Last night's August 8 San Francisco Mayoral Forum at the Castro Theater

It was a typical evening of identifying problems, but providing precious little guidance and insight last night at the Castro Theater where 11 San Francisco mayoral candidates mostly said innocuous things about city governance. The sharpest words were piled on Mayor Edwin Lee for "breaking his word" (John Avalos' phrase) by joining the contest to occupy Room 200 for the next 4 years.

Former Supervisor Tony Hall acquitted himself the most admirably of all by eschewing the mere rhetoric and sour puss disdain for Lee that other candidates distracted the audience with. The city budget faces "a seven billion dollar pension" drag over the next six years Hall apprised the hundreds of attendees (and, so it seemed, he informed his fellow panelists). Though the question of city employee pension reform came up, except for Hall, none sized up the magnitude of promissory debt San Francisco tax payers are liable for. The much acclaimed social programs evincing the spirit of Saint Francis on the part of our city will be gutted, not by mean politicians at city hall, but by the emaciated wallets of San Francisco citizens who are paying the retirement of firemen and city maintenance workers.

"Past mayors, beginning with Art Agnos have lied to city workers," Hall stated. City worker pensions are impossibly robust.

Aside from a pas de deux amongst candidates regarding the central subway, the rest of the evening sported little more substantial than fluffy acknowledgments that better funding for schools, a friendlier business climate, and housing subsidies are needs of the citizenry. In short, there was a dearth of implementation measures advanced for breathy public policy. It's true that City Assessor Phil Ting broached the issue of property tax reform, but his feint in that direction, though welcome, is small potatoes.

Closing the loophole on commercial real estate's avoidance of triggering time of change of ownership reassessment is more an administrative action than a full-bodied discussion of society's core beliefs regarding property rights. Land values are generated by the existence of community, not by the existence (much less the actions) of land owners. Being so created, land values belong to community, not to private parties. Retrieving the value added to land by the provision of public services such as paved streets, BART and MUNI, fire and police protection, museums and governance is logical, ethical, efficient. Retrieving community-generated land values would fund MUNI and BART, fund public schools, pave and maintain streets, reduce the sale price of land (which would make housing more affordable), enable the elimination of the local sales tax, and properly fund city administrative costs which are now bank-rolled by business fees.

Community-generated land values are the elephant in the room that none of the candidates present last night, including the nominally green Terry Baum, could see. It's astonishing how a party calling itself Green can so meaningfully ignore land as a community asset. But to make an analogy, aren't those Recology trucks spiffy and green-washed clean looking?

But back to the one other solid topic of the evening. Mayor Lee, former Supervisor Bevan Dufty, and perhaps another candidate defended the four times over original cost subway linking the new transbay terminal with Chinatown. The other candidates perceive the project as a massive, lousy allocation of funding. They believe it would be better to fund more buses circulating around town more frequently. Never mind asking how to fund such wonders of the world, however.

Now, about that elephant in the room.