PARADISE LOST: A FLASHBACK FRIDAY SPECIAL

My 2017 Article on the Bloated San Francisco Budget

While I will continue to post new content on Mondays, today I thought I would repost an old article of mine as a “Flashback Friday” Special. So I have included a little backstory with it, followed by the original article and a small post script. The numbers may have changed in four and half years, but the story is still the same. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

THE BACKSTORY

In 2017, I found an email address for Ben Shapiro from the Daily Wire. At the time, the Daily Wire was growing, but was nowhere near as big as it is today. I sent him a small example of typical San Francisco lunacy, along with a short narrative. I never expected anything to come from it but was pleasantly surprised when I got an email reply.

We emailed back and forth for a couple days and he offered to review a submission and possibly publish it on the site. After racking my brain for an idea, I figured the San Francisco budget would be ripe for discussion. Luckily, San Francisco had posted a large document detailing the budget by department, and even provided information on “Performance Measures.” For the next week, I poured over all the San Francisco budget documents I could find. I broke down the budget into small relatable pieces.

My very patient wife, who is still my very honest editor, read over the final draft and gave me her seal of approval. I emailed the article to Ben Shapiro and waited. The article was posted later that afternoon on the front page of the Daily Wire. I watched all day and views of the article passed 100,000. Not bad for the first time ever publishing anything.

I am very grateful that Ben Shapiro posted the article. While many things have happened since then, I still go back on the Daily Wire website and am listed as an author. The link to the article can be found here: Paradise Lost: San Francisco Leftists at Their Finest

About a year later, I found my article had been quoted in a variety of other articles around the internet, which was pretty cool. But I was shocked on day to find this tweet from Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce:

I never saw that one coming and appreciate the review from Mr. Benioff. I see San Francisco finally began publishing their budget numbers in the same fashion as in 2017 again, so maybe a new updated article will be coming soon.

Below is my article from 2017 and an added post script, please enjoy this Flashback Friday. More new content coming Monday!

PARADISE LOST: SAN FRANCISCO LEFTISTS AT THEIR FINEST

Growing up in San Francisco, I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world. A beautiful city built right on the bay. Nice views and water within a drive about 20 mins in any direction. Most of the people I knew or interacted with, were locals and had been here for generations. A small town feel within the big city. A place where we were able to play in the streets until dark, where at nine years my parents had no problem letting a friend and I walk to the corner store alone. In a time before cell phones, we could disappear all day with just a “Mom I’ll be at Joe’s house,” and the house phone would eventually ring to call me home.

I knew that one day when I grew up, I wanted the same experience for my children. It took a lot of effort but in 2010, I was able to buy a house. Two short years later, my wife and I were blessed with our first child. Then in 2016 we had our second child. However, in that time my city has continued to rapidly change and seemingly deteriorate. As my wife and I both work and make good money by any typical standard, in San Francisco it is never enough. The constant tax increases, in property tax, sales tax, property tax levies, and continually burdensome regulation has made it almost impossible to live and raise a family in. So, I started to look at where all the money really goes…

The City of San Francisco, a city of 870,877 people and only 49 square miles, is slated to spend $10.1 billion dollars next fiscal year, which started July 1st. You read that right, a city of less than 1 million people plans to spend over $10 billion dollars.

In comparison to other California cities, of even greater size, San Diego with a population of 1.2 million people, and area of 372 square miles, spends $3.1 billion budget. San Jose with a little over 1 million people, and area of 180 square miles also spends $3.1 billion. San Francisco less than half the size in land area and a few hundred thousand less people spends over three times the amount of money per year. To be fair San Francisco does have a large commuter population during the work week. It is estimated that Monday to Friday the population in the city doubles.

What do we have to show for this gross fiscal irresponsibility? Do we have perfect nicely paved roads? Clean streets? No crime? Do the buses and trains run on time? Are all of the parks clean and in nice shape? Are city schools the best in the nation? Flying cars?

The answer to all of these is a resounding NO! Anyone who has come to San Francisco will eventually be hassled by the homeless, have to step over human excrement, or wait a long time for their bus to get around the city.

How on earth does San Francisco spend so much money? Where does it all go? How can a city justify spending $11,597 per every man, woman, and child living in the city? 

Let’s take a look into the numbers. San Francisco for years now has created and maintained a Homeless Industrial Complex. One of the most expensive cities in the country literally pays for more homeless to pour in. Non-profit organizations, of which many are paid to serve the homeless or very low income, will be dividing up $600 million dollars under the 2017-18 budget.

By comparison the City will spend less on the San Francisco Police Department ($590 million), the San Francisco Fire Department ($382.3 million), the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department ($231.7 million), the Recreation and Parks Department ($220.4 million) and the Public Library ($138 million) among many other offices who don’t even eclipse the $100 million mark.

In addition, the Office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s (OHSH) 2017-18 budget of $245.9 million, up from $224 million last year, a portion of many other department’s budgets are also swallowed up by the homeless issue. From other direct funding of homeless programs the Mayor’s Office’s pitches in an extra $14.6 million, to the Department of Public Works who must clean up the shanty towns and excrement left behind, to Zuckerberg General Hospital who must provide medical services they will never receive payment for, to the San Francisco Fire Department that ends up providing free ambulance rides to those who know how to game the system. The true cost of homelessness in San Francisco pales in comparison to the already bloated $245.9 million from just one department.

Even just using the budgeted figure of $245.9 million, the OHSH says in its “Performance Measures” that in 2015-16 it provided 285 families with a rental subsidy, 648 families kept housing through a one-time grant, 566 adults left homelessness do to placement in permanent supportive housing, 880 people were given bus tickets to be sent back to a willing family member in another city or state, and 790 people maintained housing due to a one-time grant. This means by their own measure the OHSH served 3,169 clients, made up of families or individuals. If the OHSH serves the same amount of clients, the office will spend $77,595 per client served.

According to the US Census Bureau in 2015 the average, or mean, US household income was $75,558. San Francisco’s Office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing plans to spend more than that per client this year just on their housing needs and that’s only if it stays on budget, otherwise costs will of course be higher.

When cities of both larger area and larger populations can spend less than one third, how can San Francisco continue to do so? For now, the city is getting away with this gross over spending because of the tech industry. Tech money has poured in and San Francisco has given tax breaks to companies like Twitter to stay in the Market Street area and drive the revitalization. While these breaks have driven the local economy and made the city more money, they city has decided to spend more and more instead of relieving the burden of onerous taxes upon its residents. The city continues to expand city government into areas like defending immigrants in Federal Immigration court, a new cost of $1.5 million this year and rising to $2.3 million annually.

It will be very interesting to watch who is stuck holding the bag when the bubble bursts and reality comes back to city finances. The tech bubble has been growing and growing for the past few years. The city has done a dramatic amount of construction and added many more housing units to attract the new techies getting paid very high salaries. However, as these large companies start to hit money troubles and the now publicly traded companies need to shed cost, the obvious answer is to get rid of San Francisco real estate, San Francisco regulations, San Francisco taxes, and the extraordinarily high cost of living in the Bay Area. The City appears to not see this eventual reality and instead is spending like a kid in college with his first credit card.

Ronald Reagan was right when he said, “We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.” San Francisco’s future financial plan seems to live by the opposite philosophy by subsidizing the continued future of homelessness. As the homeless population seems to continually grow year after year, I only hope the city government decides to right the ship and live by the above statement instead of leveraging its financial future on those who take, take, take, but never seem to give.

I write this as a cautionary tale of how progressive politics run amok can ruin a once beautiful place and create an uncertain and totally unsustainable future. San Francisco politicians are betting the continued growth of tech will allow their irresponsibility to stand while the residents passively just sit and let it happen. My city needs a change in order to help restore its luster return some normalcy.

If you would like to look at the numbers for yourself, here is the San Francisco Proposed Budget for FY 2017-18:

http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/CSF_Budget_Book_2017_Final_CMYK_LowRes.pdf

***Originally Published on the Daily Wire July 3, 2017***

A SHORT POST SCRIPT FROM 2017

San Francisco is the only consolidated City and County in the State of California. This means that the City runs both the City government and County government as one, so there is no separate county government funded. As such the City, of less than 49 square miles, takes on all costs associated with typical county activities like running the courts and sheriff’s department.

So, in the interest of fairness, Santa Clara county, where San Jose is located, is 1304 square miles and has 1.895 million people. Santa Clara county will spend just shy of $3.4 billion in FY 2017/18. Even if we gave the entire Santa Clara county budget to the city of San Jose, spending would only be about $6.5 billion. Still a whopping $3.6 billion less than San Francisco. Or looking at it another way, San Francisco’s $10.1 billion spending could fund the city of San Jose and all of Santa Clara county, then with the left over, fund a second Santa Clara county.

San Diego county is much larger at 4,526 square miles and 3.26 million people. San Diego county will spend $5.36 billion in FY 2017. Again, if we gave the entire county budget to just the city of San Diego’s $3.1 billion budget, it would add up to $8.46 billion. San Francisco will still spend $1.64 billion more than the city of San Diego and San Diego county’s entire budget combined.

Seeing San Francisco’s numbers in comparison to the massive size of these other cities and counties make it seem even worse. Is spending $206 million per square mile really justifiable with no visible results and in such a small area?