By Christin Evans, HANC Board

Billionaire interests (real estate, tech) are playing a long game to permanently put their thumb on the scale of power.  Significantly impacting San Francisco’s elections this past cycle was the redistricting that placed a larger number of progressive voters in fewer districts and saw unprecedented levels of PAC spending to usher in so-called ‘moderate’ Supervisors aligned with billionaire Mayor Daniel Lurie.

GrowSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, Abundant SF and TogetherSF (recently rebranded to Blueprint) together poured millions of dollars into buying a slim majority of seats on the Board of Supervisors. 

Now the conservative-leaning political groups are taking full advantage of their majority powers as witnessed December 10th in the Mayor’s conference room in room 201 when the groups’ representatives set around a u-shape seating configuration to echo the Mayor’s talking points that his office needs more power.  Giving him more power will make San Francisco run more efficiently and effectively, Lurie says.

What’s in Lurie’s way?  Pesky voter initiatives, citizen-led oversight commissions, labor-backed procurement rules and an “unwieldy” 500+ page charter that is often difficult to interpret, Deputy City Attorney Jon Givner told the group.

At the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council’s January meeting, we will discuss the various proposals that could find their way into a November 2026 ballot measure including:

• Reduce the oversight role of citizen-led Commissions, cut the number of commissions in half, give the Mayor ability to appoint to a greater portion of the seats and the power to remove commissioners for any reason not just for cause
• Increase the threshold for placing a ballot measure onto the ballot: require more signatures for voter-led initiatives, and increase from 4 to 6 the number of Supervisors who can place a measure on the ballot
• Modify procurement rules and processes removing certain labor-won concessions on procurement requirements
• Give the mayor unilateral authority to hire and fire department heads, some of whom are appointed by Commissions today as well as reduce the number of departments overall

Join us on Thursday, January 8 at 7 pm at the Park Branch library community room (lower level) or online.