Leon Phat           

• Local funding, local decision-making

The surest way to bring people together is to have them belong to the land they occupy together.

Leon Phat believes the only real proof that you belong to the land is if the land belongs to you.

If the value of land goes to somebody else, chances are you'll treat land like a commodity to be exploited. You'll litter it and tag it; you'll tramp its sidewalks, but leave their maintenance to "its owners and the politicians."

On the other hand, if the rent of land stays with the community, such that there's community fiscal responsibility for construction and maintenance of neighborhood public features, people will come together to speak and advocate for those improvements.

When the land rent you pay goes for either cleaning up your litter or for senior, family and youth programs, land will cease being more a commodity than a home.

To accomplish this aim, Leon Phat will secure legislation that allocates one half of one percent of the property tax to each voter precinct. That will generate thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars for every precinct in the state. You can be sure town hall meetings will be well attended when money--and the parks and traffic calming it can purchase--is in play, to be allocated by precinct citizen's councils.  

Land values are community

The Phatties

&

 The Thinnies

There are no Phatties amongst the other candidates. Oh, some of them are like Peter Barnes of Working Assests fame.  Peter wants to treat pollution and water and the broadcast spectrum like the commons, but leave the land under your house and under downtown alone, except for a little plaque affixed to the TransAmerica Pyramid saying, "Don't do anything naughty with the land below."

Really, in SF you don't say that and expect anything but a good vibration. And that's all you'll get from the Thinnies who pass themselves off as good people doing something good for the small business person and the tenant and poor folk and the immigrants.

Pooh! Only Leon Phat is truly phat at this time!

Only Leon Phat calls for a Land Value Tax that collects all the rent potential of land and puts it to use to pay for schools, streets, public transporta-tion, and more!

If you don't believe gover-nance adds value to land, get rid of government. But if it does add value to land--and Leon believes it can--then collect that value to pay for the streets, fire protection, public transportation, public education, and more that the people of California use.

And set the small business person free from fees and taxes and a dozen nuisances and inhibitions to opening a business.

Leon believes good government begins from the ground up. It starts with local councils funded by a portion of the land value of the voter precinct, and works it way up through all layers of governance--city, county, state and nation--, each funded out of the rent of land.