JOEL ON FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
San Francisco’s budget is gigantic: $14 billion. It doubled the past decade, far outpacing population growth. If $14 billion isn’t enough to have twice-as-clean sidewalks and twice-as-fast Muni, what do we spend the money on?
Payroll is the biggest expense. We have 40,000 city employees — up from 26,000 in 2010. This far outpaced population growth. Our local government doesn’t have to be so bloated. Philadelphia has similar combined city and county responsibilities as San Francisco, yet serves twice the population on a lower budget with fewer employees.
City Hall is billions of dollars in debt for promised health care and pensions for all its employees, plus decades of retirees and their families. Cities can’t borrow their way out of a deficit the way the federal government does.
We need to change how money is spent in San Francisco. City Hall must stop treating residents like an ATM and focus on getting basic services right. We must audit every city-run program and only pay for what works.
We deserve an innovative city government that is fiscally responsible, free from corruption, and fully transparent.
Struggling with debt? Trying to save to buy a home? Worried about paying off student loans? City Hall offers a program called “Smart Money Coaching” for anyone who lives, works, or receives services in San Francisco.
It’s an honor to be given the opportunity to lead the next steps as a newly elected city supervisor. How we won.
I believe San Francisco’s best days are ahead. We deserve to live in a city that works. Here’s how.
Do you still believe in San Francisco? I do. I’m running for supervisor to create our best San Francisco.
A federal investigation has targeted multiple city departments with arrests and subpoenas. Residents are fed up with how our city is run. If City Hall is ever going to get the basics right — clean streets, less crime and better services — we need independent leadership that will end the corruption.
The Neighborhood News Network interviews Joel Engardio about what City Hall must do to maintain open space in San Francisco
The Neighborhood News Network interviews Joel Engardio about what City Hall must do to save small businesses in San Francisco.
San Francisco has been good at flattening the coronavirus curve. But will City Hall make the tough decisions to flatten a devastating economic curve? Our $13 billion budget was racking up debt in boom times. Now, the projected deficits are staggering. There are no shortcuts to survive the coming recession. We must enact a "pandemic-era" budget of shared sacrifice.
A radical change in our attitude toward business is needed if we want local merchants to survive beyond coronavirus — and keep our city from spiraling into irrelevance. Small businesses were going extinct in San Francisco long before the pandemic turned everything upside down. City Hall’s excessive fees, regulations and bureaucracy are to blame.
Many middle-income homeowners who lost their jobs during the coronavirus shutdown faced a giant tax bill on April 10 they couldn’t pay. They begged for relief and the deadline was eventually extended to May 4. But it wasn’t easy getting politicians to take up the cause of struggling homeowners.
A letter and petition to California Governor Gavin Newsom from more than 400 homeowners experiencing hardship from the coronavirus pandemic shutdown. They are asking for the property tax payment to be moved from April to July, when state income taxes are now due.
A looming San Francisco property tax bill will be hard to pay for homeowners during the coronavirus pandemic shut down. City Hall should tell the state to postpone the property tax due date from April until July, just like the federal government already has for individual taxes.
Here are a few things San Francisco politicians don’t like to talk about: Billions in unfunded pension liabilities, police no longer part of the FBI’s terrorism task force, and not enough water to fight fires after an earthquake (the Westside could be left to burn). The civil grand jury is speaking out — but will anyone listen?
If a defendant is re-arrested awaiting a court appearance, the sheriff needs to know. Yet she often doesn’t because San Francisco lacks a fully interconnected criminal justice database that shares information in real time. After 20 years and tens of millions spent, will City Hall ever get it to work?
Heroin needles and broken glass from car break-ins litter San Francisco streets. Property crimes and housing prices continue to soar. Perhaps our city should turn its lonely eyes to Assessor Carmen Chu: "Think of me as your neighborhood assessor."
Shrugs abound when asking people on the street what they know about the Office of Assessor-Recorder at City Hall. Yet Carmen Chu is poised to become the most famous and celebrated assessor-recorder in San Francisco history — by helping us survive the financial retribution of President Trump.
My second-place showing against incumbent Norman Yee and three other challengers for District 7 supervisor feels like a success. Thousands of voters embraced my campaign’s forward-looking message, which will ultimately influence the direction of our city.
In my work as a journalist, I asked tough questions and held government accountable. As a supervisor, I’ll do that from inside City Hall. In that spirit, my new campaign video — “Investigate” — pays homage to San Francisco in the film noir era when the reporter or private eye took on a big case to advocate for the little guy.
Before buying our house, my husband Lionel and I took the Red Lobster test. What if we both lost our jobs and had to get by working as servers at the seafood restaurant? Could we still afford the house? Looking at San Francisco’s $9.6 billion budget, I wonder if City Hall should take the same test.
If a newly created public advocate is the one elected official dedicated to holding all other elected officials accountable to the people they serve, who oversees the public advocate? And how do we keep that office from becoming a bloated, ideologically driven and inefficient parody of the offices it monitors?
By Joel P. Engardio -- People and pets in San Francisco rely on parks for quality of life in an urban setting. City Hall must keep our parks fully accessible and funded without resorting to budget set-asides.
By Joel P. Engardio -- “Sometimes when you put people together the sum is worse than the parts, which is the best way to describe the old board of trustees,” said Rafael Mandelman, president of City College's new board. “We can’t afford to have factions pitted against each other like before. My role is to keep folks working together and focused on saving the college.”
By Joel P. Engardio -- The short walk from Twitter's headquarters to Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu's office might as well be light years. Consider the 204,562 paper files that represent San Francisco's 204,562 properties. Keeping track of that many physical files means Chu never knows if the day will end in comedy, frustration or disaster.
By Joel P. Engardio -- The new Central Subway will inexplicably end in Chinatown without going two more stops to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf. When it's completed in 2019, disappointed riders will wonder why it was built with such tunnel vision.
By Joel P. Engardio -- While city voters yawned through this month's low-turnout election, Supervisor Mark Farrell managed to do something unthinkable in San Francisco: He got a proposition approved with the support of both the Republican Party and those on the firebrand left. Farrell's initiative won big with nearly 70 percent of the vote and the support of every labor union -- except one. Why did activists from SEIU Local 1021 follow Farrell across a parking lot, screaming at him every step of the way?
By Joel P. Engardio -- When you see the words "unfunded liability" please think of cat videos, sex or any other Internet obsession. Don't click away because "unfunded liability" is boring. The future of San Francisco needs you to crave this topic like it's a cronut.