When you vote on whether to reelect Mayor London Breed on November 5, you might also be voting on Breed’s new $360 million bond measure that would fund hospitals, homelessness services, street improvements, and even Harvey Milk Plaza.
Barely two months ago in the March 5 primary election, SF voters approved a $300 million low-income housing bond. And on Monday, the Chronicle reports that SF Mayor London Breed is proposing yet another bond measure for the November 5 ballot (yes, the very same ballot on which she is up for reelection). This one would be a $360 million bond, to fund a laundry list of causes that are all over the map: hospital renovations, homelessness services, street safety, and even the renovations of Hallidie and Harvey Milk plazas.
“We are working every day to make San Francisco a vibrant and healthy city,” Breed said in an online press release. “This bond will invest in our critical infrastructure and advance projects that create jobs and prioritize important civic needs. It will create safer streets and smoother roads, deliver welcoming and vibrant plazas and public spaces, support families, and strengthen our public health institutions that serve all of our residents. This is how we build a stronger, thriving San Francisco.”
The above graphic from that same press release does not lay out the dollar-amount numbers, but KTVU has those dollar-amount numbers in their writeup. The bond proposes $167 million for the “strengthening public health infrastructure projects” which would go to hospitals, $50 million for the homeless families initiatives, $70 million for the street safety projects, and $25 million for “supporting public space improvements projects,” which specifically mentions Harvey Milk Plaza and Hallidie Plaza at Powell and Market.
This is a bond measure, so it would need a two-thirds majority from voters to pass, as well as two-thirds majority approval from the SF Board of Supervisors to even make the ballot.
Needless to say, the organizations that would benefit from this bond are very much in support of it. SF General Hospital Foundation CEO Kim Meredith told the Chronicle that the bond would provide “critical repairs and much needed renovations to deliver quality care,” while Community Youth Center of SF executive director Sarah Wan noted it would fund the Chinatown Public Health Center, and said “Our community needs a state-of-the-art medical center.”
But Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who’s running against Breed for mayor, sounds like he’d be a little choosier about where to spend such money.
“The city of San Francisco has a lot of ailing infrastructure and a well thought out 10-year capital plan that we have been chipping away at year after year,” Peskin told the Chronicle. “The mayor’s initial proposal, while all of the things in it are laudable… some of them are need-to-have’s and some of them are want-to-have’s.”
This is still just a proposed bond, and Breed only rolled it out on Monday. The measure needs to go before the city’s Capital Planning Committee (on which Peskin sits), and then would need that two-thirds approval for the Board of Supervisors. They would have to approve the proposed bond measure by late July for it to make the November 5 ballot.
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Image: @LondonBreed via Twitter