The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to place a $400 million bond measure on the June ballot to fund improvements to the city’s public safety infrastructure.
The measure, which needs to be approved by two-thirds of city voters, would finance the relocation of the medical examiner’s office and multiple Police Department units away from the seismically unsafe Hall of Justice, as well as fund upgrades to dozens of police and fire stations.
The board’s vote on the measure came after Supervisor Scott Wiener reached an agreement with the mayor’s office and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on funding to improve the city’s nearly 25,000 streetlights.
Wiener last week had sought to include the streetlight improvements in the ballot measure before reaching the agreement, which will provide $9 million over two years—an 18-fold increase over the current funding for streetlights.
“For too many years, City Hall has allowed our streetlights to deteriorate and accumulate huge deferred maintenance,” Wiener said in a statement. “Today’s agreement is both a down payment on our streetlights’ capital needs and a path forward in assessing and addressing the system’s overall needs.”
The ballot measure comes after voters in June 2010 approved a previous bond to build a new Public Safety Building in Mission Bay and fund other public safety office upgrades.
The supervisors will have to vote again at their next meeting to finalize putting the June measure on the ballot.
More information about the bond measure and San Francisco’s earthquake safety upgrades can be found online at http://www.sfearthquakesafety.org.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
