A group calling itself Coalition for an Affordable City has been making the rounds with local merchants and merchant organizations over the past weeks.
Not to advocate renters' rights, but to establish opposition to the city's proposed tax on sugared drinks, which voters will respond to this November.
The tax is designed by Supervisors Weiner and Mar, and would add a cost of 2 cents per ounce to most sweetened, bottled drinks in the city. The added cost would be assessed at the level of the distributor, not the retailer, but would be passed on to the consumer just the same. While support for the legislation is slow to build on a large scale, opposition is already heavily funded and building. Coalition for an Affordable City is the San Francisco arm of a large national anti-food tax lobbying power backed by the American Beverage Association, the history of whose opposition to soda taxes (in New York City, and the city of Richmond, CA, for example) is well documented (here, here and here). While the taxes are designed to offset the external health costs of feeding a city heavily sugared drinks, other, more obvious opposition to the proposed legislation is based on the view that it signals an unnecessary government intrusion on private decision making. The Haight Ashbury Merchants Association has yet to decide whether to take a position on the future ballot initiative. At the time of this posting, the local representative for Coalition for an Affordable City was instructed not to respond to media questions, and their media contact had not responded to inquiry.
The tax is designed by Supervisors Weiner and Mar, and would add a cost of 2 cents per ounce to most sweetened, bottled drinks in the city. The added cost would be assessed at the level of the distributor, not the retailer, but would be passed on to the consumer just the same. While support for the legislation is slow to build on a large scale, opposition is already heavily funded and building. Coalition for an Affordable City is the San Francisco arm of a large national anti-food tax lobbying power backed by the American Beverage Association, the history of whose opposition to soda taxes (in New York City, and the city of Richmond, CA, for example) is well documented (here, here and here). While the taxes are designed to offset the external health costs of feeding a city heavily sugared drinks, other, more obvious opposition to the proposed legislation is based on the view that it signals an unnecessary government intrusion on private decision making. The Haight Ashbury Merchants Association has yet to decide whether to take a position on the future ballot initiative. At the time of this posting, the local representative for Coalition for an Affordable City was instructed not to respond to media questions, and their media contact had not responded to inquiry.
