Draft Platform of the Progressive Left

By Lucrecia Bermudez

Increase City Income by $830 Million per Year

• Progressively tax big corporations, financial institutions and big stock operations (with assets over $300,000.) Re-assess all properties with a value of over $1 million. Close all tax loopholes and collect all taxes due from corporations and Downtown businesses.
• Establish a tax for all commuters working in the City making $150,000 or more per year. These proposals will increase the tax base of the City and County of San Francisco by about $400 million per year and add $180 million of uncollected taxes in the first three years of a vigorous program.
• Withdraw all City money from Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank and other corporate financial institutions. Create a Bank of the City of San Francisco, owned and operated by the City and run by a Board of Directors, elected by district every four years. This will save the City over $25 million per year in administrative costs and will increase income by about $200 million per fiscal period by obtaining additional interest points over what the City now receives for our investment of over $4 billion of budget money and billions more of publicly administered pension plan funds.
• Municipalize the City TV cable system and all such public communications. Create an elected commission to regulate, run and provide better and cheaper services, following the example of other communities around the nation.
• Municipalize PG&E and all other privately-owned utilities. This will allow the City both to cut all utility rates by about 20% and to produce an additional surplus income conservatively estimated at $150 million per fiscal year. It's been done in a lot of other cities around the country with great success.
• This additional City income, amounting to some $830 million, will be mainly invested in these areas:
  1. Institute a massive job creation program at union wages for San Franciscans by developing City infrastructure and public works and by funding a massive line of credit for local small businesses and youth enterprises.
  2. Create a health network - with an additional hospital, new health centers and drug treatment on demand - that will be a part of a single-payer health insurance system for all San Franciscans.
  3. Develop a massive program of affordable and low income housing. Bring the existing housing stock up to code. Rewrite the existing housing rental laws to prevent Owner Move-In Evictions.
  4. Re-build a model system of public education integrating City College and the SFUSD with creation of small classes, improvement of existing buildings, building of new ones, hiring and paying the best educators available and investing in extra-curricular activities, sports and the arts. In the first three years alone, this crash program will create around 30,000 new permanent jobs with many thousands more temporary and construction jobs. At least 80% of them will go to the best applicants from a pool of City residents - with a minimum residency requirement - and at least 25% of the total jobs will be distributed among at-risk youth throughout the communities.
• Cut all City taxes for owners of single family homes and reduce taxation and administrative burdens for small businesses, in exchange for their agreement to add employees hired from a pool of City residents.
• Establish a City "living wage" ordinance, raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour with benefits and $12 without benefits (for part- time employees) with cost of living allowance built in. This will dramatically increase sales receipts for small neighborhood businesses, which can apply for technical and financial assistance from the City as needed during this transition to a living wage city.
• Integrate City departments such as the Department of Public Health (DPH) with the Department of Human Services (DHS); the Department of Public Works(DPW) with the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), etc. This restructuring will eliminate all duplicated supervisorial positions, facilities and services. The resulting savings will be utilized to hire more workers to provide essential services in a more efficient, personable way, with fewer and shorter lines. Any union workers whose positions are found to be redundant will be re-trained and transferred to other jobs, without loss of wages, benefits or seniority.
• Remove all administrative and financial tasks from City departments and transfer them to a new Department of Audit and Administration in charge of watchdogging expenses, consolidating all financial activities, eliminating all duplication of services and establishing a uniform, simpler administrative process for all departments.

• Give City employees 10% of the first year savings on any new system or idea proposed by them that is applied by the City, and 20% of all money recovered by employee whistle-blowing on bribery, corruption or payoffs. It is estimated that this re-organization of the City bureaucracy will save the taxpayers around $150 million per year.

• Consolidate MUNI and BART functions in the City under a single Department of Public Transportation, eliminating waste, duplication of services, and administrative overheads. Give the new department a Master Plan for Transportation that will provide for cheap or free transportation for all City residents in an efficient and punctual manner. Begin this process by reducing the Fast Pass to $20. This plan will integrate all forms of transportation, including bicycles and other alternative modes of transportation, and will feature such common sense innovations as exclusive streets for certain modes of transportation, such as bicycles or buses, fleets of small vehicles to feed main lines, and alternative routes to disperse traffic and avoid gridlock.
• Create a 5-year incentive plan that will encourage City workers presently on the City payroll but city residents to move to San Francisco. Develop a plan to hire exclusively from pools of qualified City residents.
• Immediately implement the SF Policy Statement overwhelmingly passed by voters in 1993 that all city officials take public transportation to and from work twice weekly, and an incentive plan to encourage all other City employees to do likewise.
• Cut in half the salaries of the Mayor, the City Treasurer, the City Attorney, the District Attorney, the Assessor; the Public Defender, the City Controller and all other elected executive offices and make the jobs of Supervisors, College Board members and Board of Education members full-time jobs with full-time salaries.

• Investigate and audit every supervisorial and director position in City government. Eliminate positions that are irrelevant or serve no purpose except patronage. This will save taxpayers a lot of money, while striking a blow against the patronage system of the machine.
• Investigate the last ten years of the operations of the offices of City Treasurer, the Mayor, the Controller, the Assessor and the City Attorney to unearth excessive expenses, possible fraud, corruption and waste.

• Integrate the Board of Education with the City College District into a City Education Department to save on administrative overhead and secure a continuum of education for all children and youth from preschool through college.
• Repeal all privatization and contracting-out schemes in the educational field, such as those under way at City College and the handing over of public schools (such as Edison) to for-profit corporations.
• Replace "reconstitution" of "problem schools" with an ongoing process of quality control and training to prevent problems from getting out of control in the first place (i.e., competent administration).
• Make all positions in the new integrated School and College Boards full-time and have individual Boards meet at least weekly, and the consolidated Boards at least once a month. Make the positions of the Superintendent of Schools and the City College Chancellor elected by the voters, with the School and College Boards to be elected by Districts (as the Supervisors will be starting in the year 2000).
• Establish student government bodies both at high schools and City College campuses, which will have a voice equal to those of the administrations. Create tripartite government for high schools and college campuses with elected representatives from students, staff and instructors. Those elected bodies will both discuss and vote on questions of budget, curriculum, and social programs. All teaching positions will be filled by committees formed by students, staff and instructors.
• Establish a diversity hiring program for staff and instructors at all levels of the educational system and a diversity recruitment program for students, to benefit underrepresented minorities and students from poor families.
• Establish a multicultural immersion program and curriculum from pre-school to college graduation in which all students, of all grades and ages, will take mandatory classes in at least two languages - English and one other - and will specialize and learn about the history, cultural achievements, language and literature of an additional culture besides their own. This program will preserve multiple cultures and languages and enhance the personal pride of students - an indispensable part of the learning process. The programs centered both on students' home culture and language and their chosen second culture and language will be run on parallel tracks throughout the continuum of education by assigning equal numbers of hours - whenever possible - to each track.
• Expand the curriculum for all grades and ages to incorporate mandatory violence prevention curriculum and multicultural and ethnic studies, including gay and lesbian studies and sexual education.
• Introduce a labor studies department and job preparedness courses at the high school level, to continue through college. Re-establish availability of after-school sports, arts and tutoring programs and extend the hours of learning at elementary, junior and high schools to incorporate these programs into the curriculum and the credit system.
• Create non-military career alternatives to ROTC programs. These will be much better than ROTC, leading to exciting, guaranteed well-paid jobs. They will provide the training, camaraderie, opportunity for public service and (optional) travel which make ROTC so attractive, but without its authoritarianism and militarism.
• Maintain and expand child care facilities. Locate child care facilities at key schools and college campuses to serve working class parents and young parents who are students. Enforce the mandatory nature of elementary and high school education to the full extent of the law.
• Transform every school into a community center for children, youth and their families, with programs and activities until 10 pm on weekdays, and all day on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

• Create a single-payer health care and insurance system, to include City employees, unions, non-profits and corporations doing business with the City. Consolidate GA recipients and the elderly on Medicare into the system. Invite all small businesses, community groups, and corporations doing business in the City to join the system.
• Create one single health care system with the best available options that will be equally delivered to all recipients regardless of their social status. Establish a City commission to regulate prices of health care services. Users will have the freedom to choose their physicians. Incorporate all hospitals and health care providers in the City into the system. The system will associate at the regional, state and national level, with similar programs under way or to be created in the future. Every San Franciscan, regardless of their ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, legal status, ability to pay and age, will be accepted into this system.
• Reinvest all profits generated by this universal single-payer health care system back into the system, to improve quality and expand services.
• We Must Stop the AIDS Epidemic Managers and employees who do not work on the front-lines of the epidemic, in public and non-profit agencies receiving funding from the City, or administered by the City, will not earn over 40% more than essential, front-line workers (outreach workers, case managers, social workers and care providers). All overlapping services will be integrated. The City and County of San Francisco will vigorously oppose the present profit-driven system promoted by the pharmaceutical companies by loosening requirements for access to treatment, and by forcefully lobbying State and Federal government agencies to pass legislation barring monopoly-driven drug treatments. Significantly increase all housing and other benefits directly or partially funded by the City of San Francisco for victims of this epidemic.
• CREATE TRUE REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR WOMEN, including free abortion on demand, no forced sterilization, and free, quality prenatal care.

• Extend the District Election system to the Board of Education and College Board, and establish a proportional representation system that will be complementary to the District Election system.
• Limit campaign expenditures to no more than the amount of one year's salary for the position that candidates are running for (presently there are formal limits of about 10 times the annual salaries for the office of Mayor and Supervisors and even higher ones for School Board and College Board).
• Mandate that neighborhood, TV, and radio debates be open to all candidates for public office and speakers on local propositions.
• Establish neighborhood councils and associations that will elect boards composed of residents every year to discuss issues and act as advisors for the elected officials of those neighborhoods. The boards will also propose local legislation and evaluate and rate elected officials publicly. Pass ordinances to make recall of local officials easier.

• Extend local voting rights and political representation to all non-U.S. citizens living in the City. These voting rights will apply to local offices and propositions. (This common-sense proposal is already law in other cities.) The Progressive Left candidates are preparing initiative policy statements to this effect and will begin circulating them during the coming elections.
• Repeal all appointments made by the Mayor to any position that is regularly an elected office. Fill vacancies on the Board of Supervisors, Board of Education, and College Board through special elections.
• Limit the Mayor's and other Executive elected officials' power by transferring all budget decisions over $25,000 and commission appointments to legislative bodies. Reduce to 50% plus one the majority needed to override a veto from the Mayor. Transfer to the control of the Board of Supervisors the Health, Economic Development, Transportation, Parks and Recreation and Education Commissions. Cut in half the unrestricted funding of the Mayor's Offices.

• In order to control crime in the streets we must declare the moral equivalent of war against the rampant crime in the suites of City Hall, local corporations and the police department.
• No three strikes prosecutions for non-violent crimes. Legalize distribution and consumption of marijuana for medicinal use. Enforce all laws against hate and racist crimes. Prosecute all cases of violence against women, children and the elderly.
• Stop criminalizing youth lifestyles. Juvenile Court should be eliminated as presently organized. A peer-based court system should be established. Every conviction of non-violent crime committed by youth should be matched with increased academic and community work obligations. The work should be done in social service programs paid for by the funds otherwise utilized to incarcerate young non-violent offenders.
• Create an elected, city-wide board to oversee all services and funding available for youth and their families. 50% of this board should be youth, 16-24 years of age and 50% should be people of color. This board will coordinate and formulate plans related to job training and youth recreational activities as related in the other relevant sections of this platform and will be responsible for instituting a youth diversion program to draw youth away from the streets and into job training and educational programs. The emphasis should be placed on violence prevention and not on policing, prosecuting and jailing youth.
• The tragic cases of Aaron Williams, Mark Garcia and Sheila Detoy are only the tip of the iceberg of police terror tactics. Address the SFPD's ingrained culture of police brutality and its code of silence by rewarding officers who come forward with information related to police brutality cases. Immediately implement the Police Crisis Intervention Program developed in April of 1997 which was unanimously approved by the Police Commission.
• Elect all Police Commissioners by district, like the Board of Supervisors starting in the year 2000. Current and former police officers and their relatives will not be eligible to run for these seats. Electing commissioners by district will make them accountable to different areas of the City; we all know that police officers act differently in the Mission and Hunters Point than they do in Twin Peaks and Pacific Heights. Police must reside in the districts where they are assigned. Assignments will be made for a minimum of three years.
• Give the Office of Citizens Complaints (OCC) enough money to double the present staff and give them more power to prosecute cops. For example, the Police Commission will be stripped of its power to reject complaints from the OCC without reason as very often happens now. All police officers accused of wrongful death, murder, extortion, excessive force and corruption will be investigated and adjudicated within three months of the complaint filing. Federal and Superior Court judges will preside over the hearings of the Police Commission in which such serious crimes are investigated.

• Secure bilingual education and affirmative action by transforming those programs at the local level into comprehensive tools which are an integral part of the educational curriculum from pre-school to college graduation as defined in the educational planks of this platform.
• Resolve the crisis of the homeless population by implementing immediate, medium-term and long-term solutions. The objective is to create an effective program to get people off the streets into safe, comfortable places, to provide them with the tools to improve their situation on a permanent basis, and to provide access to services and health care in the most efficient and expeditious way.
• Establish a centralized system of temporary shelters - using public buildings after hours if need be - with hot meals in a central location all year round. Allocate a number of public works jobs and permanent and semi-permanent low income housing for homeless people.
• Integrate all able homeless into real job-training programs. Combine this strategy with comprehensive mental health, preventive medicine and drug treatment on demand. Create a coalition of City departments, homeless advocates and homeless representatives to discuss policies and services and administer funds for this program.
• Dismantle the Matrix program (as Mayor Brown promised to do but of course did not) and end the criminalization of the homeless population perpetrated by the present City government. A self-policing system with social workers, homeless advocates, churches and City employees will immediately replace the use of the SFPD in this area in all cases except violent crimes.
• Pass effective local legislation to guarantee the right to freely organize into unions without interference of outside union-busting firms and "hired-gun" specialists. All non-profits, corporations and contractors doing business with the City will be mandated to remain neutral during union organizing drives.
• Enact local legislation to guarantee union rights at every workplace in the City. All City workers will maintain their right to strike. Guarantee all workers in San Francisco the right to protest and demonstrate free of intimidation, use of force, or discrimination. SFPD will not be used to intervene against workers on strike.
• City workers will regain their right to negotiate every aspect of their wage scale, pensions and working conditions at the expiration of every cycle of their contracts. Lawyers and consultant firms dedicated to advising employers against unions will be strictly regulated in the City so as to not undercut any worker's rights.
• Through local legislation prohibit City officials and departments from collaborating, reporting or otherwise assisting the INS, the State Department or any other agency dealing with documented and undocumented immigrants in the prosecution, harassment, enforcing and/or otherwise undercutting the rights of documented and undocumented immigrants living in the City.
• Oppose any and all raids of the INS in neighborhoods and workplaces. Use all legal procedures and a voluntary program of peaceful blockage of raids and other similar operations.
• Do not require immigrants, as condition of treatment at health facilities or access to educational centers administered by the City, to show any proof of their legal status in the country. San Francisco will declare an educational and health emergency to refuse to comply with any and all federal and state laws requiring the denial of services to immigrants, both documented and undocumented.
• Instruct the District Attorney to firmly prosecute any and all abuses of and discrimination against immigrants living or working in the City, including but not limited to enforcing wages and working conditions laws.
• The City will recognize domestic partnerships and marriages between persons of the same gender for all legal purposes and treat them on an equal basis with partnerships and marriages between persons of different genders. All City employees and their partners will enjoy the same benefits. All agencies, contractors and corporations doing business with the City will have to recognize these rights. Local legislation will be passed to include discrimination in the workplace against the l/g/b/t community along with other categories protected under the law and will give power to the City Human Rights Commission to enforce such legislation. Reparations for Bayview/Hunters Point

• Pay reparations to the residents of Bayview/Hunters Point for decades of environmental racism, unfulfilled promises of jobs and economic development, and the cynical manipulation of their interests by the ruling elite in the City. These reparations will take the form of voiding all City taxes to residents and small businesses in Hunters Point for a period of five years and the allocation of $80 million dollars to promote a crash program of economic development in the area, managed and directed by elected representatives of the community. The Progressive Left candidates are preparing an initiative ordinance to this effect, which they will begin circulating during the coming elections.
• Immediately withdraw all City investments in the defense and tobacco industries. The City will be a clear, open and firm advocate against US war and intervention everywhere in the world, up to and including establishing sanctions against profiteering corporations. The City of San Francisco will be declared a safe haven for conscientious objectors in the case of war between the US and other countries.
• Repeal Propositions D and F which allow the building of a new stadium-mall for the 49ers. Repeal the ordinance which gives corporate control over distribution of newspapers. Re-establish the rights of newspapers to install and administer newsracks throughout the City as established by previous legislation.

• Legislate to exercise community control over the Bayview/Hunters Point Superfund sites, to secure safe and complete clean-up of former military installations.
• Impose progressive fines by ordinance against all polluters in the City and County of San Francisco.
• The City and County of San Francisco will assess and clean up hazardous waste sites within its jurisdiction, (for example, MUNI diesel fuel).
• Create an energy and conservation plan to convert properties to alternative energy sources (solar, wind, etc.) and make it City policy to convert all large buildings to alternative energy use.
• Combine the existing City recycling system with a citywide chemical elimination program. Immediately ban the use of all poisonous pesticides in our city parks by the S.F. Park and Recreation Department, which will be mandated to consult with organizations having expertise in the use of non-toxic alternatives.
• Pass a lead abatement law to protect our children from this severe health risk, which disproportionately affects poor communities of color, such as the Mission District and Chinatown. Impose progressive fines on all building owners who do not eliminate lead poisoning within a period of twelve months.
• Ensure that all warnings on the hazards of fishing in particular areas of the Bay are posted in all Asian languages as well as in Spanish and English.
• Oppose all attempts to deposit dangerous waste on any location within the boundaries of the City and County of San Francisco.
• Demand the immediate environmental cleanup by the US Army of hazardous sites at the Presidio.
• Seek out and pay grassroots organizations for their expert consultations to City communities on environmental justice. Public means PUBLIC Public areas such as parks, streets, plazas, etc., are not the private property of any particular class of the population. No one will be excluded from using any public place in a law-abiding manner. The facilities such as the dozens of public toilets in the parks will be renovated and opened to the public as they were meant to be, staffed when necessary. All institutions which receive any City funding, such as museums and the zoo, will be open free of charge to ALL City residents.