Jubilant in blue and gold, downtown workers made the post-work dash to bars or home to watch Game 1 of the NBA finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers.
As everyone else buzzed by along Market Street, one man stood still.
He held a handwritten sign and a paper cup, hoping someone would drop in a little spare change, maybe hand him a hot meal.
For thousands of San Francisco homeless people, the city’s emergency shelter wait list has provided a temporary reprieve from living on the streets. But the wait time for a bed has hit a record high, as growing demand outstrips availability, city records show…
The overall economic impact of obesity and diabetes in San Francisco may be close to $1 billion a year, city researchers have found. But Proposition V, which proposes to tax distributors of sugary drinks, dramatically understates the costs of those diseases to the city and its residents.
A December 2013 report by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst calculated that the annual costs of medical care, insurance and lost productivity due to diabetes and obesity — from all causes — range from $749 million to $945 million.
Furthermore, a Public Press review of city documents and related public health studies found that the costs specifically linked to sweetened drinks, when adding up the combined direct and indirect costs of these diseases, range from $48 million to nearly $62 million every year. And because of inflation and expanded health insurance costs, all of these figures are likely underestimates.
A Mexican tax on sugary beverages has reduced consumption since 2014, and as a result is projected to help cut rates of diabetes, improve overall health and bring other indirect cost savings, according to a study published Tuesday.
The findings come a week before San Francisco voters decide whether to impose a one-cent-per-ounce tax on distributors of sugar-sweetened beverages in a bid to reduce diabetes and obesity, particularly among children and minority communities…
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chuck “C.W.” Nevius is imploring tech companies “to get into politics, particularly grassroots politics in cities like Oakland and San Francisco.”
“They’re famously disconnected from City Hall issues and politicians,” he writes (pay wall). “Millennial techies don’t vote. Startups are more concerned with funding than civics. Local politics is background noise to them.”
As much as Nevius tries to distinguish between everyday, disinterested “techies” and their behemoth employers, he conflates the two and misses a huge point: the tech industry is, and has been, very interested in and deeply involved with local politics, which the Public Press has reported on in a special report on the influence of money in San Francisco elections…
We Found a $20 Million Error in a City Database.
Two official city websites offer troves of campaign finance data for San Francisco elections: SF OpenData (data.sfgov.org) and the Ethics Commission (sfethics.org).
But all that information is useful only if you know how to sort through it. And if you know it was entered correctly…
