David Chiu became the longest-serving president of the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday when he was unanimously re-elected by his colleagues to a third two-year term.
After having first secured the post in 2009 with the backing of progressives, and retaining the job two years later with the help of moderates whom he rewarded with committee assignments, Chiu managed to secure election this time around with a decisive 11-0 vote.
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In an unexpected move, developers in San Francisco’s mid-Market Street neighborhood are applying for a tax break put in place for Twitter and other tech companies.
In 2011, the Board of Supervisors eliminated the payroll tax for new employees hired by companies in the area. Mayor Ed Lee and other supporters called the move necessary to keep Twitter from leaving town and to foster the emergence of a tech economy in the long-depressed neighborhood.
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San Francisco’s mobile food movement pleases palates with curbside delicacies such as Naughty Naan and Kalua pork sliders. But the craze frustrates the owners of stationary restaurants who are forced to watch their customers wooed away by businesses that don’t pay rent.
Pressure has been mounting for The City to intervene.
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In response to a fatal stabbing, San Francisco has tightened admission rules for homeless shelters to bar access to people who are acting violently or making such threats outside a facility.
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As a small Massachusetts town became the first U.S. community to ban the sale of single-serving plastic water bottles Tuesday, even eliminating such packaging from large events continues to elude San Francisco despite years of discussion.
While The City hasn’t been shy about taking on plastic bags or plastic foam food containers, water bottles have thus far managed to avoid its ever-growing ban list.
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A self-described “blue-collar politician,” the 63-year-old Norman Yee is set to become the oldest member of the Board of Supervisors when he’s sworn in Jan. 8. He said he wants to bring a thoughtful, independent style with a mix of progressive and moderate politics to his new job.
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The charismatic and outspoken London Breed, 38, is bringing passion and a breadth of experience from a tough childhood in the Western Addition to City Hall, where she wants to connect residents to meaningful jobs at flashy tech companies and reform public housing policies.
In November, Breed decisively won the District 5 race and will represent the Fillmore and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods on the Board of Supervisors when she is sworn in to office Jan. 8.
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As San Francisco struggles to control the cost of its health care obligations for government workers and retirees, it is putting more emphasis on actually improving its employees’ health.
New data suggest this emphasis is overdue.
A recent analysis of Kaiser Permanente users covered by The City’s Health Service System — the group of government employees considered healthiest — found that a staggering 66 percent of adults were obese or overweight. Meanwhile, 35 percent of dependent children were overweight or obese.
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Starting in July, each member of the board was allocated $100,000 in city funds to spend as they chose. Halfway through the fiscal year, some supervisors have spent all or a portion of their allocations, others none at all. The spending varies from community events to rebuilding playgrounds, and provides a glimpse of the respective supervisors’ priorities.
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In worst-case scenarios, public construction projects in San Francisco can drag on for years, suffer from cost overruns, end up in litigation and have workers complaining about not being paid.
Mayor Ed Lee issued an executive directive Wednesday aimed at improving public construction contracting by requiring better communication and new payment requirements for The City and its contractors.
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With the release of new rules for the use of nonpotable water in businesses and apartment buildings, San Francisco is riding a new water conservation wave.
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At its inception, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom hailed the SF Carbon Fund as a pioneering effort to let local residents, businesses and government agencies mitigate their own pollution while helping to build a local renewable energy economy.
“This program differs from existing carbon-offset programs that seek to offset carbon pollution far away from where this pollution is actually created,” Newsom said when he unveiled the program in December 2007.
Yet five years later, the Department of the Environment is struggling to live up to its mandate.
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Energy-saving streetlights and wireless systems controlling them will be tested in three San Francisco neighborhoods next year, and ultimately the technology could be used to control all 18,500 city-owned lamps and other devices such as traffic signals and surveillance cameras.
Eight companies have been selected under a San Francisco Public Utilities Commission pilot program, and they will each receive a $15,000 stipend to demonstrate what their wireless streetlight systems can do. The technology will be tested in the Sunset, Presidio Heights and downtown neighborhoods.
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While David Chiu is considered the odds-on favorite to become the first person to lead the Board of Supervisors for three straight terms, no fewer than four colleagues are jockeying to replace him as president.
Moderate Supervisors Malia Cohen and Scott Wiener and progressives David Campos and Jane Kim are all seeking the post, City Hall sources say. Progressive supervisors first elected Chiu as their president in 2009, but two years later he cut a deal with moderates to secure a subsequent term.
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With tech firms seemingly the beneficiary of much of the love coming out of City Hall these days, small businesses feel somewhat neglected in the wake of the realization that a voter-mandated report on how to make life easier on them is now years past due.
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