned (and one of the largest in the nation). Meanwhile Denver's opera and museums are an entirely private affairs. San Francisco's botanical gardens are owned by the city and county, Denver's are owned and operated by a non-profit. It costs more to do more, and I'd venture to guess most residents prefer it that way. It's not all hurr durr homeless people taxes poop bad big government scary yahtzee. https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America%27s_largest_cities https://ballotpedia.org/Analysis_of_spending_in_America%27s_...
    - abeppu 4y ago
      I'm not convinced that we're getting what we pay for, or that we're funding the most important things -- no one's life is being ruined by an insufficient quantity of library books, or access to too few museums. I'm glad we have the hetch hetchy water we do. I'm glad when the East Bay has brownouts SF often doesn't. The botanical gardens are _nice_. But again: ~$16k per head. For comparison, I checked and Denver is presently at 2.04B for ~740k people. The _difference_ in per-capita budget between these two consolidated city-counties is _almost_ the same as a year of in-state tuition at a UC. Think about that -- people save for years to send their kids to college, and for every single resident, we're spending a sum comparable to tuition at a competitive research university. Perhaps your way of living in the city is fundamentally different than mine, and you extract a commensurate amount of value out of the public services here. I think it indicates there must be a lot of waste. Other things SF has: - the highest paid mayor in the country - an endless parade of corruption revelations that don't even feel scandalous anymore - safe sleeping sites that cost more per tent than a 1BD apartment So if, as the article says, the city has a 4% drop in revenues, I feel like we have a lot of non-critical stuff that we should be able to cut.
- abduhl 4y ago
  Denver is also a consolidated city and county as well as the Colorado state capital. Denver’s budget per citizen is 1/4 San Francisco’s and 1/8 DC’s. Why is Denver not higher if what you’ve identified as making SF special has such a large impact?

inferiorhuman 4y ago
I feel like we have a lot of non-critical stuff that we should be able to cut. Right. And if you don't value books, music, or art then San Francisco is not for you. There are plenty of other more bare bones cities to live in. Even in the Bay Area. You would likely be much happier in a city like Emeryville or Denver. It costs more to do more. San Francisco does a lot of things that other consolidated cities push off onto the state or private companies. Speaking of world class education, City College is run by San Francisco. Denver's community college is run by the state and doesn't even have a dedicated campus. Muni was servicing well more than half a million trips daily and is funded in large part through the city budget. Denver's got a regional transit district funded independently and the whole region only sees about 200,000 riders. I mean, look, I get that you're tap dancing around cutting social services. Who wants to pay to deal with homeless people or drug addicts? However, that's only part of the puzzle. All of the other cities (except for NY and DC) either push off the cost of the services San Francisco funds or they simply don't offer them at all.
- abeppu 4y ago
  I think that's a really condescending response. I'm happy to live here; that doesn't mean that I don't get to take issues with the actions of our government. And you don't get to pretend that SF "isn't for" people who disagree with your specific views, nor do you get to claim that I don't value books, music or art (which is nowhere indicated in my prior posts). I did not say anything about cutting services for the homeless, and I think it's in poor form for you to try to ascribe any belief to me which I have not actually expressed. When I say that the safe sleeping sites cost more per tent than market-rate 1BDs, it's because it's pretty stupid that during the pandemic we didn't actually just put people in apartments -- it's not the services that we've rendered but the cruel and inefficient way we've insisted on delivering them. It's also stupid that we pay cops to do street sweeps, we pay DPW to install boulders on sidewalks to prevent people sleeping there, both of which are only moving symptoms. It's also stupid that Breed prematurely started shutting down the room-key program when there was still plenty of _federal_ funding available for it. If anything, I would say that SF is being simultaneously inefficient and lacking in empathy. What we should cut is anyone in municipal government who has come within a 3 meters of parties involved in the ongoing corruption revelations. We should cut out any future work with the contracting firms involved in the Twin Peaks tunnel retrofit that had to be done twice, or the Central Subway project blew past all timeline and budget expectations, and we should seriously look at the relationships between specific people in city hall and the firms that get lucrative contracts. When the city is over-paying, I think it's frequently because someone in city government has something to gain. If you don't think there's stuff we can prune easily, I think you're not looking. - SFUSD needs to support actual teachers, but it seems like there's plenty of room to cut administrators. I wonder how many of those administrators had a personal connection inside the system prior to landing their role? https://48hills.org/2022/03/sfusds-big-administrative-expenses/ https://48hills.org/2022/03/sfusds-big-administrative-expens... - How about stopping the Cultural Districts program which lacks a basic ability to engage with the cultures it claims to honor? The Leather & LGBT district commissioned art from queer artists which it refused to even display. The whole thing arrived after most of the relevant businesses had folded. Largely the result is some land+hardscaping by The Eagle. - What about stuff that we spend money on that the city just can't do competently regardless of resources? I think the federal reaction to the conditions at Laguna Honda is heavy-handed, but given that there have been problems for multiple years, the administration can't credibly promise to resolve them in any pre-stated timeline. Maybe there's a reason other cities don't try to run long-term nursing facilities. And frankly, a bunch of the stuff you listed earlier is pretty regressive. There's a strong relationship between neighborhood, income, and who goes to the legion of honor or De Young. Most of the people who enter the botanical garden for free as SF residents could easily pay for entry. Why should Bayshore residents subsidize Sunset residents spending their day in a garden? And other stuff could be means tested without destroying the primary benefit. I think the Free City program at City College is a great idea for giving people access to college -- but there's no compelling reason that a well-paid techie who wants to do a language or arts class on the side needs to be subsidized. Don't try to put words in my mouth, and don't try to act like you get to be a gatekeeper on who belongs in this city.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    Don't try to put words in my mouth, and don't try to act like you get to be a gatekeeper on who belongs in this city. If you don't like it, leave. If you're not getting value from the things that the city/county budget funds, leave. It's that simple.