San Francisco’s Proposition A, a $400 million bond to improve the city’s public transit system and street safety, was too close to call on Wednesday morning with nearly 100,000 ballots that still need to be reviewed and processed.
The proposition needs two-thirds approval (66.67%) to pass. As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, 63.32% of voters had checked the “yes” box on their ballots and 36.68 checked “no,” the San Francisco Department of Elections said.
The department has processed 127,926 ballots so far and said Wednesday morning that it still needs to process an estimated 95,000 mail ballots as well as 4,000 provisional and conditional ballots.
The department will issue its next batch of results on Thursday at 4 p.m
Mayor London Breed proposed the Muni Reliability and Street Safety Bond in February, and the Board of Supervisors voted in favor of putting it on the June 7 ballot in March. If passed, it would allow the city to issue $400 million in bonds to fund improvements to public transportation infrastructure, equipment, and facilities. It would also pay for improved streets and sidewalks. The bond would be paid for through property taxes at a rate of $10 per $100,000 in assessed value to repay the bonds over up to 30 years.
On Election Day, Jeffrey Tumlin, director of Transportation of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, encouraged residents to vote in favor of the proposition. “Prop A is critical to Muni’s recovery, funding maintenance and efficiency work for our core system,” Tumlin wrote on Twitter.
Opponents of the proposition argued that Muni ridership plummeted during the pandemic and the city should wait to understand its impact on transit before pouring more money into the system. In a paid argument against the proposition in the Voter Information Pamphlet distributed to all registered voters, the San Francisco Taxpayers Association said the Municipal Transportation Agency fails to complete projects on time and on budget, pointing out that the Central Subway project was $353,000,000 over budget and four years behind schedule.
Arguments in support of the bond emphasized the importance of creating a fast and convenient transit system with less waiting time and fewer delays as well as improving pedestrian safety.
“Passing Proposition A makes smart fiscal sense by ensuring access to federal matching funds, helping deliver improvements now at lower cost instead of paying more later,” a paid statement in the voter guide from San Francisco Planning and Urban Research reads.
