Nature Positive Cities Efforts to Advance the Transition San Francisco 2025

2 Assessment of enabling environment2.4 Financing Overview Financing has been identified as one of the most urgent barriers to the nature-positive transition that the city faces. At present, the city relies on a few different revenue sources to sustain its activities: 1 Tax revenue 2 Utility service fees 3 Lease revenue and commercial fees 4 Developer obligations 5 Grant funding A long-standing bond programme used heavily by the Recreation and Parks and Port Departments is a major funding scheme in the city. As part of this scheme, the city issues public debt and then repays investors with property tax income. At present, the solution to sourcing funding is largely ad-hoc and opportunistic.Short-term measures to raise funds include the adaptation of general obligation (GO) bonds (making them applicable for climate offsetting through green decarbonization and for retrofitting houses to be zero-emissions). A parcel tax or a gross-receipts tax could also be used to raise funds. 21 Parcel taxes defined by square footage rather than income, however, have been shown to have an unequal impact on underserved communities. City agencies and not-for-profits apply for and routinely receive grant funding from state and federal sources for on-the-ground ecological restoration, trail construction and urban forestry projects.Budget allocation City agencies work with a range of contractors and grantees to help achieve nature goals, providing grant funding to local non-profits and community organizations, and supplying contracts to local businesses. This is done using a competitive bidding process that includes issuing requests for proposals (RFPs) to award grants and contracts to businesses and organizations for a wide array of programmes, projects and services. San Francisco Environment Department (SFE) submitted a $1.4 million proposal to the State of California Natural Resources Department’s Urban Greening Program to install a wild native plant landscape at a several-acre public housing site in Bayview Hunters Point. However, the programme’s funding for 2024 was cancelled due to state budget shortfalls. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) will unveil a reach of Yosemite Creek in southeast San Francisco. This will be used to divert stormwater from the combined system and provide access to wildlife habitats and nature for residents. 22 San Francisco Public Works was recently awarded $12 million from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Grant. 23 This funding supports Street Tree Nursery’s goal to grow and plant thousands of street trees. 25 Nature Positive: Cities’ Efforts to Advance the Transition