Amid Bid to Save Bay Area Transit, Muni Gets a Campaign of Its Own

No more cable cars. Double the wait times. No more regular service after 9 p.m. and the elimination of 20 Muni bus routes.

These are the dire scenarios elected officials and public transit advocates in San Francisco are working to prevent as they kicked off the Stronger Muni For All campaign at the city’s Dolores Park on Tuesday.

“The success of San Francisco’s economic recovery is dependent on safe, reliable, and affordable public transit. Without it, older adults can’t get to their appointments. Kids can’t get to school, and workers can’t get to their jobs,” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said.

The campaign aims to put a parcel tax measure on the November ballot that, if approved by voters, would generate around $160 million for Muni annually in order to help stave off those cuts. It’s one of two campaigns now underway to generate revenue for Bay Area transit agencies. The campaign for the Connect Bay Area Act, a regional sales tax measure that would generate around $1 billion annually for Muni, AC Transit, BART and Caltrain, among others, began gathering signatures in late January.

The measures come at a precarious time for public transit across the region, and Muni in particular, as the agencies stare down immense budget deficits that could force extreme reductions of their networks. Proponents of the measure include representatives from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, organized labor and community advocacy groups.

“ What’s the point of living in a city if you have to drive everywhere?” asked Mario Guerrieri, who plans to volunteer as a signature gatherer for the campaign. “I love San Francisco, and Muni is one of the things that makes it great.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, the city’s public train, cable car and bus provider, is still reeling from the pandemic. The economic downturn and shelter-in-place order that accompanied COVID-19 negatively impacted all of SFMTA’s funding sources, including tax revenue, parking fees, grants and Muni fares, all of which have not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Since that time, the SFMTA has relied on federal, state and regional pandemic relief funding to stay in the black, but that money is set to run out this summer.

If the measure makes it to the November ballot and passes, property owners would be billed annually based on the type of property and square footage. Owners of single-family properties would need to pay $129 annually, multifamily property owners would owe $249 and owners of non-residential parcels would have to shell out $799, with additional tax levied if the properties exceed a certain square footage limit.

About $150 million of the revenue generated annually from this tax would be used to reduce Muni’s deficit, and about $10 million would pay for “marginal service quality improvements,” according to the SFMTA. The measure would expire in 15 years, and the tax amount would be annually adjusted for inflation.

Certain property owners would be exempted. Parcels or units owned by seniors who occupy that space as their primary residence wouldn’t pay, nor would occupants or owners of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) buildings. Non-profits, hospitals, museums and government-owned land would also be exempt under existing rules for property taxes.

At a recent meeting of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill said he was “broadly very supportive of this, despite concerns about some of the details.”

“Seniors being exempted generally makes sense, but was there any thought given to seniors who can definitely afford this, say in the 5,000-square-foot mansion properties?” Sherrill asked SFMTA staff.

SFMTA staff confirmed that all senior property owners, regardless of the extravagance of their property, would be exempt from the tax.

The language of the measure also allows a “pass-through,” where owners of single-family properties may pass up to 50% of the tax onto renters of rent-controlled units.

Sherrill noted that while senior property owners are exempt from the tax, senior renters could still be charged the pass-through.

SFMTA staff said they modeled this parcel tax off previous ones used by the San Francisco Unified School District.

“Throughout this process, what we were balancing was the need to avoid complexity,” SFMTA Director of Transportation Julie Kirschbaum said. “This is already going to be a very complex task to administer and deliver, as well as trying to make sure that we were focusing on the people who needed [the exemptions] the most.”

Kat Siegal, one of the measure’s proponents, said the parcel tax is one of the best stable funding mechanisms for public transit.

“It doesn’t fluctuate with the economic situation the same way that a sales tax or a gross receipts tax might,” Siegal said.

Siegal acknowledged it is hard to ask voters to tax themselves twice in the November election to fund transit, but she said the costs would be far higher to everyone in the city if Muni reduced service.

”It’s a flat rate, $129 a year tax. So that’s pretty reasonable compared to the price of buying a car because your bus line isn’t there anymore,” Siegal said.

If voters approve just one of the two proposed taxes, Muni officials say it won’t be enough to prevent service cuts. The agency’s budget deficit is projected to be $344 million in fiscal year 2027, growing to $435 million in fiscal year 2030.

The Connect Bay Area Act would levy a 1-cent sales tax in San Francisco, and a half-cent sales tax in four other Bay Area counties, providing $155 million per year for the agency, but even with that additional funding, it wouldn’t close the full funding gap.

To make up the difference, the SFMTA also plans to reduce costs by further cutting vacant positions, optimizing maintenance shifts to reduce premium pay and scaling back the work it requests from other city departments, among other policy shifts. The agency also plans to generate more revenue by increasing meter rates and citation late penalties, along with eliminating the Clipper card fare discount, to name a few. Combined, these efforts are expected to contribute up to $42.5 million.

Dylan Fabris, the community and policy manager with the non-profit advocacy group San Francisco Transit Riders, said he would have preferred that the two ballot measures be merged into one, but the depth of Muni’s deficit, in particular, combined with that of other transit agencies, meant Muni also needs to “self-help.”

“It’s not one or the other. At the end of the day, we need both of these measures to pass to prevent catastrophic cuts,” Fabris said.

The Stronger Muni For All campaign has until July 6 to collect and submit just over 10,6000 valid signatures to get the measure on the November ballot.

“ Structurally, we just need new funding, and it’s not coming from the federal government or the state government,” Siegal said. “We need to do it ourselves.”