· Oppose any tax or fee increase on single-family homeowners.
· Strengthen tenants’ rights and protections.
· Increase the supply of housing for low, moderate, and middle-income households.
· Implement a humane, effective, and comprehensive homeless program.
· Adopt a tax on vacant buildings to encourage owners to use the buildings for economic activity or housing.
· Maintain and increase affordable housing units that are subsidized.
· Help low, moderate, and middle-income residents with down payments for first-time home purchases.
· Reduce the speed limit on Sunset Boulevard and adjust the traffic lights to improve pedestrian safety.
· Support the SPEAK Community Revitalization Plan for 19th Avenue.
· Encourage electrification of MUNI lines to reduce noise and air pollution.
· Develop a parking master plan for the Sunset-Parkside neighborhood.
· Increase traffic safety around schools.
· Create a public transit system that is safe, comfortable, convenient, on-time, and user-friendly.
· Implement an annual downtown transit assessment fee.
· Adopt an annual commercial property transit assessment fee for large businesses to provide for a free-for-users public transit system.
· Upgrade and properly maintain the public transit infrastructure.
· Mandate auto-free pedestrian malls in dense sections of the city to encourage foot traffic.
· Build the plan for a new multi-modal regional transit terminal that includes extending CalTrain downtown.
· Reduce pedestrian deaths and injuries by putting additional traffic controls in place.
· Pursue pedestrian-and-bicycle-friendly policies.
· Shrink automobile subsidies and increase public transit subsidies.
· Get non-resident commuters out of their cars and onto public transportation systems.
· Rebuild Parkside Elementary School (Kindergarten-5th Grade) for 540 students and Child-care Center for 120 children.
· Expedite the $6 million renovation of Parkside and Ortega Public Libraries.
· Establish a free-higher-education-for-all-program that permits any adult City resident who meets academic qualifications to have tuition, living stipend, fees, and educational expenses covered for education and training.
· Bring public school reading standardized test scores up to the national average.
· Ensure that the City’s 27 neighborhood libraries, 105 public schools, and park recreational facilities are open daily until 10 p.m. to provide constructive activities and programs for young people.
· Establish a summer youth job program that will guarantee a job to all disadvantaged teenagers who remain in school.
· Fund one-on-one remedial education for each child falling behind in reading, writing, and speaking skills.
· Set up a Task Force on Public Education to make recommendations on how the educational system in San Francisco can be improved.
· Raise high school graduation standards.
· Push for more representation and participation by parents in the public education decision-making process.
· Extend school day hours and school year if necessary to improve academic performance.
· Require homework five-nights-a-week.
· Establish a requirement that all students must complete volunteer community service before graduation.
· Convert all public high schools into college preparatory schools.
· Require publicly-subsidized cultural facilities on City public land to provide free admission to all San Francisco children.
· Guarantee that public school students are taught in a safe and well-maintained environment.
· Ensure that up-to-date educational materials are used in classrooms.
· Oppose any attempt to privatize the management of public schools.
· Increase public funding for public education.
· Empower parents, students, and teachers in shaping school programs and policies.
· Promote the delivery of comprehensive services at school sites.
· Develop an effective program that reduces the dropout rate.
· Improve the special education program.
· Make San Francisco the most family-friendly city in the United States.
· Require all sworn police officers to walk a neighborhood beat once a week.
· Improve police performance to solve violent crime cases.
· Create economic incentives for police officers to move back into the City.
· Increase the efforts to solve all murders that occur in the City.
· Establish an independent, adequately funded civilian commission that will review all complaints made concerning police officer conduct.
· Adopt the most restrictive gun control law of any U.S. City.
· Shift police personnel to where they are needed the most.
· Provide adequate funding for programs to reduce domestic violence.
· Expand counseling, detoxification, and other programs that reduce drug use.
· Set up a comprehensive earthquake preparedness program.
· Pursue alternatives to jail or prison for non-violent offenders.
· Work to amend the costly Three Strikes law because 80% of the people sentenced under this law are sentenced for nonviolent offences.
· Establish a comprehensive, affordable, high-quality universal health care insurance program for all San Franciscans.
· Finance health care coverage based on the ability-to-pay.
· Ensure that the health care system is responsive and accountable to the needs of health consumers.
· Close the two large polluting power plants in the City and prevent the construction of any new polluting power plants in the City.
· Increase school-based health clinics and monitor children for lead poisoning.
· Oppose cuts in medical services.
· Require major grocery stores to identify foods that are genetically engineered.
· Reduce the death rate from cancer and strokes.
· Expand healthy diet education programs.
· Reorganize the health care delivery system to emphasize preventive health care.
· Guarantee that reliable comparative data on health care quality is publicly disclosed.
·
Provide
education and advocacy to reduce tobacco consumption.
· Ensure that every Sunset-Parkside public park has clean restrooms, safe children’s play structures, after school programs, multi-purpose community rooms, and outdoor lights.
· Fund Larsen Park Sava Pool improvement project.
· Make sure the Sigmund Stern Grove and Pine Lake Park master plans reflect nearby resident concerns.
· Develop an Ocean Beach beautification initiative that would include improving public restrooms and installing proper sized garbage/recycle containers.
· Monitor the restoration of the 97-year old Murphy Windmill.
· Restore Lake Merced as the nation’s best example of a City lake for fishing, boating, and recreation.
· Ensure that the erosion of the ocean shoreline is stopped with an environmentally sound plan.
· Place utility wires underground for residential blocks that face the Pacific Ocean.
· Implement the City’s Sustainability Plan.
· Prohibit corporate advertising in publicly owned spaces and ban billboards near freeways.
· Preserve Treasure Island as parkland.
· Stop non-visitor-related commercial development in the Presidio national park.
· Close the east end of Golden Gate Park to autos for all three-day weekends.
· Promote toxic clean-ups and occupational health and safety.
· Fund adequately the public park infrastructure system.
· Create a comprehensive environmental education program in public schools.
· Improve air quality, increase fines for clean-air violations, and expand right-to-know laws.
· Set up a research institute to study the bay and ocean.
· Plant 10,000 trees.
· Provide off leash dog areas that are naturally landscaped within 15 minutes of each City resident.
· Complete a seismic and electromagnetic radiation study on Sutro Tower.
· Encourage regional approaches to solving transportation and environmental problems.
· Oppose tax and fee increases on single-family homeowners.
· Reduce taxes on small businesses.
· Create a fair, equitable, and progressive tax system based on ability-to-pay.
· Increase revenue-producing activities fairly and efficiently.
· Lower penalties for small businesses that demonstrate a commitment to fix problems.
· Identify all unregistered businesses and encourage voluntary compliance with tax laws.
· Obtain additional revenues from enterprise City departments for the general fund where appropriate.
· Decrease the tax burden on low, moderate, and middle-income households.
· Increase the tax burden on wealthy individuals and big businesses.
· Generate new revenue from high-income non-resident commuters.
· Eliminate corporate welfare and tax loopholes for big business.
· Stop under valuations of large downtown properties that result in annual tax losses of $23-100 million.
· Re-negotiate all existing franchises to generate additional revenue.
· Recover the costs of public subsidies that have gone into the new baseball stadium.
· Repeal the $100 million public subsidy for the proposed new football stadium.
· Promote progressive tax reform.
· Place new fees and increase taxes on polluters.
· Utilize Public Utilities Commission revenues for maintenance and repair of the water system instead of expensive bond measures.
· Set up a not-for-profit, consumer-owned public power system to lower electric bills.
· Elect the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission members by neighborhood districts.
· Complete a comprehensive public power economic feasibility study.
· Close the two large fossil-fueled burning power plants in San Francisco.
· Promote electrical renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy conservation, environmental management, business operation, and customer service programs that are the best in the nation.
· Set and maintain the highest electric utility industry standards.
· Work toward 100% consumer ownership of generation, transmission, and distribution of electrical facilities.
· Pursue electric rates that are 15% less than PG&E.
· Reduce dependence on nuclear power and fossil fuels.
· Build solar and wind power facilities.
· Create least cost, reliable electric service.
· Advocate for a sustainable energy future.
· Implement a welfare-to-work program that guarantees meaningful work at a living wage with training, education, and supportive services provided.
· Pursue aggressive policies to reduce illiteracy, disease, and poverty.
· Extend library hours for neighborhood branches.
· Keep the main public library open 24 hours a day.
· Encourage development, growth, and stability of Sunset-Parkside small businesses.
· Provide low-interest loans to help entrepreneurs start or expand locally owned small businesses.
· Set the local public and private sector minimum wage at double the federal minimum wage with an exemption for businesses that employ four or less employees.
· Direct retirement fund investments into firms that encourage fair labor practices, environmental protection, and product quality.
· Promote non-polluting industries that create good-paying jobs.
· Support zoning policies that favor neighborhood-serving small businesses.
· Assist small businesses that fill positions with unemployed City residents.
· Increase water-dependent enterprises on the waterfront.
· Rebuild the City’s infrastructure.
· Eliminate the mayor’s political patronage army of 581 special assistants for a savings of $45 million annually.
· Reduce the City’s workforce by 4,000 employees by attrition.
· Eliminate waste, inefficiency, and corruption.
· Shift all Board of Supervisors meetings into weekday evenings.
· Ensure that hard earned tax dollars are spent effectively and efficiently.
· Investigate all election irregularities and take corrective actions; ensure that all federal, state, and local election laws are followed; reform the election process to increase accountability; implement safeguards to guarantee that every vote is accurately counted; and restore confidence in local elections.
· Work to make government more responsive and accountable.
· Encourage open, democratic, and participatory government.
· Build public safety, education, transit, park and library systems that are the best in the nation.
· Submit to the electorate a proposed ordinance that would require 100% publicly financed candidate elections for all local government offices.
· Complete independent audits of all city departments with cost-saving recommendations implemented.
· Adopt private sector management techniques utilized in the nation’s best-run businesses to ensure high quality and cost-effective City services.
· Create customer-driven and worker-friendly government.
· Implement a program to reward non-management government employees who identify significant money-saving ideas.
· Increase public access and public oversight.
· Mandate that 1.5% of personnel budgets are spent on training and education.
· Guarantee proportional representation of local political parties on City commissions.
· Restore the competitive, career-oriented civil service system.
· Institute a constituent service program that will permit telephone calls and e-mails to be responded to in 24 hours and letters to be answered within one week.
· Require complete economic disclosure for all appointed and elected public officials.
· Ban gifts, honorariums, and perks for public policy decision-makers.
· Make it easier to recall ineffective or incompetent elected officials.
· Bring minority communities into the decision making process at City Hall.
· Reduce costs and enhance efficiencies by utilizing new technologies, reducing management layers, improving customer service, empowering staff, streamlining operations, and expanding training opportunities.
· Eliminate overtime and inflated salaries.
· Increase voter participation and civic involvement.
· Promote socially just and environmentally sustainable investments.
· Limit all local elected officials to two terms.
· Improve public protection, education, transit, park, and library systems.
· Set up elected, advisory neighborhood planning boards to review private, public, and non-profit sector development and service proposals before approval by the City.
· Pass residential zoning controls to maintain existing residential densities and character.
· Strengthen the growth control measure Proposition M.
· Oppose residential, hotel, and office high-rises outside the downtown area.
· Ban new national chain stores that drive smaller locally owned stores out of business and develop restrictive controls on existing ones.
· Increase restrictions on the placement of cellular phone antennas and other wireless transmitters in residential neighborhoods.
· Eliminate large commercial aviation aircraft from San Francisco airspace.
· Subject institutional expansion proposals to more public review.
· Condemn all acts of bigotry and promote civil rights.
· Protect historic buildings from demolition.
· Offer grants to encourage community empowerment activities.
· Reduce the wage gap between women and men who work full-time.
· Ensure that public schools meet gender equity laws and eliminate sexual harassment.
· Push to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women.
· Expand the supply of affordable quality child-care for working women.
· Expand activities and services for children.
· Provide comprehensive and accessible preventive health services for children.
· Guarantee that all four-year-olds have equal access to public preschool.
· Improve reading scores in the early grades.
· Make Headstart a full-day program.
· Eliminate health care disparities that face minority children from low-income households.
· Increase wages and benefits of child-care providers.
· Reduce the number of families that live below the poverty level.
· Build a Sunset-Parkside senior center.
· Expand elderly community-based services.
· Oppose cuts to existing benefits and increase benefits where there is need.
· Support economic security, pedestrian safety, and protection against consumer fraud initiatives.
· Increase health care services.
· Protect seniors from evictions
· Make MUNI services more accessible to older riders.
· Improve police department response to the needs of seniors.
· Make all public buildings, including schools, accessible to people with disabilities.
· Guarantee that disabled workers do not lose health or economic benefits while working.
· Use technological tools to bring people with disabilities into the work force.
· Increase penalties for crimes against people with disabilities.
· Support the independent living and people with disabilities civil rights movements.
· Expand disability-related community-based services.
· Ensure equal access to recreation, education, and jobs.
· Support policies that enhance empowerment of the Asian community.
· Recruit more police officers, fire fighters, and poll workers who can speak Cantonese or Mandarin.
· Make Board of Supervisors meetings more accessible.
· Create a worker health and safety program that provides free screenings, physical therapy, classes, and basic treatment for work-related injuries.
· Ensure that the City’s workforce, management and non-management positions, reflect the percentage of Asian adults in the workforce.
· Improve public education and support bilingual education.
· Support implementation of the Asian Pacific American Education Summit 2000 recommendations that include: conduct an in-depth analysis of students by ethnic breakdown, encourage parental involvement, provide parent liaisons for schools, disseminate bilingual school information, and increase availability of resources on culture and heritage.
· Fund an annual multi-ethnic summit.
· Provide multilingual access to government services.
· Ensure that the City’s workforce, management and non-management positions, reflect the percentage of Latino adults in the workforce.
· Improve educational attainment at every level.
· Promote legal immigration and citizenship training programs.
· Defend everyone’s right to education, health care, and public services.