On Wednesday, Uptown Almanac's Kevin Montgomery corralled arguments against the city's so-called Charge for Harm, a mitigation fee for costs San Francisco racks up in the care and drunk-tanking of alcohol abusers.
Wednesday was the day S.F.'s Budget and Finance Committee met to discuss the fee, which would attach $0.076 to every ounce of alcohol guzzled in the city and county ― supporters reckon a 5- to 10-cent retail add-on to every drink.
Guys like Ron Silberstein of Thirsty Bear and Guy Carson of Café Du Nord call bullshit on that estimate, predicting, instead, that small business owners will just have to suck up the fee, yet another narrowing of an already weak revenue stream.
Montgomery links to some badly outlined iStock photo-appeal mounted by the California Alliance for Hospitality Jobs, which blasts the fee as a bar and restaurant job killer. The idea being that burdened owners would have to cut payrolls, and thrifty drinkers would find motivation to check out, say, a bit of bargain nightlife in Oakland's Uptown.
In the face of proposals to reduce, slightly, that $0.076 fee, final reckoning on the Charge for Harm was held over till Monday. If there's heavy drinking to be done, you might want to load up this weekend.
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