TK's Extremely Unhelpful Guide to SF Ballot Props

Every few years we, the hapless San Francisco voters, are asked to pass judgment on a bunch of stuff that probably should be handled by the elected representatives of Garbage City but I gather they are so hapless and ineffectual that they would rather just take a luxury vacation to Japan than do their jobs. This year, we have 7 ballot propositions to vote on, and here are my extremely uninformed and wildly biased opinions on how you should vote:

PROP A

Prop A is an “Affordable Housing Bond” which will raise $300 million to “construct, develop, acquire, and/or rehabilitate housing, including workforce housing and senior housing, that will be affordable to households ranging from extremely low-income to moderate-income households.” That sounds good! $300 million should buy, what, like 10 houses? Just kidding. This is one of those things that you should just vote yes on because everyone likes houses. Plus the only opponent in the voter guide is "some dude named “Larry Marso” who is a “delegate of the San Francisco Republican County Central Committee” and, frankly, sounds like kind of a crank.

VERICT: Yes.

PROP B

As SF voters, we all get shitloads of those glossy flyers in the mail around election time, and I got this very strange one:

This lady is Connie Chan, my supervisor who I intensely dislike for a number of reasons including her dogged opposition to car-free JFK, which has been the single greatest thing to come out of the pandemic. Fuck off. So i’m already inclined to vote against this thing. She looks like she’d rather by anywhere else than staring slightly off-camera into middle distance, and I’d rather she be anywhere else too.

So what is it. It would “amend the Charter to change the process for establishing and funding minimum police staffing levels for the City, only if voters in a future election amend an existing tax or approve a new tax that would fully fund police staffing and recruitment.” Huh. So it doesn’t do anything unless there’s another election to do something. That sounds like BS. Plus if Connie Chan is for it, it stinks.

VERDICT: No.

PROP C

This is supposed to make it easier to convert office buildings to residential by waiving the transfer tax for first-time commercial to residential conversions. The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council is against it, and they’re famous for hating any new building of any kind and no one’s converting office buildings in the Haight so it’s none of your fucking business. Look, we all know that no one’s going to convert office buildings to residential anyway because it’s too expensive (it doesn’t “pencil out,” to use the phrase beloved by those in the building trades), so it doesn’t matter anyway.

VERDICT: Yes.

PROP D

You know what San Francisco politicans love more than anything? GRAFT. Big gobs of slimy, dirty money. Pound for pound, this has to be one of the most corrupt cities in America. So the idea here is to tighten up ethics laws by doing stuff like “expanding the types and sources of gifts that City officers and employees are prohibited from accepting” and “requiring City department heads to report additional information about gifts to their department and allowing discipline for failing to meet these requirements.” Oh, that should take care of it.

This isn’t going to do anything but it’ll make us FEEL like we’re doing something and in the end, VIBES MATTER.

VERDICT: Yes.

PROP E

This is the big one that everyone’s all hyped about. More cop stuff. This one lets the cops do a lot more shady shit, like installing a ton more surveillance cameras, letting the cops do more car chases, which they love because it makes them feel like Bullitt, and lets them use drones, which they love because cops like cool technology shit.

Car chases for misdemeanors are ridiculous. “San Francisco police pursuits are more likely to end in a collision than vehicle chases by any other major law enforcement agency in the state of California,” so we want more of that? Uh, no.

I know that sometimes it feels like shit is out of control here, but the fact is crime is falling, and instead of giving the cops a bunch of expensive new shit to play with, maybe they show that they can do the job they’re supposed to do already?

VERDICT: No.

PROP F

This is drug testing for welfare benefits. Study after study shows this is a waste of money, so why do we want to do it? Because no one likes druggies getting welfare money. I get it, I totally understand that feeling. But this measure is designed to put people into treatment beds we don’t currently have, so it’s all a big show that’s designed to make London Breed look like she’s fucking DOING SOMETHING.

VERDICT: No.

PROP G

This is the kind of shit I can’t believe they make us vote on. The issue here, I shit you not, is whether Algebra I should be taught to 8th graders in SF public schools. What do I look like, an educational consultant? How the fuck should I know? I remember hating math and I probably fucked up Algebra I real bad. Also, this is just a suggestion and not even a binding law! It’s like saying “We think you should do this.” Don’t encourage this kind of nonsense.

Plus I asked my 5th grader and she made a face and said “No!”

VERDICT: No.

Democracy, was it a good idea?