• Office: DCCC, Assembly District 19
• Election Date: March 5, 2024
• Candidate: Lanier Coles
• Due Date: December 23, 2023
• Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the March 5, 2024 Primary Election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government.

The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco.

We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by December 23, 2023 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

Table of Contents

• Questions
  • Education
  • Business
  • Public Safety
  • Housing
  • Drugs
  • Mental Health
  • Public Transit
• General questions

Questions

Please mark the box that best aligns with your position. You may explain any position if you so desire.

Education

	Yes	No
Should all students in 8th grade have access to algebra, if they want it?	X
Should all students in 7th grade have access to algebra, if they want it?	X
Should all high school students have access to AP courses?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that promote making algebra available to 8th graders?	X
Did you support or oppose the recall of Board of Education members Collins, López, and Moliga? If you supported or opposed a subset, please specify below.	SUPPORTED

Explain why you did or did not support the recall of each member:

I supported the recall of all 3 BOE members. These BOE members demonstrated a preference for ideology over practical policies to get the schools re-opened long after other public school districts had re-opened. The emotional and academic cost to SFUSD children who were forced to rely on virtual learning for an unnecessarily long period of time will be felt by those children for years to come. It is a tragedy. I also organized friends and family to march to City Hall to advocate for the public schools to re-open. More recently I attended a rally at City Hall for the proposition to bring back Algebra to SFUSD middle schools.

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

Business

Should San Francisco…	Yes	No
Reduce the time to obtain all permits to open a new business to no more than 3 months?	X
Reduce the cost of obtaining permits to open a new business?	X
Reduce the number of activities which must obtain permits, and expand the number of by-right activities?	X
Increase the number of available ABC permits?	X
Increase the number of available recreational marijuana permits?
Try to attract businesses of all sizes to the City?	X

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

I don't know enough about the current state of supply and demand of recreational marijana permits to have a point of view on this issue.

Public Safety

	Yes	No
Do you think that property crime in San Francisco is too high?	X
Do you support policies commonly referred to as "defund the police"?		X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that promote a fully-funded and fully-staffed police department?	X
Should police funding be from the general fund, rather than via special taxes and set-asides?	X
Did you support the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin?	X

Please explain why you did or did not support the recall of DA Chesa Boudin:

Our former DA was an idealogue who ignored the reality on the ground in San Francisco with escalating petty theft and repeat offenders. I gathered signatures for many months to get the DA recall on the ballot. I donated to the DA recall campaign and encouraged others to donate. Once we knew the recall would be on the ballot, I spent numerous weekends canvassing for the DA recall.

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

Housing

	Yes	No
Is it too difficult to build market rate housing in San Francisco?	X
Is it too difficult to build subsidized housing in San Francisco?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that make it easier, faster, and/or cheaper to build market rate housing in San Francisco?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that make it easier, faster, and/or cheaper to build subsidized housing in San Francisco?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that would loosen the existing limits on height, density, and bulk for residential buildings? (ie taller, denser, and fewer/reduced setbacks)	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that would abolish the existing limits on height, density, and bulk for residential buildings?		X

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

While our current housing policies are too restrictive, it seems like we need some guidelines on residential building construction to ensure our neighborhoods and roads continue to have adequate natural light and new buildings relate to existing buildings on a given block. There are several blocks in downtown San Franciso that were built a long time ago without adequate natural light hitting the streets and sidewalks - these blocks feel unwelcome and cold.

Drugs

	Yes	No
Should San Francisco arrest and prosecute fentanyl dealers?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that formally request help from the State and Federal governments to bolster our police force (both the officers and the investigators)?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies promoting "safe consumption" sites without altering existing laws and lax enforcement around open-air usage?		X
Should the Party adopt or support policies promoting "safe consumption" sites only if paired with zero-tolerance for open-air usage? (ie consuming drugs like fentanyl on the street would be illegal; and users would be taken to a recovery site until they are sober)	X

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

In theory, I might be open to a safe consumption site, but I would need to see specific details about the operations of the safe consumption site and surrounding areas to be convinced the safe consumption site could be used effectively as a tool to not only reduce overdoses, but also incentivize people to enter into rehab. A safe consumption site funded by the tax-payers (or even privately funded) with drug dealers across the street dealing drugs without impunity would make the situation on our streets worse.

Mental Health

	Yes	No
Should San Francisco place people who are experiencing mental health crises on the streets into involuntary mental health holds at psychiatric facilities? See my explanation below.	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies that facilitate the construction and operation of mental health facilities, and permit those facilities to treat patients involuntarily if they are deemed to be unable to care for themselves (as determined by a panel of psychiatric professionals)?	X

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

San Francisco's current conservatorship laws appear too restrictive to meet the needs of some of our mentally ill residents who are in crisis, as demonstrated by the story in the SF Chronicle about a sister who tried to have her brother put into a conservatorship to no avail. Ultimately the woman's brother, who was mentally ill, was found dead at Land's End. While we need to loosen the conservatorship law, we still need parameters around who enters into a conservatorship; and, we need to ensure there's an adequate supply of places where people can be conserved, a pathway for people to exit conservatorship, as well as checks and balances on conservators.

Public Transit

	Yes	No
Should SFMTA and BART conduct fare enforcement operations and prosecute fare evaders?	X
Should the Party adopt or support policies requiring SFMTA and BART to enforce fare payment?	X
Recent state funding requires Muni and BART to enforce fare payments in order to receive funding; do you agree with this requirement?	X

If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:

People who evade paying for SFMTA and Bart without impunity are no different than people who shoplift without impunity. In civil society we must have rules and they should be enforced, otherwise people should change the rules through a democratic process.

General questions

What needs to change with the Party?

The San Francisco Democratic Party has moved too far to the left of San Francisco voters and they have damaged the brand and reputation of the Democratic Party in San Francisco. The most telling example of how out of touch the DCCC is were the results of the D.A. recall; a super majority of the DCCC voted against the D.A. recall while a majority of San Franciscans voted for the recall. I predict we will see this disconnect again when a majority of San Franciscans vote for the proposition to allow Algebra back into middle schools. Yet, 14 out of 28 DCCC members did NOT vote in favor of endorsing the Algebra prop. (It ultimately gained the endorsement of the DCCC, but only because the people who "abstained" were removed from the denominator of the endorsement calculation.)

What are the top three issues facing San Francisco, and what would you like to see change?

The top three most pressing problems are drug use and drug related deaths, housing affordability, and high rates of property crime. I would like to see:

• Open air drug markets eradicated (night and day) with drug users in rehab

• An abundance of housing to drive down prices

• Criminals who avoid engaging in nefarious activities in San Francisco because they know they will get caught by the police, prosecuted by the D.A.'s office, and held accountable by the judges

• Once we address drugs, housing and crime, our City will be better positioned to revive our economy. We can't strengthen the economy without first addressing the other 3 most pressing problems I have outlined.

Tell us one thing you think needs to change in SF that the average voter wouldn't know about.

Many voters think the problem with prop 47 is the dollar threshold for a felony; the average voter may not understand that prop 47 also made it difficult (if not impossible) for a serial petty theft criminal to be prosectuted for prior petty theft as a felony. I spoke with clerks at the CVS near my kids' school in Nob Hill after witnessing brazen shoplifting at 8:30am, and learned their store experiences shoplifting over 12 times per day. The petty theft criminals are often the same people committing petty theft repeatedly. In my conversations with assistant district attorneys in other California cities, the most helpful change to prop 47 would be to allow lawyers to prosecute a person for a series of petty thefts as a felony.