• Office: DCCC, Assembly District 19
• Election Date: March 5, 2024
• Candidate: Parag Gupta
• 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.

• 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.	X

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

I supported the recall and helped get signatures. I have a daughter in an SFUSD school. I also served as School Site Council Chair. I also invested $60M in SFUSD-adjacent programs as an executive in a foundation. With the lived and professional knowledge I possessed, I voted to recall the three school members for dereliction of duty. Their meddling in hiring a consultant to develop a plan to get our kids back in school after COVID, their focus on school renaming, and their divisive name-calling created harm for SFUSD children - particularly BIPOC student populations that suffered the most learning melt.

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:

We need a dashboard with 'average time to open a business' that elected officials pay attention to and to which bureaucrats are held accountable to reduce.

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:

We needed to send a clear message to elected officials that ignoring Asian hate crime is not okay.

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

We should support policies that promote a fully-funded and fully staffed police department without an oversight committee that hampers the functioning of the police force. AND I seek to understand what are the KPIs that the police department holds itself accountable to such as decreasing property crime. The metric should not be a decrease in bureaucratic time in and of itself. It is important to share with the public some of the outcomes that are being achieved by having an unfettered fully staffed police force.

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:

I am an executive at the largest nonprofit affordable housing organization in the country. I am also a board member of YIMBY Action. We need to thoughtfully yet urgently build 82,000 units of housing in San Francisco of ALL kinds.

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:

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?
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 should place people who are experiencing mental health crises on the streets into involuntary mental health holds at psychiatric facilities if it is not a one-off incident and especially if the person may be of harm to themselves, others, or to physical property.

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?
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:

I agree with the principle of the above statements. I seek to see the analysis on what kind of cost (such as man power) is required to enforce fare payment, what the expected result would be (both in collection and deterrence of such behavior) to opine more thoughtfully. It certainly feels like more can be done currently.

General questions

What needs to change with the Party?

1. It must be a big tent party. I am a co-founder of the Westside Family Democratic Club. I represented the club before the DCCC when we sought to get chartered because we did not pass a purity test by many of the incumbent DCCC. This is wrong. We also need to expand the way in which we register new Democrats.

2. The DCCC should endorse candidates that recognize the urgency of San Francisco's situation. The DCCC should endorse candidates that make evidence-based decisions rather than holding onto ideological beliefs that are not working (e.g." detracking" 8th grade math).

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

1. We must thoughtfully and urgently build 82,000 units of housing of all kinds 2. We must meet students where they are and help everyone reach their full potential rather than holding students back

3. We must uncuff our law enforcement's ability to stop property crime and protect our grandparents.

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

Currently, we only build housing at a 1 - 2% rate of the current housing stock. Without dramatically increasing housing stock, we make current San Francisco housing more and more unaffordable. The key to tackling homelessness is not in building more supportive housing. It is going upstream to build more middle-income market housing and more workforce family affordable housing. By doing so, we prevent people from sliding into homelessness or housing instability. This further prevents residents from experiencing the trauma of homelessness and ultimately the higher operational cost of supportive housing programming. The benefit to society is we can better retain economic and racial diversity within San Francisco.