City Hall Digest: Breaking Down Proposed Ballot Measures and Potential SFUSD School Closures

City Hall Digest is TogetherSF Action’s weekly dispatch from San Francisco’s City Hall, broken into bite-sized pieces—because understanding local government is your fundamental right.

Breaking Down Next Year’s Proposed Ballot Measures

Even though the presidential primary election is still six months away, the SF ballot is already taking shape—candidates for local office are staking their claims and local elected officials are proposing ballot measures. This week, we compare and contrast some proposed local ballot measures from members of the Board of Supervisors, and look at the broader context of these measures. 

Let’s dive in. 

Two Governance Proposals From Supervisor Safaí 

First up are proposals from District 11 Supervisor and mayoral candidate Ahsha Safaí. Last week, he announced two separate ballot measures, which he frames as good governance reform, and would need to go through the Board of Supervisors before reaching the ballot. The first measure would make the Mayor accountable for approving Muni fare and meter rate hikes. Currently, Jeff Tumlin, the Director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), is responsible for this. According to Supervisor Safaí, the Board of Supervisors “has received thousands” of complaints regarding SFMTA’s potential change to extend the operating hours of parking meters. This seems to be a populist move to perhaps establish that he would oppose fare hikes as Mayor, but it’s unclear what this measure is actually solving for—the extension of parking meter hours is really unpopular, but making the Mayor responsible for changes like this feels somewhat reactionary. 

Supervisor Safaí also introduced a measure to make the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) a chartered department, which it is currently not. At the moment, if an emergency is declared by the Mayor, DEM is not actually given any powers to manage it—rather, that responsibility is diffused. It’s a deep-in-the-weeds sort of technical change that is aimed at improving cohesion amongst city departments, but we’re not entirely sure how this directly improves anything. 

Supervisor Safaí is running for mayor. At a time when property crime is spiking, fentanyl-fueled overdoses are reaching record highs, and the city faces a fiscal crisis agitated by street conditions and empty office space, fare hikes and the DEM’s charter status feel beside the point. Safaí isn’t making these ballot measures the lynchpin of his campaign, but in the context of a mayoral race, everything a candidate does should essentially be considered part of their platform. 

Supervisor Dorsey’s Proposal to Fully Staff SFPD

Earlier this year, District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey introduced a ballot measure that would fully staff up the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) over the course of five years. “Fully staffed” would mean that SFPD has 2,182 officers, as recommended by a 2021 independent report. 

Supervisor Dorsey’s measure is a crucial step to solving the city’s public safety problems by ensuring San Francisco has enough officers to respond quickly to calls.

SFUSD Must Face the Reality of School Closures

Superintendent Matt Wayne has indicated that he’s working on a list of SFUSD schools across the city that will likely need to close in order to balance the district’s budget. SFUSD is grappling with teacher retention, a potential strike, a malfunctioning payroll system, and a divisive curriculum, but its largest challenge might be shrinking enrollment. Enrollment directly affects district finances because schools receive funding per student, and also schools cost money to run. Many SFUSD schools have fewer than 200 children enrolled in them—the smallest school has just 11 students in two classrooms yet costs almost $1 million per year to operate.

With a serious fiscal cliff approaching the District, extraordinarily difficult decisions will have to be made. Closing schools is not ideal—it may force parents to travel further to get their kids to school, and it may separate them from culturally relevant staff and resources. It’s also a huge political problem, as the idea of closing schools and potentially laying off teachers is unsavory to almost everyone. However, it’s worth noting that in this case it’s unlikely that any teachers would actually get laid off—they would likely be moved to other schools in the district. 

There will likely be opponents to this who will organize and fight to keep these schools open no matter the cost to the district. It will be an uphill battle, politically, but the district cannot continue to spend this kind of money on disproportionately small schools. And, while the district is not a business, taking into account the impact these schools have by dispersing teachers and draining money, it simply does not make sense for the district to keep supporting schools that have such small classrooms.

Superintendent Wayne stated he’s aiming to provide the list of schools that will need to close by the end of the school year. We’ll monitor and keep tabs on the closures and keep you up-to-date.