FAT CATS EAT PIE,

WE FIGHT OVER THE CRUMBS

The SF Supervisors restored many of the devastating health cuts in the Mayor’s budget, but serious cuts remain, particularly to the clinic system.

· Now we are left trying to balance the needs of the homeless versus the needs of the working poor and uninsured.

· Now we are told that if we don’t accept the Mayor’s revenue plan, the whole budget will collapse.

But the Mayor’s revenue plan is based on a sales tax that hits the poor, and a tippy-toe gross receipts tax that spares business and the rich, and says no payroll taxes to incoming drug/biotech companies.

Join with the SF Gray Panthers and SF Neighbor to Neighbor to demand:

SF Supervisors make a plan to fund ALL necessary health and social services.

Make downtown business pay for these services. Consider alternative revenue plans like:

A Property Transfer Tax like Oakland and Berkeley would

raise $70 million per year.

Increase the PGE franchise tax to 5% to raise $27.5 million more per year.

(See the 2004 People’s Budget document for ways to get money from Downtown)

SF Neighbor to Neighbor

3543 18^th Street, Box 34

San Francisco CA 94110

phone/fax: 415-647-2471


SF Gray Panthers

Healthcare Committee

1882 Market St, Rm 203

415-552-8800

graypanther-sf@sbcglobal.net

http://graypantherssf.org

Tuesday July 27, 2004 was the final SF Board of Supervisors meeting on the City's 2004-05 budget.

A dozen SF Gray Panthers and Neighbor to Neighbor activists protested the City's refusal to seriously tax downtown business, forcing serious cuts to the City's health system and other services, even after the Supervisor's restorations of cuts proposed by the Mayor. See the complete list.

Our survival depends on our rejecting the premise that we cannot ask business to pay more taxes than they are willing to volunteer.

This is the leaflet we distributed.