A thread on San Francisco’s Prop C. As a citizen of SF since 1999, and likely for the rest of my life, my primary objective is to help set our newly elected Mayor @LondonBreed up for success. That means addressing homelessness long-term in a scalable way, with accountability.
While I understand an influx of cash is attractive, the mayor has said she doesn’t have the accountability or controls she needs to manage it well. Ultimately, she is the only one on the hook to make this work. If she doesn’t feel she can, we need to listen and understand why.
I‘d love to see a meeting between the mayor and the @OurHomeSF (Yes on C) folks to work through the disconnect. We all have the same goals, but it doesn’t seem we’re talking enough directly. I’ve been attempting to put this together. And I just received word this is in the works!
I’ll also posit that we do this discussion a disservice when we only look on the surface and make it us vs. them. I find that distracting and diminishing and it’s all too common in today’s discourse. Let’s instead focus on the real issue, the policy, and whether it will work.
I admit that while I come at this as a citizen first, there’s an unfairness I see in my role of CEO of Square (this does not apply to Twitter). Companies like Square and Stripe would be taxed at a significantly larger total contribution than much larger companies like Salesforce.
Hypothetically Square could pay over $20m more in 2019, while Salesforce (4x bigger than Sq) pays less than $10m. Taxes would grow at rates multiple times our adj. revenue, which no company can sustain. Not an issue for Salesforce/Twitter, but unfair to Sq and fintech startups.
We’re happy to pay our taxes. We just want to be treated fairly with respect to our peer companies, many of whom are 2-10x larger than us. Otherwise we don’t know how to practically grow in the city. That’s heartbreaking for us as we love SF and want to continue to help build it.
The Square/Stripe issue isn’t something the Mayor or Prop C folks can fix directly. I thought it was important to get our considerations out on the table though, so people understand our corporate hesitation and considerations (separate from my personal ones) around this measure.
I hope this helps add some color to the conversation. I’d love to see the Mayor get the funds and support she needs to do her job. And I’m committed to helping do just that. We need to have long term solutions in place, not quick acts to make us feel good for one moment in time.
P.S. I appreciate I could be wrong about this. If I am, I’ll admit it, and work to fix. I’m committed to addressing this crisis in our city, and mindful of the urgency required. Here’s the mayor’s thoughts on the matter: medium.com/@LondonBreed/a…
