Protecting Artists & Homeless Families in San Francisco
Yes & Yes on Prop S. It’s not that often that an initiative makes so much sense for San Francisco. We’re simply talking about restoring funding (without raising any taxes) to the city’s arts programs & to our most vulnerable citizens, homeless families.
Prop S has the uninspiring name of “Allocation of Hotel Tax Funds”, for a 3 main reasons. The first reason is that decades ago (1961) San Francisco created a Hotel Tax in order to raise funds for art programs, they knew back then that a big reason why tourists flooded to San Francisco in the first place was because of its incredible museums, public art installations, and live performance venues. But in 2013, City Hall began pilfering and diverting those funds. This measures restores that tax money to what it was meant for.
Funding Specifically going to: Arts Commission would receive 2.9%; the War Memorial would receive 5.8%; the Grants for the Arts Program would receive 7.5% by 2020; the Cultural Equity Endowment Fund would receive 7.5% by 2020; and the Moscone Center would receive up to 50%.
Another reason for the prop’s name is that it allocates money from the tax fund to support homeless families in our city. It goes to the Ending Family Homelessness Fund as well as subsidizes programs for low-income families that are at risk of becoming homeless. It even funds programs that specifically develop and rehabilitate new housing for homeless families. Something this city is in dire need of.
The third reason Prop S has such an ugly, conventional, and uninspiring name (Allocation of Hotel Tax Funds) is because they clearly didn’t ask an artist to name it. If an artist had named the bill it would be called something like: “Prop S: The Awesome Measure that Restores Public Beauty While Helping Vulnerable Families” or something along those lines. The Prop’s boring name alone, spells out why San Francisco needs to protect and support our artists in this city!
We at BrokeAssStuart.com proudly support this proposition. A prop that helps fund our public art institutions, supports our local artists, and guarentees money for homeless families. WITHOUT CREATING ANY NEW TAXES. It’s a big deal, vote YES on S.
To Volunteer to help the Yes on S campaign There are lots of great options:
- Wave signs at a high turnout polling place on Election Day! This kind of visibility will have a huge impact on getting voters to remember to vote Yes on S on a very crowded ballot. Sign-up HERE
- To Help with Phone Banking for Yes on S: Sign Up Here
- Check out a great supporting party at Edinburgh Castle Nov 3rd: Dope Dope Dope + YES on S: GOTV Throw Back Thursday Art Show
And if you are confused (like we were) with the massive amount of ballot measures we have this year, we put together a voting guide for you. It’s a progressive guide to all the initiatives and candidates this year:
THE 2016 BROKE-ASS STUART VOTER GUIDE
Here are just some of the awesome institutions who are voting Yes on Prop S:
Theatre Bay Area
SF Opera
SF Symphony
SF Ballet
ArtSpan
Museum of the African Diaspora
SF Jazz
API Cultural Center
Chinese Cultural Foundation of SF
SoMa Pilipinas, Filipino Cultural Heritage
District
Center for New Music
American Conservatory Theatre
San Francisco Film Society
Queer Cultural Center
Contemporary Jewish Museum
SF MoMA
SOMArts Cultural Center
Root Division
Alonzo King Lines Ballet
AIDS Legal Referral Panel
Coalition on Homelessness
Compass Family Services
Dolores Street Community Services
Hamilton Family Center
Homeless Prenatal Program
Providence Foundation
SRO Families United
South of Market Community Action Network Corporation