tv [untitled] October 26, 2011 2:30pm-3:00pm PDT
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libraries. i want to build affordable housing in san francisco. i want to support local property owners to prevent defaults and foreclosures. i want to look at how the banks can write down loans and property, house is that are underwater. properties where if we did that we would give families much more buying power and put more money into the local economy to support local jobs. >> yes, i feel that housing. we're talking about housing, is the central crisis and san francisco because we are this beautiful little peninsula surrounded by a lot of water and a lot of people who want to live here. we already have a lot of rich people living here, and i would stop building housing for the wealthy. that is it, moratorium on market-rate housing. if we do not develop any more of it until we develop housing for the rest of us, for the middle
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class, families, working class workers, artists, seniors. we have to preserve our rent- controlled housing. we cannot allow it to be demolished. we have to work on other housing schemes, limited equity, nonprofit. we have to build housing just for the rest of us. only the rest of us, until the rest of us have enough housing. no more housing for the wealthy. we have enough rich people. >> on the topic of families, i often tell folks that if we did a better job of keeping families, i would probably have 1000 more votes in san francisco because i have that many personal friends who have had to move to the east bay, north bay, and south. we have to invest in our schools. we need a mayor who will be in education mayor coming use the bully pulpit for that purpose. we have to invest in services
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that wraparound families and make sure we're not cutting funding to parks and recreation centers and after-school programs. fundamentally, we have to do with far better job of keeping the jobs we have been losing. over the past couple years, we have lost 30,000 jobs, hundreds of companies. this is why have been proud to fight to keep companies like twitter and san francisco come to fight for the next biotech company, clean technology, to fight for the 80,000 small businesses and stethoscope and the several hundred new manufacturing companies. i hope everyone may take a chance to visit my website and see my plan for jobs and the economy and all of the policy papers we have and how we build a 21st century city. >> i hope you will visit my website. i have the education, down payment loan assistance, condominiums, or reform, but let's get real, san francisco
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has lost its black middle class. this city has become on wealthy -- unhealthy and unwelcoming for african-americans. the outcome is terrible. i would not blame anybody for leaving. i see two brave women and the audience, individuals who are fighting for our young men of color to have better outcome, and i challenge everyone of you because i walk into one room white room afterward other in the city to say you did not have to be black to have a black agenda. we need schools to give everyone the education and we need to build the capacity of african-american organizations. why is it that other organizations have corporate click titans on their board, but the hunters point family foundation, but they did not? i will change that. >> the question is, what can you do to keep middle-class in san
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francisco and welcome families back to the city? >> my wife and i have raised seven children in the city and is not a family friendly city. we have to change our attitude. what can i do? i would streamline the committee process to allow local small businesses to really get to work they implored the middle -- date employed the middle class. we have to reduce the red tape, unnecessary fees, and hidden costs associated with jump starting small businesses. in 2002, i came up with a program called hope, homes and surfaces go beyond the reach of middle-class workers that allows landlords to voluntarily sell their apartment as these units. people get a piece of the rock. they can invest in san francisco, the city gains through taxes, and the people abroad and with home ownership. it is a program that will keep the middle and blue class
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workers in san francisco, and that is what i was do as mayor is try to reinstitute it. thank you. >> the key to keeping families in san francisco revolves around three complimentary things -- jobs, housing, schools. 60,000 sent franciscans have moved here over the last decade, many of them young workers trying to find their fame and fortune, but we need to make sure we are providing job up to these four folks at all levels of the scale. we're looking to expand trading opportunities and the community college district. those young folks who are coming here, we need to provide smart growth housing opportunities so people can have a piece of the dream and san francisco. if we're going to keep them long term, we need to invest in education. that is what i call it an
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expansion and extension of proposition h. we need to put our money where our mouth is and expanded from 60 million to 90 million and ensure that we are building a committee schools model which strengthens the partnership between the city and the san francisco unified school district. you do that, and keep families in san francisco. >> i think that every level has to participate in our economic growth. that is the way that you keep families here, and all other families, whether low income, middle income, or high income working in the city. we have to have small and medium businesses create those jobs. government cannot do it alone. the government is shrinking. at the have to use the ingenuity and the private sector to create real jobs. i am really proud of putting together a road map, 17 ideas i have.
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one of them gets the best talent to go out to all of the communities and make sure we are supporting the local merchant efforts to create jobs and fill vacancies in storefronts and provide ideas like we have done in central market to activate those areas and create job activities. the $5 million small business loan program i am offering right now to make sure bthe financing for small businesses discontinued. i'm for a proud of the folks we have worked together with. they landed a grant from the federal government because they themselves were involved in rebuilding their housing. that is the way you get people back to work and stay here. families have to be involved in the actual building of san francisco. [applause] >> as a world-class city, we deserve to have a world-class public school system. if we do, families will stay
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here and move to san francisco and jobs will come to san francisco. my moment of obligation when i knew i had to run was not to circumvent the only way to achieve this was that the mayor makes it a high level priority. it takes a community wide effort to improve the public education system. i am a proponent of high-quality schools. i cannot tell you how many kids as young as seven, who i've met alone on the minutes of bus, going across town to get to their public school. we're not supposed to leave children at home alone at the age of 12. that is not acceptable children are traveling across town by themselves to get to school. we have to create committees schools where we bring resources to support children and families, social work, mental- health care, after-school programs, locate them on the site of schools. we have to support the business community. as the innovation capital of the world, we are the shoemaker kids with no shoes, we are not
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compiling any of the great education. we need to reach out through our philanthropic community to support these efforts. if we do so, families will stay. [applause] >> as a father of a 4-year-old and 1-year-old, have seen many of my friends leave at san francisco. the primary reasons were we had a very volatile education process and they cannot afford to live here. at in order to reform that company to make sure that we have an assignment process for public schools that helps you know where you will send your kids. i think the school district took a big step in doing that. i am very hopeful as we move into the second year of that process that families will see they have a much greater probability of getting the schools in the neighborhoods, which i think it's a great thing. in terms of housing, we need more housing, or family housing. most of the housing we have
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built in the last 10 years have been one-bedrooms and studious. i know of very few families who live in a studio with three, four people. instead of getting developers to build those, we developers to build 3-bedroom, 4-bedroom house in. we also need more affordable housing. i plan to champion and affordable housing bond if i am mayor. >> i did some research, and i did a survey of a number of residents in san francisco. i represent both san francisco and the san mateo. what i found is many individuals who used to live in san francisco do not anymore. they are in san mateo county. when you ask why, number-one, because quality of the public education that their kids were getting was not there. what did they do? they send their kids to private school. you can handle one child and
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public schoolone childtwo -- one child in public school, but two you cannot. the jobs were not there, so they had to move. finally, the cost of living, housing, those other variables we need to work on. we have to improve the quality of public education across the city, not just some areas or schools. you have to also provide additional money to developers to develop affordable housing. finally, we need the diversity of jobs. a variety of jobs that fit all qualifications. that is how you keep the middle class from leaving san francisco. >> thank you. [applause] >> i would do four things. at first, i would build more middle-class affordable housing in san francisco. right now we only have 21% of the affordable middle-class housing that we need and we're building about 120% of the
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above-market housing. the second thing i would do is have an aggressive jobs program. 86% of the jobs in the city are small businesses. i would create a micro loan program where 1000 businesses would create 7,800 jobs. the most important thing is school. we have cut summer school two years in a row because we did not have $1 million to pay for it. 10,000 kids cannot go to summer school. that is a disgrace. i would restore summer school, and i have a plan to pay for it. the reason i got involved is not to be against the union, it is about making sure that we have the backbone to make the decisions so we're not spending five under million dollars on pensions every year and we did not have $1 million to pay for summer school -- so we're not spending $50 million on pensions every year. >> i picked a question that sort
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of reflects everything. you touched on this, but our next speaker who will start will be mr. avalos. what we should do to help generate additional revenue to support city and county services. how would this impact the city and residents of san francisco? >> thank you for the question. last year, i worked on the local hire ordinance. it is using existing revenue, our tax dollars to create jobs for local residents. as far as looking at revenue, the services, it is something i have been doing a number of years and i have already talked about it. i want to look at the income tax that we can use to cover basic services. i also want to look at a vehicle
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license fee that could be used to cover municipal, pedestrian safety, cycling, looking at a parcel tax that would cover the needs of the parks and schools. the parcel tax would be graduated. if you have commercial real- estate property, you will pay more. and want to focus on the least among us. we have black kids and brown kids who are killing each other on the streets. we need a strong response, and having revenue to do that will be part of my solution. >> first, i would change the charter so we have the immiscible bank of san francisco. instead of depositing our pension fund and the bank of america and letting them take the profits, which they add to what they're getting from their new charge for debt cards, we would get the profit and we would lend the money to individuals and businesses in san francisco.
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then i would institute a commercial rent tax that would be a lot more fair than the payroll tax that we have now, and also much more progressive than the gross receipts tax. then we would need public power. we need to be creating our own power and also owning the grade. we can do that. p.g. and evil has been proven to be incompetent. this is something we can work on and we have to bring the money back down by progressive income tax. there are many cities that have progressive income tax. it is time to tax the rich. duh. >> ever since i ran a small business in san francisco, i have been a major proponent of reforming the business tax. this is a tax that penalizes the cost of hiring folks and is only paid by want out of 10
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companies and san francisco. 90% of our businesses do not pay their fair share. i've also been a sponsor of the vehicle license fee. i was very disappointed when governor brown yesterday decided to veto the legislation that would have given the localities the opportunity to decide whether to get revenue from that source. i've been a big proponent of getting revenue from dark fiber. under the streets of san francisco, we have an infrastructure that we could license to the private sector, that we could control from the public sector. we could stand to bring in millions of revenues from that. i want to expand that. >> one of the major beekeepers and our city through the local economy are the city planning and building inspection departments. i think we can do a much better job of being caught. norris. -- we could do much better job
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of being business owners. it is construction jobs, it prevents people from big hired, and would be far more business- like. i want to talk about bridges to biotech and how the city college has the best biotech program in the country. i am so proud of what the country has done to get people jobs paying $25 per hour and changing people's lives. we have to do what san diego did. in our case, it is by attacked, clean technology, and digital media. we have over 200 clean technology companies and i will develop a success plan for every neighborhood commercial district. every neighborhood commercial district need something different, and we will put that together. >> we have the income tax, parcel tax, floor tax, a lot more regulation. do you really want that? are you ready for that? unreal.
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i don't think the middle class and san francisco can pay that. i am not sure the rich can pay that. we have to go back to 0-based budgeting. i know that is foreign to everybody appear, but it is worth every penny goes to zero. that is how we increased revenue 40%. it would have to jump-start business by reducing the unnecessary fees, red tape that is precluding and stopping businesses from working in san francisco. is that simple. the revenue will come in. we have to do something like reducing the parking meter rates so local businesses to be patronized. this is not rocket science. if i sit here and tell you i will add another tax, i am just conning you, and i am not about doing this. i have too many years in this business. pinky. -- thank you.
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>> i had the good fortune of working with supervisor chu, and he says on the 10% of the businesses pay payroll tax and san francisco. we're the only city and state of california that has peril tax. you'll never wrote attract business when you are taxing the businesses. we need to reform the business tax so it is fair to small, medium, and large businesses and rewards job creation. i think the efforts to fight for vlf, despite what jerry brown has done, it is worthwhile and will have to look at. we also have to look at how we spend. zero-based budgeting? i do it in my office, managing according to my priorities. nonprofits, $600 million per year goes to nonprofits.
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some of them are a vital cog in the delivery system, but that does not mean that we cannot be better customers and they need to be more accountable providers. >> in addition to revamping the payroll tax, i think the way that we grow, the way we increase revenue is to really grow the economy. we can do that by supporting the creation of more small businesses. people have a lot of ideas to work ideas in a way in which government to cut red tape. one of my ideas is to make sure we are cutting red tape and linking people with the financial connections they should have to support their development of small businesses. i was happy to see he ceramics takeover of a vacant warehouse. and they will hire local people to create a very vibrant business, selling ceramics and bitter where all over the world. we have the ability to
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manufacture san francisco-made products that will not only be sold in the city, they will be sold all over the world because everybody knows that san francisco-made products are world renowned. we just have to support and give a lot more stimulus to our small and medium-size businesses to do that. [applause] >> we will bring in more revenue if we attract and retain more jobs in san francisco. we have lost some of our largest employers who have left because of the employee payroll tax. wish not just reformate for any company that locates on market street. -- we should not just reform it for any company that locates on market street. companies should pay their fair share, but the tax structure needs everybody participating. 25% of the working population
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commits out of the city and they are spending their money elsewhere and we need to make sure they can walk to their jobs because they're located in san francisco. we also have to reduce the burden on small businesses. summit people tell me they had a three permits, now have 10, the most expensive are over a thousand dollars. the merchants are the backbones and we are breaking their backs with the amount of performance on top of them. i agree about 0-based budgeting, the denny with a clarity of where we spend money is when we have transparency at city hall. i've requested budgets from every department, even by sunshine request, and have not received one line-item budget from any department. that is not acceptable. [applause] >> we can generate millions by closing loopholes and focusing on departments like myself, the tax collector.
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we brought in over $300 million by making the office more efficient, post -- closing loopholes, and make sure everyone paid their fair share. we have to cut the red tape at dbi and planning department pictured stores and businesses open faster. we need to make sure that businesses have a place to go. we should be adding 30 people from many of the other areas of san francisco to make sure they can help small businesses navigate complex bureaucracy in city hall. only then will they feel like they're getting served in san francisco. by creating these jobs, we can grow our budget and revenue and grow our way out of the deficit. >> i have talked about revenue increases, taxes, bonds. a balanced approach also
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requires that we look at how efficient use the dollars we have. the budget is now $6.8 billion. you have asked, what the spending the money for? you have to look at how to grow the economy. part of that is to look at what are those industries we do not have that are not mature enough in san francisco. one of the key industries is the biotech industry, the biological medicine and industry, but they are in san mateo. you have to look at, what are those key ingredients as to why companies that ought to be in san francisco are not? having the relationships and having the understanding of the biotech firms will be absolutely critical. having to predictability, dealing with the red tape, dealing with how you provide incentives to bring businesses
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in to provide a variety of different skills and workers in san francisco. >> thank you. >> we have a $6.6 billion budget. we need the mayor to make decisions in the best interest of the people. right after the mayor released his proposal, he agreed to a deal with the highest city employees to give them a raise and exempt them from pension contributions that will cost $20 million over the next 10 years. -- $200 million of the next 10 years. we opposed having city employees contribute 1.5% more towards guaranteed pensions. now, this is the reality we are facing at city hall. we have no competitive bidding for garbage. we have a former head of the department of public works who
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10 years ago agreed that toa 46% increase when his own staff recommended 20% increase. these are the kinds of decisions being made every day at city hall. what we need to do is say no more and elect a mayor who will make the decisions in the best interests of the people, not special interests. [applause] >> as a member of the board of supervisors, one of the very first things i did it is created san francisco's very first economic plan six years ago. our beautiful city did not have one. but the economic plan did was give us a blueprint for job growth and creation. i also instituted the office of economic impact. before the office of economic impact, we had no economists on staff. as a member of the board of supervisors, you could vote on
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legislation not knowing how many jobs were created or lost as a result. today, you cannot vote on something without knowing how many jobs are lost or gained as a result of the legislation. i went on and did the biotech payroll tax exemption. i am glad everyone is talking about their role tax, but the truth is i was the first to do it. i did it six years ago. i proved that we created hundreds of jobs. i did and alignment with school districts, establishing classes, and now we know six years that the kids are taking the position we have created. i also looked at film and television, creating 3000 jobs in two years, $5.5 million of wages, and as we look at the future of san francisco, we should be looking at cruise ships and what the industry can do for the city and county of san francisco. it would be a billion other industry and give us a huge shot in the arm. >> i have to explain, mr. al
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avalos had to leave because he has an apartment across town. he apologizes that he cannot stay for closing statements. that leads me to almost the conclusion. i know that it is getting late. first, i want to thank our journalists for their insightful questions and the creed of ways they did that. joyce, rachel, and scott shafer. thank you all very much. [applause] and now we come to the candidates' closing statements. if you have not registered to vote, please do so. we urge everyone to register. it is a right and privilege. the deadline is october 24. if you have moved, you have to register at your new address. we will do these closing statements in reverse alphabetical order, and candidates, each have one minute.
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>> thank you for the debate. i appreciate all of your attention and concern. as i said early on, we are in a rather serious crisis in the state of california a, reverberating on the look out government. the realignment of social services, health care services, and public safety. for the first time, realigning public safety in the local government causes tremendous cost pressure of the city and county of san francisco. i'm the only candidate with the kind of experience at the local level and state level to address these problems. i am the only individual who is independent, over 23 years, from power brokers in city hall. i am the only candidate who has published five documents that lay out exactly how i will be held accountable dealing wi
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