San Francisco “Convenience Fees”

This has been sitting in the back of my head for sometime and managed to make its way to the front last night. San Francisco government seems to think that they are doing you a favor by letting you pay your property tax and parking tickets, etc. by charging you an additional fee to so online. In my mind this is garbage as they are saving money while charging you more money for helping them save money.

I am not a big enough political entity to in turn charge them back a convenience fee for the hassle of me filling out a check and dropping it in the mailbox so that they can then spend more money to have several individuals process the check that if paid on the web would all be handled mechanically without a person having to touch any of it.

This is a nonsensical process that needs to stop. I would like to call upon our illustrious Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors to correct this problem. By paying online the electronic payment is much more convenient for not only the payer, but more importantly for the payee. This is a system that makes life easier for our government more so than for the citizens of San Francisco.

Unemployment now is paid onto a debit card which you can go online and set up so that the payment is automatically transferred to your bank account a several days sooner than if they mailed you a check and you deposited it into your bank. This makes sense. San Francisco Government needs to move into the 20th century even though we are now in the 21st century.

San Francisco government needs to progress, not regress.