My question: how much is this just NVIDIA's investments being spent back on NVIDIA products?

I didn't even know NYC had done this. Thank you so much for the links!

Individual emails are particularly powerful right now. But there is a good template email from the Muni Forever campaign that can also be used as a starting place. You can find it here:

muniforever.org/speak-up

You can email the mayor here: [email protected]

Please mention you district and CC your Supervisor. You can find their emails here:
sfbos.org/home

Let them know how you depend on Muni, your perception of service, and where you see more service as being needed.

This is an advocate plan that - presented to the Office of the Mayor today - achieves this end. You can find out more about the advocate plan at sfparcels.org.

But it's not clear the Mayor believes that supporting more Muni service is politically popular. We need to demonstrate that it is.

Estimates vary, but Muni is currently running between 80% and 90% of pre-pandemic service. We're seeing crowding and pass ups again. Muni needs to be able to respond as demand grows. Passing a measure that does not allow for growth is a bad plan. We'd have to go back to the ballot again in 2028.

There is a regional measure to save BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, and other agencies, but it does not generate enough money for Muni, leaving a yearly $150m hole. Mayor Lurie has suggested a local parcel tax to fill the remaining deficit. But filling the hole isn't enough: we need to restore service.

We have to solve for both MTA funding and affordable housing, but if every project has to do everything we just end up doing very little. IMO, we've tried to stuff affordable housing into many places, built relatively little, and effectively made responsibility very diffuse.

I personally think we need a new leg of funding for MTA. Both taxes will likely have sunsets. The parcel will hopefully be renewable, and serve as part of a fourth leg, but something doesn't need to be voted on again and again seems advisable.

But if every project is affordable, and there is no funded and persistent subsidy attached, we are solving for affordable housing and not MTA's long term structural budget problem. Next year will hopefully buy as a decade to work on that, but it's only a decade.

It would be awesome if MOHCD provided the $70m to close the gap. And that's where my frustration goes: the mayor and his responsible agency for not committing to the project. It should be MOHCD that brings forward affordable housing projects on city land.

IMO, the city needs to stop making affordable housing every departments problem. It's a diffuse, inefficient approach. Every effort is new, without expertise in financing. We need a single housing agency, tasked with the creation of social housing, and judged by its success or failure.

Melgar's primary goal to shore up SFMTA long term. Unless the city has a way to consistently provide the same subsidy that for-profit units would, I find it hard to criticize seeking new revenue. MTR's revenue is ~50% real estate. SBB's is ~20% real estate/banking. Muni could use that.

This video is extremely good. You should watch it. Highlights include what is going on in Oakland around Flock, which we should be paying more attention to here in San Francisco.