Mayor Breed kicks off campaign for 3 measures she says will improve SF

San Francisco Mayor London Breed joined other local leaders Saturday in Japantown to urge voters to back three ballot measures that supporters say will make the city safer and more vibrant.

The three measures, which will appear on the March ballot, attempt to address some of the city’s most visible, persistent issues — downtown’s sluggish economic recovery, public safety concerns and the drug crisis — that Breed has been focusing on ahead of her upcoming, potentially tough reelection campaign. Standing in front of dozens of supporters at Japantown’s Peace Plaza, Breed said the initiatives will face the issues head-on.

“We need to dig in, and we need to go harder and stronger and not be afraid to make the hard decisions that are going to get us to a better place,” she said.

The first of the three initiatives the leaders touted, Measure C, would waive the city’s transfer tax, which currently ranges from 0.5% to 6%, for buildings converted from offices to housing the first time they are transferred to new owners, in an effort to diversify and revitalize San Francisco’s downtown core.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said at the rally that, by making it more financially feasible to turn empty office buildings into housing, the measure would help bring life and activity to downtown and the Financial District outside of the workweek.

“We need to make sure that people are able to come in and do what they need to do with those buildings and convert some of them to housing, and that we’re not letting our taxes get in the way of those changes that we need in downtown San Francisco,” he said.

The other two measures Breed and her allies promoted Saturday, E and F, have drawn more controversy. 

Measure E, called the police policies and procedures measure, would cut down on the amount of paperwork officers must fill out, including after certain use-of-force incidents, with the goal that officers spend no more than about a third of their time on recordkeeping and reporting. 

It would also allow the Police Department to use public surveillance cameras, drones and facial recognition technology without approval from the Police Commission, which sets policy for the agency, and would expand when officers are allowed to engage in a vehicle pursuit when they believe someone is committing a felony or violent misdemeanor, as long as it can be done safely. 

On Saturday, Breed said Measure E is about giving police “the tools that they need to do their job,” especially as residents become frustrated with slow response times, and pointed to recent reductions in reported crime in the city as evidence that she and the Police Department are making progress on public safety.

She added that, in an era where people can record everything on smartphones, using drones to fight crime is just “21st century policing.” But she said the proposal didn’t mean that police reforms and transparency are forgotten.

Measure E “doesn’t mean we walk away from our values,” she said. “It just means we have another tool to help combat the crime that is terrorizing San Francisco.”

Finally, Measure F would require welfare recipients with substance use disorders to enroll in treatment to continue to receive cash assistance through the County Adult Assistance Program — an idea Breed floated in the fall that received immediate pushback.

While critics have argued that the measure threatens vulnerable populations that rely on the government assistance, Cedric Akbar, a substance abuse recovery advocate and the director of the Positive Directions Equals Change treatment center, said Saturday that the proposal is an effort to get more people into treatment, especially as fatal drug overdoses in the city rise.

“It’s time for change,” he said, adding that the proposal wouldn’t force anyone into treatment or sobriety, but encourage people to seek out help.

Breed emphasized that Measure F would not strip people of housing or shelter access, but only require people to seek out treatment if they are getting cash assistance. She said the treatment wouldn’t have to be a 24/7 program, but could involve going in once or twice a week to access treatment services and meet with a caseworker to discuss options. 

While Breed acknowledged that “there’s never enough” treatment services available for every person grappling with substance abuse in the city, she plans to expand the options available as requests for treatment ramp up. She said she hopes the measure would at least get more people in the door who might otherwise not have sought help otherwise. 

“Our morgue is filled with people that haven’t even been identified who have died from drug overdoses. That is not OK,” she said. “We have to start doing things different if we want a different result.”