One Group That Doesn't Fear Change

The City that knows how....to spend (sf.budgetchallenge.org)

Both on an absolute and per-capita basis San Francisco has one of the largest budgets in the nation: [bold added]

In 2010, the budget totaled $6.4 billion in a city with 805,000 people, meaning the city spent nearly $8,000 per capita. Six years later, the $9.6 billion budget is paying for services for 865,000 residents, or $11,100 per capita. Inflation explains a little of that increase, but certainly not all of it...

Philadelphia’s budget this year totals $4.2 billion for a population nearly twice the size of San Francisco’s. Denver will spend about $3 billion for a population approaching 700,000 people. The city and county of Honolulu, which pays for services for everybody on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, has a budget of $2.33 billion for a population close to 1 million people.

With that level of expenditure San Francisco should be paradise, but....

we spend more than $250 million a year on homeless services and supportive housing and still have some sidewalks that look like Calcutta.

With a homeless population of 7,000 to 10,000 the $250 million budget means that San Francisco annually spends $25,000 to $36,000 per homeless person without making a permanent dent in the problem. And homelessness is just one example of the City's inefficiency:

Joe Maly, a Cow Hollow resident, said he wonders where all the money goes, considering public schoolteachers are underpaid, the roads are in poor condition and the city doesn’t pay for street tree maintenance. In fact, there are only enough arborists on the city payroll to service each of the city’s 177,000 trees once every 105 years. A large tree branch fell on a woman in Washington Square Park just last weekend, critically injuring her.

High expenditures, problems not solved, high taxes----the insatiable City wants still more:

San Francisco, which already collects more transfer tax revenue than any city in California, will ask voters in November to raise this tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million.

San Francisco voters previously approved transfer tax increases in 2008 and 2010. The tax rate starts at the equivalent of 0.5 percent of value on properties worth up to $250,000 and goes up in steps. It tops out at the equivalent of 2.5 percent on properties worth $10 million or more.

On a $1 million property, the tax is 0.75 percent, or $7,500.

The rulers keep getting re-elected, so why should they change?