Mayor Daniel Lurie is throwing his weight behind a plan to save the financially destitute San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency via a November 2026 ballot measure that would keep bus services running with a new parcel tax on properties.
“We believe that a parcel tax is the best mechanism to generate the level of funding needed to support Muni service and that it can be structured in a way that is fair and affordable,” Lurie wrote to SFMTA Director Julie Kirschbaum in a letter exclusively obtained by The Standard. “We can — and we must — generate the funding necessary to avoid devastating Muni service cuts.”
Lurie asked Kirschbaum to “engage with critical partners” to shape the tax strategy. Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and Supervisor Myrna Melgar cosigned the letter, signaling strong support for the measure, which the board or mayor could place on the ballot.
Local officials for months have warned that a financially healthy Muni system is vital to downtown’s recovery, which hinges on easy access to office buildings, shopping centers, and restaurants. Muni ridership plummeted during the pandemic, resulting in a deficit of $320 million — an amount expected to grow to as much as $434 million in 2030.
The fiscal crisis spurred SFMTA to curtail Muni routes this year in an effort to save $7 million. On Tuesday, the agency, which has roughly 6,200 workers, told its board it saved more money by eliminating roughly 500 staff vacancies. The agency is nipping and tucking wherever possible, from halving staff travel reimbursements to cutting $6 million in information technology contracts, budget documents show.
Matters are so bad, Muni recently limited how often drivers can take bathroom breaks, in a bid to save $1 million annually.
Kirschbaum told the SFMTA board Tuesday the slashed positions won’t harm transit service.
“Given our current budget situation, we cannot afford to improve on what we’re already doing,” Kirschbaum said. “But we do want to acknowledge the positions we have kept have really been focused on our core service and on the customer experience.”
It’s unclear how much revenue for Muni a parcel tax would generate, in part because such taxes vary widely. The 2012 parcel tax funding City College facilities improvements imposed a $99 annual fee on property owners, while the 2020 tax to increase teacher salaries costs $325 annually per parcel.
A Muni Funding Working Group report published in July estimated that a local parcel tax could bring in $85 million annually.
Lurie noted the working group’s support in his letter as one reason to favor putting the measure on the ballot. But the group rated other funding strategies higher; among them, hiring more parking enforcement officers to boost ticketing, charging for parking on Sundays, extending parking meter hours to 10 p.m., and issuing a gross receipts tax on rideshare companies like Lyft and Waymo.
Even with voter approval, a parcel tax alone isn’t expected to save Muni.
State lawmakers are simultaneously pushing legislation to put a ballot measure before Bay Area voters in the November 2026 election that would impose a temporary retail sales tax to shore up regional transit systems. That means voters would consider approving two new taxes for transit on one ballot, Kirschbaum said. In his letter, Lurie said SFMTA must find additional cost-saving measures.
The Muni Funding Working Group floated more dire steps the agency could take to cut costs: reducing bus route frequency as much as 50%, suspending less popular routes, and eliminating or reducing free Muni for youth and seniors.
One potential cut shows just how drastic things could get: The working group discussed nixing San Francisco’s beloved cable cars. No one ever said climbing halfway to the stars was cheap.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the Free City College tax of 2016, instead of the City College facilities improvement tax of 2012.