Supervisor Jake McGoldrick: Childcare, Clean Streets Proposals

Childcare and Other Developer Fees
The SF Board of Supervisors recently passed legislation co-sponsored by my office and that of Supervisor Aaron Peskin that reforms the process of tracking and collecting developer fees. These fees support childcare facilities, affordable housing, parks and Muni.

The legislation was the culmination of an investigation and committee hearings by my office that identified significant problems with tracking and collecting such fees. I am happy that we were able to reform the process by centralizing collections in the treasurer's office and by requiring departments responsible for administering the fees to be informed about amounts owed. This will ensure that the fees are actually collected and that childcare facilities and affordable housing actually are built with the proceeds.

But our work is not done. We also need to reform some of the fees themselves. For example, if the childcare fee is to fulfill its purpose of satisfying the demand for childcare created by commercial development, then the fee must be expanded to cover other land uses that generate such demand, such as retail and entertainment. It also should include developments outside of the downtown core.

Of course, state law now requires that any expansion of developer fees must be supported by studies showing that the developments to which it is applied actually create demand for childcare. Fortunately, the fee legislation just passed by the SF Board of Supervisors also provides that a small portion of fees collected can be used to fund studies demonstrating such connections. This will allow us to request that the SF Department of Children, Youth and Families appropriate money for such a study in this year's budget so that future developments of many kinds also help fund much needed childcare facilities.

Clean Streets, Clean Government
I have introduced a charter amendment at the SF Board of Supervisors for consideration on this November's ballot. The proposal would make the controller the City Services Auditor, responsible for monitoring the level and effectiveness of services provided by City government to the public.

The controller would be further charged with developing performance and cost benchmarks for all city departments and with conducting comparisons of the cost and performance of San Francisco city government with other cities, counties and public agencies performing similar functions. 

In addition, the controller would review the cleanliness and condition of streets and sidewalks through an annual performance audit of the city's street, sidewalk and public park maintenance and cleaning operations. All city agencies engaged in such maintenance would have to establish regular maintenance schedules for streets, sidewalks, parks and facilities and provide the public with information on how they are meeting those schedules. The controller also would review whether, and how, city departments prepared customer service plans as required under the city's charter.

Another part of the proposal seeks to ensure clean government. Under these provisions, the controller would oversee the City's contracting procedures, including developing model criteria and terms for requests for proposals (RFPs), auditing compliance with City contracting rules and procedures and, where appropriate, investigating cases of alleged abuse or conflict of interest.

Moreover, the controller would investigate citizen complaints concerning the quality and delivery of government services, wasteful and inefficient city government practices, misuse of city government funds and improper activities by city government officers and employees. The controller also would maintain and publicize a whistleblower and citizen complaint hotline telephone number and website.

To ensure that these efforts would be funded, the City would set aside a small portion of the city's overall budget for a Controller's Audit Fund, to be used exclusively to implement the proposal. Money from the audit fund could not be used to replace existing funding for non-audit related functions of the controller's office. Such guaranteed funding would lessen the problem of political pressures being brought to bear that could blunt audit findings.

Since the first month I came into office, I have sought to beef up our audit and oversight functions to bring greater efficiency to our city departments. In this time of budget crisis, our financial troubles provide a window of opportunity to bring greater fiscal accountability to local government. I hope I will have your support in these endeavors.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick represents District 1.