The Weekly Digest (February 2, 2025)

Written By Bill Jackson

Happy Sunday, Brionies!  Here’s what you need to know about local politics this week and beyond:

San Francisco City Hall 

  • Monday, February 3 at 1:30pm: Regular meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Committee (agenda here): 

    • Item 2: Hearing to address the scheduled closure of the Webster Street Safeway, including a presentation by the Food Security Task Force. The task force highlights the negative impact that the loss of Safeway will have on the food-insecure Western Addition, noting, “zip code 94115 consistently has the highest age-adjusted rates of hospitalization due to diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.” We don’t disagree with the diagnosis – access fresh and healthy food is critical to every community – but the task force’s proposed prescription of a “community driven centralized food coordination body for San Francisco (i.e. a city food security body plus a community advisory board” is wildly naive. As anyone over the age of two who visited this Safeway could see, the supermarket was unsafe and insecure, rife with shoplifting and disorder. That’s a law enforcement problem, not a task force / committee / commission problem. If San Francisco had empowered police to protect local shoppers, Webster Street Safeway might have kept its doors open.

  • Tuesday, February 4 at 2pm: Regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors (agenda here):

    • Item 14: Resolution approving an amendment to a grant to Episcopal Community Services for short-to-medium term rapid rehousing for adults; extending the grant term by 29 months and increasing the amount by $11,525,980 for a total amount not to exceed $21,524,980. 

    • Items 15-18: Resolutions approving various grants to social service organizations for youth programming, including two grants of $11 million+ to the Community Youth Center; $12,929,020 to Instituto Familiar de la Raza Inc.; and $10,366,200 to the Richmond District Neighborhood Center. 

    • Item 32: Resolution urging pharmacies and medical providers to address pharmacy deserts by expanding services in underserved neighborhoods. See the discussion of Webster Street Safeway, above.


Happenings Around Town

What we’re reading

  • There’s no shortage of problems facing San Francisco’s newly inaugurated mayor, but Daniel Lurie’s biggest challenge of all may be that, er, we’re running out of cash: the City faces an estimated shortfall of nearly $1 billion over the next two years. That terrifying number may even be an underestimate, because it doesn’t account for anticipated federal funding that may be yanked under the new Trump administration, including over $500 million that San Francisco spent on sheltering the homeless in hotels based on a hope-and-a-prayer that FEMA would reimburse us. On the plus side, two supervisors just proposed a tax grab plan to revitalize the Van Ness corridor by allowing chain retail stores. Potential retail investors may want to check in with their pals at Safeway, Inc. to see how that worked out.

  • On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution supporting San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy. The measure will have no practical effect other than to signal the Supes’ characteristic tone-deafness to the wishes of San Francisco residents, who want undocumented fentanyl dealers off the streets. Indeed, removing protections for undocumented criminals is a bipartisan issue, as the Laken Riley Act sailed through Congress by a wide margin. The Laken Riley Act, which President Trump signed into law on Wednesday, is named for a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan migrant who had previously been arrested twice, including for endangering his 5-year-old child. While the Supes are basking in their own beneficence, let’s not lose sight of who really loses when local law enforcement refuses to turn over criminal aliens to the feds: the immigrant communities to which they return. A 2015 ICE report found that 23% of criminal aliens released by sanctuary cities were subsequently arrested for new crimes within eight months of release. Additionally, if the feds have to go into the community to arrest known criminals rather than collect them from local jails, it is more likely they will sweep other undocumented immigrants who don’t have criminal records. As White House border czar Tom Homan points out, “There’s going to be more collateral arrests in sanctuary cities because they forced us to go into the community and find the guy we’re looking for.” 

Quick hits

Palate cleanser

This week in San Francisco history

  • Thirteen years ago this week, legendary Chronicle columnist Herb Caen passed away. 



Bill Jackson
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