The major candidates vying for Mayor Willie Brown's job faced members of the City's neighborhood press at City Hall Sept. 15 to explain their positions on quality-of-life issues facing San Francisco's neighborhoods.

Gavin Newsom described himself as being left, politically, of presidential candidate Howard Dean because he is an ardent supporter of rent control and other liberal issues. But his positions concerning the homeless, especially his homeless measure Care Not Cash, has led to him being vilified by tenant activists as an insensitive millionaire son of privilege, an image he said is often perpetuated by San Francisco media.
The Care Not Cash program, approved by San Francisco voters with 60 percent of the vote, would have replaced most of the $410 General Assistance check the city gives homeless indigents and replaced it with shelter and services. A judge said that only representatives of the city government – and not voters – could make such a decision, and suspended the program. When Newsom introduced the measure at the board, it was defeated.
Newsom said that because he is a fifth-generation San Franciscan from the Marina District, an area perceived to be relatively wealthy, the local media often take a "class politics" approach to its coverage. But he said there are needy families and seniors in the Marina District and that the success of his numerous business activities has been due to his diligence to the cause, regardless of the long hours involved.
If elected, Newsom would slow down the growth of city government by reducing the number of city employees overall, through attrition. He would stimulate the economy by increasing revenues from increased building in the city, and by chasing down more grant money. He has 12 strategies for increasing business in the city and making San Francisco a more attractive location for business to locate.
"We have to be more creative," he said of the challenges of stimulating the economy.

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Angela Alioto says there is a lot of fat in the city's $5 billion budget, and she opposes the rampant use of tax dollars in single-source, non-competitive-bidding contracts.

She also thinks the amount of city money going to Minority Business Enterprises (MBE) is "a scandal." Although the city's goal of awarding contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses is 16 percent, she said, the actual rate is now down to about 3 percent.When she served on the SF Board of Supervisors in the 1990s, the rate was 11 percent.

To stimulate the economy, Alioto would look to cut waste from the budget. The trial attorney would also eliminate the city's payroll tax, and institute an across-the-board tax for all businesses, closing loopholes that she says allow large corporations to escape paying their fair share of taxes. The payroll tax penalizes employers who hire additional employees, she said, resulting in fewer positions.

To tackle homelessness, Alioto has a 25-page plan that calls for 1,500 volunteers fanning out across the city in search of the homeless population. Once located, the volunteers would direct the homeless to one of the 400 organizations the city pays each year to deliver services to the population. She calls the job "a mission, not an obligation."

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Tom Ammiano said he dislikes the traditional budget cycle, whereby the mayor introduces a budget and gives the supervisors precious little time to work with city residents to fashion the best possible budget.

So he has worked to open up the negotiations with neighborhood groups and nonprofit providers, and took budget meeting out to the neighborhoods for direct public feedback. He also started working on budget issues all year long rather than wait until the mayor introduced a budget. Ammiano said he would diversify the city's business landscape by working more to secure biotech and other emerging-technology firms.

To balance the city budget, he wants to make government more efficient. He said that small businesses are an unrecognized economic engine that should be helped, perhaps with small business loans. But he also says that many large businesses don't pay their fair share of taxes.

Ammiano vowed that his administration would work hard to improve schools and increase funding to improve educational opportunities, particularly on the east side of the city where test scores are the lowest.

Concerning the homeless population, Ammiano said a major effort needs to be facilitated to reach and treat mentally ill people. He also thinks the city is badly managing the homeless program, and that there is some fraud that needs to be rooted out. The current approach of leasing out an entire building that it can be used to house homeless and provide services at the same location is a sound one, he said.

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Matt Gonzalez called economic development the most important issue in the race, because it provides the money government needs to function. He would diversify the city's business base and eliminate the city's payroll tax because it penalizes employers who want to hire additional employees. He would also shrink the size of government by lowering the city's payroll through attrition. Many department heads do not replace employees lost to retirement or other reasons, because the money that would have been used to pay for the employee's salary and benefits can be diverted to other department purposes without the department heads having to go to the supervisors for a supplemental appropriation. "There's a game going on," he said.

The supervisor would also like to see residential developers contribute to a fund to improve city resources in exchange for permission to develop a property. Currently, only commercial developers contribute to a separate fund.

Gonzalez, a member of the Green Party, also refuted the idea that the party was politically to the left of the Democratic Party. He said the Greens are a unique third party in American politics that favors decentralized government and encompasses some of the values of both parties.

Gonzalez does not favor Care Not Cash, saying a cut in cash payments might lower the numbers of people getting General Assistance checks, but that the city would pay more than it was saving through increased costs at hospital emergency rooms. He wants to improve the city's shelter system and build more transitional housing to house the homeless.

Gonzalez would also like to help blue-collar workers stay in the city by exploring a public-private partnership, whereby the city would give money to homeowners for an equity stake in the property. When the property is sold, the city would get its money back plus a percentage of profits from the sale.

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Tony Ribera is going to tell the truth and face the consequences. As the only Republican in the mayor's race, he is undaunted in his battle to win election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

Ribera, the former chief of police under Mayor Frank Jordan who is currently the director of the Criminal Justice Management Program at the University of San Francisco, said the current situation in the city is reaching "crisis proportions" because of the administration of Mayor Willie Brown. He said Brown is appointing people based on a political patronage system, and that he is refusing to make difficult decisions, such as what to do to help the city's homeless population. "I'm not afraid to make hard decisions," Ribera said.

He would cut a bureaucracy that has grown by several thousand people during Brown's administration. For example, Ribera said, when he was chief of police he had five civil service "exempt" positions that served at the will of the chief. Now, he said, there are 11 such positions.

Ribera is opposed to higher taxes and wants to stimulate the business community, which he says has been neglected too long. He would reduce the size of government by 6 percent over four years by looking at the top of the management pyramid.

Ribera is in favor of Care Not Cash, as well as treatment on demand for drug and alcohol abusers. He would appoint the city's director of human services to chair a committee that would look to improve the delivery of city services, particularly to the mentally ill homeless.

"We have to reachut aggressively to those people," he said.

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Susan Leal has her eye on the city's money. As treasurer, Leal says she has stepped up the department's collection of delinquent debts and invested funds with some of the best returns of all California cities.

As mayor, she would use her financial expertise to grow the city's tax base and more efficiently run government programs. She would work to promote and retain business, providing capital through micro-enterprise loan. And she would eliminate the city's payroll tax.

To help the homeless population, Leal favors reducing cash payments in favor of providing direct services, including housing. She would make the health department the lead agency in dealing with the situation and would meet weekly with all city departments working on the coordinated effort to assist the homeless.

Leal thinks bond measures could be used to help finance housing for middle-class residents. A possibility would be to help homeowners by giving them a $40,000 grant to use as a down payment.

Education is also a high priority for Leal. She would work to provide more preschools and after-school programs in the city and, where needed, provide transportation for students traveling to after-school programs.

"Come hell or high water, we're going to contribute more money to schools," Leal said.

The city's general election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 4. No one is expected to get more than 50 percent of the vote on that date, requiring a run-off election that would be held on Dec. 9.

The SF Neighborhood Newspaper Association is comprised of 16 neighborhood newspapers including the San Francisco Observer. Paul Kozakiewicz is the publisher of the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon newspapers.

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MEET THE D.A. CANDIDATES

 

Gov. Davis Stands His Ground in SF PHOTO BY ERIC BARNES At the San Francisco Labor Day celebration Sept. 1 in Yerba Buena Gardens, Governor Gray Davis, accompanied by his wife, Sharon, and members of the California Labor Federation, rally a mostly supportive crowd to vote no on the Oct. 7 recall. "This recall has been a humbling experience for me, and if I had it all do do over again I would have done some things differently," Davis said. But, he added, those things do not include easing protections on the environment, civil liberties or workers' rights.