Lurie’s budget spares city jobs — but grant funding cuts may lead to nonprofit layoffs

San Francisco City Hall jobs are safe, for now — but next year, not so much. Mayor Daniel Lurie released his annual proposed budget on Monday, aiming to close a $643 million deficit. Despite devastating federal disinvestment and a still-recovering economy, additional layoffs did not materialize this year. The budget cuts some social safety net programs as the city seeks to offset expected federal reductions that threaten to leave tens of thousands of San Franciscans without health care and food stamps. “Today, I am proud to submit a balanced budget that is fiscally responsible and strengthens our social safety net, so even in the face of federal cuts, San Franciscans know they can count on this city,” Lurie said in livestreamed remarks to the city. It’s not all roses: the budget slashes grant funding to nonprofit services focused on helping the poorest citizens, immigrants, and communities of color. The funding loss may result in as many as 1,050 layoffs among nonprofit service providers, advocates said Monday. Earlier this year, dire budget projections led labor unions to brace for layoffs among the city’s 34,000 employees in Lurie’s budget proposal, and in April, the mayor handed out a small set of pink slips to 127 employees. Speaking to The Standard last month, SEIU 1021, which represents one of the largest swaths of city employees, warned that strikes next year could “shut down the city.” In a statement, SEIU 1021 San Francisco Vice President Kristin Hardy said, “We are pleased and relieved to see that Mayor Lurie did not include further layoffs in the next fiscal year’s budget. San Francisco is at a pivotal moment in its recovery, and we cannot afford to go backward.” Still, she added, the union continues to fight against nonprofit reductions, and for Lurie to keep three Department of Public Health community clinics open, which are slated for closure under the budget reductions. “They are absolutely vital to the clients who receive services there, who are some of the city’s most vulnerable residents,” Hardy said. “And we want to ensure that nonprofits providing critical public services have the funding they need to retain the frontline workers who do that hard work every day.” Lurie said his budget closes a $300 million structural deficit, meaning the city has reduced ongoing spending by roughly $300 million to better align with projected revenues. But that only bit a chunk out of a $1 billion structural deficit that is projected by 2029. At a press conference on the budget Monday, Lurie told reporters he didn’t want to shrink the entire deficit at once. Instead, he said, he wanted to “responsibly” shrink government by focusing on core services. Cutting too quickly, he said, may threaten the city’s economic recovery and the city's continued ability to provide its remaining social safety net. “You’re seeing the city come back; it’s an economic recovery we can all feel,” Lurie said, “but it’s fragile. We need to nurture it.” At the same time, Lurie added, “we wanted to protect our immigrants and their legal rights, we wanted to protect our LGBTQ-plus and our trans community. We’re always going to lean into our values here in San Francisco, and our budget reflects that.” The continued deficit may mean that future layoffs are still on the table. Departments need to start work to prevent that now, Lurie wrote in his budget, by collectively reducing $81.5 million in personnel costs over the next year through “recognition and attrition.” The challenge will be figuring out “how we think about getting the best services for our residents as we continue through the hiring slowdown,” said Sophia Kittler, the city’s budget director, at the Monday press conference. Some city employees got better news than others: Police officers and firefighters were promised 14% raises after contract negotiations this year, at a cost of roughly $100 million over two years . Other city unions will negotiate their contracts next year. The mayor’s budget book is a sprawling 150-plus-page document, but some notable programs he invested in include $90 million in shelter and housing for families and youth, $34 million in federal risk reserve spending to backfill CalFresh and Medi-Cal disinvestment, restoring proposed cuts to LGBTQ+ community services, community organization-led legal services for the poorest San Franciscans, and investments in maternal and infant health. Perhaps controversially, Lurie proposed a $100 million reserve for homelessness prevention and legal services from a pot of funding created by the 2018 ballot measure Proposition C, which was championed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff . It is aimed at helping homeless young adults, and past efforts to divert funding to other uses have sparked outcry from the Board of Supervisors and homeless advocates. To meet the looming fiscal challenge, Lurie has cut back City Hall grant funding for nonprofit programs serving San Francisco’s poorest communities. Early budget documents submitted from departments to Lurie signaled to the city’s 700-plus nonprofits that they would face devastating cuts in services for immigrants, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and disadvantaged communities of color. The People’s Budget Coalition, a collective of more than 150 community organizations that receive city grant funding, said that while Lurie’s budget restores some funding, most of the devastating cuts departments promised are preserved in the mayor’s budget. The layoffs they anticipated have not been significantly averted, the coalition said. “Mayor Lurie says we need to make ‘hard choices,’” the coalition wrote. “But balancing the budget on the backs of working-class residents has become too easy for this administration.” Gabriel Medina, executive director of La Raza Community Resource Center on Valencia Street, learned in February that his organization would lose $660,000 in city grants, but half of it was restored in the mayor’s proposed budget. Instead of two layoffs, he may only have to make one. The funding loss still will hit Spanish-speaking immigrants hard, Medina said. The city depends on organizations like La Raza Community Resource Center to connect monolingual San Franciscans to Medi-Cal and CalFresh, as well as emergency financial assistance when they’re displaced in emergencies such as fires. Medina said hundreds of families would lose out on such services from La Raza Community Resource Center alone. It’s far from a done deal. The mayor’s proposed budget is only a step in the city’s budget process. Now the Board of Supervisors will negotiate the budget with the mayor and in concert will deliver a compromise by July. “We are going to spend the next month doing Board of Supervisors advocacy,” Medina said. “The good news is, we might get half from the mayor, but maybe could get half from the board.” “We’re just waiting to see,” he said. Lurie’s budget also does not assume any funding from Proposition D, the Overpaid CEO Tax, which is on the ballot in Tuesday’s June primary election. If approved, it would bring as much as $300 million annually to San Francisco’s coffers starting in 2028. Supervisor Connie Chan had urged Lurie to dip into the city’s reserve budget to serve as a “bridge” until that funding materialized. Lurie told reporters Monday he would not modify the budget if Prop. D passes, adding the city needs to be “fiscally disciplined” and not spend money “that we don’t have.” While the proposed cuts will be painful, they’re less devastating than initially estimated for two reasons: The mayor got lucky, and he also manufactured his own luck. A budget status report issued by the City Controller’s Office in May revealed a $339 million surplus compared with previous projections, mostly due to better business tax revenue from “worldwide sales” among a number of San Francisco businesses, a matter mostly out of city government’s control. But a $108 million boost in property transfer tax revenue came due to renewed investor interest in commercial real estate, which the administration has cited as evidence that its efforts to revitalize downtown are gaining traction. A hiring freeze Lurie announced last year also saved the city roughly $130 million, according to the mayor’s office.

Who is funding the 2026 California Primary? We dig into the money on PST

Mayor Lurie releases his budget next week. Here’s how Trump royally screwed it

More and more, San Francisco’s 2026 budget process is resembling a slasher flick. Shadows are dancing across City Hall’s marble-wrought grand staircase, with President Donald Trump threatening to leap into view, ready to gouge hundreds of millions from the city’s coffers. The threat is real: Roughly $2 billion of San Francisco’s $16 billion budget flows from Washington, funding hundreds of grant programs across nearly every city department. Trump has already started turning off the tap. With a $643 million deficit looming, Mayor Daniel Lurie has days to reveal how the city absorbs the pain — and who feels it most. Trump has already made real cuts to healthcare. And while San Francisco has fought back — filing more than a dozen lawsuits against the administration and winning most of them so far — a single appellate loss could imperil billions. Fear that Trump may further upend any number of federal revenue streams undergirds every hard fiscal choice in front of Lurie. On June 1, the mayor will propose his draft budget to the Board of Supervisors and voters, revealing the true extent of the bloodletting. Trump’s policy choices are projected to disenroll up to 45,000 San Franciscans from healthcare and tens of thousands from food stamps. To protect those programs, Lurie is trimming across all 55 city departments rather than gutting public health and human services, his budget director, Sophia Kittler, told The Standard. “This is a loss to the whole city,” Kittler said. “We’re treating it as a citywide deficit.” The impacts are already here. Government layoffs loom, and nonprofit social safety-net programs know they face the chopping block. In anticipation of deep layoffs, labor has signaled a historic general strike is possible next year. In the meantime, tens of thousands of San Franciscans may lose crucial services, from food stamps to doulas. So what can San Francisco do to save itself? And how devastating will the impacts be? The answers are uncertain, but the city is preparing anyway. Threats in the shadows Since it’s a city and a county, San Francisco is uniquely vulnerable to federal meddling. Large counties often administer healthcare, serving as a pass-through for federal funding, creating a single vulnerable pot of money. But the city also depends on federal and state grants, both of which are primarily funded by the federal government. Trump could whisk much of it away with the stroke of a pen or the tap of a button on his social media platform, Truth Social . Much of it is also at risk in court. San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu is litigating more than a dozen lawsuits against the federal government, most of which touch on funding to the city. “Our legal efforts to defend our communities and protect our federal funding are paying off,” Chiu said in a statement. “We have seen many early wins in the lower courts, preserving billions of dollars in federal funding for our city.” Yet the risk still persists. The largest of these suits seeks to challenge the Trump administration’s effort to axe grants for any program it deems related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. As Chiu’s office wrote , Trump’s rules sought to instill his anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-choice, and anti-equity policy preferences on federal spending. A court granted a preliminary injunction against Trump imposing new restrictions on those grants last year, Chiu’s office said the decision preserved billions in funding that help San Francisco support early childhood development, critical health services, safe and effective transportation, and housing to our most vulnerable. Each lawsuit represents a distinct fiscal vulnerability, a situation that insiders speculate will prompt Lurie to budget cautiously. He doesn’t have much room for error — the city has about $433 million in its federal-risk reserve fund, which Lurie and the Board of Supervisors created last year. If the worst federal funding losses happen, it won’t be enough. One Big Beautiful screw you You might’ve noticed that downtown still isn’t the hotbed it once was. That carries economic implications, since the city largely fills its general fund coffers from taxes generated by employee-filled high rises, including property taxes. In that weakened economic state came Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act , also known as H.R. 1, which threatens to see tens of thousands of San Franciscans lose Medi-Cal coverage and CalFresh food access — which in turn will prompt a roughly $300 million, two-year loss in federal payments to San Francisco to administer those programs locally. It isn’t a straight cut. Instead, the legislation implemented stricter work and filing requirements and is projected to cause people to lose their care. The Lurie administration budgeted $34 million to help those people navigate stricter filing requirements and retain access to Medi-Cal and CalFresh, but it remains to be seen how successful the effort will be. The funding losses primarily hit the Department of Public Health and the Human Services Agency. Those program losses equal roughly half of the city’s $643 million budget deficit. Lurie’s office chose to distribute the pain of that funding loss across the city’s 55 or so departments. Kittler said the other choice would be to decimate public health programs and food stamps, and that wasn’t a choice at all. Stemming the bleeding The Board of Supervisors will haggle with the mayor over budget details throughout June. There aren’t many choices before them. The city can either cut its funding or increase its revenue. Both choices carry risk. As nonprofit leaders have told The Standard, Lurie’s intention to cut community social service programs may have downstream impacts: if nonprofits that help tenants fight their evictions lose funding, for instance, more people may pressure homeless services in the coming months. Supervisor Conie Chan, the budget chair, laid out another plan in an early-May budget briefing with reporters. She said San Francisco shouldn’t live in fear of D.C. “You can absolutely plan that way. But then what you will end up with is just cuts and cuts and cuts,” Chan said. Instead, she said, Lurie should dip into reserves until 2028, when the Overpaid CEO Tax would begin generating an estimated $300 million annually. Dipping into reserves could leave San Francisco vulnerable to other Trump cuts, which may be anathema to risk-averse Lurie. It is also wholly dependent on voters approving the tax in June. Lurie opposed the tax. But if it does pass, he’ll have one more tool to forestall the worst of Trump’s cuts, whether he wanted it or not.

Lurie to spend $34M to protect thousands of SF’s Medi-Cal recipients from Trump’s cuts

President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act may turn San Francisco’s healthcare system into one big beautiful mess. The new work requirements under the bill HR1 may result in 45,000 San Franciscans losing healthcare within two years, according to city estimates. Roughly 21,000 people may lose eligibility for CalFresh, the food stamp program. Mayor Daniel Lurie plans to leverage city coffers to fill in the gaps, even as he balances mounting pressure to prevent layoffs and maintain nonprofit grant funding amid a fiscal crisis. Lurie is allocating $34 million from the city’s federal funding reserve to keep people enrolled in the Medi-Cal and CalFresh programs, his office shared exclusively with The Standard. “Even though we have zero funding from the feds to do this, and zero funding from the state to do this, we are taking it as our responsibility as a city to help [people] meet those work requirements,” said Trent Rhorer, executive director of the Human Services Agency. It’s the second and largest withdrawal from the fund since its creation last year to buttress San Francisco against financial turmoil from an unpredictable president. Lurie is moving to intervene in the hope of keeping residents enrolled before deadlines hit. CalFresh work requirements take effect in June; Medi-Cal follows in January, with a requirement of 80 hours a month to maintain coverage, along with stricter reporting schedules. The city isn’t acting out of compassion alone: If those 45,000 people lose healthcare coverage, San Francisco could absorb up to $400 million in uncompensated costs, the city estimates. Prevention, Lurie is betting, is cheaper than the alternative. The fund will pay for the hiring of more than 150 staffers at the Human Services Agency, the city department that confirms eligibility for Medi-Cal and CalFresh, processes the paperwork, and provides other support. They join the roughly 760 who are already with the agency and will help San Franciscans navigate — and survive — the new federal paperwork requirements before deadlines hit. Intending to cut what he called “waste and fraud” in Medicaid, Trump in July signed HR 1, a bill of nearly 1,000 pages filled with huge cuts to the social safety net, ramped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding, and tax breaks. The law’s twice-annual reporting requirements may result in as many as 10 million people losing healthcare nationally by 2034. Medicaid, the national program known as Medi-Cal in California, insures the lowest-income Americans, seniors, and people with disabilities. In San Francisco, the funds support safety-net providers like Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the Laguna Honda Hospital, a hospice. Lurie is due to deliver his proposed budget to the Board of Supervisors at the end of the month. He is legally mandated to close the $643 million deficit; to get there, he has laid off 127 of the city’s roughly 34,000 workers, with more cuts expected by June. “While federal cuts make it harder for San Franciscans to access health care and put food on the table, this budget will protect our city’s social safety net and help residents stay on the benefits they rely on,” Lurie said, in a statement. “We are delivering a responsible budget that prioritizes core services, safeguards vulnerable communities, and continues San Francisco’s broad, durable economic recovery.” In balancing the budget, Lurie must also weigh how much of the city’s tax dollars to spend to backfill any federal cuts coming San Francisco’s way, even as those risks aren’t immediately clear. To that end, Lurie and the Board of Supervisors last year placed $400 million into the newly created Federal and State Revenue Risk Reserve, some of which is paid for by $220 million in unused medical reimbursement accounts, a pot of money raised through controversial fees that restaurant owners argue hurt local businesses . Lurie is proposing to tap into that money to help CalFresh and Medi-Cal recipients. The economic ripple effects extend beyond healthcare. The local economy may take a hit of about $6 million monthly from lost CalFresh enrollment alone — a loss felt most sharply at corner stores, where as much as 80% of sales can come from CalFresh recipients. The Department of Public Health is also using its budget to buttress the loss of Medi-Cal, redirecting funds to beef up the Healthy San Francisco program, the city’s stab at universal healthcare in 2007, when Gov. Gavin Newsom was mayor, prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. “We’re leveraging all of our resources to help people connect to Medi-Cal coverage,” said Dan Tsai, director of the Public Health Department. The funding isn’t Lurie’s only prescription for the crisis. The Human Services Agency is launching a website that will direct people to work and volunteer opportunities to meet the new work requirements, courtesy of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation. And to meet San Franciscans where they are, the Human Services Agency has rolled out a mobile enrollment truck equipped with staff and all the needed paperwork — have forms, will travel. Rhorer said there’s a misconception that some people don’t want to meet the new Medi-Cal requirements. Some have jobs, he said, but can’t work enough hours to meet healthcare requirements. Others can’t find a gig at all. The perception of widespread laziness is “just not reality,” Rhorer said. “People don’t choose to be poor. People don’t say, ‘I’d rather not have any money.’ People are literally struggling to find and retain employment.”

5 takeaways from The Standard’s investigation into Lurie’s permit project

Obtaining a business or residential permit in San Francisco is like that check-engine light on your car: a big fix that you keep putting off, even though you need to do it. Since taking office in January 2025, Mayor Daniel Lurie has attempted to bring the city’s byzantine permitting system into the shop, promising a one-stop, modernized platform, PermitSF, that would make life easier for residents and businesses. But an investigation by The Standard reveals that the project has faced significant setbacks. Former employees of OpenGov, the firm hired to oversee the overhaul under controversial circumstances , said the govtech company had internal doubts about the city’s deadlines. City employees said the software, which was procured through a no-bid contract, lacks critical features that have led to delays in the permitting revamp — criticism that mirrors concerns voiced last summer when the mayor’s office was choosing software for the project. Lurie had given the city a year to get a new permitting system up and running, and his office said OpenGov was the only company that could meet the aggressive timeline. OpenGov’s $5.9 million contract with the city — eight times higher than the average new software contract procured through no-bid contracts — was supposed to deliver a full slate of permits on the new platform by March. Roughly two months later, less than half are available on the website. “It’s been amateur hour, to be honest. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” one city worker told The Standard. “The ability to spin absolute failures as success is absolutely wild to me.” The mayor’s office is defending its progress, all while seeking a renewal of the OpenGov contract that will go before the Civil Service Commission on Monday. Here are five takeaways from The Standard’s story. The city chose OpenGov because it could meet deadlines After OpenGov was selected by the mayor’s office through an unconventional no-bid process last summer, The Standard reported on some unusual circumstances of the contract, including links between company executives, the mayor, and Tipping Point Community, the nonprofit Lurie founded. The city’s justification for not conducting a formal bidding process was that OpenGov was the only govtech firm that could meet the deadline. But that bet hasn’t borne out. The company was supposed to deliver 15 types of permits — from bathroom and kitchen remodels to fire alarm and sprinklers — to the new PermitSF system by March 16. Today, only seven are available online. OpenGov says the rest will be delivered by June, but a city official told The Standard not to expect everything to be completed until the end of summer. The contract renewal is facing pushback The city is seeking a new, $6.5 million, six-year contract with OpenGov that would lock the permitting system into the software for the foreseeable future. While the first year of the contract has faced hiccups, city officials admitted to The Standard, they claim future iterations of the software will offer more flexibility. That hasn’t stopped some from trying to put the kibosh on the contract extension. IFPTE Local 21, the public-sector union that represents more than 13,000 city workers, claims that the software lacks critical features and isn’t being integrated properly with the city workforce. On May 4, the Civil Service Commission, the body overseeing the approval of the contract, voted unanimously to push the renewal hearing to Monday after asserting that the city had not provided the required documentation showing union objections. The contract is also subject to the Board of Supervisors' approval. This isn’t the first time Lurie has missed an important deadline During his 2024 campaign for mayor, Lurie promised to create 1,500 shelter beds in the first six months of his term, a signature proposal that helped propel him into City Hall. Almost immediately, there were signs that this would not come to fruition: In January 2025, a homelessness adviser to Lurie told The Standard that his 1,500-bed commitment was a rhetorical “ slip up .” By July, as the six-month mark approached, the mayor dropped the ambitious plan and said he would instead focus on a smaller number of “the right beds,” while directing city agencies to tackle drug addiction and mental health issues. The promises surrounding PermitSF carry similarities to the shelter rollout. However, in this case, the city has been able to release a small, working product with OpenGov instead of scrapping the project entirely. Staff have been frustrated by the software’s lack of features When the mayor’s office was searching for software to overhaul the permitting system last summer, staffers raised concerns about OpenGov’s capabilities, saying its features had “gaps so significant” that it “shouldn’t be considered.” Those concerns continue, with one city worker telling The Standard the city is effectively subsidizing OpenGov’s research and development department. City staffers have created a list of more than 50 problems with the software, according to a document obtained by The Standard, including a lack of integration with the existing system and gaps in the permissions of who can edit data. OpenGov employees backed up the city workers’ assertions; one said the company can handle roughly 25% of what its govtech competitors can do. PermitSF is making some workers’ jobs easier All the criticism doesn’t diminish the fact that some city workers are pleased with the new OpenGov platform. The Standard spoke with two members of SF Planning who described a program that, while limited in the types of permits it can issue, has made their jobs better. “We do the same type of review, we do the same type of back and forth with applicants,” said staffer Dakota Spycher. “It’s just all in one system. We don’t have to write on [a] physical form. We don’t have to enter information into a system that was created in the ’90s, and we don’t have to create a new record ourselves. So it’s really streamlined.” But there remains a wide variety of permits to transfer to the OpenGov platform. The city has hundreds of permit types, and many are much more complicated than the ones that have been modernized. Whether Lurie’s project can execute on those remains to be seen.

Inside Ezra Klein’s abundance-pilled CA governor’s debate

Most people would not consider ADUs, bonding capacity, and prevailing wage policy to be juicy conversation topics for a fun Friday night out. We somehow ended up in a room full of exceptions to that rule. Housing affordability is the defining issue of the next Governor’s race and on a beautiful spring evening less than a month before the primary, just across the street from Oakland’s Lake Merritt, hundreds of people packed into the Henry J. Kaiser Center to watch the five top Democratic candidates duke it out over who had the best solutions to the state’s most unsolvable problem. The line snaked around the recently renovated venue. Call it Bonnaroo for those building “backyard casitas,” or Coachella for takes on modular housing. The crowd was predominantly think-tank employees, academics, lobbyists, and other young-ish professionals in horn-rimmed glasses. Two lovebirds (an architect and a fundraiser for an environmental nonprofit) were even there on a date. It was not a debate, moderator and neoliberal heartthrob Ezra Klein insisted, but a forum for substantive policy discussion. The housing crisis is at emergency levels, with the state facing soaring homelessness, scores of residents fleeing over high costs, and residential construction stubbornly stuck despite more than 100 laws meant to cut red tape and build faster. Buffy Wicks, an East Bay state Assemblymember and perhaps the most stridently “pro-housing” California lawmaker besides Sen. Scott Wiener kicked off the festivities with a fiery speech. “Hello housers!” she said, greeting the audience before explaining how we got here: “Our housing hell was paved with very good intentions.” The event featured the top-polling Democrats still in the race: Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa. “One of these candidates is going to be our next governor,” Wicks said. “They are not going to be perfect, they’re going to make mistakes, but will they be willing to break some glass to advance a pro-housing agenda?” The audience roared. Although the event was billed as nonpartisan, notably absent were the two leading Republican candidates: former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Organizers said both declined to come. If you’ve read this far, you’ve clearly read (or listened to a podcast about) “Abundance,” so here’s a rundown of the highlights. Katie Porter stands up to labor In a rizz-deficient lineup, many observers pointed to the former Southern California congresswoman as perhaps the most charismatic candidate on the issue. Porter was the only candidate onstage to say union labor had become an obstruction to housing construction. “I do not think today is the time to do prevailing wage on residential housing,” Porter said. “I am not scared of anybody because I have three teenagers and I don’t want them to be living on my couch.” Translation: California should not require developers to pay workers the prevailing wage to build housing. Porter’s argument is that cutting labor costs will have to play a pivotal role in bringing down the cost of construction even if it’s politically toxic to do so . Becerra insisted that carpenters should be able to afford the houses they build. Pressed on what else could bring construction costs down, the former Biden official blamed the Trump tariffs and the war in Iran before landing on cutting red tape and reducing local fees. Housing experts observed after the event that while Becerra has a ways to go before joining their ranks, his lack of expertise does not disqualify him from the governorship — the important thing, they said, is that the governor listens to the right people. A carrot or stick measuring contest Much of the debate — excuse us, forum — centered on how the state should hold municipal governments accountable for when they don’t produce enough new homes. Becerra came in tough, flexing his bona fides as a former state attorney general unafraid to sue city governments into compliance. He name-checked Huntington Beach and San Mateo as examples. Others thought litigation wasn’t the best tool to get more projects off the ground. Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, said the threat of the builder’s remedy was an important accountability tool against bad actors, but should only be used as a last resort. “I think the next governor cannot bring a lawyer mindset to this problem,” Mahan said. Steyer, who wore a suit and white Nike sneakers, favored the carrot over the stick, saying he would generate $20 billion each year for housing (along with healthcare, education, and infrastructure) by closing a “corporate tax loophole.” He would use the money to reward cities that built enough housing instead of suing noncompliant ones into submission. “Lawsuits don’t get things done, money will,” Steyer said. “If you can build housing now, you get money. If you can’t, you don’t.” Looking backward for solutions Abraham Lincoln purportedly lived in boarding houses throughout his young adulthood. The government built large-scale housing after World War II and the G.I. Bill helped mint a generation of first-time home owners. All night, the candidates waxed nostalgic about past eras when interim housing was widely embraced in America and the federal government played an active role in investing in public welfare. They all agreed that money should flow to those most in need — namely, the poor and developers. Porter said that the most effective way to keep people from falling into homelessness would be to just give them cash. Oftentimes, she said, households need only a “handful of money” to bridge the gap between paying rent and buying food. Mahan bragged that San Jose’s temporary housing sites and no encampment zones, while controversial , are helping to reduce homelessness in the city. He also said the state should be buying and preserving older affordable housing stock. Antonio Villaraigosa’s book club The last time former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa held elected office was in 2013. Since then, an entire Golden State Warriors dynasty has risen and fallen. But at least he’s staying up-to-date on his reading. Villaraigosa referenced Klein and Derek Thompson’s book “Abundance” on stage three separate times. It got to the point where Klein had to tell him to calm down, eliciting chuckles from the crowd. The candidate’s resume has been on the shelf so long it’s started to yellow, and there’s only so much hay you make out of Obama-era political achievements. (Villaraigosa claimed to have personally told Obama that the federal government should give cities low-cost loans to build housing near transit.) Where he did stand out was in being able to openly criticize the Democratic establishment. He said that while liberals blame Ronald Reagan for shutting down the state’s mental hospitals, the Blue supermajority has done nothing to bring them back. Villaraigosa also stumbled on the proverbial third rail of California politics, Prop. 13, which, in a scattered answer, he said he’s long opposed, still supports, but wants to reform on the margins. Well played, old-timer.

Heated district race shows the lengths — and limits — of Lurie’s big-money network

Supervisor Stephen Sherrill has been appointed by one mayor and received the endorsement of another. He’s an incumbent with more than a year of experience inside City Hall. And he’s got four PACs — four — supporting him, with a combined $1 million in the bank, making him perhaps the most lavishly funded candidate in board history. So why does Cow Hollow neighborhood organizer Lori Brooke think she has a shot at toppling Sherrill in the June contest for District 2? “I am absolutely grassroots, bottom-up perspective,” Brooke said over coffee at Rose’s Cafe on Union Street. “And City Hall does not always have that, and Stephen doesn’t have that.” The race for District 2, which covers posh enclaves like the Marina, Presidio Heights, and Cow Hollow, is shaping up to be a true David-versus-Goliath fight. It doesn’t necessarily carry the same political implications as, say, the election in District 4 — where the outcome could tilt the ideological scales of the moderate-majority Board of Supervisors — but it will say much about whether money can sway hearts and minds in a wealthy and traditionally conservative corner of the city. The truth is, Sherrill and Brooke aren’t terribly dissimilar — they both hold moderate views on issues like public safety and homelessness, positions that aren’t going to ruffle feathers in their district. This race is all about housing: an incumbent who leans urbanist and is open to more development in the district versus a challenger who is intensely skeptical of its impact on affordability. The production of residential development in the city remains slow, and even if Brooke is victorious, recent state laws have reduced local officials’ ability to stop projects from being built. That doesn’t mean the NIMBYs can’t try to flex their muscles: A Brooke-founded group helped sue the city in January over its state-mandated housing plan. Sherrill, 39, entered office after being appointed in December 2024 by former Mayor London Breed , succeeding Catherine Stefani, who was elected to the Assembly. Early in his career, he interned in the George W. Bush administration and later worked in the office of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He registered as a Democrat in 2023. Formerly director of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation, a Bloomberg Philanthropies project, Sherrill has been a close ally of Mayor Daniel Lurie, supporting his Family Zoning Plan and calls for more cops and for loosening the city’s bureaucracy. During a recent afternoon door-knocking session in Anza Vista, Sherrill was asked by constituents about the traffic impacts from the incoming T&T Supermarket at the shopping center at Geary and Masonic and the never-ending drama surrounding the San Francisco Unified School District (which the Board of Supervisors does not oversee). He was quick to mention his endorsement from Lurie and pressed hard on making the neighborhood safer and more welcoming to families. He didn’t mention his support for housing at the top of the conversation, only once he’d established a connection. In interviews with The Standard, however, he did not shy away from his stance that San Francisco has a housing shortage. He said he is “very proud” of his vote on Lurie’s upzoning plan, a response to state-mandated requirements to rezone large swaths of the city to encourage more housing. While Sherrill faced some opposition from his constituents on the proposal, he argued that if the city did not adopt it, the state could impose severe penalties. “For all the people who may still disagree with the choice that I made to vote for the plan, which I‘m very proud of — they can’t say that I didn’t show up; they can’t say that I didn’t engage with them,” said Sherrill. “They can’t say that I didn’t listen to them. I may not have done what they wanted. Listening doesn’t mean doing what people want.” Sherrill’s housing views were tested late last year, when Align Real Estate released plans for a 25-story development complex at the Marina Safeway. The supervisor called the design “outrageous” and “cartoonish.” He said residents were blindsided by Align’s proposal, and the project could stymie additional construction. “If we do things that erode trust with residents, it makes it harder to do all the other things that mean progress,” he said. Sherrill’s campaign, headquartered at a cavernous office on Union Street, has raised $396,000 for both the June election, which will allow him to fill out the term of his predecessor, Stefani, and a follow-up in November, when a new four-year term would commence. But that’s just a part of the moneyed machine behind him. Lurie’s well-heeled donor base created an independent expenditure committee in support of Sherrill and District 4 incumbent Alan Wong called “ SF Believes ,” which has raised an eye-popping $802,000. The PAC was cofounded by financier Alec Perkins, who also set up the pro-Lurie PAC that helped the mayor zoom to victory in 2024 with a cool $6.6 million. There’s another pro-Sherrill PAC backed by GrowSF, which has raised $252,000 toward its $500,000 goal , as well as one linked to the consulting firm BMWL, which has raised $26,000. A fourth, set up by a handful of unions, is still collecting donations. It’s a tremendous amount of money for an off-season district race, and far more support than any supervisor had in support or opposition in 2024. It is likely the largest number of PACs to ever support a Board of Supervisors member. Brooke, 62, has zero PACs. But she is embracing the uphill battle and thinks Sherrill’s PAC money can go only so far. “What we‘re up against is a money juggernaut,” she said. “But there’s a point of diminishing returns in a district race.” A longtime neighborhood activist, Brooke has been president of the Cow Hollow Association’s leadership for nearly two decades and in 2023 cofounded Neighborhoods United SF, which has been fiercely critical of the state’s efforts to force cities to build more housing. She has raised $160,000 for the June race, just opened an account for a November sequel, and has formed a campaign team with links to former Supervisor Aaron Peskin and the recall campaign of ousted Supervisor Joel Engardio. Her office, located on Lombard Street, is maybe a fifth of the size of Sherrill’s. She contends that the Family Zoning Plan is driven by a false narrative — that building more will drive down prices — and winces at the term “housing crisis,” instead calling it an “affordability crisis.” Even though the city was required to comply with the state’s housing requirements, the board members, she said, didn’t offer sufficient opposition. “Even if legally they had to do something, you can at least go kicking and fighting,” she said. “Instead, they rolled over like a Labrador, let them rub the belly.” While door-knocking last month in Cow Hollow, she came across residents who were disturbed at the idea of more development in the area. She admitted to potential constituents that she and Sherrill aren’t all that different, but that their big red line is on housing. (Brooke is also against Lurie’s proposed parcel tax to fund Muni, which Sherrill supports. “The voters in D2 do not want that,” she said. “They do not want more taxing.”) While meeting her neighbors, she got a few excited about her views, especially when she mentioned that her opponent was appointed by Breed; some residents frowned when they heard the former mayor’s name. She sees herself as the outsider, going up against a supervisor who hasn’t been knee-deep in the community like she has. “He comes from Bush, Bloomberg,” Brooke said about Sherrill. “His motivation and where he cut his teeth is at the administrative level. I cut my teeth at street level.”

Ex-Human Rights Commission head charged in corruption probe; Breed not implicated

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced charges Monday against Sheryl Davis, former executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, and James Spingola, former head of the nonprofit Collective Impact, alleging that they misused roughly $350,000 in public funds intended for the Black community. Davis faces 19 criminal counts, including felony misappropriation of public funds and felony perjury by certification. Spingola, who exited Collective Impact in October, is being charged with four counts of felony aiding and abetting a conflict of interest in a government contract. The two lived together as Davis was directing grants to Spingola’s nonprofit. “We have to make sure that we hold everything accountable. Each and every day we file cases involving street crime, but people have to understand that accountability goes beyond what happens on the streets,” Jenkins said Monday, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Davis and Spingola surrendered voluntarily and were booked into San Francisco County Jail, Jenkins said. The charges — a result of an 18-month-long investigation — stem from the Dream Keeper Initiative, a program launched under former Mayor London Breed to funnel money into Black communities, which was managed by the Human Rights Commission. Prosecutors allege Davis steered nearly $8.5 million in Dream Keeper grants — and other city funds — to Collective Impact despite conflicts of interest that should have disqualified her from the decision-making process. Collective Impact and Spingola received more than $3 million in additional funds through the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, prosecutors said. Prosecutors allege Davis had two direct conflicts of interest. First, according to the warrant affidavit, Davis and Spingola have lived together since 2015, share accounts at two banks, and have traveled together, paying for each other’s flights and hotel stays. Spingola wrote monthly rent checks to their landlord from the bank account where his Collective Impact paycheck was deposited, according to prosecutors. “We are not alleging that they even had an intimate relationship,” Jenkins said, adding that the conflict-of-interest charges rest on the entanglement of their finances, not on any theory of a romantic relationship. The second conflict relates to Davis’ continued financial involvement with Collective Impact after joining the Human Rights Commission. Prosecutors allege she remained a signatory on Collective Impact’s bank account, signed checks, authorized reimbursements to herself and used Collective Impact funds to pay Human Rights Commission expenses. Jenkins also alleges that Davis’ son received direct financial benefits from organizations that received Dream Keeper money. Prosecutors say Davis signed four contracts awarding millions of dollars to the nonprofit Homeless Children’s Network while the organization was simultaneously paying her son more than $140,000 as an independent contractor between October 2021 and 2024. Those payments were deposited into a bank account held jointly by Davis and her son, according to the warrant affidavit. Among the payments, prosecutors allege, he received $10,000 for helping the director of Homeless Children’s Network prepare five presentation slides for a panel on which Davis served as moderator and $40,000 for a two-month research project for which he was permitted to determine the scope of his own work. Collective Impact also spent more than $45,000 on behalf of Davis’ son in 2023 and 2024, on payroll, rent, and graduate school tuition, prosecutors said. Jenkins alleged Davis used a combination of city and Collective Impact funds to pay for personal projects, including hiring public relations firms to promote her personal brand and website, promoting and selling her children’s book, and upgrading flights. Prosecutors allege funds were used to purchase tables and VIP admissions to events in Beverly Hills, Martha’s Vineyard, and New York City, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Davis also directed spending through an entity called Megablack, described by Jenkins as a community initiative with no formal nonprofit status, no leadership structure, and no registration with the California secretary of state or attorney general’s office. Funds raised for Megablack flowed into Collective Impact’s bank accounts. Prosecutors allege Davis directed those funds toward expenses the Human Rights Commission would not have been permitted to make as a city agency, including payments for music artists, banquets, and a wine-tasting event. Davis’ attorney Tony Brass said she has been forthcoming about her role as a city official with nonprofit connections. “I have a lot of questions about the processes within the mayor’s office and the city attorney’s office,” Brass said. “This is a person who was asking for more transparency. She asked to be audited. She actively wanted to give up her power. And she has proactively announced her conflicts of interest. I’m very curious how they have a criminal case based on her conduct.” Representatives of the Human Rights Commission declined to comment. Davis joined the commission in 2016 and quickly became an important figure in the city’s efforts to economically bolster Black communities. Her role became more prominent in 2021, when Breed launched the Dream Keeper Initiative in response to George Floyd’s murder and placed it under the management of the Human Rights Commission. Davis’ tenure there ended in 2024, when The Standard was first to report that she had signed off on city contracts worth at least $1.5 million to Spingola while the two were living together. The revelations created a scandal for Breed, who was in the middle of a reelection bid and said she was aware of the “very close” relationship between Davis and Spingola. The district attorney’s office cited The Standard’s reporting in its arrest warrant. Jenkins said the $350,000 of misused funds represents a combination of misappropriated Dream Keeper Initiative funds and Proposition Q funds administered through Davis’ department. Proposition Q allows city departments to bypass the need for a contract for the purchase of goods under $10,000. Jenkins acknowledged the total could grow as the investigation continues. Jenkins said the investigation involved more than 50 search warrants served on various entities, along with a large volume of emails between Davis and third parties. She said the probe began after her office received tips through its Public Integrity Unit and determined there was sufficient basis to open a criminal investigation. The investigation was launched after Davis had left office. Jenkins declined to say whether Breed had knowledge of the alleged misconduct, noting only that charges were filed against individuals whom prosecutors believe committed crimes. She did not implicate Breed. “If more comes out, those charges can be changed,” Jenkins said. “More can be added.” “We have to hold government actors accountable,” Jenkins added, “certainly when they are abusing the trust of San Franciscans and abusing taxpayer dollars.” Monday’s arrest follows other charges levied against figures in the San Francisco nonprofit world. Gwendolyn Westbrook , the former head of a homeless services nonprofit, was accused in February of misappropriating more than $1.2 million in public funds. In 2024, another former nonprofit executive, Kyra Worthy, was charged with 34 felonies for the alleged misuse of $700,000 in public funds.

Donald Trump can’t quit San Francisco

President Donald Trump has San Francisco in his sights again, and maybe Bill O’Reilly had something to do with it. In a meeting with his Cabinet on Thursday, Trump suggested that a federal intervention in San Francisco was again on the table, pointing to what he said are the city’s ongoing struggles with crime and drug abuse. “San Francisco — a great city, was a great city — could quickly become a great city again,” Trump said in a rambling comment. “But, you know, they’re going very slowly. “They have tremendous, tremendous potential. It was one of the greatest cities in the world. Now it’s got a lot of crime. And the mayor’s really trying. Again, a Democrat trying. And I spoke to him. He just wants to have a chance. And I said, ‘We’ll give you a chance, but we can solve it very quickly.’” Trump’s comments came hours before Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host, released a NewsNation prime-time special titled “The Decline and Fall of San Francisco,” dredging up a milieu of drugs, homelessness, and neglect. “One of the worst places in America,” O’Reilly said as he toured a Tenderloin street. “A legion of drug addicts, mentally ill, miscreants, thieves roaming the city. Nobody does anything about it.” O’Reilly’s special was heavily promoted in the days before broadcast, suggesting that the show might have reminded Trump that no city rattles conservative brains as much as the home of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, Fox News and its ilk have found San Francisco an irresistible target since 2023, when they gleefully showcased the city’s descent into a “doom loop” of homelessness, drug addiction, and street crime. Despite visible recent progress in addressing these problems — street tents and structures decreased to 155 in February from nearly 400 in February 2024 — the insinuations of the city’s decline continue. In February, conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley came to town, hoping to root out fraud or corruption. He also visited the Tenderloin. Political experts say there are reasons the anti-SF messaging won’t go away. “This is part of a campaign to undermine Gavin Newsom,” said Democratic consultant Jim Ross. “Look what they did on the fraud stuff with [Gov. Tim Walz] in Minnesota. They think that formula worked.” In the outrage after Shirley’s videos in Minnesota, Walz dropped out of his race for reelection. Matt Shupe, a Sacramento consultant for Republicans, said the timing is again right for putting SF in the spotlight with midterm elections coming up in November. “San Francisco is essentially the capital of the Democratic Party,” said Shupe. “It is a beautiful city. A magical place. It’s very special. But it also demonstrates the criminal mismanagement that pure Democratic Party rule has on one city.” The negative reports may seem repetitive, Shupe said, but that’s because they are effective. “It’s a good way to contrast [Democratic] talking points and anchor it in reality,” he said, noting that he was speaking as a consultant, not as a representative of the state Republican Party, which is one of his clients. Ross, however, isn’t sure the punches are landing on Newsom or other Democrats. “They’re still looking for the issue. I don’t think it’s popped up,” he said. “They’re still scrambling for their Somalian child-care story in California.” In a statement, Lurie underscored the progress made on his watch. “In San Francisco, crime is down 30%, encampments are at record lows, and our city is on the rise. Public safety is my No. 1 priority, and we are going to stay laser focused on keeping our streets safe and clean.”

SF public defender, found in contempt, fined $26K for refusing to take on clients

A San Francisco judge has ordered Public Defender Mano Raju to pay a $26,000 fine after finding him in contempt of court for his office’s failure to represent all indigent clients the court has asked it to. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman fined the elected official $1,000 for each instance of failing to provide a lawyer to 26 felony defendants this year. He must pay the fine by April 10. “I am not telling Mr. Raju how to organize your office … but I do conclude that you have available lawyers to handle felony cases that you are refusing,” said Dorfman, adding that he would not “retreat from enforcing court order.” Raju sat beside his attorney during the proceeding Tuesday, which was watched by a packed courtroom, including a handful of public defenders from Northern California. Raju said he plans to appeal and expects a stay before the deadline. The fine is an escalation of a months-long saga that has pitted the public defender’s office against what Raju claims is an overwhelmed court system that has left him unable to ethically represent clients. Since May, Raju’s office has refused to take new clients on one day each week because of his overworked staff. Dorfman, who found that there are public defenders available to take cases five days a week, found Raju in contempt March 10 for continuing to refuse to take clients. “It was a disappointing ruling. We’re anticipating a higher court to stay his decision,” Raju said. Prior to the ruling about the fine, several staffers of Raju’s office, including a lawyer, investigator, and social worker, spoke to the judge about their inability to take on new cases. “It feels like blame and punishment is only being put on the public defender,” said felony attorney Tal Klement. He said the courts are overwhelmed by systemic issues that are out of his office’s control, like court availability, jail visiting hours for clients, and the district attorney’s charging decisions. Klement said he has 161 open cases, regularly works 60 hours a week, and has developed health and strained his family life. Raju and his department say national studies show that they are understaffed to meet the demands of a far more resourced DA’s office that has refused to reduce the caseload by taking actions such as settling cases. Meanwhile, the DA’s office has said that the public defender’s office is making a political choice in its refusal to take cases. Chief Deputy District Attorney Ana Gonzalez said that when caseloads have skyrocketed in the past, no such emergency was declared. She said the number of new felony cases has been flat for four years. She also argued that many of the court delays are due to the public defender prolonging cases by choice and refusing to settle cases. In a prior hearing, Hadi Razzaq of the public defender’s office said the attorneys have myriad duties beyond trying cases. He said the office’s 47 felony attorneys each have an average of 61 cases, and taking on more would mean being unable to properly represent their clients. By comparison, the Public Defender has 125 lawyers while the DA has 140. The public defender’s refusals have had a host of downstream effects. Fill-in private attorneys, who have taken on more than 600 additional cases, have also run out of resources to represent indigent defendants. This leaves many defendants lingering in jail until an attorney becomes available. “We have now had to transport clients day after day after day,” Rani Singh, chief legal counsel at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, said at one of the hearings. “Our deputies have been told by clients that they are sick of waiting for attorneys, and some have refused to come to court because they don’t expect to get attorneys.”

Asian Art Museum

Office of the City Administrator

Adult Probation Department

Airport

Arts Commission

Office of the Assessor-Recorder

Board of Appeals

Office of the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors

Office of the City Attorney

Department of Children, Youth and Their Families

Controller's Office

Planning Department

Civil Service Commission

District Attorney's Office

Department of Building Inspection

Department of Early Childhood

Department of Emergency Management

Department of Police Accountability

Department of Public Health

Department of Public Works

Office of Economic and Workforce Development

Environment Department

Ethics Commission

Fine Arts Museums

Fire Department

Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing

Human Rights Commission

Department of Human Resources

Human Services Agency

Health Service System

Juvenile Probation Department

Public Library

Municipal Transportation Agency

Office of the Mayor

Public Defender's Office

Police Department

Port

Public Utilities Commission

Recreation and Park Department

Department of Elections

Retirement System

Rent Board

Sheriff's Department Office of Inspector General

Sheriff's Department

Department of Technology

Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector

War Memorial

Department on the Status of Women

General City Responsibilities

General Administration & Finance

Culture & Recreation

Community Health

Human Welfare & Neighborhood Development

Public Works, Transportation & Commerce

Public Protection

SF Civil Grand Jury

The Abatement Appeals Board provides a final review process for City permitting decisions. It ensures fair and efficient adjudication of permit-related disputes before an impartial panel. The board holds authority to make binding decisions on appeals concerning notices of abatement.

Abatement Appeals Board

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 1

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 2

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 3

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 4

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 5

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 6

Abatement Appeals Board Commissioner 7

The Access Appeals Commission provides final reviews for a wide range of City permitting decisions. It ensures an efficient, fair, and expeditious permit issuance process through an impartial panel. The commission holds authority to make binding decisions on appeals related to City permits.

Access Appeals Commission

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 1

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 2

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 3

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 4

Access Appeals Commission Commissioner 5

The Adult Day Health Care Planning Council advises on the development and improvement of adult day health care services. It provides expertise in healthcare planning, policy recommendations, and program evaluation. Key responsibilities include assessing community needs and advising on service delivery enhancements.

Adult Day Health Care Planning Council

Adult Probation Department supervises individuals on probation and facilitates their reintegration into the community. It provides reentry and rehabilitative services, including victim restitution and financial assistance for crime victims. The department values public safety, offender rehabilitation, and community partnerships.

Cristel Tullock

The Advisory Committee of Street Artists and Crafts Examiners evaluates arts and crafts applicants and monitors program compliance. It conducts studio visits and public screenings to ensure adherence to established criteria. Members also revise program criteria and undertake additional tasks as needed.

Advisory Committee of Street Artists and Crafts Examiners

The Advisory Council on Human Rights advises on anti-discrimination laws and racial equity initiatives. It provides expertise on reparations and public policy impacts on Black communities. It guides efforts to establish partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities in San Francisco.

Advisory Council on Human Rights

San Francisco Airport manages air traffic operations and ensures safe aircraft movement. It provides parking facilities and maintains airport infrastructure to accommodate travelers and staff. The department oversees ground transportation and coordinates with airlines for efficient passenger services.

Mike Nakornkhet

The Airport Commission oversees policy and strategic planning for San Francisco International Airport. It makes key decisions on airport development projects and financial management. It ensures compliance with regulations and collaborates on initiatives like terminal naming.

Airport Commission

Airport Commission Commissioner 1

Malcolm Yeung

Jose F. Almanza

Mark Buell

Susan Leal

Airport Director

Animal Care and Control Department manages animal sheltering, adoption, and emergency response services. It enforces animal-related laws and regulations, ensuring the humane treatment and safety of animals. The department also provides public education on responsible pet ownership and animal welfare.

Animal Care and Control Department

Virginia Donohue

Animal Care and Control Department, Director

The San Francisco Arts Commission oversees the integration of arts into city life and ensures public access to cultural experiences. It makes decisions on public art programs and allocates grants to support local artists and performances. The commission actively shapes policies affecting the arts ecosystem in San Francisco.

Arts Commission Commissioner 1

Arts Commission Commissioner 2

Arts Commission Commissioner 3

Arts Commission Commissioner 4

Debra Walker

Suzanne Ferras

Jessica Rothschild

Seth Brenzel

JD Beltran

Marcus Shelby

J Riccardo Benavides

Nabiel Musleh

Charles (Chuck) Collins

Lydia So

Arts Commission Commissioner 15

San Francisco Arts Commission invests in a vibrant arts community and shapes cultural policy. It enlivens the urban environment through public art programs and supports diverse artistic expressions. The commission facilitates meetings and discussions to engage the community in cultural development.

Ralph Remington

Arts Commission, Director of Cultural Affairs

The Asian Art Commission determines policy and administers the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. It oversees museum operations and collaborates with the Asian Art Museum Foundation on fundraising efforts. Commissioners ensure the museum's strategic direction and financial sustainability.

Asian Art Commission

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 1

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 2

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 3

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 4

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 5

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 6

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 7

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 8

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 9

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 10

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 11

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 12

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 13

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 14

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 15

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 16

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 17

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 18

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 19

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 20

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 21

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 22

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 23

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 24

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 25

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 26

Asian Art Commission Commissioner 27

Asian Art Museum showcases Asian art and culture through exhibitions and educational programs. It offers diverse collections and hosts special events to engage the community. The museum fosters cultural appreciation and understanding by providing access to its extensive art collections.

Dr. Soyoung Lee

Asian Art Museum, Director

The Assessment Appeals Board #1 hears property tax assessment appeals in San Francisco. It evaluates evidence presented by taxpayers and the Assessor to determine property values. The Board has the authority to make final decisions on assessments regardless of property type or value.

Assessment Appeals Board #1

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #1 Commissioner 2

Richard Lee

Stephen Wasserman

Adena Gilbert

Paul Bellar

Quirina Mitchell

Hilary Winslow

The Assessment Appeals Board #2 adjudicates property tax assessment appeals for San Francisco taxpayers. It evaluates evidence presented by taxpayers and the Assessor to determine accurate property values. The Board exercises authority to render final decisions on residential properties and specific real estate assessments.

Assessment Appeals Board #2

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #2 Commissioner 3

Claire Ervin Lee

Louisa Mendoza

Joyce Lewis

Nicholas Goldman

Michelle Domingo

The Assessment Appeals Board #3 provides a platform for San Francisco taxpayers to contest property tax assessments. It conducts hearings where evidence from both taxpayers and the Assessor is evaluated. The Board makes binding decisions on property assessments based on presented evidence.

Assessment Appeals Board #3

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 1

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 2

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 3

Marc Dickow

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 5

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 6

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 7

Assessment Appeals Board #3 Commissioner 8

Assesses property, applies exemptions, collects transfer taxes, and records official documents.

Assessor-Recorder

Joaquín Torres

The Ballot Simplification Committee ensures voter materials are clear and understandable. It reviews and revises ballot language to accurately reflect propositions and measures. The committee advises on simplifying complex legal and technical terms for voter comprehension.

Ballot Simplification Committee

The Bayview Hunters Point Citizens Advisory Committee provides policy advice on planning and land use matters in Zone 2 of Bayview Hunter's Point. It offers expertise in land use policies, zoning issues, and urban development. The committee advises the Board of Supervisors, City Boards, and commissions on relevant projects and initiatives.

Bayview Hunters Point Citizens Advisory Committee