Editor’s note — These endorsements are the views of Susan Dyer Reynolds, not necessarily the views of The Marina Times.
“The quality of independence was almost wholly left out of the human race. The scattering exceptions to the rule only emphasize it, light it up, make it glare.”
— The Character of a Man, from the Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1906
It is important to study the text when voting, whether in citywide or statewide elections (this month we are focusing on San Francisco, while next month we’ll offer our thoughts on some key state propositions). Make sure you know who is paying for it, who is for it, and who is against it. Try to ignore the relentless television advertising and slick mailers. Often the text used to describe ballot measures is meant to confuse, a bit like an Alice in Wonderland chapter, where yes is really no, and no is really yes. In other words, read the fine print.
A — SFUSD $790M Bond: NO
Key factors: With interest, the cost of Prop. A will be around $1.3 billion.
My general rule of thumb on propositions that ask for more money is vote no. San Francisco is projected to face a $245 million deficit this fiscal year, which started in July, and a $555 million deficit in the following year, despite having a budget of $14.6 billion. The Board of Education, meanwhile, has a track record of financial mismanagement.
SF.gov info here
B — Community Health and Medical Facilities, Street Safety, Public Spaces, and Shelter to Reduce Homelessness $390M Bond: NO
Key factors: This measure requires 66.66% affirmative votes to pass, unless State Prop. 5 passes, then 55%, so vote no on State Prop. 5 as well.
This is an election year money grab for problems San Francisco has thrown billions at for decades. With interest, the measure will cost closer to $740 million. Look at the condition of the City and if you think that money has been flushed down the toilet, vote no on B.
SF.gov info here
C — Inspector General: NO
Key factors: As the reporter who broke the City Hall corruption stories, I know it’s never a good idea to give one person too much power.
Another Aaron Peskin attempt to create a position for a City Hall insider, the “Inspector General” would be an appointed, unaccountable official who is supposed to investigate corruption and waste. News flash to Peskin — the longest serving supervisor in San Francisco history — that’s what the Ethics Commission, City Attorney, District Attorney, and the Controller are supposed to do. The only way to truly reduce corruption is to hold those departments accountable while also giving them the necessary tools, elect officials who are not part of the City Family (where former mayor Willie Brown has reigned supreme for decades), and make sure the feds keep sending people like Mohammed Nuru and Harlan Kelly to prison.
SF.gov info here
D — Commission Reform: YES
Key factors: Cost savings from $350K to $630K annually.
San Francisco has a ridiculous 130 commissions and over 1,200 commissioners, mostly cronies appointed by the mayor and the Board of Supervisors in exchange for political and ideological favors. For example, District 5 supervisor Dean Preston appointed his pal Christin Evans, a longtime homeless activist who helped Preston purchase and hand out tents to the homeless in the Haight-Ashbury district, to the Homeless Oversight Commission. Evans also campaigns for Preston (currently running to keep his seat — we endorsed two of his competitors) and volunteers with the Coalition on Homelessness, which sued the City to prevent encampment removals (when Evans went to jail for interfering at one such removal, Preston called the police chief to spring her out). Evans has no business on a commission that decides how homelessness funds are spent. Prop. D uses a public process to create a temporary task force to review and streamline San Francisco’s commission system, with a hard cap of 65 total commissions in the City. It also creates accountability for commissioners by allowing the authority who appointed a commissioner to remove them if they engage in bad behavior.
SF.gov info here
E — Creating a Task Force to Recommend Changing, Eliminating, or Combining City Commissions: NO
Key factors: Like its name sounds, E was put on the ballot by Supervisor Peskin to confuse voters about Prop. D.
If you vote YES on D, there’s no need for a task force to tell San Francisco that it needs to reduce commissions. Peskin’s “task force” is just more bloat and bluster from the king of bloat and bluster — did I mention they would have until 2026 to make recommendations? Prop. E is a BIG NO.
SF.gov info here
F — Police Staffing and Deferred Retirement: YES
Key factors: Financial impact ranges from $300,000 in savings to $3 million in costs annually, depending on individual officers’ retirement decisions.
Prop. F is a first step in restoring minimum San Francisco Police Department staffing levels (2,074), establishing a deferred retirement incentive to retain experienced officers by incentivizing them to delay leaving the force while also increasing recruitment of new officers, without taking money from the City’s General Fund.
SF.gov info here
G — Rental Subsidies: NO
Key factors: Another murky measure from Supervisor Peskin, this one appears to be an attempt to boost support for his mayoral campaign.
It sounds good — expanding an existing fund to subsidize rent payments for low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and families — but it’s really just a “set-aside” of $8 million annually in an already stressed City budget that wouldn’t even kick in until 2026. It’s also expensive: the amount would increase every year until the measure sunsets in 2040. Plus, San Francisco already has the Senior Operating Subsidies program.
SF.gov info here
H — Retirement Benefits for Firefighters: NO
Key factors: Reducing the age of retirement just three years isn’t the answer to reducing high rates of cancer.
The statistics are tragic: more than 300 current and former San Francisco firefighters have died in the past decade from cancer, another 200 have been diagnosed in the past six years, and San Francisco’s women firefighters are diagnosed with breast cancer at a rate of six times the national average. However, knocking three years off the retirement age and adding millions to the budget does nothing to prevent cancer risks in the first place, which is what we believe the City should be focused on.
SF.gov info here
I — Retirement Benefits for Nurses and 911 Operators: NO
Key factors: Increased costs to the City of up to $6.7 million in the first year, with annual costs increasing over time.
San Francisco needs more nurses and 911 dispatchers, but this measure from District 11 Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safaí, which offers additional retirement benefits to existing workers, does nothing to increase staffing.
SF.gov info here
J — Funding Programs Serving Children, Youth and Families: YES
Key factors: Will require the use of a measurable and objective outcome framework to evaluate the budget and spending of each City department that has funding eligible for the Public Education Enrichment Fund.
The City contributes annually to the PEEF fund with ⅔ of the money allocated to SFUSD. Half of the fund supports “other general uses” — which means there are no metrics in place to track funds and outcomes. Prop. J is a charter amendment meant to better monitor these funds.
SF.gov info here
K — Permanently Closing the Upper Great Highway to Vehicles to Establish a Public Open Recreation Space: NO
Key factors: There is no PARK in Prop. K. All this measure does is close a sandy, foggy patch of road to cars, diverting that traffic onto city streets.
First, let’s point out who is behind Prop. K — a shadowy group of billionaires called Abundant SF, which has close ties (and has made donations to) Mayor London Breed, District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, and State Senator Scott Wiener. Leaders and supporters of Abundant SF used their political and financial clout to get Prop. K on the ballot despite living nowhere near the neighborhoods that will be impacted. (For example, Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman donated $300,000 to the Yes on K initiative, yet he lives in Pacific Heights.) But the biggest problem with Prop. K is that it’s a lie. The measure mentions nothing about creating an actual park — you know, like the one right next to it called Golden Gate Park — and there is zero budget included to do so. The measure mentions establishing a “Public Open Recreation Space” — you know, like the one right next to Upper Great Highway called Ocean Beach — but again, there are no plans and no budget to add so much as an Adirondack chair. According to an analysis performed by the San Francisco Transportation Authority, permanently closing UGH to cars will cost over $11 million in initial capital and a minimum of $1.6 million annually to maintain the roadway for emergency vehicles and “recreation” — whatever that means. The cost to make upgrades to fully open the road would be $7 million in capital and $1.5 million annually.
Further, in 2025, 19th Avenue will undergo a significant repaving project stretching between San Francisco State University and Golden Gate Park. I used the Great Highway to get my father to the San Francisco Veterans Hospital twice a week for years — Prop. K would take the essential route away from workers, the elderly, the disabled, and busy families. The billionaires behind it claim this is part of creating a car-free city, but they’re hypocrites who have nannies drive their kids to school in Teslas. Electric or not, a Tesla is still a car that gets stuck in traffic.
SF.gov info here
L — Additional Business Tax on Transportation Network Companies and Autonomous Vehicle Businesses to Fund Public Transportation: NO
Key factors: This tax will be passed on to Lyft, Uber and Waymo customers and go into the pockets of the rudderless SFMTA.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is yet another mismanaged, bloated department bleeding money. Let’s wait to see who is elected mayor and hope they fire SFMTA’s anti-car director Jeffrey Tumlin, who is thick as thieves with the lobbyist group San Francisco Bicycle Coalition — in fact, Tumlin hands them a million bucks a year from his struggling agency. The incompetent Tumlin was fired from his last job in Santa Monica before Mayor Breed hired him to take over the SFMTA — after several more qualified candidates turned down the job, that is. Time for Tumlin and the SFMTA board to go, and in the meantime, vote no on L, a tax that will simply line their hole-riddled pockets.
SF.gov info here
M — Changes to Business Taxes: YES
Key factors: Would change current law regarding the business gross receipts tax so that certain companies’ taxes would be assessed on sales instead of on-site headcount.
A currently wonky tax structure has made San Francisco’s budget reliant on less than half a dozen large companies. Prop. M would reform the City’s business taxes to compensate for previous ballot measures that made it a mess in the first place. Small businesses will potentially benefit, and it may help to revitalize the dying downtown area. We aren’t a strong yes on M because, well, San Francisco’s current leadership can’t be trusted to implement things in a timely or efficient manner. But if the City elects a new business-savvy mayor like Mark Farrell (our number one endorsed mayoral candidate), it’s worth a shot.
SF.gov info here
N — First Responder Student Loan and Training Reimbursement Fund: NO
Key factors: Like Supervisor Safaí’s other measure, Prop. I, this measure does nothing to address the key issue of staffing shortages.
I worked multiple miserable temp jobs to pay off my student loans so I think others should do the same — well, minus the miserable temp jobs (I’m looking at you, Bechtel). Bottom line: Prop. N does nothing to address first responder staffing shortages.
SF.gov info here
Here are our other key endorsements — nothing much to say except we went with common sense choices and, in the case of Brooke Jenkins, one of the only City officials who has kept her election promises. Jenkins is strong, smart, capable — and she’s just getting started.
School Board: Min Chang, Supryia Ray, John Jersin, Ann Hsu
District Attorney: Brooke Jenkins
Follow Susan and the Marina Times on X: @SusanDReynolds and @TheMarinaTimes.
