Proposition E would create a task force to assess San Francisco’s many commissions and public bodies and recommend whether any should be altered or eliminated to improve local governance.

The task force’s powers would be more than advisory for certain types of commissions, which it could directly change or dissolve without approval from lawmakers.

Proposition E is in direct opposition with Proposition D, which would slash the number of city commissions to no more than 65, eliminate their oversight function and give the mayor hiring and firing authority over department heads.

Listen to a summary of what this ballot measure would do.

Support

Board of Supervisors president and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin wrote Proposition E. The measure is needed to block Proposition D, which “takes a meat ax to our government,” he says in the official proponent argument.

“It eliminates without a cost-benefit analysis essential and effective commissions,” he said. “It removes citizen oversight over police conduct policies such as the use of deadly force … undermining transparency and accountability and creating a breeding ground for abuse and corruption.” 

Four other members of the Board of Supervisors support Proposition E, as does Assemblymember Phil Ting. Some retired politicians are also backing it, like former Mayor Art Agnos, California Sen. Mark Leno and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano. Local and political groups in favor of the measure include the San Francisco Labor Council, Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, United Educators of San Francisco and the San Francisco Tenants Union.

Opposition

Proposition E is a “‘poison pill’ to defeat Proposition D, so that nothing meaningful gets done,” says Larry Marso, a technology executive, in the official opponent argument. “San Francisco continues to suffocate in bureaucracy, with over 100 commissions that overlap and waste resources.” 

Other opponents of Proposition E include the San Francisco Democratic Party, TogetherSF Action, RescueSF, Stand with Asian Americans and others.  

What it would do

If passed, Proposition E would first require the Budget & Legislative Analyst, which generally conducts studies to aid lawmakers’ decision-making, to prepare a report on how much public money each of the city’s approximately 130 commissions spends in carrying out its business — and how much money would be saved if each were eliminated or consolidated into other public bodies.

Proposition E would also create a Commission Streamlining Task Force that would have until Feb. 1, 2026, to review the Budget & Legislative Analyst’s report and decide which commissions should change, merge or be eliminated in order to improve and streamline the administration of city government.

The task force could also recommend no changes to city commissions.

Some of the city’s many commissions were created by ballot measures that voters approved; others resulted from conventional legislation, through the Board of Supervisors. To alter, combine or dissolve commissions, the task force would need to engage in the same processes that created them.

That means that if the task force wanted to affect commissions created through ballot measures, its proposed changes would require voter approval.

The task force would have greater power to affect commissions that had been legislated into existence. It could propose any changes via legislation, which would automatically go into effect within 90 days unless a supermajority of the Board of Supervisors intervened.

The five-member task force would consist of:

• The city administrator or their representative;
• The city controller or their representative;
• The city attorney or their representative;
• An appointee of the president of the Board of Supervisors, representing public sector unions;
• An appointee of the mayor with expertise in government transparency and accountability.

Cost

Implementing Proposition E “would have a minimal impact on the cost of government,” according to an analysis by San Francisco Controller Greg Wagner.

Wagner did not provide exact costs, likely because Proposition E’s impacts cannot be known before the task force forms and makes its recommendations. Eliminating commissions would probably save the city money, he said.

The costs associated with the Commission Streamlining Task Force also are unclear. While three of its five members would be full-time city officials or employees, the remaining two might be volunteers. In other public bodies, volunteers can receive stipends and health care benefits.

Campaign finance

As of Oct. 7, a campaign committee opposing Proposition D — and supporting other measures, including Proposition E — had raised $27,404.

Campaign committees opposing Proposition E and supporting Proposition D had raised more than $8.7 million.

Votes needed to pass

Proposition E requires a simple majority of “yes” votes to pass, as does Proposition D. If both measures pass, the one to get more votes will prevail.

Click here to return to our full voter guide.

The post Proposition E — Create Task Force to Consider Culling Commissions appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition D would halve the number of City Hall commissions and end their oversight of government departments. The mayor would gain greater power to appoint commissioners, and full control over hiring and firing department heads. 

Proposition D would dramatically alter governance in San Francisco. It would remake rules, approved by voters nearly 30 years ago, about the mayor and lawmakers’ shared control over who sits on public bodies.

Listen to a summary of what this ballot measure would do.

Support

By transferring power from commissioners to elected politicians, Proposition D would make government more directly accountable to voters, according to TogetherSF Action, the political advocacy group that sponsored the measure and is funded by billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who also owns The San Francisco Standard news outlet. Proposition D’s many mandates would also make government more efficient, said Kanishka Cheng, chief executive officer of TogetherSF Action.

The “redundant, wasteful, and ineffective” commission system is a major reason that local government has “failed to solve the challenges San Francisco faces,” Cheng says in the official proponent argument for the measure. Despite there being five commissions related to homelessness and six related to public health, the city’s homelessness and fentanyl crises have persisted, she says.

The San Francisco Democratic Party, one of the city’s most powerful political groups, also backs Proposition D — a move that brings funding for political ads, mailers and volunteers. The endorsement comes after party leadership shifted in March away from the political left and toward the center. Other supporters include local groups RescueSF, Stand with Asian Americans, Stop Crime SF Action, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.  

Supporters have heavily funded the campaign.

Opposition

The measure’s main opponent is Aaron Peskin, president of the Board of Supervisors and a mayoral candidate. Proposition D would disband more than 20 voter-approved commissions, “undermining key services” and drawing the governance process out of the public’s view and “back behind closed doors,” he says in his official opposition argument. 

“Prop D will only lead to more corruption by taking away checks and balances, transparency, and civic engagement,” Peskin said in a September press release. 

Other opponents include the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, United Educators of San Francisco, San Francisco Labor Council, Small Business Forward and the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods.

Peskin is sponsoring Proposition E, a competing measure that would create a task force to consider changes to the city’s commission system.

Measure would slash commissions

San Francisco City Hall has about 130 commissions and similar government bodies.

If voters pass Proposition D, it will schedule the vast majority of commissions for automatic elimination, though the Board of Supervisors could intervene to retain some of them.

The measure would initially preserve the 20 commissions that oversee major city functions, such as the Police Commission, Fire Commission and Public Utilities Commission. Within nine months of the measure’s passage, a task force would make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors about other commissions to keep as well. The board would have until spring 2026 to save or restructure up to 45 commissions, to preserve a total of 65, at which point any others would dissolve.

Budget savings

Some of the city’s roughly 1,200 commissioners receive stipends — the rest are unpaid volunteers — and all commissioners are offered access to health insurance through the city.

Proposition D would eliminate stipends and health coverage. That would save the city between $350,000 and $630,000 annually. These changes might affect who could afford to serve on commissions.

The city would no longer pay for support staff for dissolved commissions.

Executive power would increase

Proposition D would give the mayor greater control over commission makeup. Currently, the mayor appoints most commissioners; the Board of Supervisors appoints the rest and may reject the mayor’s picks. Under Proposition D, the mayor would appoint two-thirds of commissioners and the board could not reject them.

The mayor would also gain control over who runs city departments.

Today, when appointing department heads, the mayor chooses from among candidates whom commissions recommend. And often, the mayor may remove appointees only following their misconduct and with commission approval. Proposition D would strip the commissions of those powers and let the mayor hire and fire department heads at will; the commissions could only advise on those decisions.

Measure D would remove the Police Commission’s authority to make rules about officer conduct, and give that power to the police chief. The commission would still discipline officers.

Campaign finance

Proposition D is drawing more financial backing, by far, than any other local ballot measure, according to data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission.

As of Oct. 7, campaign committees supporting Proposition D had raised more than $8.7 million. The next-greatest financial support was for Proposition M, which would overhaul the city’s business tax system; that committee had raised nearly $1.5 million.

Of Proposition D backers’ war chest, about $2.4 million had come from the “Mayor Mark Farrell for Yes on Prop D” campaign committee.

Mayor London Breed — who is running to keep her seat against Farrell and many other candidates — supported Proposition D but withdrew her backing in September because it had become “tainted” by Farrell’s campaign committee, she said.

By a quirk of local election laws, committees for or against ballot measures may receive financial donations of any amount — unlike Farrell’s mayoral campaign committee, for which individual donations may not surpass $500. Breed said Farrell was using Proposition D to “funnel unlimited amounts” into his bid for mayor. 

Cheng, of Proposition D sponsor TogetherSF Action, called Breed’s move a political calculation. The group backs Farrell for mayor.

A campaign committee opposing Proposition D and supporting other measures, including Proposition E, had raised $27,404.

Votes needed to pass

Proposition D requires a simple majority of “yes” votes to pass, as does Proposition E. If both measures pass, the one receiving more votes will prevail.

Click here to return to our full voter guide.

The post Proposition D — Eliminate City Commissions, Empower Mayor appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

As I recently waited to get the latest COVID-19 booster and flu shots at my local pharmacy, I found myself thinking about how much has happened in the four years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

There was the lockdown in March 2020, the endless Zoom calls, then-President Donald Trump rambling about somehow injecting bleach or bringing sunlight inside the body to fight the virus, online conspiracy theories, political battles over masking mandates and many other jarring events.

I remembered my first COVID shot in a very quiet and solemn setting — then catching the virus months later but being down for only a couple of days as my vaccine-prepped immune system fought it off. 

“Are you Mel Baker?” a voice asked.

I snapped back to the present, in the Walgreens aisle next to the cough drops. The pharmacy technician escorted me quickly into a little side room, I rolled up my sleeve and he gave me the shots. Then he was done and gone, without even signing my vaccination card — such a vital document during the pandemic and now it was not even an afterthought. 

The card might be an apt symbol for how San Francisco, and possibly most of American society, is now treating COVID-19. It seems that we’ve pushed the pandemic into the collective “memory hole” — a place where those thoughts, feelings and traumas can be dropped, comfortably out of sight. We want to move on. That may help explain why only 69% of people in the United States finished their primary vaccine series, and just 17% got all of the boosters, according to 2023 figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I think it’s important to look back and reflect. We have to reckon with the loss of life and the loss of trust in public institutions in order to prepare for the next pandemic. 

“Civic” and the San Francisco Public Press are working on stories about people living with long COVID.

Do you have a story to tell? Please contact us at radio@sfpublicpress.org.

It should not be so easy to forget that nearly 1.2 million people in the nation have died from COVID-19. Almost 7 million required hospitalization. Millions more live with the symptoms of long COVID. 

But this also wouldn’t be the first time that society has responded to great loss by putting something down the memory hole.

Survivors of the 1918 Great Influenza were quick to put it behind them, some historians say, and it is all but forgotten today. Only a tiny memorial in the Hope Cemetery, in Barre, Vt., marks the loss of at least 675,000 people living in the United States, when this country had about one-third of today’s population. Then, as well, there were fights over mask mandates and social distancing, though no vaccines to slow the flu’s spread. 

Many people also wanted to forget about the HIV/AIDS pandemic after new drugs made it possible for them to live with the virus. But some survivors want to remember, in order to heal from the trauma. 

In 2014, more than three decades after HIV and AIDS ripped through the country, Greg Cason started the program “Honoring Our Experience.” It brought together people who had lived through the pandemic so they could process the experience. 

“There was something powerful about creating a space for that community of people,” Cason told me. They realized the AIDS pandemic had given them “a unique and profound experience that only they would understand.”

Kristin Urquiza co-founded the group “Marked by COVID,” which helps people memorialize those who died so that society does not forget. The group is trying to have a permanent monument to the pandemic placed in Washington, D.C. 

Urquiza was inspired by activists who used the AIDS Memorial Quilt to personalize the dead and force a better government response. 

For her father, the desire to move on had deadly consequences. 

“He got sick early on in the pandemic, in the summer of 2020, right after the state of Arizona re-opened,” she said, referring to his COVID-19 infection. “The governor at the time was basically spreading misinformation that it was safe to resume normal activities.” 

“I think that the need to commemorate and memorialize allows us to move past the divisiveness and the politicization of COVID,” Urquiza said. She added that doing so is necessary to prepare for whatever comes next. 

Dr. Monica Gandhi agrees. She is the author of the book “Endemic: A Post Pandemic Playbook.” The term “endemic” applies when a disease becomes ever-present in a population. 

Today, the greatest threat to public health is the lack of trust in government institutions, she said. That’s in part a consequence of the shifting, confusing guidance that U.S. health agencies gave in response to COVID-19.

“We have the vaccine, take it, but you’re gonna need booster after booster,” she said, recalling the government’s guidance. “And oh, by the way, we’re not gonna let you go back to a normal life.” 

The U.S. government’s messaging was also in stark contrast with how it had handled the AIDS pandemic decades prior, when new drugs made the disease manageable for most people in the mid-1990s.

“We got these biomedical advances like protease inhibitors and life turned around” for the people who took them, Gandhi said. At the time, people celebrated a return to normalcy.

Her book contains a list of recommendations for the next major outbreak: 

• The government must spring into action to develop and distribute vaccines, especially to low- and middle-income nations. 
• Pharmaceutical companies should develop antivirals and other therapies to treat the infected, similar to the prescription drug Paxlovid and the infusions of monoclonal antibodies — laboratory-produced proteins intended to stimulate the body’s immune system — used to battle COVID-19. 
• Celebrate medical advances by easing restrictions, when possible. 
• Avoid what she calls “medical rituals,” like cleaning groceries with bleach or taking temperatures at airports. 
• Keep public parks and playgrounds open to avoid isolation and get people out of buildings where respiratory viruses are more likely to spread. 
• Re-open schools as soon as possible, especially after teachers have been vaccinated, to avoid learning loss and social isolation among children. 

“In this era of global warming and everything else, we’re going to get another pandemic,” Gandhi said.

Read a Q and A with Dr. Gandhi about how she and her colleagues reacted to the greatest pandemic in a century in our Reporter’s Notebook piece, “The Epidemic She Didn’t Expect to See.”

The post Reporter’s Notebook: To Prepare for the Next Pandemic, Let’s Not Forget the Last One appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Four years out, this seems like a good time to look back and reflect on those days. I’ve been working on a “Civic” episode to examine what we’ve learned so far about the COVID pandemic, what we could have done better back in 2020, and what we failed to learn from earlier pandemics, such as HIV/AIDS. That work will be published this spring as part of our current season of “Civic” podcasts. 

As we near the lockdown anniversary, I want to share part of an interview I did with Dr. Monica Gandhi, author of “Endemic: A Post Pandemic Playbook.” She is a professor of medicine and associate division chief of HIV, infectious diseases, and global medicine at UCSF and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She also serves as the medical director of the HIV Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 86.

Mel Baker: Can you think back to those first few days when the news was coming out of Wuhan and this looked like it might be a pandemic?

Dr. Monica Gandhi: So, all of the division of infectious disease and the entire Department of Medicine here at San Francisco General were crowded into our auditorium, terrified and listening to updates from Wuhan, China. We met again when we thought that there was the first case of community transmission in San Francisco. It was two days later that the shelter in place orders came down from the San Francisco Health Department because there was community transmission. 

I remember feeling faint. I didn’t think I’d see a pandemic like this in our lifetime. I was so much more familiar with HIV, but this was so unknown. Watching anything from New York was so hard and so sad. So, yeah, it was a feeling of incredible shock. And I just felt dizzy really all the time.

Baker: It must have been like, you’ve trained all your life for this moment — and here it is. One of the astonishing things you say in your book is that the numbers initially coming out of Wuhan were between 1 and 10% fatality. I remember reading a story claiming 5% mortality and sharing it in a San Francisco Public Press staff meeting — we were all on Zoom of course — and I said, “5% — you realize what that means? I mean, that’s like civilization-destroying!” If it had been 10%, the potential would have been full societal collapse.

Gandhi: You’re right. Anything with some mortality rate like 10% would be incredibly devastating and would resemble what happened in 1918 with the influenza pandemic. 

(Reporter’s note: Recent estimates for the 1918 influenza pandemic range from 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide, when the global population was about 1.8 billion people.) 

I was interested in writing this book, in a way, because I want us to have more trust in public health. A lot of this book is about increasing trust. God forbid we get another pandemic that is spread through droplets and respiratory secretions. If it has a very high mortality rate like Ebola does, we would literally have to go crazy [with public health measures.]

(Reporter’s note: The World Health Organization cites Ebola death rates of up to 90% without treatment.)

Part of the reason I waited to publish this book until COVID was declared, quote “over” — and it’s never over, but over in the pandemic sense — was to say, okay, these were the mistakes made. These were the ways that we did good things, like really fast technological advances, biomedical advances, vaccines, therapeutics. Let’s put it all together, and let’s build up our trust. Because we have no idea what the next pandemic will be. 

Baker:  There are plenty of viruses on the horizon that could potentially become pandemics. Are you hopeful that our ever expanding toolbox of vaccines and drugs will be enough for us to manage the next one? 

Gandhi: I’m profoundly hopeful about vaccines. So, I’m really hopeful how fast the vaccine got developed. I was floored. You know how I said I was feeling faint and dizzy at the beginning of the pandemic? It was around Nov. 4, 2020, when the first positive results came back, and I was elated. That day was like my birthday. I remember just feeling like wait, it took this long? This is not that long! 

So, I’m very hopeful about our technology, about how we can produce really effective vaccines and treatments quickly and well. That’s why I really do want people to start trusting doctors and public health people more, even though everyone’s tired of the pandemic right now.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: The Epidemic She Didn’t Expect to See appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

As of September 2023, San Francisco employed 1,578 “full-duty sworn” police officers paid from the city’s general fund. A recent staffing analysis from the Police Department recommended that the city employ 2,182 full-time police officers. The city charter does not set a minimum number of police officers.

Proposition B, a proposed amendment to the city charter, would set permanent staffing levels for the Police Department and would require that new positions be paid for by new taxes or other revenue allocated from outside the general fund.

If it passes, the measure would go into effect only if voters approved an unspecified new tax source in a future election.

Under Proposition B, minimum police staffing would rise from 1,700 in the first year to 2,074 in the fifth year. If the new tax source, once approved, failed to fund the increased staffing in any given year, the city would be required to maintain the voter-mandated staffing level with money from the general fund.

Current staffing for the department is determined every two years by the Police Commission, which drafts the Police Department’s budget with recommendations from the chief of police. The budget then goes to the Board of Supervisors and the mayor, who may amend it further.

Under Proposition B, the chief of police would set staffing level recommendations every five years instead of every two years.

This charter amendment was proposed by Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a former Police Department public information officer, to increase police staffing over the next five years using money from the general fund. That plan was amended in committee by Supervisor Aisha Safaí to include the new tax funding requirement. The Board of Supervisors voted 6 to 5 to put the modified measure before the voters.

Those opposing Proposition B, including its original architect, Dorsey, say the current measure “aims to fool voters” by making them think a yes vote will increase police staffing and recruitment, while its proponents are “obstructing desperately needed progress.”

City Controller Ben Rosenfield in his analysis of Proposition B noted that it would “establish a binding required appropriation” of up to $200 million over the first five years from an unspecified, new tax source and would “reduce General Fund dollars that could otherwise be allocated by the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors in the annual budget” if the new taxes failed to cover the cost of the additional officers.

Proposition B supporters include Safaí, who said the measure is “fiscally responsible” and doesn’t pit police officer recruitment against 911 call operators, nurses, paramedics, firefighters and sheriffs because it seeks funding from new sources. 

Proposition B supporters have raised $605,000 as of publication, Ethics Commission records show. All of these funds were linked to three organized labor groups: SEIU Local 1021, IFPTE 21 and the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. Opponents have raised nearly $538,000, including over $377,000 from Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy and $50,000 from Michael Moritz, venture capitalist and backer of The San Francisco Standard.

Proposition B requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass. 

A “yes” vote on Proposition B means you support amending the city charter to set permanent staffing levels for the Police Department and requiring that new positions be paid for by new taxes or other revenue allocated from outside the general fund.

A “no” vote on Proposition B means you do not support amending the city charter to set permanent staffing levels for the Police Department and requiring that new positions be paid for by new taxes or other revenue allocated from outside the general fund.

The post Proposition B — Police Officer Staffing Levels Conditioned on Future Tax Funding appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The court has not ruled on the appeal. Meanwhile, the city is pursuing other strategies to reduce visible homelessness and drug use in several locations ahead of a fall filled with high-profile events, including the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting, which will put San Francisco in a global spotlight.

The city will also host Salesforce’s Dreamforce in and around the Moscone Center Sept. 11-13 and Fleet Week, with official events along the Embarcadero and at Fisherman’s Wharf, Oct. 2-10.

In the Civic Center neighborhood, San Francisco is employing a variety of strategies — moving a farmers market, adding a city-sponsored carnival and accelerating construction in a prominent public plaza — to allow it to clean up and hold a perimeter on areas that could be in many camera shots this fall.

The APEC summit, a Nov. 12-18 gathering for the heads of 21 Pacific Rim economies, could offer city leaders a chance to counter the prevalent “doom loop” media narrative. But depending on where attention is drawn during the event, news coverage could also reinforce the idea that the city is failing on an epic world stage.   

Early this year, Mayor London Breed declared her intentions for cleaning up the city’s image in “Roadmap to San Francisco’s Future.” Her office posted a status update this month that called out areas near City Hall where the city has “launched efforts to enliven public spaces and plazas, including the family-friendly Civic Center Carnival, a new skate park to be installed in UN Plaza” — all part of a strategy to “enhance public spaces to showcase Downtown.”

The update noted the APEC gathering as a progress point in the city’s strategy to “tell our story through proactive marketing to emphasize our strengths and reclaim our brand.”

Representatives of countries representing 40% of the global population and 50% of world trade will converge in San Francisco for the meetings, according to the conference website.  Heads of state as well as 30,000 governmental and business delegates, are expected to attend sessions at the Moscone Center and other locations across the city.  

Some of the most visible signs of the city’s failure to address extreme poverty and addiction persist in UN Plaza, the Civic Center and the Tenderloin neighborhood. The plaza holds the city’s largest open air drug market, with numerous tent encampments scattered nearby. 

Politico reported earlier this month that Gov. Gavin Newsom put pressure on city leaders “to get their collective house in order” for APEC.  

Super Bowl Set a Precedent 

San Francisco faced a similar dilemma when the city hosted Super Bowl 50 festivities in February 2016. (The Bay Area is slated to host again in 2026.) 

Then-Mayor Ed Lee was hoping to polish the city’s reputation with Super Bowl logos against the backdrop of iconic San Francisco imagery — all part of his effort to attract jobs and investment in the city. His administration was accused by advocates for the homeless of trying to remove unhoused people from anywhere near the Super Bowl events.

No Bay Area teams were in the showdown and the game itself was played in the new 49ers stadium in Santa Clara. 

Activists angry over Lee’s tactics held a large protest and tried to set-up a tent city within the Super Bowl “fan village” on the Embarcadero. It was met by a cordon of police, providing exactly the kind of news coverage city leaders were hoping to avoid. 

In 2016, San Francisco used policing and anti-camping laws to sweep the streets leading up to football’s annual showcase event. 

The current federal court order prohibits the city from clearing encampments — unless it is moving tents for street cleaning, construction or events. 

Those exceptions are central to the city’s new strategy — sweeping the streets through “street activation.” Some of the most ambitious and quickest projects will be in the UN Plaza area. 

The first change was a four-day Civic Center Carnival on Fulton Plaza between the Asian Art Museum and the Main Library that ran Aug. 24-27. The event is not a yearly occurrence and was only announced by city hall on July 31. 

Fair-like events have happened before at Civic Center, including the two-day Pride celebration in June, but other longer fairs are not typically situated next to City Hall.  

The Civic Center Carnival will be followed beginning Sept. 1 by a much larger and longer construction closure east of Fulton on UN Plaza. Daniel Montes, communications manager for San Francisco’s Department of Recreation and Parks, said the plaza will undergo a significant makeover as it is turned into a skate park and multipurpose entertainment zone.  

“The skating elements and other activities including pickleball, ping pong, tables for chess, exercise equipment will take about six weeks to prep and install,” he wrote in an email responding to questions about the project.

The street activation plan will displace the Heart of the City Farmers Market, which has been operating at UN Plaza since 1981. It will be moved to a much smaller space at Fulton Plaza on Sept. 3. 

The farmers market operates on Wednesdays and Sundays, and the city has noted that market days bring a dramatic drop in the size and intensity of the illicit drug market in and around UN Plaza. 

Heart of the City Farmers Market Executive Director Steve Pulliam said the city asked the market if it wanted to take over the plaza seven days a week, but Pulliam said there is not enough business to operate full-time. 

The city told the market that because it couldn’t occupy UN Plaza every day, the city would proceed with an experimental skatepark pilot project to try to improve conditions in the area.

Pulliam said that “metrics for success have not been defined” but added that the city assured him that it would restore the plaza and invite the farmers market to move back to UN Plaza if the plan fails to improve conditions at that site.  

Civic Virtue or Desperation Move?

Montes told the San Francisco Public Press that this was the best plan state, local and federal officials could come up with to change conditions in UN Plaza and adjacent areas in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods. 

“Rec and Park rangers have been closely monitoring the plaza since earlier this year in partnership with local law enforcement and community outreach workers with the ultimate objective to make these San Francisco public spaces safer for all,” he wrote.

Pulliam said he has been told that more Recreation and Parks rangers and ambassadors from Urban Alchemy — a nonprofit that hires people who were formerly incarcerated to help keep streets clean and engage with community members who might need help — will be assigned to UN Plaza when it reopens. 

Urban Alchemy ambassadors are already stationed in the area. Last Wednesday, a person wearing the Urban Alchemy logo told a group of people crowded into a corner of the plaza to “clear out — you need to move your stuff or it will be taken!” 

Additional reporting by Madison Alvarado and Yesica Prado.

The post SF Uses Events, Construction Projects to Clear Streets Ahead of Pacific Rim Economic Summit, Other Gatherings appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Like the rubber stamp recently discovered by Liana Wilcox, producer of the San Francisco Public Press’ podcast “Civic,” when she was helping her mother clear a storage area.

“I was with my mom going through some of her keepsakes and found a stamp that read ‘Lesbian Money.’ My mom told me that she found it in our old church’s basement,” Wilcox said, adding that she feared the rubber stamp had a sinister connotation.

“I immediately thought it was some sort of exclusionary practice, but that didn’t feel right considering the church we went to, the First Congregational Church of San Francisco, called themselves ‘open and affirming,’” she said.

Wilcox mentioned the stamp during one of our staff meetings, and I said “Oh, no that was a way we tried to raise awareness about the LGBT community back in the old days.” 

As a young gay activist and budding journalist in Salt Lake City in the early 1980s, I vaguely remembered stamps like that one. I reached out to a dear friend to see if she remembered lesbian money. 

Becky Moss is a longtime LGBTQ+ community organizer in Salt Lake City. She and I co-hosted the radio show “Concerning Gays and Lesbians” in Utah in the early ’80s. Moss said activists around the U.S. were stamping bills to show the financial power and size of the greater queer community back in the late 1970s. 

“Separatist lesbian communes would stamp all of their bills before coming into town for supplies,” she said. “But I remember it being more widespread than that, it was really a nationwide thing.” 

A number of sources trace the first “Gay$$” and “Lesbian Money” stamps — sometimes marked with a pink triangle — as having originated in San Francisco in the mid 1970s. The pink triangle was used by the Nazis in Germany to identify gay men in concentration camps and was co-opted as the symbol of the early gay movement before the rainbow flag mostly supplanted it. 

Wherever the money stamping started, by 1986 it had drawn the ire of the Reagan Administration. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois issued a cease-and-desist order to lesbian and gay bar owners in Chicago who were stamping all the bills coming through their businesses to the tune of $5 million a year. Government officials said the campaign violated federal law against defacing currency. But the legal action foundered at least in part because it was nearly impossible to determine who was responsible — anyone could stamp bills, anywhere. The Treasury Department also determined that most of the bills were still “fit for circulation.”  

Money stamping campaigns grew quickly to the point that finding some kind of queer stamp on currency was fairly common in the 1980s. It made an impact in an era when LGBTQ+ representation in film, television and the press were rare. 

Campaign Against Discrimination

Money stamping campaigns were also used to counter discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. One campaign out of Utah unfolded when Moss visited a restaurant in a suburb of Salt Lake City in the late 1980s. 

“My sister, who had AIDS, and I were at a restaurant in Bountiful, Utah,” she said. “After the meal, the staff threw our plates in the garbage.”

The Salt Lake City branch of ACT-UP, the AIDS activist organization, decided to use an “AIDS Money” stamp to fight such blatant discrimination against those perceived to be infected with HIV.

“They all went to the restaurant and bought things like pie or french fries and then paid for them with the stamped money,” Moss said. “The activists made the point that the owner would now have to throw away all the plates used to serve them or stop the practice.” 

“AIDS Money” stamps remained part of the nationwide effort to raise awareness through the 1980s and ’90s. 

Becky’s sister Peggy Moss Tingey died of complications from AIDS in March 1995, just nine months after her young son Chase died from the virus. Both passed away just before the HIV protease drug cocktail was starting to become available. 

Other Stamping Activism

Recent money stamping campaigns included “I grew hemp” stamps, promoting marijuana legalization, placed on $1 bills near George Washington’s portrait. The idea was taken up by groups advocating for the Second Amendment — “gun owners money” — and even campaign finance reform, with the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation organizing “stamp money out of politics” stamps in 2012.

A campaign in 2016 used large stamps to place Harriet Tubman’s face over the $20 bill portrait of Andrew Jackson, after the Trump Administration overruled the Treasury Department’s plan to replace Jackson with Tubman by 2020.

While the LGBTQ+ movement used stamping to great effect, it was by no means the first to spread the word by customizing currency.

Before World War I, British suffragettes stamped pennies with the words, “Votes for Women.” Only a handful of the coins still exist. But just as the U.S. Treasury Department declined to withdraw bills with “Lesbian Money,” the British banking system declined to take the low-value marked pennies out of circulation.  

Without suffragettes breaking the first chain of patriarchal thinking by winning the right to vote, there would have been no LGBTQ+ rights movement. Discrimination against women — sexism — is the basis of hatred of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

Both the British women who had to strike each penny 13 times — engraving their words letter by letter — and those who inked rubber stamps over and over again used their spending power to wear down conspiracies of silence, one tiny message at a time.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: The Rebellious Legacy of ‘Lesbian Money’ appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Rains this winter and early spring ended the drought in the Bay Area and brought a kind of weather whiplash that put San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management to the test. 
 
Early in the storm cycle, the department faced challenges communicating with the public, especially with people experiencing homelessness. Internal confusion over the forecast delayed the opening of its Emergency Operations Center until a major storm was under way. In at least one instance, flood barriers were deployed too late to prevent homes and businesses from being inundated. 
 
Despite those missteps, the city rallied a coordinated response from its Emergency Operations Center, where multiple city agencies, along with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. representatives, gathered to discuss and act on emerging issues in real time. 
 
It has been years since California faced this kind of barrage. The National Weather Service said that at least 14 powerful atmospheric rivers have slammed into California since October, triggering flooding and downing trees that have killed at least 22 people statewide, including two who were struck by falling trees in San Francisco.
 
And there could be more trouble to come: The Sierra snowpack is at a staggering 225% of normal, and while it will fill reservoirs, a fast spring melt could cause even more flooding. 
 
In a new “Civic” episode, we examine how the city responded to the first big deluge of the season and what it learned from that harried experience to improve response to subsequent storms. 

The biggest rainstorm hit San Francisco with 5.5 inches of rain on New Year’s Eve, when many city employees were away on vacation. Adrienne Bechelli, deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said city departments were able to mount a full response despite being short staffed. 
 
“The city tasks that were the most urgent priority were, of course, flood mitigation and clearing catch basins ensuring that all of our storm drains were clear,” she said. 

Emergency response teams also helped drivers whose vehicles were stranded in floodwaters and worked to get people living on the streets into emergency shelters, she said.  
 
Despite those efforts, some residents and businesses in the Mission District said the city was slow in providing information and failed to put up additional flood gates as it has done before previous storms. 

Blame game

On Jan. 3, Mayor London Breed began a news conference saying the city didn’t expect so much rain. 
 
“We were under the impression and notified by our National Weather Service that we could anticipate not even an inch of rain,” she said. Less than one inch of rain is not considered a threat according to the city’s winter storm and flood plan. 
 
Mary Ellen Carroll, the executive director of the Department of Emergency Management, echoed the mayor’s claims and said the city scrambled to increase its response on New Year’s Eve: “Our city employees rallied and we activated our Emergency Operations Center late morning when we realized what was actually happening was a little different than the actual forecast.”
 
Brian Garcia, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in the Bay Area, disputed those claims. He said the forecast showed a strong system hitting San Francisco days before it arrived. 
 
“We started messaging that on the 26th and 27th, when we started putting out information for the New Year’s Eve system,” he said. “We issued a flood watch on December 28. So, we definitely saw something coming in.” 

The weather service issues flood watches when the risk of a hazardous weather or flood event increases significantly.
 
San Francisco’s own response protocol lays out an elaborate system to prepare for major storms. The city activated its emergency response on Dec. 28, after the National Weather Service issued its flood watch 96 hours ahead of the storm. 

Garcia said city leaders’ forecast concerns seemed to center on whether the New Year’s Eve fireworks show — which had been cancelled during the first two years of the pandemic — could proceed as planned over the bay near the Embarcadero. 
 
“There was a focus for all of us to see if the rain was going to clear out by then, on the briefing that we provided on December 28,” Garcia said. “We were talking about the wind and the rain across our entire area, including the city, and how nasty it was going to be. The fireworks were definitely a bit of a focus.” 
 
The city seemed to have moved past the “one inch of rain” forecast claim in late February, when Bechelli said the forecast didn’t hamper the city’s efforts. 
 
“We were full out in terms of our operational response,” she said, shifting the focus to the city’s storm water capacity. “The built infrastructure of San Francisco is not built to handle five and a half inches of rain in a 24-hour period — we’re going to see inevitable flooding.” 
 
Garcia is ready to move on. “You’re always learning how to communicate better,” he said. “We continue to look forward to many years of a strong partnership with the great city of San Francisco.”
 
A representative from the Department of Emergency Management wrote in an email that the city hopes to bring National Weather Service representatives into the Emergency Operations Center during future storms. 

Seeking shelter

Following the New Year’s Eve storm, San Francisco Public Press reporters Yesica Prado and Madison Alvarado visited eight San Francisco neighborhoods over three days to talk to homeless people out in the rain. 
 
Prado said that access to shelters varies a lot by neighborhood.
 
“Some places, like in the Bayview, people are able to be more settled down versus being in the Civic Center or being in Japantown, where people are constantly on the move, and they will have to seek shelter if they want accommodations for the night,” she said.

Alvarado said nonprofits were scrambling to find spots for people and, in some cases, sent them across the city where there were beds available.  
 
“We were visiting a shelter and dining room down in the Bayview. We actually heard that at the end of the day the St. Anthony Foundation bused people down to Mother Brown’s in the Bayview, because they knew that there were shelter options down there,” she said. 

San Francisco added more beds to all its shelters in anticipation of a demand surge and worked with nonprofits and churches to add more, but Alvarado said finding information about where beds are available can be difficult for people without access to the internet. 
 
“If you don’t have a phone, you don’t know where you can go because you don’t know where they are,” she said. “Maybe you know of another shelter, but you don’t know how to get there.” 
 
During their reporting, they came across a man shivering on the sidewalk. 
 
“We noticed that nobody had actually approached him,” Prado said. “We didn’t ask for an interview. We went to ask ‘do you need any help?’ And then all he could muster is that, yeah, like he was cold. So we went back to our car, and we got some supplies for him, some dry clothes. But once we came back, he wasn’t really responsive. And that’s when we thought, he really needs some other kind of help.”
 
Prado and Alvarado said they looked online to see whom they should call. The Healthy Streets Operation Center website indicated that calls from concerned citizens would not be returned. Prado and Alvarado were reluctant to call 911, which they said they thought might bring a police response to a medical issue. So, they ended up calling 311, and a team designated to help homeless people showed up a few minutes later. 
 
Confusion over whom to call was understandable. During the Jan. 3 news conference, San Francisco Fire Chief Janine Nicholson discouraged people from using 911 for anything less than an emergency. 
 
“I can’t stress it enough,” she said. “Call 911 for life threatening emergencies only. We still have to run all of our critical 911 calls, whether it’s a cardiac arrest or a car accident or a fire.” 
 
But Bechelli said that calling 911 is the right choice: “Our 911 dispatchers are trained to send the right resource for that particular problem. If there is a medical emergency, they will send a medical response in order to help that person.”

Encampment sweeps continued 

Representatives from the Department of Emergency Management said that they reached out to people in encampments to offer them shelter ahead of and during the rain storms, and in some cases, to warn them that the place they were in was prone to flooding or other dangers. Meanwhile, the Department of Public Works continued to dismantle tent encampments during the inclement weather, as witnessed by our reporters. 
 
Alvarado spoke with a man named Duane who said he had been camping on 19th Street near Harrison Street for about a month, and that city workers kept asking him and other people nearby to move. 
 
“They were making us move every week, every week, back and forth, back and forth. No matter if it was raining,” he said. 
 
Our reporters said the city was offering temporary shelter stays to people in the two encampments they visited, but few of the people they spoke to said they were taking the offers. 
 
Duane said he thought congregate shelters and even navigation centers, which allow groups of friends to stay together, were too dangerous. “You got to deal with a bunch of crazy people. They pick fights with literally no reason,” he said. “It’s like, yeah, they offer you housing. But you gotta jump through hoops to get in.”

Mitigating floodwaters

The city has long known where flooding is most likely to happen and has some plans to mitigate it. After the December and January storms, residents and businesses affected by flooding were asked to fill out questionnaires to help the city track damage and potentially help San Franciscans get federal relief. 
 
Bechelli said 117 people submitted responses about flooding affecting their homes and 17 submitted responses about their businesses. Many responses came from people in the Marina, Mission, Bernal Heights, Glen Park, Castro, Potrero Hill and Dolores Heights neighborhoods, she said. 
 
Most had flood damage, but few had flood insurance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency declined to offer emergency grants to those affected, but will offer Small Business Administration Disaster Loan assistance. Applicants must apply in person at the War Memorial building on Van Ness Avenue. 
 
The city has plans to address some areas prone to flooding. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has allocated $632 million for three large drainage projects in low-lying areas. 

• The Wawona Street Stormwater Project in West Portal will be under construction until 2024.
• The Lower Alemany Area Rainwater Improvements Project in Bernal Heights will improve stormwater management near the Alemany Farmer’s Market, and the Interstate 280 and U.S. 101 interchange in Bernal Heights. Construction isn’t expected to begin before 2025 with completion in 2028.
• The Folsom Area Stormwater Improvement Project would cover multiple streets in the Mission to reduce flooding in one of the neighborhoods hardest hit in even moderate storms. The project is in the planning phase with no date set for construction to begin. 

In a more modest effort, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has distributed $2.5 million in grants to schools and nonprofits to fund rain gardens, green roofs and other green infrastructure projects to help slow down and redirect floodwaters.

Weather response report card

So, how did the city respond to our wild and wet winter? 
 
There were communication problems. 
 
It’s unclear why city officials and the national weather service got into an argument over the New Year’s Eve forecast. Confusion over the forecast delayed the opening of the city’s Emergency Operations Center.
 
Given conflicting instructions, San Franciscans may have been confused about when to call 911, especially around helping homeless people. 
 
Finding information about shelter locations generally requires access to a smartphone or the internet. Direct outreach to the homeless is limited by staffing constraints and the fact that those needing the information move around a lot. 
 
Overall, the city’s response to protecting people in need was hampered by the same factors that have led to so many people living on the streets: a lack of long-term housing and a focus on temporary shelters, which are often considered by the homeless to be worse than staying outside. 
 
The city knows where the most problematic flood areas are and has plans to mitigate many of them, but those infrastructure projects are years from completion. 

The New Year’s Eve storm was the city’s second wettest on record, only surpassed by a Nov. 11, 1994, storm that brought 5.54 inches of rain to San Francisco. It is too early to know whether California will break its previous record set in 1952-53 for wettest season based on snowfall. The total snowpack results are usually measured and reported April 1. 

Inconsistent weather patterns

For the last few years California has been experiencing a series of La Niña weather patterns, which normally mean drier than usual conditions. An El Niño pattern usually means a wetter than average winter. But within those two major patterns are lesser intra-seasonal oscillations that can change from month to month. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains that variations in tropical rainfall can shift the wintertime jet stream and atmospheric circulation over the North Pacific and western North America, thereby overriding the dominant seasonal weather pattern.
 
The weather service’s Garcia explains that if the intra-seasonal oscillations “all come together in the right way, they can override a strong entrenched signal. We can have El Niño years that are extremely dry. And conversely, we can have La Niña years that are extremely wet. It’s not unheard of, it’s just not the norm.” 
 
The La Niña pattern officially ended March 9. It’s unclear whether we’ll see an El Niño pattern by next fall or a neutral pattern.
 
“In California, we typically end major droughts with major floods,” Garcia said. “This has happened multiple times throughout California’s history. So, is this related to climate change at all? The way that it’s related to climate change are the extremes at which we’re seeing those higher heights and lower lows. It’s not happening any more frequently than historically, it’s just getting deeper and higher at the same time.”

CLARIFICATION 4/10/23: The Department of Emergency Management responded to this story to characterize the changing activation status of its Emergency Operations Center. Though only described as “open” during specified times, it is otherwise continuously in standby mode and monitoring events.

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Proposition N would give the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department control of the Music Concourse Garage in Golden Gate Park. The 800-space parking garage is managed by a nonprofit created by a ballot measure in 1998 that raised private donations to help finance the facility. Supporters of Proposition N cite a series of financial scandals and mismanagement of the garage and say the parking lot is underutilized because parking rates are set too high. They want to amend the earlier ballot measure to give control of the facility to Rec and Park.

This measure requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

Proposition N would overturn part of a ballot measure (then-Proposition J) passed by voters in June 1998 that placed construction of the Music Concourse Garage in Golden Gate Park in the hands of a nonprofit called the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority.

The authority took over management of the garage from the Music Concourse Community Partnership, another nonprofit created to raise tax deductible donations to build the 800-space garage. Organizers raised $36 million of the $55 million needed to build the garage. Ongoing profits from the garage were supposed to pay off loans taken out to cover the balance.

The original measure also called for any excess parking funds to be returned to the operation, maintenance, improvement or enhancement of Golden Gate Park. No such funds have been distributed.

In 2008, a $4 million embezzlement scandal by a former chief financial officer rocked the original fundraising nonprofit. Since then, the concourse authority has struggled to pay rent to the city.

Critics of the nonprofit said that the parking spaces are overpriced, with many of the 800 parking spaces often going unused. They also criticize the authority for not providing discounts to park employees who work in the De Young Museum, California Academy of Sciences and other attractions near the garage.

No opponents to the measure have placed a counter argument for maintaining the current system in the official ballot pamphlet.

Mayor London Breed issued the “Official Proponent Argument.” She said that the passage of Proposition N would allow the city “to spend public dollars on the garage, which creates flexibility over the management and parking rates.” She said the change would make it possible for the city to offer discounts to low-income and disabled visitors who drive to the park. The mayor said that “flexible pricing” will also allow the city to pay down the debt incurred from building the garage. 

The post Proposition N — Golden Gate Park Underground Parking Facility; Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition J is primarily designed to counter another measure on the ballot — Proposition I — which would overturn a Board of Supervisors ordinance passed in April 2022 closing off John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to motorized vehicles. It requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

Proposition J would add those changes to the park code. The goal is to shift park access away from car traffic and toward pedestrian and bicycle use.

The measure would also protect the weekend closure of the Great Highway along Ocean Beach and plans to turn part of that roadway between Sloat and Skyline boulevards into nature trails and parking. City planners say that erosion from sea level rise makes the maintenance of the entire Great Highway unfeasible in the long term. Changes to the Great Highway and wastewater treatment facilities are outlined in the Ocean Beach Climate Adaptation Project.

The Yes on J campaign claims that public use of the park has increased by 35% since the closure of JFK and the Great Highway and that 70% of people surveyed support the closure. No details were given on how the survey was conducted. They also cite traffic data that found JFK Drive was among the top 13% of most dangerous San Francisco streets when it was open to car traffic. The campaign also said that the city has added 29 new ADA parking spaces behind the Music Bandshell, exceeding the number of spaces that were eliminated when JFK Drive was turned into the JFK Promenade.

A paid ballot statement from the Prop. J Hurts Seniors campaign asserts that “without access to JFK Drive, it is impossible for many seniors to visit Golden Gate Park, its museums and attractions,” and adding that “many seniors do not have access to reliable public transit and cannot walk long distances and rely on cars to get around.”

Proposition J would pass on a simple majority vote. The Board of Supervisors can amend the ordinance by a majority vote. If Proposition J passes with more votes than Proposition I. then the latter would have no legal effect.

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