Bill Shireman
- Office: Assembly, District 17
- Election Date: June 7, 2022
- Candidate: William Shireman
- Due Date: Monday, April 11, 2022
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the June 7, 2022 primary election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco and have the expertise to enact meaningful policy changes.
We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by Monday, April 11, 2022 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Table of Contents
Vision
GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous San Francisco. We work to propose and pass laws that align incentives of private businesses and individuals to promote shared prosperity for every San Franciscan.
This section of our questionnaire seeks to help us gain an understanding of your alignment with our vision for San Francisco. Note that some of the questions may be outside the scope of the office you're running for.
Short-form questions
Please mark the box that best aligns with your position. You may explain any position if you so desire, but this section is designed to be a quick overview of your governing philosophy and view of the city's problems.
Small Business
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open a new businesses | much | ||
| Run a business in the city | yes | ||
| Hire staff at a living wage | verdad | ||
| Obtain various licenses & permits (liquor, entertainment, etc) | true |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Housing
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expand your home (adding new stories, rooms, decks, etc) | way | ||
| Demolish your home and redevelop it into multifamily housing | yes | ||
| Redevelop things like parking lots and single-story commercial into multifamily housing | still | ||
| Build subsidized Affordable housing | Too complex for | an easy | answer |
| Build market-rate housing - yes but not compared with the barriers to more authentically affordable housing | yes | ||
| Build homeless shelters (including navigation centers and "tiny homes") | yes |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Public Safety
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| File a police report | easy | ||
| Recover a stolen item like a bike or laptop computer | impossible | ||
| Arrest & prosecute criminals | legendarily | ||
| File a domestic violence or rape report | efficient | ||
| Charge & prosecute domestic violence or rape not familiar |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Education
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attend a school of your choosing | yes | ||
| Transport children to school | brutal | ||
| Hire teachers | About right | ||
| Fire teachers | Very tough | ||
| Set public education curriculum | Too rigid |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Budget
| Do you think San Francisco spends too little, too much, or just enough on… | Too little | Just enough | Enough, but badly | Too much |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In none of these cases is money the main barrier to effectiveness… | ||||
| Police and public safety | x | |||
| Street cleanliness | x | |||
| Homeless services | x | |||
| Affordable housing | x | |||
| Parks | x | |||
| Roads | x | |||
| Bus, bike, train, and other public transit infrastructure | x | |||
| Schools | x | |||
| Medical facilities | x | |||
| Drug prevention and treatment | x | |||
| Arts | x |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
In none of these cases is money the main barrier to effectiveness. Even more than most cities, SF is trapped with archaic old pre-digital systems, with interest groups well organized to protect them, and little latitude for politicians or bureaucrats to improve them. They need to be disrupted, firmly but sensibly, by new alliances that help break old alliances that no longer serve us, and build new ones that do.
What are the top three issues facing San Francisco, and what would you like to see change?
Brutal housing costs - the result of unadaptive rigid outdated controls on development and improvement that block individuals, small businesses, and even large corporations from creating more intrinsically affordable housing supply, coupled with ideological blinders that prevent "progressive" and even liberal politicians from acknowledging the counterproductive impacts of rent control and myriad mandates that sound good but do harm.
Criminal injustice - a binary approach to reform that chooses between simplistic ideological extremes, not common sense solutions. Everything from drug laws to school finance to zoning to codes to parking tickets impose a crushing burden on many poor residents and POC. But the solution is not to be lax on petty crime, where young people try on their criminal training wheels, or to defend a "right" for the unlucky and the addicted to live in squalor while we blame "capitalism." We need law enforcement empowered to follow probable cause and arrest and disband the organized criminals who operate freely in the Tenderloin to process stolen goods and distribute drugs every evening. We need to permit better-trained security guards to intervene directly with petty thieves. We need the City held liable in a straightforward manner for smash-and-grabs that happen on city streets, so officials do more than post signs telling people to carry all the stuff they buy cars to carry for them. We need judges to impose short but impactful county jail time to discourage the young and angry from starting criminal careers no matter their wealth or connections. We need to stop either ignoring or arresting addicts, and follow models like Portugal's that allow and support their contributions as workers and taxpayers. Above all, we need to engage the common sense 70%, not extremists and politicians who pander to them, to partner with the city to solve problems.
Poor-performing schools - the consequence of a shortsighted (or maybe just selfish) public employee union business model that treats teachers like they are easily-replaceable office workers in a typing pool and schools like they are factories for manufacturing standardized children. In the digital age, people are able to express much more of their diversity, and children need school choices that capitalize on the many forms of diversity that provide value. STEM education is great, but some students are born to be artists, innovators, moms, dads, musicians, mechanics, counselors, healers, makers, athletes, warriors, and even loungers. Non-corporate charter schools, diverse traditional schools, easy neighborhood school choices, parental teaching co-ops, innovative neighborhood private, at-home, and parochial schools are among the diverse offerings that San Francisco can liberate its citizens to pursue. But it won't happen without a more politically organized center of common sense voters.
Tell us one thing you think needs to change in SF that the average voter wouldn't know about.
The exploitation of well-intentioned progressive ideologues who (mostly) unwittingly drive money and power to status quo business and institutional insiders who manage rather than solve problems like housing costs, criminal injustice, and poorly-performing schools.
Long-form questions
This section is optional.
We know your time is short, so please feel free to respond to the questions below which you think are most relevant to the position you're running for (but you are, of course, welcome to answer all of them). It is not necessary to answer these questions to secure our endorsement, but more context always helps us make better decisions.
Public health
Do you support the creation of safe consumption sites in San Francisco?
Do you support our current laissez-faire approach to open-air drug usage? What would you change?
Education
How should the Board of Education be reformed to bring more accountability and better performance to the Board?
Should the ban on middle school algebra be reversed?
Please.
Should charter schools be allowed to operate in San Francisco?
Yes, yes, yes. But with common sense rules and incentives to prevent the profiteering that has infected private corporate colleges.
Urbanism
Do you support raising the price of parking and driving in San Francisco?
Generally, no. It's an appealing idea, but it's too broad, and would be brutal to the poor well before it's even felt by the rich. Better to
(1) institute London-style incentives to keep traffic down during rush hour
(2) update zoning and codes to bring jobs and housing together in walkable neighborhoods
(3) put artists rather than engineers in charge of making our streets both more beautiful and more adaptive and appealing to different modes of transportation. Red lanes crossing green lanes everywhere? Really?
Do you support banning cars from central downtown areas and certain retail or residential corridors?
Sometimes, yes. We've created beautiful oases of walkability in many neighborhoods, and need more. But we ought not punish drivers for ideological reasons, even to save the planet. More carrots, fewer sticks. IE, free people to be more creative, rather than punishing us for trying to shop here instead of online.
Do you support congestion pricing?
Yes, yes. But be gentle. A small price goes a long way.
Should San Francisco expand its protected bike lane network?
Only if artists are in charge of the design. Today's approach is like brutalist architecture.
Should San Francisco prioritize buses over car traffic by creating more bus-only lanes and directing traffic enforcement to ticket drivers who ignore the restrictions?
No. It's not 1970. Harness digital technology to empower more innovative, entrepreneurial, decentralized solutions. Don't punish drivers sensible enough to use the red lanes to reduce congestion when there are no buses around and traffic is backed up for blocks. We're not cattle.
Should Uber, Lyft, and other ride-share services be banned?
God no. Congestion pricing will trim them back. Thousands of San Franciscans couldn't live here without the earnings from the sharing economy.
Should San Francisco allow more bike share and scooter share companies?
Yes. Let them bloom.
Should San Francisco allow bike and scooter share companies to operate with fewer restrictions on the number of vehicles they offer for rent, and in more places (including inside Golden Gate Park)?
Yes. Measure the benefits, not just the costs.
Do you support keeping JFK Drive and the Great Highway car-free permanently?
This requires thought. Absolutes are dangerous. Exceptions help make rules humane and effective.
Should Muni be free for everyone? If so, what other programs would you take money from in order to fund this change?
Sounds nice, but no. SF has greater transit variety, but we need more. Subsidizing a 1970s model will block innovations that fit the 2020s.
Taxes
Would you repeal Prop 13, if you had the authority to do so? Or, if not repeal it, how would you change it?
Repeal it, in exchange for cutting state sales taxes and some CEQA requirements, to bring funding accountability back to the local community.
Are taxes and fees on small businesses too low, just right, or too high?
Way too high, complex, outdated, and counterproductive. Make it easy and cheap to start and run a small business here.
Should San Francisco pursue any and all avenues to impose parcel taxes that could bypass Prop 13, which keeps property taxes on multi-million dollar property artificially low?
This sounds sensible. Would need to study.
Are sales taxes too low, just right, or too high?
Too high. In general, taxes on income, sales, and profits should be shifted to taxes on pollution and other externalities.
Small Business & Entrepreneurship
What would you change about the process of new business formation?
Create safe havens for small entrepreneurs to start small enterprises, create rental housing, offer packaged foods, establish informal child care co-ops, provide babysitting, offer health care, and perhaps even serve meals to others inside their homes, with zero or gentle rules until they reach $1M annual revenues-with full disclosure to customers that these are "safe haven" businesses that offer opportunities but also require awareness that certain rules don't apply to them.
Should San Francisco welcome all businesses, regardless of size?
Yes, but we should advantage small businesses, because they knit our communities together and create real neighborhoods that big ones can't.
Do you think the government should decide which businesses can and cannot open in San Francisco?
Generally, no. But there are exceptions.
Should all businesses be permitted by-right? If not, which business categories do you think should not be by-right?
This requires study. But hands-off is the best policy for an era where diversity enriches everyone.
Housing & Homelessness
Do you believe that San Francisco has a shortage of homes?
Let me think. Yes.
Do you believe that housing prices are set by supply and demand constraints?
Yes, but SF by nature will always have more demand than supply. Housing diversity and more organic development is preferable to either opening or closing the floodgates.
Should San Francisco upzone? If so, where and how?
Should homeless shelters be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Many developments should be exempt from those-perhaps homeless shelters, but not preferentially.
Should subsidized Affordable housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Same. CEQA needs reform.
Should market rate housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Same. CEQA needs reform.
Policy
Now that we know where you align and differ from our vision for San Francisco, we'd like to get some details about how you intend to use your elected office to achieve your goals.
Why are you running for Assembly?
Because we need new ideas and new alliances to break through the institutional and political barriers that prevent a common sense majority from governing sensibly.
What is your #1 policy goal?
Legalize marriage between progressive and conservative ideas. Build a cross-partisan alliance for housing, crime, education, and environmental policies that advance progressive ideals using conservative, market-based, and systems-based principles that actually work.
Examples: CEQA reform, zoning/code updates, enforcement of petty crimes, reform wide range of laws that disproportionately harm POC, and tax pollution and externalities, not income, sales, and profits,
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?
By uniting common sense progressives, conservatives, small and large business leaders, gig workers, and parents to invade the state capital and city hall-figuratively speaking-and shift the political advantage from divisive extremism to common sense problem-solving.
Will the power of the office of Assemblymember be enough to achieve this goal?
No. While I fully expect to win in a district that is 5% Republican, I actually am running to win in a different way: to test whether and how an appeal to the broad center 70% can shift voters away from extreme polarization and toward common-sense problem-solving.
What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?
See above.
Will the power of the office of Assemblymember be enough to achieve these goals?
No. But running will. It will show how to end-run barriers to change in winnable districts.
What is an existing policy you would like to reform?
See above. Personally, I want a mother-in-law unit in our backyard, and renters in every spare room, without worrying that rent control will give them life-long squatters rights.
What is an "out there" change that you would make to SF / local government / policy, if you could? (For example: adding at-large supervisors, changing how elections work, creating a Bay Area regional government, etc.)
See above: Make SF neighborhoods safe havens for small entrepreneurs to start small enterprises, create rental housing, offer packaged foods, establish informal child care co-ops, provide babysitting, offer health care, and perhaps even serve meals to others inside their homes, with zero or gentle rules until they reach $1M annual revenues-with full disclosure to customers that these are "safe haven" businesses that offer opportunities but also require awareness that certain rules don't apply to them.
Personal
Tell us a bit about yourself!
How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?
Moved here in 1999 because it's one of the most creative cities on the planet, despite the overbearing rules and ideological correctness.
What do you love most about San Francisco?
The corner of Haight and Ashbury, and what it represents.
What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?
The combination of ideological rigidity and archaic rules.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)
I'm a lifelong paradox-a Republican environmentalist, former Nader Raider, and serial social entrepreneur who wrote and mobilized coalitions that passed much of the state's recycling laws and helped change the business of forestry globally. I'm a member of the relatively inactive Bernal Heights merchants association and the relatively out-of-power local Republican Party, chairman of BridgeUSA, on the boards of numerous transpartisan NGOs, and I am the founder of Future 500, and of In This Together, a nascent alliance of common-sense problem-solvers uniting the left, right, capitalists, and activists across the silenced 70% majority in the broad political center. I have a wonderfully patient and loving family that supports me nonetheless.
I ask that you endorse a Republican in a district where 95% of the voters are Democrats or independents. Alternatively, we could work together to make possible what's necessary to GrowSF.
If you see any errors on this page, please let us know at contact@growsf.org.