Your help is needed to influence a promising new local group to be more pro-freedom on issues outside its core area of focus! The SF Bay Area Renters Federation basically exists to counter NIMBYism and allow more housing to be built, but has adopted an endorsement process where the group will be taking positions on unrelated ballot issues as well.
It's free to join the Renters Federation and vote. You can do so by adding yourself to the SFBARF database -- http://www.sfbarf.org/pages/vote.html (if you're not listed in the database, your vote won't be counted) -- and then voting at http://goo.gl/forms/m0Q7htjSdd .
Voting closes Sept 8 2015. You can change your vote as often as you like up until then! Here's how the results are looking so far (see message below for more details):
Prop. A (housing bond) - yes
Prop. B (more paid leave for city employees) - yes
Prop. C (more regulations on grassroots lobbying) - no
Prop. D (Mission Rock development) - yes
Prop. E (public meeting sunshine) - no endorsement
Prop. F (more short-term rental regulations) - no
Prop. G (PG&E energy measure) - no
Prop. H (City Hall energy measure) - yes
Prop. I (Mission housing moratorium) - no
Prop. J (business preservation slush fund) - no
Prop. K (restrictions on use of surplus city lands) - yes
By contrast, here's how I voted and what I recommend from a more libertarian perspective (the measures with a * are where my positions coincide with the group's):
Prop. A (housing bond) - no
Prop. B (more paid leave for city employees) - no
*Prop. C (more regulations on grassroots lobbying) - no
*Prop. D (Mission Rock development) - yes
Prop. E (public meeting sunshine) - yes
*Prop. F (more short-term rental regulations) - no
Prop. G (PG&E energy measure) - yes
Prop. H (City Hall energy measure) - no
*Prop. I (Mission housing moratorium) - no
*Prop. J (business preservation slush fund) - no
Prop. K (restrictions on use of surplus city lands) - no
So as you can see, the results are about 50/50, and we need more libertarians to weigh in! It would be awesome to see SFBARF go "no endorsement" on the housing bond instead of supporting it, but we'll need a good number of votes to make that happen! More easily achievable is tipping Prop. E from "no endorsement" to "yes". Also we need to keep the political patronage slush fund measure Prop. J in the "oppose" column, as the voting had been trending toward "no endorsement" and could still flip back that way.
Please spread the word to pro-freedom voters and let them know to cast their endorsement votes by Tuesday!
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
P.S. - You can also join the SFBARF email list (high volume, lots of discussion, if you're a housing policy wonk you'll be in heaven!) at sfbarentersfed@... .