Subsidies not the way
As construction for San Francisco’s new Central Subway drags on, Mayor Ed Lee has faced increasing pressure from merchants who say the interminable dust, noise and street disruption have negatively affected their business. Last week, his office announced a new assistance plan for these businesses — and other businesses that will be affected by future construction all over San Francisco.
The “enhanced con- struction mitigation mea- sures” for businesses affected by the Central Subway’s construction have a $1.4 million price tag and include a new directed assistance program. In addition to business consulting services, affected businesses will apply for subsidies up to $10,000 to implement the consultant’s suggestions.
City officials insist that the mitigation measures are narrowly targeted and based on programs that have already proved themselves successful.
The mayor’s office is caught between a rock and a hard place.
San Francisco is rightly proud of its small businesses, and it’s true that the ones along the subway’s construction corridor have suffered from reduced street traffic and other impacts.
The mayor also has to contend with a restive Board of Supervisors on this issue. Three supervisors from the board’s progressive wing — Aaron Peskin, Norman Yee and Jane Kim — are working on a similar proposal that might have even more business subsidies.
So the mayor’s desire to respond to the businesses’ complaints is understandable. But there are still a few problems with the new plan.
The first is that it sets a rather expensive precedent for the rest of the city.
After the Central Subway will come the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project, and then the Geary Rapid Transit project. That’s a lot of businesses that will be affected by construction. Small businesses affected by private construction will surely want to know why the mitigation program can’t be expanded for their needs. That’s what happens when a city decides to offer subsidies.
The result will be higher costs for construction, which will then be borne by taxpayers, for the foreseeable future. (The mitigation programs will be funded primarily from the construction budget.)
City officials told us that the overall amounts of each individual mitigation program would average out to a very small part of the construction budget, but small line items add up, especially for drawnout projects like the Central Subway. Which brings us to the second problem.
The best thing the city could do for affected businesses would be to complete construction projects as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, they’ve already failed at that goal for the Central Subway.