Governance
We believe: The public sector can and should serve the collective good.
• Improve government’s capacity to provide services and address challenges effectively.
• Support voter engagement.
Our Goals
SPUR Report
Designed to Serve
San Francisco’s governance structure has evolved to distribute authority and maximize oversight. As a result, policies don’t always meet the needs of the people they intend to serve. SPUR outlines how San Francisco can choose to design a better system.
SPUR Voter Guide
The SPUR Voter Guide
The SPUR Voter Guide helps voters understand the issues they will face in the voting booth. We focus on outcomes, not ideology, providing objective analysis on which measures will deliver real solutions.
SPUR Report
Making Government Work
Many of the challenges Oakland faces are worsened by its unusual government structure, which makes it harder for the mayor and other officials to do their jobs well. SPUR explores how the city can adapt its governance structure to better serve Oaklanders.
Updates and Events
SPUR's 2011 Voter Guide Now Online
News /
Absentee ballots will start to arrive this week, which means it's time for the annual SPUR Voter Guide, our in-depth analysis of all local San Francisco ballot propositions. With only eight measures on the docket, this is a short ballot for our fine city — but it's certainly not short on substance. Voters will weigh in on dueling pension reform plans, bonds for schools and…
How to Solve San Francisco’s Parks Funding Crisis
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Our latest SPUR Report, Seeking Green, takes a hard look at the many factors that make funding San Francisco’s parks so difficult: diminishing public funds, political forces that prevent raising new revenues and, more recently, a recession of historic proportions. How can the Recreation and Parks Department navigate these competing pressures to maintain services and care for our parks? Our task force found 11 ways to save San Francisco’s parks, from stabilizing public financing to strengthening philanthropy to expanding revenue opportunities.
Seeking Green
SPUR Report
Image courtesy Flickr user ShawnaScottPhoto San Francisco’s parks are among the city’s most treasured assets — but they’re also in serious financial trouble. The city’s Recreation and Parks Department (RPD) has lost more than 25 percent of its General Fund revenue in just five years. Meanwhile, labor costs have gone up 34 percent. This mix of factors has forced the department to make dramatic cuts…
Election 2011: How Did SF’s Pension Problem Get This Bad?
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With two different pension-reform measures on the upcoming ballot, it’s no secret that pension reform will have a significant impact on the November election. But how did the city get to the point of having a problem of this magnitude? Clearly the recession has played a big part, but what about the many negotiated increases in benefits over the course of the last decade? While…
Hackathon! Coders and Civil Servants Unite to Fix SF
News /
A grown man napping on his laptop case. Daily visits from SF mayoral candidates. Keynote addresses from the Wigg Party, MIT's SENSEable Cities Lab, the Rebar Group, and the San Francisco Department of the Environment. Cold pizza after midnight. More than a hundred adults sitting around tables on the 5th floor of a Mid-Market office building on a Friday night. This is what ground zero of the…