SF finds revenue under every rock

The cost of living and doing business in San Francisco increased this year in hundreds of little ways.

Though they didn’t garner as much attention as the city’s massive budget cuts, a series of new and increased fees emerged from the Board of Supervisors from late May to early July. The goal was to generate revenue beyond taxes, reducing city departments’ reliance on an anemic general fund.

The following list was compiled from records from the board. It includes all new and increased fees introduced with the 2010-11 fiscal year. The supervisors enacted more than 400 fee hikes, some for rare activities with small constituencies, such as hosting a masked ball or shooting off a cannon. (Seriously.)

If you are a patient at San Francisco General Hospital or have filed for a permit to host bingo games, you have helped the city zero out the massive $483 million budget deficit it faced for the 2010-11 fiscal year. Even the fee for adopting pets from Animal Care and Control swelled.

On the bright side, the fee for adopting hoofed animals decreased — to $15 from $25 last fiscal year, marking one of only a handful of fee decreases — a square deal indeed for all you urban equestrians.

Few of the fees adopted by the Board of Supervisors came with projections for the expected revenue gains, with a few exceptions: botanical garden tickets, Board of Appeals surcharges and Coit Tower elevator fees. Those are expected to produce nearly $540,000 through next summer.

Mayor Gavin Newsom sponsored all of the new fees and fee hikes. The legislation text explains that the old fees did not cover the costs of providing the corresponding services and administrative work.

To ensure that fees continue to meet departments’ costs in future years, the supervisors gave the city controller the authority to adjust them without further action by the supervisors. (In case you were wondering, the passage on Nov. 2 of California’s Proposition 26 — which will require two-thirds legislative approval for some state and local fees — won’t affect the city’s ability to adjust the fees in this list.)