How Can You Tell You Live in a Blue City? When They Consider Taxing Your Driveway

There are hard times and then, I guess, there are times when times are SO hard, damn near any solution sounds plausible if it has hard dollars signs attached to it.

I guess that’s what’s happening in San Francisco, a city that has dug itself a good-sized financial hole.

The new mayor, Dan Lurie, just submitted his 2025-26 budget, which begins on July 1, and I have to admit he inherited a whopper of a deficit from former mayor London Breed.

Cratered. Decimated. Tanked. Whatever word you use, the reality is the same. 

San Francisco’s budget is screwed.

The deficit is an eye-watering $782 million out of a budget of $15.9 billion. Now, Mayor Daniel Lurie has the unenviable task of digging San Francisco out of that hole by slashing spending. 

Lurie plans to balance critical priorities like public safety while gutting the budgets of other city departments. Residents could see service cuts, and 1,000 city positions might be eliminated. More than 100 people may be laid off. 

It’s not going to be pretty. The Board of Supervisors and the mayor’s office are mandated to agree on a balanced budget by the end of July.

Then again, he campaigned for the job knowing what he was going into, and has a reputation as a savvy businessman, so perhaps he’ll be able to make some headway on it.

They’re going through all the usual hoops one sees in these circumstances – hiring freezes, winnowing down the workforce through attrition, etc. Lurie is also slashing contracts the city has with non-profits that cater to the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the special interest and victim-class groups San Francisco is so fond of. That will probably cause some sincere heartburn, as he’s trying to shift funds back into services like the cops and emergency responders.

While his budget doesn’t specifically mention tax raises, he is ‘restructuring’ the city finances, and no one is yet sure exactly what that means because there hasn’t been a blueprint out of the mayor’s office.

Extra money coming in would be instantly put to use, and departments at City Hall have apparently been brainstorming around the clock for sources of additional revenue.

Reports indicate they landed on one a bit ago, and cooler heads did prevail, but not before eager city beavers ran the numbers because it looked like they’d found themselves a sure thing.

You’re not supposed to be driving a car anyway. You’re supposed to be taking ‘The Muni.‘ In other words, instead of wheeling about town in an ICE vehicle or even that despised Tesla, one should be availing oneself of the different transportation options – trains, buses, street to cable car, and mini-buses – offered by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).

So it made perfect sense in a virtue signaling, climate cult crazed city, they would tax driveways because, hey!

You shouldn’t have a driveway for a private vehicle to begin with.

And let’s not call it a ‘driveway.’ Let’s call it ‘private car infrastructure.’

It sounds so much more taxable. 

Like a LUXURY item.

The pitch was simple: Charge any property owner with a driveway $100 a year. Spend the money on Muni bus and rail service.

It originated from the Muni Funding Working Group, a sprawling task force formed to brainstorm solutions for a projected $322 million deficit. Though highly imaginative and almost certainly controversial, the driveway fee could have been a reliable source of revenue: Public records reviewed by the Chronicle estimate that billing people for driveways and “curb cuts” — the term of art for a ramp carved into a sidewalk — would net $15.4 million in the first year, and $16.5 million every year thereafter.

“This is a more equitable way to use public space,” said Luke Bornheimer, executive director of Streets Forward, a nonprofit that promotes cycling, walking and transit. Under the current system, Bornheimer said, San Francisco essentially subsidizes car owners — and building owners — by allowing them a free strip of the public right-of-way in the form of a sloped curb.

See how rabid socialists and progressives rationalize things?

You didn’t build that public curb your driveway is formed into and over. 

TAX IT

And your driveway disturbs the pristine beauty of a public San Francisco city sidewalk.

TAX IT

The city is hotly denying that any of this tax for the privilege of already owning your driveway is ‘on the table’ right now for implementation. But the sharp penciled financial wizards at the Muni Funding Working Group had bitten on the idea hard enough that they ran all the numbers as if it were going to be a program.

I mean, they even estimated how many owners of driveways would go along with being soaked.

…San Francisco “likely has more private driveway curb cuts than any other city of its size and density, since most east coast cities of similar density make more use of back alleys for trash and car access,” representatives of the working group wrote in their summary.

“These curb cuts are essentially permanent privatization of public space,” the summary continued. “Charging an annual fee to the owners of curb cuts would put a fair price on this privatization of public space, encourage owners whose curb cuts no longer lead to active driveways to return those curb cuts to the public, and generate significant revenue for the agency.”

An economic analysis from the city estimated that San Francisco has 196,000 curb cuts that could generate $19.6 million annually at a rate of $100 apiece, though officials would have to subtract roughly $3 million for administration and staffing, including collections. In the end, they predicted that roughly 90% of landlords would pay.

Kamala’s old boyfriend Willie Brown had a good, long, ’20-second laugh’ when he heard about the group’s proposal, as did most other saner folks, once they got over their initial YGTBFKM reaction.

There are loons in San Fran, and then there are foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics.

“I have data that supports people that walk, bike, and take transportation spend more money than people who use cars”

Luke, can you provide the data?@LukeBornheimer pic.twitter.com/2xavqHsElS

— Lou B (@LuigiCPA) April 28, 2024

Supposedly, the driveway tax has faded quietly away, filed with the rest of the brainstorming the desperate Muni Working Group did.

But I’d be wary if I lived there. Mothra and Godzilla always come back.

And the wonks around the table at Muni already have all the figures run.

It wouldn’t take anything for them to kick taxing to the curb.