tv [untitled] October 29, 2011 4:00pm-4:30pm PDT

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>> i'm melissa griffin, i write about city politics and a member of the league of women voters. i am here to discuss a proposition g, voters will be faced with on november's valid. -- ballot. proposition g would increase the sales tax rate by 0.5% for a total tax rate of 9%. this would only happen if the state does not increase the sales tax by either 1% before november 30, 2011 or 0.75% before january 1, 2015. the city would pass a tax increase to pay for public

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safety programs and the other half for programs for children and seniors. the city will start collecting this additional sales tax on april 1, 2012. it would apply for 10 years. prior to july 1, san francisco had the sales tax rate of 9.5%. the city decreased by 1% when it allowed to expire. san francisco only gets a fraction of this 8.5% sales tax. 7.25% goes to this day, the city receiving about 1%. -- goes to the state, the city receiving about 1%. i'm here with -- thank you for being here. please tell us why you are in

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favor of proposition g. >> i believe the low income children, seniors, firefighters, and police officers are worth half a cent. it will restore funding that was cut from these programs. proposition g " restore $30 million so the children will have a better start in life and a better chance of succeeding in high school and college. >> san francisco has one of the highest sales tax rates. are you concerned that the passage will affect our tourism or adversely affect the economics? >> i am not concerned with that at all. tourism accounts for 40% of the revenue.

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it will still be lower than the sales tax prior to july 1 of this year. >> my understanding is that it will be eliminated if the state raise the sales tax within the next year. in light of that, palace of the city is able to plan, budget, and expect those revenues if it passes. >> that's a good question. it is about local control. they can decide where their tax dollars go, in light of lack of leadership of politicians in sacramento, but we are not counting on that type of leadership occurring any time soon. it would be helpful that the politicians will listen to the need of san franciscans and act accordingly when they enacted the next sales tax. up next, we will be talking with an opponent.

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i'm here with howard, former chairman of the san francisco republican party. he is an opponent of proposition g. thank you for being here. why should voters vote against proposition g? >> in this age of high unemployment and high high unemployment -- of high unemployment, a regressive sales tax will hurt everyone. just to give you an idea, in 2000, the budget was $4.2 billion. in 2010, the 2011 budget is 6.8 $3 billion. that is more than the budget -- $6.83 billion.

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that is more than the budget of any other states. if you look at the way city hall is, there is over 100 commissions, boards, advisory boards, so on and so forth that overlap. they can combine a lot of them and save a lot of money. >> in light of the fact that this tax has already been proposed, it recently expired. how can you see consequences as a result of increasing the sales tax just .5%. >> it takes money away from the people that needed them most. if you are an upper-middle-class person, it won't harm you. but on lower end, it does harm you. that is why we should not pass if.

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>> proponents say that we have to do this to offset the tax at the state level. how do you propose that the city deal with the extraordinary budget cuts that i've come from the state? >> proponent to are mostly public employees and employees of nonprofits will have you believe the sky is falling if they don't get this raised. if they go back to 0 base budgeting, do good budgeting, good management, they have plenty of money to run the city. >> we hope that that was helpful. for information on ballot measures, visit the web site of the league of women voters at sfvotes.org. early voting is available at city hall monday through friday

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8:00 a.m. to 8 5:00 p.m. 8:00 a.m. to 8 5:00 p.m. if you don't vote early, vote on >> hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this evening. my name is sandra. i'm part of the arab heritage month committee. we would like to welcome you to our annual arab heritage month celebration. on behalf of the mayor's

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office and the city of san francisco. >> hi, everyone. thank you for joining. we were technically supposed to start at 5:30, but we are a few minutes early. that's pretty good. we're usually late. thank you for coming. this is the third year we have initiated the cemenevent. this is a very interesting year to be an arab, i would say. many things are happening throughout the arab world. as you may have noticed, there's been a slight change in the flag. we have a new libyan flag. [laughter] [applause] we have four arab countries in the entire arab world where

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people are finally speaking up. for many of us in the san francisco bay community, we've known far too long what's been going on in the arab world. the reason there is a thriving arab-american community in the area is because many of us had to leave our homeland due to political persecution or the fact there's no respect for our dignity. in the san francisco bay area, we came together from all over the arab world to live. thank you, again, for coming. i hope you have enjoyed the program to a lot of people have worked very hard. i want to make a few announcements. we could not have done any of this without our sponsors. before we start, a big thank you to the presenting sponsor, the law firm. a round of applause for them. thank you. [applause]

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also, burgermeister franchise. [applause] and we have ike's place and [inaudible] [applause] we could not have done it without their support. they were very generous. i urge all of you to please support these businesses. without them, we would not have put on this event. >> and now i have the pleasure of introducing the musical ensembles. it is a bay area based ensemble that reaches out to all diverse groups in the bay area. we had the pleasure of having their perform at our first annual celebration of arab heritage month and now we have

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