The Weekly Digest (March 5, 2023)
Happy Sunday, Brionies! Here’s what you need to know about San Francisco politics this week and beyond:
City Hall
Tuesday, March 7 at 2pm: Regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors (agenda and call-in instructions here)
Item 1 – Mayor Breed makes her monthly appearance before the Board and will discuss the Community Ambassadors program and implementation of the housing element.
Item 6 – An ordinance authorizing settlement of a lawsuit by Francisco Valle for $1.95 million. Valle was convicted of shooting at two SFPD officers and spent 13 years in prison, but an appeals court overturned his conviction in 2017 due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Item 11 – A continuation of the motion raised last week by Supervisor Mandelman to end remote participation/public comment in meetings of the Board and its committees.
Item 17 – A motion to increase the City’s five-year contract for power scheduling coordination with APX, Inc. to $895 million – a jump of $636 million (71 percent!).
Item 30 – Another discussion of the resolution proposed by Supervisors Ronen, Walton, Preston, Melgar, Chan, and Safai last week regarding the temporary suspension of sanctuary city protections for a child rapist and a murderer that District Attorney Jenkins wants extradited to the United States. These supes apparently think it’s unreasonable that the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t want to bring violent criminals to the US without assurances that, if a San Francisco judge or jury releases them, ICE will be notified first so that the men can be immediately deported.
Interestingly, because this item was referred for adoption without first going to committee, it requires unanimous support from all the supes to pass – and it didn’t first go to the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee because the supes who currently serve there (Stefani, Engardio, and Dorsey) would have let it die on the vine. Good on you, San Francisco, for electing these three level-headed moderates last year.
Item 31 – A resolution urging Gov. Newsom and other state officials to legalize sex work.
Thursday, March 9 at 10am: Regular meeting of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee (agenda and call-in instructions here)
Agenda Items 4 and 5 – These ordinances are the flip side of the resolution proposed by Supervisor Ronen et al. regarding the extradition of two violent criminals to the US. It would authorize exceptions in these cases to San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy.
Happenings around town
Tuesday, March 7 at 6-7pm, SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street
What we’re reading
By now, you’ve probably seen Michael Moritz’s viral NYT piece about San Francisco. Progressive white guys who don’t even live here unsurprisingly flipped out. As for us at the Briones Society, we couldn’t agree more with Moritz’s diagnosis of what ails our city’s government, and what we need to do to fix it – especially since we’ve written about these exact same diagnoses and fixes before.
Speaking of our favorite socialist Supervisor, Dean Preston doesn’t think that fentanyl dealers should be arrested and prosecuted.
Here’s a disheartening look at which public school districts in the Bay Area offer algebra to eighth graders. For background, this is SFUSD’s rationale for why accelerating students is “problematic.” And here’s an interesting perspective on why our public schools are failing.
Supervisor Hillary Ronen Asked a Judge to Release Mission Gang Member From Probation.
End of the Line? The Homelessness Crisis is Sending BART Careening Toward Fiscal Disaster. Let’s hope the BART Board starts taking public safety seriously, now that one of its own has had to experience the direct consequences of the anti-policing environment she helped foment.
Tweet of the week
Call to action
Our friends at D2 Unite urge you to send four (don’t worry, they’re pre-written!) emails today to the Board of Supervisors urging them to support various commonsense public safety measures.