10.21.2024

Proposed $40 million firehouse sparks debate in Westwood | How Dems lost their Midwestern bastion | San Francisco’s woes a warning for Boston | Wu torpedoes proposed compromise to her controversial tax hike plan | Quick hits |

News tips? Story ideas? Email us at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com

A message tucked in here for Boston? Moderate Dem business tycoon takes to The New York Times to warn that progressives are ruining San Francisco

Progressives have run amuck opposing new plans for new market-rate housing, resulting in soaring prices and rents and ballooning homeless encampments.

Meanwhile, the city budget has spiraled ever upward, even as tens of thousands of residents have fled the city.

There are also new taxes galore on commercial real estate, as well as on executive pay.

Sound familiar? Well, the city in question is not Boston under Mayor Michelle Wu, but rather San Francisco, where years of progressive misrule have turned the city into a “poster child for much that ails the major cities of the West,” writes Michael Moritz, a long-time Silicon Valley investor and city resident, in an op-ed for The New York Times.

“Thousands of homeless people, many addicted to fentanyl, camp on the city’s streets, and few cranes dot its skyline,'“ Moritz writes.

San Francisco street scene

A particular focus of Moritz’s wrath is Aaron Peskin, a NIMBY candidate for mayor who helped make a name for himself fighting to stop various plans to build new housing.

That said, Peskin is apparently not alone in turning the city into a progressive dystopia.

“And then there are the others, a generation of local politicians who have burrowed themselves into the city and used its resources to execute their devotion to a polarizing ideology that embraces a knee-jerk opposition to progress, a deep-rooted antipathy to many forms of law enforcement and a belief that higher taxes are a cure for all evil,” Moritz writes.

A warning for Boston should present trends continue?

Progress but no deal yet on controversial tax hike plan: After appearing to accept a compromise proposal by city business leaders, Boston’s mayor moves the goal posts