By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

Our April 10^th  General Membership meeting will again address the impending MUNI service cuts directed by the SFMTA Board at its March 18^th meeting.  The vote was 3 to 2 to cut services instead of using reserve funds.  The City Attorney clarified that action requires four votes to be approved.  The cuts will most likely be finalized at the Board’s April 1 meeting and the results will be reported at our meeting on the 10^th.  The razor close 3-2 vote approved the proposed cuts to five lines as shown below:

• 5-Fulton would turn around at McAllister & Market/Civic Center weekdays; 5R Fulton Rapid would remain as-is
• 9-San Bruno would turn around at 11th & Market Street/Van Ness Station on weekdays; 9R San Bruno Rapid would remain as-is
• 31-Balboa would run between Cabrillo & La Playa and 5th & Market/Powell Station (current weekend route). Riders could continue to Caltrain on the 30 Stockton, 45 Union/Stockton or T Third.
• 6-Haight-Parnassus and 21-Hayes would be combined into one line with portions of each, and would turn around at Hyde & Market / Civic Center Station.  This new route would serve all current 6 Haight-Parnassus stops west of Masonic Avenue.   Instead of turning down Haight Street (heading east), the route would turn right on Hayes and continue on Hayes to Hyde and Market.  There would be no bus service on Hayes Street west of Masonic.

As can be seen the Haight-Ashbury and Western Addition will be most affected by the cuts as three of the five lines serve these communities.

These cuts were discussed at HANC’s March meeting when Chris Arvin of the SFMTA Advisory Committee and Jaime Viloria of the SF Transit Riders presented their views on the matter.  Both were asking the SFMTA Board to avoid service cuts by using some $15m of the current $180m MUNI reserve funds to plug the gap for the rest of the fiscal year instead of making the service cuts.

 What is clear with the March 18 vote is that the majority of the SFMTA Board AND Mayor Lurie have no problem in cutting MUNI service.  Lurie announced a proposed “blue ribbon committee”, composition unannounced, to recommend new MUNI revenue for the future while making no announcement on continued service cuts in next year’s budget.

Arvin, who also co-chairs a special MUNI revenue working group, laid out the working group’s suggestions for new revenue.  It is unclear what relationship it has with the new committee announced by the Mayor and if any of its suggestions will even be reviewed by the Mayor’s Committee. The working group’s suggestions are:

• Regional Measure Transit Revenue (sales and parcel tax $90 to $250 m a year)
• Local Sales Tax (increasing ¼ to 1% , up to $90m)
• Local Parcel Tax (up to $120 m)
• Ride-hail and autonomous vehicle tax ( up to $25m)
• Commuter benefit Clipper Card (unknown)
• Parking tax (up to $25 m)
• New off-street parking tax (up to $25m)
• Utility user tax (raise current 7.5% to 10% on commercial uses $50m)
• Increase Residential Parking Permit fee ($3-5m)
• Extend paid parking to Sunday ($6m)
• Extend paid parking hours to 10 p.m.($8m)
• Transit Fare Optimization ( fare cops up to $5m)
• Parking Optimization (increase rate and hours up to $20m)
• SF Visitor parking tax including residents (!) ($100m)
• Short term curb use fee on commercial vehicle ($12m)

Jaime Viloria, representing the coalition MUNI Now, MUNI Forever called for resisting any service cuts, using the MUNI reserve to fund the rest of the year and to devise “revenue options before any cuts are proposed” and new revenue options to be put on the ballot in a “special election this year”. He concluded by challenging HANC to outline which revenue options we would support.

The April meeting will discuss these options including the recommendations of the HANC board.

HANC BOARD’S REVEUNE SUGGESTSIONS

HANC would support the following revenue measure:

1  A local annual commercial vehicle license fee, indexed to the rate of inflation, aimed at commercial vehicles that impact our public streets and impede  transit and pedestrian use :

A. tech shuttle buses,

B. ride share and automated driverless vehicles,

C. electric scooters

2. A steep utility tax surcharge on large commercial users of electricity, exempting residential uses and focusing on AI and server farm users.

HANC would OPPOSE any fare or sales tax increase or a "flat" parcel tax which charges all properties the same tax as opposed to a graduated parcel tax based on the value of the property.

The idea is to tax commercial uses that have a major impact on both public transit and the environment while avoiding pitting resident against resident over their transportation choices (bikes v cars, pedestrians v bikes). These divisive measures simply inflame resident animosity and often tax residents that have little choice than driving because of the poor transit service, especially regional transit service.

Increasing fares only results in decreasing ridership and efforts to address “fare evasion” by increasing fare police often result in the cost of the police equal or exceeding fares actually recovered.  Single rate parcel taxes are inherently unfair as commercial property, both residential and business, generate more income (and probably more transit use) than a single family home or apartment.

The use of a sales tax to fund public transportation is equally unfair as it hits lower and fixed income households more than the wealthy and ignores the fact that San Francisco currently devotes .5% of its current sales taxes to funding transit.  Extended by voters just three years ago ( Proposition L) the City currently raises about $100 million a year for MUNI through its local sales tax. The Controller estimates that by 2053, the year the current sales tax for transit expires, some $236 m will be going to transit each year from sales taxes.  Given that the regional transit tax will most probably be in the form of a sales tax increase, adding even more locally make no sense at all.

Come join us at HANC this Thursday, April 10^th at 7 PM at the Community Room at Park Branch or online to share with us your view and what you are willing to do to make MUNI service vigorous and sustainable.