When Mayor Edwin Lee of San Francisco unveiled his $6.8 billion budget earlier this month to a standing ovation from the city’s supervisors and other officials, it featured something that would make most politicians duck for cover: Tax increases.

To close a $306 million deficit, Mr. Lee proposed raising the sales tax and decreed that property owners should henceforth be responsible for maintaining thousands of street trees and sidewalks previously tended by the city.

He also proposed borrowing $248 million to fix crumbling streets.

With this agenda of more taxes, fewer services and debt financing, Mr. Lee avoided what is really the unspeakable political act here: Layoffs.

In most of the country, tax increases are anathema. Not in San Francisco. The city’s public employee unions are a potent political force; business groups are focused on business taxes; resident taxpayers are disorganized and inconsequential, politically.