Elsbernd is right on this and our progressives are not. Ammiano tried this back in 2002 as a prelude to his mayoral race and did not make the ballot, and Newsom is doing same now to make it appear as if he’s cared for the past 5.

TO be fair, the CIty holds a revolving portfolio of bond obligations and keeps the card maxxed up to a finite upper limit. They claim that sales of street resurfacing bonds will be pegged to the paying off of bonds taken out when I first moved here 20 yr ago.

That said, I’d rather see my property tax rate raised to remain at the same level as before those old bonds were paid off, and instead of the bond service property tax dollars going to a Wall Street investment house to cover bond sales fees (a chunk of change on $300+m) and interest payments, how about having my tax dollars go to pay for 1.25 times the amount of street improvement than we get with the bonds?

The insanity here is that street repairs last for 10 years max, while the bond terms are 20 years. How much fun will it be for suckers still living here in 10 years time to be paying property taxes to pay down debt for 10 more years into the future, all to have made the streets nice for those of us who no longer live here, improvements which have just finished depreciating?

The good thing is that interest rates for creditworthy borrowers like SF are historically low at this time, so the relative cost to borrow is less. But I’d still prefer that we figure out a path towards sustainable self sufficiency on our simple capital systems.

-marc

I guess not. Just get out the credit card then wonder why it is we have a “budget crisis.”