2006 ISSUE FOCUS FOR SF SOS

SF SOS will always stand up to attempts to undermine our quality of life in San Francisco. But being on the defensive and beating back bad legislation is not enough. We have spent the last year working hard to proactively effect positive change in the City on a variety of fronts, and we will continue to work on these issues moving forward:


Defeat Chris Daly in November, 2006 District 6 Supervisor Election
SOS members need no explanation as to why Sup. Chris Daly deserves opposition. Directly as a result of his increasingly outrageous conduct and policies, SOS opened an Independent Expenditure Committee to raise small contributions from our grassroots network of Democrats, Independents and Republicans. As the most stridently anti-common sense Supervisor, Daly reminds us weekly why regular citizens must be involved in the political process.

Advocacy focused on holding Supervisor Daly Accountable
We are clearly not alone in our disdain for Chris Daly. Simply put, he is Public Enemy Number One when it comes to quality of life in San Francisco. This fact is substantiated by the thousands of letters our members have sent to the Board of Supervisors pertaining to Chris Daly’s actions and - more importantly - the destructive influence he is having on San Francisco’s future.


Homeownership
Unlike the rest of the Bay Area, San Francisco is disproportionately renters (roughly 2/3 renters to 1/3 homeowners). But we know from common sense and our survey work that the vast majority of renters would like to own their own homes one day. The price of homeownership in San Francisco is prohibitive to many renters, who often must leave the City they love when they want to purchase their first home.

While we continue to support new housing development in the City, and we will always oppose anti-housing measures like those offered by Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, we believe that we cannot build our way into affordable home ownership in San Francisco.

Homeownership issue advocacy
We know we’ve struck a nerve by the response rate we’ve had on our homeownership issue advocacy. The pro-homeownership letters we’ve generated for the past year and a half have received the greatest response of any letters we’ve run to date. Through September of 2006, SF SOS members have sent over 15,000 pro-homeownership letters to their Supervisors and state representatives.


Improving San Francisco’s Public Schools
Enrollment at San Francisco’s public schools is down 40% from the levels that existed in the 1960s, with 5,000 students leaving the system in the last five years alone. While the School Board pretends that it is the victim, not the cause, of family flight from our City, SOS has actually done the homework to set the record straight. The most recent decline in public school population tracks the increased refusal to accept the School Board’s dysfunctional school assignment system. In just the last four years, the number of children in San Francisco declined by 4,122, or 3.65%. But the census numbers underneath that tell the real story: Children age five and under increased a whopping 21.4% while school age children plummeted by 13.4%.

Only the most ideological of the extreme progressives can ignore these facts. San Franciscans want to start families, and they want to stay San Francisco families. If the cause of family flight were the cost of housing, cost of living, or desire for suburban pastures, then couples would leave in roughly even numbers before birth, before school-age, and during school age. Instead, we see family flight just when the decision about education must be made.

Advocacy pertaining to challenges facing our public schools
In the last year, SF SOS has instigated a large number of advocacy campaigns regarding San Francisco’s public school system, which generated over 3,000 letters to the Board of Education and the Board of Supervisors. These campaigns include a failed effort to keep Arlene Ackerman as Superintendent, urging the SEIU 790 and the Teacher’s Union not to strike, lobbying the School Board to adopt a Neighborhood Schools assignment policy, and urging the Board of Education and the Supervisors to preserve Prop. H funds for student enrichment programs.


Downtown Parking/Downtown Driving Fees
The extremist progressives understand that one of the best ways to drive normal people out of San Francisco is to make it miserable to drive their cars in the City. San Francisco homeowners own an average of 1.9 automobiles per household, despite the obvious choice to live where car use is at a minimum. To make life as miserable as possible for such citizens, Sup. Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin tried to legislate a Planning Department policy that would purposefully create a parking shortage of 3 to 4 times the number of cars that homeowners possess (0.5 or 0.75 parking spots per new unit of housing). Sup. McGoldrick’s attack on citizens wanted to charge drivers a daily permit fee to drive anywhere "downtown" beginning east of Van Ness Avenue. McGoldrick conceded that the fee would have to be punishing enough to force people out of downtown (because by definition it is allegedly meant to "reduce congestion," and he conceded that other cities spent a stunning 50% of motorist fees administering the fee-collection system.

Advocacy Efforts to Influence Downtown Parking and Driving Ordinances
San Franciscans both like and need their cars. In the past year we have beaten back two attempts to make it more difficult and more costly to operate a vehicle in the City’s C-3 (downtown) district. The Peskin-Daly parking measure was vetoed and sustained, and the McGoldrick pay-to-drive plan has been exiled to a "study" for at least the next two years.

SF SOS members sent the Supervisors and Mayor Newsom over 5,000 letters in opposition to these measures and our actions were clearly a factor in their defeat.


Controlling the Cost of Living and the Cost of Doing Business in San Francisco
As we all know, there is nothing our City’s government leaders like to do more than to find new ways to spend taxpayer dollars. In the past year - as in every year - we have faced a number of attempts to make it more expensive to live and do business in San Francisco. These attempts include:

1. Tom Ammiano’s health care mandate
2. Chris Daly’s minimum wage measure
3. Mayor Newsom’s proposal to increase the City’s workforce
4. The Board of Supervisors’ continued desire to use one-time tax windfalls to fund everyday expenses

Advocacy Campaigns to Reduce the Cost of Living and Doing Business in San Francisco
Our letter-writing campaigns pertaining to controlling the cost of living in San Francisco have always resonated strongly with our members. This year was no different as SOS members bombarded their Supervisors with over 5,000 letters regarding the above-mentioned attempts to make it more expensive to live and work in San Francisco.


San Francisco’s Medical Cannabis Dispensaries (MCDs)
When San Franciscans supported 1996’s Prop. 215 on the California ballot, they did not support the concept of "Pot Clubs" in any way. SOS supported stronger neighborhood and school-site protections than proposed by either Green Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi or Mayor Newsom. When the first pot club to come up for official authorization was planned for Fisherman’s Wharf, SOS Field Director Ryan Chamberlain worked full time to organize local residents. Thanks to the coordinated effort, the Planning Commission rejected the club, preventing a ground floor pot lounge from opening just four blocks from Galileo high school.

Advocacy Regarding San Francisco’s MCDs
While San Franciscans overwhelmingly support the use of medical marijuana as a treatment for chronic conditions, they clearly desire to regulate the dispensaries of medical marijuana in a manner that promotes the quality of life for all citizens. Hundreds of members have sent letters to the Supervisors expressing their desire for a common sense approach to the location and regulations pertaining to the licensing of the City’s MCDs.


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