View Dimmed
A steady decline in contributions, coupled with a precipitous drop in advertising, has placed The Potrero View on the list of media outlets in danger of folding. Months away from celebrating its 55th anniversary, San Francisco’s longest-running neighborhood newspaper, and one of the only print news publications left, may not make it to its 56th. “It costs about $8,000 a month to write, produce, print, and distribute the View,” said publisher Steven Moss, “and that’s with a considerable amount of support from volunteer writers, photographers and editors. If we can’t get our revenues up by our anniversary in August, the occasion might also become our wake.” Those who want to keep the View alive are invited throughout the publication to advertise, subscribe or donate, with limited edition anniversary T-shirts and hats available in gratitude. The View is also open to new ownership as a means to energize the paper, which Moss has shepherded for almost two decades: editor@potreroview.net.
Art Donation
California College of the Arts has raised $45 million from philanthropic sources, half of which came from the world’s 11th-richest man, Nvidia co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang. The board, former trustees, and alumni, among others, gifted $22.5 million. The Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit created in 2007, matched that amount. Huang’s contribution, his first to CCA, is the largest donation in the school’s history, by $5 million. The funds arrived at a crucial time; since the pandemic CCA has experienced declining enrollment and financial setbacks, even as a $123 million campus expansion, funded entirely by donors, opened last fall. CCA President David Howse announced a year ago that the school was facing a $20 million budget gap, following the laying off of 23 staff, 10 percent of its workforce. There were 1,848 students in 2019, 1,295 this school year, with applications for next year continuing a slightly downward trend.
Tax-Free
With almost 40 percent of Downtown San Francisco’s office buildings still vacant, perhaps the City should adopt a policy that helps unleash consumer demand at airports and destination places like Dubai: eliminate all sales tax. A tax-free zone for retailers could be created from Market to Bush streets, Hayes Street to the Bay, to induce traffic into the area. The gambit would reduce municipal revenues in the short term but could jumpstart Downtown’s beating heart. Such a strategy is likely to achieve more than the narrowly targeted Twitter tax break adopted in 2011, now expired, which had mixed success. Sales tax could be phased back in after three to five years, once the area, as measured by falling vacancy rates, recovers.