The Weekly Digest (February 26, 2023)

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

City Hall

• Tuesday, February 28 at 2pm: Regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors (agenda and call-in instructions here)

• Item 30 is Supervisor Mandelman’s proposal to end remote participation in public meetings of the Board of Supervisors and its committees. There’s an argument to be made that San Francisco suffers from “too much” democracy – too many committees, too many commissions, too much public comment – but this proposal would not solve the problem. All it would do is rewind the clock to pre-pandemic times when participation in that democracy was restricted to folks who had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than show up in person at City Hall.

• Item 37 is a resolution by Supervisors Ronen, Walton, Preston, Melgar, and Chan to “Uphold San Francisco Values to Protect Our Sanctuary City.” Basically, these supes have a problem with the fact that the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t trust San Francisco judges to not release a child rapist and a murderer on the street without notifying federal authorities first – which is, you know, not an unreasonable concern. Heckuva hill for the prog faction of the Board to die on, but we’re hardly shocked by anything these supes do at this point.  

Happenings around town

• SOAR-D1 hosts “Where Does Our Money Go? Part 2”

• Monday, February 27 at 6:30pm, location provided upon RSVP

• TogetherSF Action hosts “What We Can Do About San Francisco’s Drug Crisis (Virtual)

• Tuesday, February 28, 6:30pm, online

• TogetherSF Action hosts “What We Can Do About San Francisco’s Drug Crisis (In-Person)

• Wednesday, March 1, 6:30pm, 2505 Mariposa Street

What we’re reading

• Armed robbers stormed his packed San Francisco coffee shop. Now, he wants action 

• Credit where it’s due: Matt Haney is proposing a good and wise reform to California’s housing construction permitting process

• Even the yutes are tired of San Francisco’s far left policies

• Small businesses hit by constant burglaries

• From CA to NY, cities across the country are banning the rainbow flag

• Mayor’s new downtown plan is neither new, nor a plan

• 2023 California bill tracker

• SFPD is unaware of where Chronicle’s mysterious SFPD database came from

• The real story is not that the most likely source of a mutated coronavirus that originated near Wuhan is the government lab in Wuhan that specializes in mutating coronaviruses, it’s that a whole host of politicians, media personalities, and “scientists” spent the last three years telling you that you’re bad and stupid for even considering that possibility