Dylan Hirsch-Shell
- Office: Mayor
- Election Date: November 5, 2024
- Candidate: Dylan Hirsch-Shell
- Due Date: July 1, 2024
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the November 5, 2024 election! GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city delivered via common sense solutions and effective government. Our work includes running public opinion polls to understand what voters want, advocating for those changes, and ensuring that the SF government represents the people.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco.
This questionnaire will be published on growsf.org, and so we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.
Please complete this questionnaire by July 1, 2024 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Table of Contents
Your Goals
We'd like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.
Why are you running for Mayor?
I'm running for Mayor because I believe San Francisco deserves a strong leader who will work tirelessly to solve the serious problems facing our city, not a career politician who seems to be preoccupied with staging press conferences and attending events for photo-ops and always makes excuses for why things aren't improving. Our city is in a state of neglect, with an absentee mayor who has too many conflicts of interest and competing priorities that take precedence over doing what it takes to fix the city. It's time for someone who has fresh perspectives, bold ideas, and isn't beholden to anyone.
I also believe that in the rapidly evolving technology landscape of the 21st Century, major cities such as San Francisco need leaders with training in science, engineering, mathematics and real world practical experience in creating new technologies. As someone with a PhD in computational neuroscience and over 12 years of experience working on cutting-edge electric vehicle technology as an engineer at Tesla, I feel that I have the necessary background and knowledge in these areas to lead the City through the next four years with skill and confidence.
Finally, none of the other major candidates have proposed a platform that is bold enough to truly solve the deep-rooted problems of homelessness, drug addiction, and crime that have plagued San Francisco for decades now. They continue to push for band-aid fixes that aren't addressing the systemic issues that put us in this situation. It's like treating the symptoms without curing the disease; or more aptly when it comes to the City's budget, we continue to pay the interest without ever paying down the principle. I want to see San Francisco transcend that short-sighted, narrow-minded approach and start to address the systemic issues so we can achieve lasting change. Toward that end, I've assembled a comprehensive set of policies that strike a balance between compassion with pragmatism and short-term gains with long-term investments.
What is your #1 policy goal?
As an engineering lead at Tesla, I used data to drive my decision-making, and I would do the same as Mayor. Given that the last available GrowSF poll cited Homelessness as the #1 extremely/very serious problem, this should be our #1 priority to address. I would commit to ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco as Mayor. To do this, I would follow the successful strategies used in Houston to reduce their homeless population by 63% since 2011 and in the 14 communities that have implemented the “Built For Zero” methodology to achieve “Functional Zero” homelessness for at least one population (meaning the number of people in that population experiencing homelessness in a month will not exceed the City's proven record for housing at least that many people within a month). At its core, success in ending chronic homelessness requires collecting comprehensive, real-time data on every person who is experiencing homelessness in San Francisco, so that every day we know how many individuals are homeless, why they are homeless, what they need to no longer be homeless, and what systemic or individual barriers stand in the way of them getting what they need. Collecting this data requires a shared technology infrastructure used by all members of the Homeless Response System that must be updated whenever any organization interacts with a homeless individual and a coordinated effort to canvas the entire city on a daily basis. Once we have this real-time data, we can also start to test different strategies and see what's working and what's not for individuals with different sets of challenges. We can also do a better job of evaluating the effectiveness of partner organizations and shift resources away from ineffective organizations or approaches. Finally, in addition to the real-time data, we must have an adequate supply of housing for people. The low-hanging fruit here is to ensure that all vacancies in our permanent supportive housing system are filled, and that our supportive housing is managed competently (meaning we need to fire the management companies that are presiding over rodent or insect infestations and replace them with competent companies or the City itself as a manager). Beyond the low-hanging fruit, I'm proposing that we implement a bold plan to build tens of thousands of units of Universal Social Housing, modeled after Vienna's highly successful approach that provides 60% of the city's residents with publicly-funded, beautiful, spacious, housing, without requiring applicants to demonstrate that they earn below a certain income level. And I'm proposing that we fund our social housing with a revenue-neutral revolving construction loan fund, modeled after Montgomery County, Maryland's Housing Production Fund, which will cost the City nothing beyond the initial investment to establish the fund. Between the technology-enabled approach to connecting every individual with the help they need, and the large increase in truly affordable housing that can be achieved with a Universal Social Housing approach, I believe that with consistent and persistent effort, San Francisco can achieve a state where nobody is living on our streets for more than one month before they are housed again.
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?
I believe the foundation of strong leadership is personal integrity, genuine respect, and an unrelenting dedication to succeeding in whatever your goal is. When I was on the vehicle software engineering leadership team at Tesla, I worked with vice presidents, directors, managers, engineers, scientists, technicians, associates, and lawyers from many different departments and organizations within the company, as well as vendors and suppliers located around the world. I always treated everyone with respect, never looking down on anyone with a title that was below mine or undermining someone with a title above mine. I focused on inspiring others to work together to accomplish our common goals, which was sometimes very hard to do in a fast-paced environment where everyone had competing priorities and was constantly dealing with intense pressure to meet tight deadlines or handling business-critical emergencies that arose suddenly. Throughout my 12.5 years with the company, I formed a reputation as a straight-shooter who could be counted on to ignore any office politics and act quickly and decisively to solve problems. Paradoxically, I believe my steadfast focus on solving problems instead of playing politics will actually allow me to build a stronger coalition and accrue more political capital, through a shared understanding that I'm different from previous Mayors that may have come before. I will be focused on outcomes, not optics. This will be refreshing for anyone who also shares my desire to fix our city's problems. By being a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, by truly listening to people's concerns, ideas, and beliefs, and by taking into account people's shared values and interests, I will forge a common ground that the middle majority of reasonable people will gladly join.
Will the power of the office of Mayor be enough to achieve this goal?
No, the power of the Mayor will not be enough in and of itself to end chronic homelessness. To be sure, I will push the limits of the Mayor's power as far as it will go. I will do everything within my power to ensure that the technology infrastructure is put in place and the real-time data starts to pour in from all of the organizations in the Homeless Response System. However, once we have the data, we will no doubt start to identify some systemic barriers to helping people exit homelessness that will require changing certain laws, regulations, or processes that are outside of the Mayor's direct control. At that point, it will be incumbent upon me to make the case for why the changes are required and convince the relevant entities to enact them. If I present a strong case that is backed up by reliable and comprehensive data, then it will maximize the chances of getting the necessary cooperation. However, I acknowledge that it still won't be easy. My next recourse will be leveraging state and federal sources of funding, public/private partnerships, and community involvement. Of course, no one person can make this happen; it will take a village. But as Mayor, I will be in the best position to build the coalition to get it done—a task that Breed has unfortunately failed at.
What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?
As with my #1 policy goal, I will set my #2 and #3 goals based on the data. From that same September 2023 GrowSF poll I cited above, we know that the next highest priorities should be tackling "open-air drug use/dealing" (I'm lumping these together, since they are causally related) and "crime and lack of safety".
To address open-air drug use and dealing, I want to implement the Four Pillars approach that was developed in Switzerland and successfully reduced the number of opioid-related deaths by 64% while reducing new HIV and Hepatitis C infections and dramatically cutting home break-ins by 98%. The Four Pillars are: Prevention, Treatment, Harm Reduction, and Repression (Law Enforcement). It is a balanced, compassionate, and pragmatic approach that emphasizes both the needs of those who are suffering from crippling drug addiction and the needs of the rest of society for whom it is not fair to have to deal with the harmful impacts of rampant open-air drug use. The key to the success of the Four Pillars approach is creating clean, indoor consumption rooms, which takes the drug use off the streets and brings it inside. These rooms are established near hotspots of public drug use, so that the treatment they offer is easily accessible. Addicts caught using on the street are cited and referred to the nearest consumption room. The treatment is administered by clinically trained professionals, and it is paired with wraparound services that also treat the psychological trauma and address the lack of life skills that caused many people to become addicted to drugs in the first place. Such a treatment program, paired with comprehensive wraparound services, is highly successful in helping people to regain control over their lives and establish stability, and many will eventually stop needing any form of treatment at all. Once the clean consumption rooms are in place, some addicts will continue to use on the streets even after being referred to a room. These people will be referred to a more intensive live-in treatment facility until they have regained enough control and stability to transition back out of the facility. Notably, law enforcement is one of the main pillars of the Four Pillars approach. Anyone caught dealing on the streets should be apprehended and prosecuted. However, because the vast majority of users will move indoors to consumption rooms, the dealers will start to lose profits as demand implodes. This will cause them to add an even higher percentage of fillers to their supply than they already do, which will only serve to drive even more users to go to the consumption rooms where they know they will be receiving pure and precise treatment doses. Whatever dealers still remain amidst these significantly degraded economic conditions will be much easier for the police to handle at this point.
To address crime and lack of safety, I think we should listen to the research, which shows that crimes can be deterred when potential criminals have a reasonable expectation of being caught. To increase the expectations of being caught, we should increase police visibility in high-crime areas, publicize arrests and prosecutions, and aim for a 100% case solve rate. Increasing police visibility will require more police officers on the beat, which means we will ultimately need to hire more officers. I'm proposing that we hire from within the community by recruiting at local high schools and community colleges with ROTC-style programs that inspire young adults to want to serve their community. This recruiting effort will take time to bring the officer ranks up to full staffing levels, so in the meantime we can help reduce the demands on police officers by expanding our Street Crisis Response Team to handle situations that don't require a police presence. People should also expect that if they are caught committing a crime, then they will be prosecuted for it and face consequences. For certain non-violent crimes, like shoplifting and car break-ins, the sentencing can start out relatively lenient. One week of jail time should be an adequate punishment for a first-time offender. Accommodations can be made to allow for someone to continue working if they are employed. Each additional infraction should incur a doubling of the sentencing, up to the statutory maximum for the crime. Anyone arrested and prosecuted for a violent crime should be detained until they are deemed to no longer be a threat to the rest of society. However, there should be a real attempt to actually rehabilitate these people while they are being detained. While incarcerated, there should be opportunities to complete high school, trade school, college, and higher education, and there should be access to extensive counseling and mentoring/coaching to help transform present or future career criminals into contributing members of society.
Of course, none of the ideas for addressing public drug use/dealing and crime that I've outlined above actually address one of the primary root causes of those problems: poverty. Poverty is one of the most significant predictors of both drug use and crime. The most efficient and effective way to deal with poverty is to give people money. That's why I want to implement a Universal Basic Income of $1k/month for every resident of San Francisco, so that we can help to lift everyone out of poverty and begin to break the generational cycles leading more young people to go down the path of drug addiction and crime year after year. If we don't start addressing the sources of drug addiction and crime now, then we will forever be doomed to continue paying a huge amount of money dealing with the aftermath.
Will the power of the office of Mayor be enough to achieve these goals?
No, the power of the Mayor will not be enough to achieve these goals. For example, the sentencing approach that I outlined will require buy-in from the District Attorney, and it's quite likely that multiple laws and/or the Charter will need to be changed to implement other parts of the approaches I've laid out, which could require the Board of Supervisors to be on board. I could use my power as Mayor to bypass the Board and place items directly on the ballot for voters to decide on, but ideally I'd prefer to work with the Board and avoid burdening voters with yet another thing to research and give their opinion on.
What is the top single policy you would like to reform in 2025?
I know it probably sounds silly, given all of the issues facing our city, but one of the first things I would like to do is to address the monopoly that Recology has over trash collection in our city. Given that Recology was at the center of the Nuru scandal that rocked City Hall and is still reverberating, I think it would behoove the City to either replace Recology with a municipal trash service, or to at least open up trash collection within the city to competition.
If I couldn't get that changed, then it might be more feasible to modify the “citation release” policy set by the Police Commission that requires SFPD to cite and release most misdemeanor offenders. This is preventing serial shoplifters from facing any real consequences for their actions, which encourages more crime. Importantly, we shouldn't focus solely on punitive actions. We also need to address the root causes of most shoplifting and other crimes: poverty. Otherwise, we will forever be doomed to sink money into fighting crime. Instead of always treating the symptoms, we should also try to cure the disease. Instead of always paying the interest, we should also try to pay down the principal. The most direct and effective way to end poverty is through a Universal Basic Income, which is why I have made it one of my flagship policy proposals.
Is there an "out there" change you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? (For example: adding at-large supervisors, changing how elections work, creating a Bay Area regional government, etc.)
As you can probably already tell already, I've got lots of "out there" changes I would make if I could. One that I think would be particularly beneficial would be to reform Prop 13 to allow for a Land Value Tax to replace many/most/all other taxes that currently introduce friction in the economy by reducing productivity. A Land Value Tax is widely recognized by economists from across the political spectrum to be the perfect tax, since it introduces no deadweight loss due to the supply inelasticity of land. Tying this in with a Universal Basic Income to create a Universal Land Dividend would provide everyone with the same financial floor to stand on, and it would be paid for by the bounty of the land, which can be argued on philosophical and moral grounds to below to everyone anyway.
Tell us one thing you think needs to change in SF that the average voter wouldn't know about.
I'm also in favor of adding at-large supervisors. I recognize the utility of district-based Supervisors for people who want to feel like they know exactly who to go to when they need to provide feedback about how the government is performing, and as a way to ensure that each district receives adequate attention in the deliberations of the Board of Supervisors. However, I think having only district-based Supervisors has been detrimental to the City, since no one is advocating for the needs of the City as a whole. Therefore, I would be in favor of adding new at-large Supervisors to counterbalance the district-based Supervisors, and of course Proportional Representation would be the perfect way to select these at-large Supervisors without concentrating all of the power in a majority bloc, which was a big part of the problem with how our at-large Supervisors used to be selected and why it was rejected in favor of district-based Supervisors twice. The exact number of new Supervisors to add, whether to consolidate some districts and replace those Supervisors with at-large Supervisors, and which exact Proportional Representation method to use for the election, are all details worthy of some healthy debate. Personally, I would propose the following: Add an even number (between 10 and 22) of new at-large Supervisors, elected half (between 5 and 11) at a time every 2 years using Sequential Proportional Approval Voting, which, combined with the existing 11 district-based Supervisors, would bring the new total number of Supervisors to between 21 and 33. I would love to see a Proportional version of Approval Voting used to select the at-large Supervisors, since it is a much simpler ballot, voting experience, and tallying process than the Proportional version of IRV (also known as Single Transferable Vote, or STV).
Executive experience
Please describe your experience running large organizations, managing executive teams (including hiring, firing, and performance management), driving cultural change and clear communication throughout all levels, effective financial management (budgets, reporting, audit, etc.), and any other experience relevant to running a city with a $14B+ budget and tens of thousands of employees.
While I was at Tesla, I was in an engineering leadership position that required me to interface with vice presidents, directors, managers, engineers, scientists, technicians, associates, and lawyers from many different departments and organizations within the company, as well as vendors and suppliers located around the world. I had to ensure that engineering requirements were communicated clearly both internally and externally. I was entrusted with making decisions that could not only cost the company billions of dollars in lost revenue and market capitalization but could also cost people their lives if the vehicles did not behave the way they were supposed to. When I joined Tesla in 2011, there were fewer than 1,500 employees; when I resigned my position in December 2023, there were nearly 150,000 employees worldwide and the company had annual revenues of $97B, driven in large part by vehicle sales that my team's software products played a critical role in supporting. I participated in the hiring of dozens of engineers and managers during my 12.5 years with the company, I mentored multiple interns and young engineers, and I weathered multiple large rounds of layoffs at the company. Over the years, I was on the receiving end of many communications from the executive team that pertained to hiring, firing, and performance management, and I participated in many budgeting, reporting, and auditing exercises that were part of the company's effective financial management. I would say that I learned a lot about both effective communication and ineffective communication within large organizations from my tenure at Tesla.
Please describe a time when you had an underperforming subordinate and how you handled the situation, including (and especially) how you were able to increase their performance.
Note: Please remember that this questionnaire will be public, so do not include any personally identifiable information.
I once had a subordinate who was not working full days, was making careless errors in their work, and was inappropriately distracting others around them. I have a very direct style when it comes to dealing with a situation like this. As soon as I recognized there was a consistent problem that rose to a level that merited an intervention, I scheduled a meeting with them. I stated directly and firmly that they were not performing according to expectations, and I asked them whether they agreed with that assessment (they agreed). Then, most importantly, I asked them if they knew why this was happening. But I asked them in a gentle and compassionate tone, and with a facial expression and body language, that let them know that they could open up to me in an honest dialogue and I was going to listen respectfully and thoughtfully to whatever they had to say. The answer they gave was not altogether a surprise to me. They were feeling slighted because they felt they hadn't been recognized sufficiently for the work they'd been doing and that they should have been given a position that was given to someone else instead. I acknowledged their feelings, and I agreed with them that they should have been recognized more for their previous efforts, but I pushed back on the idea that they should have been given the role that was given to someone else instead, and I pointed out why the other person was more appropriate for the role at that time.
Please describe a time when your organization faced an extreme challenge and how you got the organization through it.
In the early days at Tesla, we often found ourselves facing extreme challenges that were existential threats to the company. One time, while I was still a relatively junior engineer, I was testing out some software that I'd loaded onto a new hardware version for the first time, and I realized there was a problem that would prevent the car from entering its power-saving "sleep" mode properly. This meant that the batteries would drain pretty quickly, even while the car was just sitting there unused. It would be a bad experience for anyone who owned a car that ended up with this new hardware and had its battery drain so quickly, but it wouldn't be a big enough problem to sink the company, since the owner could just recharge the battery a bit more frequently and we could call those cars back into service and eventually swap out the hardware with a version that would allow the car to sleep. However, what was a big enough problem to sink the company was the fact that we had about 4,000 cars that had already been built with that hardware, and they were about to be loaded onto ships at Pier 80 in San Francisco so they could be shipped all the way to China. While these cars were on the ships, no one would be there to notice the batteries were draining quickly and plug them in to recharge them. In fact, there was no way at all to recharge them while they were on the open ocean! So, we were facing a situation where 4,000 cars, each worth about $100k, were about to be dead on arrival and potentially fail to be delivered before the end of the quarter, which could impact our reported revenues and earnings for the quarter by $400 million! Even if the cars didn't miss the quarterly delivery window, it would still represent a massive cost to the company of at least $2 million, since every 12V battery would have to be replaced (about $500 each for parts and labor). As soon as I noticed there was a problem, I immediately communicated it to my manager, so that he could begin contacting the logistics team in charge of loading the cars onto the boats at the port and coordinating with them. In the meantime, I sprang into action working on a way to fix the issue. I knew that if I could fix it quickly enough, there was a chance we could send an "Over-The-Air" software update to all of the cars through their onboard modems and fix them before they ever left the port. Within a few hours, I'd come up with a fix, tested it, arranged to have a couple of other software engineers review the code, and we had a new software package ready to load onto every car at the port to save them from dying. By this point, we had confirmed with the logistics team that they could connect every vehicle to WiFi (there was no cellular signal at the port), and I worked with the engineer who wrote and managed all of OTA update software to remotely update and test every single car to confirm that they could successfully sleep. Through my attention to detail and critical thinking skills in recognizing the nature and scope of the problem to begin with, and my snap judgment to immediately alert my manager to the situation, along with my composure and deep knowledge of the product's software by that point allowing me to fix the bug and test he fix within an hour, and my ability to work closely alongside another engineer in a high pressure situation, I was able to save the company at least a couple million dollars, if not hundreds of millions in market cap that could have been impacted by missed quarterly delivery metrics.
The Board of Supervisors may not be aligned with your goals. In that case, how will you be able to execute with an adversarial Board?
I will make every effort to start things out on a good foot with the Board. I will start out by meeting with every individual Supervisor one-on-one to get to know them informally, as a person, and to ask them point blank what their top priorities and goals are and how they imagine that I could help them to address those priorities and achieve those goals. I would work very hard to make sure that I fully understood where they were coming from and that they knew I cared about knowing what was important to them, and then I would do my best to find common ground between us that could serve as a foundation for trust and understanding. I would further invite the Board as a group to join me for dinner once a month, so that we could continue to get to know each other as flesh-and-blood people, rather than as the political adversaries caricatured in the news. I would hope that this upfront effort to meet every Supervisor at least halfway would be reciprocated and would lead to a much more productive working relationship than we've seen between the current Mayor and the Board. If not, then I would be forced to get a bit more creative. The tools in the political toolbox are typically some variant of one of the following: flatter, ask, insist, demand, threaten. But in many cases the Mayor can also bypass the Board and simply present issues directly before the voters on the ballot. If that's not an option, and all of the aforementioned tools have been exhausted, then one final ace up the Mayor's sleeve is attempting to use the bully pulpit. Doing so effectively, without any potential blowback, still requires a solid case backed up by good data and a clear alliance with the general interests of the public. If the goals are just and right, then obtaining the data and making the case should be straightforward and worthwhile.
The Issues
Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.
Public Safety
What is your plan to increase SFPD staffing?
Currently, the City is having trouble with recruiting and retaining officers. Low morale among current officers who feel vilified by the community is leading officers to leave the force. The job is perceived by potential applicants as thankless or would make them unpopular among their peers because of negative connotations associated with police abuses of power. We need to address and reverse all of these issues. First, we should be recruiting from within the community. We should establish a pipeline from high schools and community colleges to the police academy. By appealing to a sense of community pride and ownership, we can inspire more promising young members of the community to apply to the police force. Next, we need to do more to elevate and celebrate members of the police force who are making a positive impact in the community. We need more regular and substantive community outreach events and town halls between the police and community leaders. I also think it would be great to showcase great leaders within the force who are modeling the type of behavior that every community activist could hope for in a police officer. There should be an annual awards ceremony where we grant awards to the top police officers (and firefighters, EMTs, 911 operators, etc.), who are keeping our community safe while treating everyone with dignity and respect. We should also put them up on billboards and at bus stops. At the same time, we need to ensure that every cadet and active-duty officer receives robust and regular training that continually reinforces the values that our police force should embody. As the only representatives of the City who are authorized to carry a gun and use force to coerce people into behaving in ways that they may not want to behave, our police have a sacred duty to use that power with restraint, and we need to ensure that they're well aware of this and treat that responsibility with the gravity that it deserves. By appealing to that sense of duty and civic responsibility, we can recruit cadets who will develop into excellent and trustworthy officers who are worthy of the respect and admiration of the community.
Traffic enforcement has been declining since 2014, and fell off a cliff in 2020. It is now near zero. Why do you think this crash in enforcement happened and what is your plan to ensure SFPD actually performs their jobs?
I think the precipitous drop in traffic enforcement by the police is directly related to the aftermath of the George Floyd / Black Lives Matter protests, when it became clear that many members of the community were angry with the police and didn't appreciate them or the job they did. I think it was a combination of leadership within the force de-prioritizing traffic stops in the face of staffing shortages, as well as officers themselves feeling that it wasn't worth it for them to enforce most laws if they were going to face backlash from the community. As far as enforcing traffic laws, I actually agree with the notion that many/most traffic infractions are not something that an armed police officer should be handling. Instead, I'm in favor of primarily relying on passive enforcement with traffic cameras that capture infractions and issue tickets to motorists via mail. Additionally, I think we could expand the purview of the Department of Transportation to include certain moving violations that are relatively minor. The only time it is appropriate and necessary for an SFPD officer to apprehend someone violating traffic laws is when the motorist is driving recklessly (running multiple stop signs, weaving in and out of traffic, excessive speed, etc.), since this is a clear sign of a dangerous individual behind the wheel who is willing to endanger themselves and others.
What is the #1 public safety issue today?
I think the #1 public safety issue today is gang violence. Most of the gun violence occurring on our streets, the robberies of small businesses, and the car break-ins, are carried about by members of organized gangs. The City should be doing more to work together with other law enforcement agencies in the region, as well as state and federal law enforcement, to infiltrate and dismantle criminal gangs.
What will you change about how SFPD operates?
As I mentioned above, I would change the department's recruiting and training practices to increase the community's representation on the force and refocus the culture of the force on the sacred duty they are entrusted with. Additionally, I would introduce Continuing Education courses in best practices for officers (similar to how doctors are required to complete CE credits throughout their careers), conduct monthly role playing exercises to teach and refresh conflict resolution and de-escalation skills, and require weekly training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or a similar martial art that teaches practical grappling and submission techniques as an alternative to using lethal force. I would also mandate that all police officers are required to follow all traffic laws at all times, unless there is an actual emergency situation that they are responding to. I have seen with my own eyes way too many times when a police cruiser ran a stop sign or red light or double-parked and they were clearly not responding to an active situation. This kind of conduct erodes the trust and respect of the police force among residents, and it should be treated seriously.
What will you change about how the Police Commission operates?
I'm honestly not familiar enough with any specific proposals for changing the Police Commission's current operations to comment on this, but I'm open to ideas! In general, I think the fact that the Police Commission has existed since 1878 is generally a good indicator that it's a body that is serving an important purpose. As for how it can be improved, I would need to seek input from all stakeholders before arriving at an opinion.
Some have argued that Police Chief Scott should be fired and replaced. Regardless of your position on Chief Scott, how will you ensure the Chief of Police is effective? If that position includes firing the Chief, please explain why you will fire him, and how you will hire a good replacement given the fact that the Police Commission picks the set of candidates.
Referring back to the section where I described how I've successfully dealt with underperforming subordinates before, I would first directly confront the problem and try to talk it out with the Chief Scott until I understand what, if any, barriers he feels are in the way of him meeting his goals. I would also secure his commitment to achieving those goals if I commit to working on removing those barriers. I think past performance under a different administration isn't necessarily a good indicator of future performance under a new administration that is better at creating an environment conducive to the Chief being successful. Assuming we've taken steps together to address whatever conditions are blocking success, and he's still underperforming, then firing Chief Scott might end up being the most appropriate course of action. If that's the case, then I would reach out to the Police Commission and attempt to come to a consensus on a shortlist of potential replacements for Chief Scott. I don't think the fact that the Police Commission picks the set of candidates is necessarily a guarantee that there will be zero good candidates. I guess I have more faith in humanity and the basic sense of responsibility that the commissioners feel in carrying out their duties. Even if all of the candidates are absolutely terrible, we could still choose the best available, and then I could fire them if they're also underperforming. We shouldn't remain paralyzed because of a check that has been put in place to balance power. The whole point of such safeguards is to ensure there's a certain amount of negotiating that occurs between different bastions of power.
Do you support the policies referred to as "defund the police"? Why or why not?
No, I don't want to "defund the police". I do agree that much of our public tax dollars could be diverted to other purposes. In particular, we could be focusing on the root causes of crime and eliminating poverty by providing a Universal Basic Income to every member of society. We could also shift more of our spending to non-police responses to issues related to the homeless population. However, even after we diverted all of that funding away from the police, there would still be many circumstances in which the police would be appropriate and welcomed.
Please explain why you did or did not support the recall of DA Chesa Boudin. If you were ineligible to vote in that election, please explain how you would have voted.
I did not support the recall of Chesa Boudin, because I believe there should be a fairly high bar for recalling elected officials (breaking the law or gross negligence). I didn't think he was doing a good job, but in my opinion it didn't meet the threshold for a recall. I recognize that this was a personal judgment call.
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Try to achieve "full staffing" for SFPD? (Defined as about 2,100 officers, according to the City)? | ✔ | |
| Retain the cite-and-release policy for misdemeanors like shoplifting and car break-ins? | ✔ | |
| Arrest and prosecute street-level fentanyl dealers? | ✔ | |
| Prioritize diversion instead of incarceration for fentanyl dealers? | ✔* | |
| Investigate, arrest, and prosecute fentanyl distribution ringleaders (like organized crime and cartel members)? | ✔ | |
| Arrest and prosecute street-level vendors of suspected stolen goods? | ✔* | |
| Investigate, arrest, and prosecute the leaders of theft rings and fencing operations? | ✔ | |
| Arrest and prosecute street food vendors operating without a permit? | ✔* | |
| Fine street food vendors operating without a permit? | ✔* |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I'm honestly not quite sure what "diversion instead of incarceration for fentanyl dealers" means, so I put an asterisk next to my check mark under the "No" column. I want to reiterate that I'm committed to: 1) ensuring that sentencing is optimized for deterring crimes; 2) turning incarceration into an opportunity for true rehabilitation; and 3) dramatically reducing demand for street drugs by opening clean consumption sites where addicts can get on the treatment plans they need to regain control of their lives. Many fentanyl dealers in SF are actually Hondurans, so we should seriously consider deportation as a more cost effective way to deter dealing, but that's not necessarily the best answer.
Regarding the arrest and prosecution of street-level vendors of suspected stolen goods, I want to also provide more constructive alternative economic activities for people to engage in. In general, I'm a proponent of carrot and stick approaches, both on principle (it's more fair) and practically (we can get more people to change over to legal forms of making money, saving them from acquiring a criminal record and saving our criminal justice system the expense of dealing with them).
I said "No" to arresting and prosecuting street food vendors because I think in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively low priority and they're filling a niche that isn't necessarily filled by anyone else in the local economy. I'm open to changing my mind on this, but at the moment I tend to think of street food vendors as entrepreneurs who are pursuing the American dream and the lack of permits is a relatively minor issue. I think we should make it very straightforward and simple to get a permit, so that they can continue to operate with minimal effort. If they refuse to go through a reasonable process of getting a permit, then by all means we should at the very least fine them, and I might consider arresting and prosecuting vendors who are opening under unsanitary conditions.
Drugs
Today, people are openly dealing drugs, including fentanyl, with little or no consequences. Why is this happening and what will you do to change this?
"Why" is always a very deep question with a complicated answer. At the most superficial level, there's not enough of an expectation that people will be caught if they are dealing in order to deter them from doing it. At the next level down, they're dealing because there are people who are addicted to drugs who are willing to buy them, so there's a customer base, which establishes a market. At the next level down, there are myriad reasons why people are either compelled to become a dealer to make money (lack of alternative opportunities, childhood/family conditions that make it the most attractive option, etc.) or are compelled to become a user (either genetics, or experiences, or the combination of the two). Ultimately the primary root cause of people becoming dealers or users is poverty and lack of economic opportunities. As Mayor, I would implement policies to address each stage of the causal tree: more police and more effective police procedures to apprehend dealers, clean consumption sites to remove users from the market, and a Universal Basic Income to start to break the generational cycle of creating new users and dealers.
In general, how should the City handle people who are abusing drugs on City sidewalks?
In general, the City should provide a viable alternative to abusing drugs on the sidewalks for someone who is in the midst of an unshakeable drug addiction. This means offering an indoor clean consumption room, with wraparound services to help people regain control of their life and attain enough stability to where they can remain housed and pursue a vocation. Once this pathway is establish, anyone who is abusing drugs on the sidewalks should be referred to it a couple of times before they are deemed too far gone to make reasonable choices, at which point they should be compelled to enter a live-in facility that will help them to reach a stable enough position where they can live independently again without returning to the sidewalks.
Do you support the creation of safe consumption sites in San Francisco? If so, please detail how they should be run, including how the City should handle people abusing drugs in public, outside of those sites. If not, please explain a viable alternative to reducing overdoses and drug addiction.
I support the creation of consumption rooms that are indoors, clean, staffed by clinical professionals, and paired with wraparaound services. Anything less than this is insufficient. The City's previous attempts at "safe consumption sites" that were merely fenced off street corners where people could shoot up on a dirty sidewalk, were woefully insufficient, and arguably only worsened the situation. By providing indoor consumption rooms (modeled after the highly successful Swiss approach), we can provide a reasonable alternative life path for people who are currently abusing drugs on the streets. Importantly, the treatments offered in the clean consumption rooms should include a full spectrum that is tailored to the needs of the individual. Some people will be amenable to an abstinence approach. Others will respond to replacement therapies like methodone or buprenorphene. A select few will remain resistant to all of these treatments and will still require pure doses of the drugs that they are hooked on. Switzerland has demonstrated that it's still possible to help even these most resistant cases to attain a level of stability in their lives where they can maintain fulltime employment and sustain fulfilling relationships. We shouldn't be afraid to embrace an approach the has 30 years of evidence to back it up at this point.
Should fentanyl dealing be penalized differently from dealing other drugs?
Sort of. I'm in favor of tailoring sentences to each individual's rehabilitation needs. So it's quite likely that if a fentanyl dealer knows that the drugs they are dealing have the potential to kill someone very easily, then that dealer will need a longer sentence to internalize the missing moral and ethical code that would otherwise tell them that what they are doing is wrong. Or it might never be possible to close that gap, and they might need to remain isolated from the rest of society forever because of deep-seated sociopathy. (For the record, I don't think this is very likey for most fentanyl dealers; I suspect most of them are doing what they feel they have to do to survive and they rationalize it in some way that is not at all sociopathic.)
As Mayor, what directives will you give SFPD and other departments to end fentanyl dealing and clean up drug-dealing hotspots? How will you ensure they do their jobs effectively?
- Empower them. 2. Use the right strategy. 3. Track performance accurately. 4. Hold them accountable for poor performance. Undercover officers. Work with the FBI to track drug trafficking/traffickers. Fire the police chief if they're not doing their job. Inspire them to take pride in their job. Inspire the community to appreciate and support the police in doing their jobs. Training.
Mental Health
Some have argued that San Francisco should place people who are experiencing mental health crises on the streets into involuntary mental health holds at psychiatric facilities. Do you agree or disagree with this view? Please explain why or why not. Agree. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis on the street, you need help. You're in no condition to decide what's good for yourself. You should immediately be brought into a triage facility for a psychiatric evaluation to determine what your underlying condition is, what your treatment options look like, and whether you can go back to living independently or need referral to full-time care (either under the supervision of your family or at a specialized live-in facility). A lot of people are understandably wary of forcing people to enter psychiatric facilities based on depictions of abuses in mental institutions popularized in fictional works like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Bell Jar, and well-documented historical examples like Bedlam and the detainment of falsely diagnosed experimenters in the Rosenhan Experiment. The potential for abuse is real and must be taken very seriously, but it cannot be used as a justification for ignoring the needs of people with serious mental illness that has progressed to the point that they are unable to care for themselves and are living on the streets of our city. This is neither compassionate for the individuals with mental illness, nor fair to the rest of the residents of the City who must deal with the minority of individuals who behave in verbally or physically aggressive ways while in the midst of psychotic episodes.
If you agree with this view, please outline some guardrails and oversight the City must provide to prevent abuse.
The potential for abuse is real and must be taken very seriously. First, the City must ensure that all individuals involved in every step of the process, from engaging with and detaining the mentally ill individual while they are on the street, to transportation to the facility, to all personnel at the facility itself, are trained to treat mentally ill individuals with the utmost care, empathy, and respect. Secondly, there must be adequate oversight mechanisms, including opportunities for whistleblowers to come forward with reasonable expectations of protection against retaliation,
If you disagree with this view, please outline your preferred alternative solution, possible drawbacks, and the oversight it might need.
While I didn't disagree with the need for involuntary placement in psychiatric facilities, I want to emphasize that the facilities must be staffed by compassionate, well-trained professionals, and the detainment must be limited to the minimum length of time required to perform adequate triaging of the individuals. Additionally, we must do more to educate families, friends, and co-workers about the warning signs of the onset of mental illness, so that people can get the help they need before they ever get to the point of being on the streets. Finally, we know that homelessness and drug use can be triggers for mental illness, so we must ensure that we are doing everything we can to address
Education
What reforms should be made to the way the Board of Education is elected or conducts business?
It's difficult to say for sure what will fix SFUSD, but reforming the way the Board of Education is selected is certainly one possibility. Currently, the Board is directly elected by the general voting population after an open nomination round, but that wasn't always the case. Prior to 1971, the Board was appointed by the Mayor and then confirmed by voters in the following election. The transition to directly appointing the members was a reaction to the Board's decision to desegregate schools in the City with busing.
Some parents prefer their children attend private religious schools, others prefer public magnet schools for specific skills (like the Ruth Asawa School for the Arts or Lowell), others prefer public or private charter schools with nontraditional curricula, and others prefer homeschooling. Should all of these educational options be available to students in San Francisco? Why or why not?
Sure, give everyone choices. The whole reason behind establishing public schools in the first place was that families weren't equipped to educate their children. If families want to educate their own children, it should be an option. Our government must adapt to this reality, rather than dictating a reality for everyone based on the budgetary needs of an outdated system.
As Mayor, how will you support SFUSD in its efforts to achieve financial stability and sustainability, especially in regards to school closures?
As Mayor, I will urge the Board of Education to firie administrators and managers instead of closing schools. I agree with the teacher's union report that highlights the recent increase in management/admin headcount while student numbers dropped. The bread and butter of the public schools is the teachers, not the admins.
Did you support the recall of Board of Education members Collins, López, and Moliga? Please explain why you did or did not support the recall of each member. In general, I think the bar should be pretty high for incurring the high costs of running a recall election. We hold regular elections for a reason, so that the voters can periodically weight the performance of elected leaders and dedicated whether they should continue to be entrusted with the public's to support raising the bar so that an elected official could only be recalled because of illegal or unethical activity
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Offer Algebra in 8th grade to students who want it? | ✔ (!!) | |
| Offer Algebra in 7th grade to students who want it? | ✔ (!!) | |
| Require schools to improve student performance, and fire teachers who consistently underperform? | ✔* |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I am a product of public schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District of the 1980s and 1990s, and I believe I owe whatever modest success I have attained in life in no small part to the hard work, dedication, and genuine caring of many of the teachers who taught me during those formative years of my childhood. I also feel incredibly fortunate that I was given the opportunity to challenge myself by taking an advanced track of math courses that allowed me to enroll in Algebra in 7th grade. This meant that I could ultimately complete AP Calculus A/B/C and AP Statistics while I was in High School, which helped to make me a competitive—and ultimately successful—applicant to MIT. I don't know if I would be where I am today without that opportunity to push myself as much as I did before applying to colleges.
Given my experience, I think it's outrageous that SFUSD fails to offer algebra to students before 9th grade! We are doing a huge disservice to our public school students by making it more difficult for them to complete advanced mathematics courses before applying to colleges. This policy seems to stem from a misguided attempt to "help" students to feel better about themselves by ensuring more "equity" among all students in the district. Rather than holding back students who would otherwise be prepared to tackle algebra in 7th grade, we should be doing more to prepare more students to take algebra earlier.
In general, we must move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to education. Ideally, every student would have their own individual tutor guiding them at the exact pace they need, using the exact methods and motivators that will maximize their learning. Maybe one day soon we can have that with AI-based individualized personal tutors, but in the meantime at a bare minimum we need to have at least two, if not three or four, different tracks for students to follow that will roughly match the pace that they can handle.
With regard to the question about student performance and firing teachers who consistently underperform, I said yes, but with the critical caveats that it's important to use a definition of "student performance" that doesn't overemphasize rote memorization at the expense of true understanding, and it's similarly important that measures of "teacher performance" are accurately measuring factors that are actually within the control of teachers. Without a good definition of "student performance" against which teachers can be measured, there are incentives and opportunities for teachers to game the system and actually do more of a disservice to students by getting them to perform exceptionally well on standardized tests without learning any critical thinking skills or a deep appreciation and understanding of the subjects they have supposedly learned. And if the method of measuring a teacher's performance is purely based on the absolute performance levels of their students, without regard to any confounding factors that could contribute to their students' poor performance (e.g., higher rates of poverty, hunger, violence, etc. experienced by their students relative to students of other teachers in the district), then it won't be fair to punish teachers for being dealt a bad hand. However, if all confounding factors are taken into account, and a teacher is performing significantly worse than their peers whose students also face similar challenges, and that teacher has been offered additional training and support to improve but they either refuse it or are still failing to improve, then the school district should absolutely be able to fire that teacher, for the sake of all of their potential students who will be put at a disadvantage by having an inept teacher.
Housing
Do you believe that San Francisco has a shortage of market-rate homes? Why or why not?
Yes and no. Yes, the May housing stats showing that 62.4% of houses sell for over asking price and the median time on the market for a house is only 22 days, and the June rental stats showing that market-rate rent of $2,712 for a 1-bedroom is still the #4 highest in the country, are strong indicators that there is not enough of a supply of houses for sale or apartments for rent to meet demand. However, we also have many houses and apartments/condos that are not on the market because people are living in them only part-time. Too many people have their second or third home in San Francisco that they use as a vacation destination a few times a year, or that they bought as a speculative investment that they don't want to bother renting out because it's not worth the hassle of managing it and the potential legal battle of trying evict a bad tenant down the line. Too many units are owned by large real estate investment funds or other holding companies that again are either keeping the units vacant because it's a property eligible for rent control and they're betting on making a bigger profit by selling down the line with a higher future market-rate rent roll vs. locking it in at a lower rate by renting it out at current market rates, or because they're so large and profitable in other areas that they can afford to neglect them at a loss. In fact, the 2022 American Community Survey estimated there were about 50,000 vacant units in the city. No doubt, some of those units counted as vacant by the ACS were under construction or in between tenants, but many were not. I believe these truly vacant or under-utilized units are low-hanging fruit that we could convert back into available market-rate housing for full-time residents, and we should prioritize enacting policies that encourage this conversion so that we can reduce the number of new units that have to be built. That said, it's unrealistic to expect this strategy to achieve a 100% conversion rate, which means it will not meet all of the demand for housing, and there will still be a need for at least some new developments.
Do you believe that housing prices are set by supply and demand constraints? Why or why not?
Yes, I believe that housing prices are in principle subject to the constraints of supply and demand. However, that's assuming a free market. Market failures can occur, which can lead to deviations in prices away from the Econ 101 supply-and-demand curve. For example, the FTC and Justice Department recently filed a joint legal brief citing the widespread use of algorithmic pricing software that allows landlords and property managers to collude in price fixing for entire regions. The City must remain vigilant to any market failures, whether from private or public sources, that distort housing prices.
Under State law, San Francisco must build over 82,000 new homes by 2031. Do you think this is a good goal?
I think the general goal of building more housing is a good goal because it should increase the supply of housing on the market and therefore should reduce housing prices (although see my answer above regarding prioritizing converting units from vacant to occupied as a quicker/easier way to get more housing supply). However, I don't think 82,000 is necessarily the correct number. We might need more or we might need less, depending on the changes in demand as the supply increases and prices readjust downwards.
Follow-up: Do you believe we're on track to achieve this goal?
No, we are definitely NOT on track to achieve this goal.
Follow-up: What will you do to meet the goal?
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Tax on pied-à-terre/foreign owners
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Aggressively reduce bureaucracy and red tape that adds to expenses and uncertainty for private developments
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Reform building codes to allow for automated permitting and guaranteed 60-day project approval
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Rezone the entire city to allow for 4-story mixed-use buildings throughout (SF Chronicle's model shows this alone would help build 50,000 homes within 5 years))
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Tax the 27 million square feet of privately-owned vacant lots in the city at a rate of $500/sqft, with an offer to work with existing landowners to figure out how to develop the land, or an offer from the City to buy the land, which can then be used for housing
-
Implement a Land Value Tax, which would spur development throughout the city
Should homeless shelters be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
Not sure. I feel like all of these things should either apply across the board or not apply at all. Making exceptions for homeless shelters feels like we're admitting that these things don't really matter, in which case we should just get rid of them completely for all other development projects. If not, then we need to adapt the rules to allow for homeless shelters to be built in a timely manner, and then we should backport those changes to every other development (because again, either they're valid regulations or they're not).
As Mayor, will you order the construction of thousands of new homeless shelters across the City, even if neighbors object?
Sort of. I think we should focus more on permanent housing than on temporary shelters, since that's where we need people to end up eventually anyway. That said, whatever solutions are needed should be applied citywide, regardless of which neighborhoods have the most political clout or the most money.
Should subsidized affordable housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
See my answer about homeless shelters.
Should market-rate housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and Conditional Use permits?
See my answer about homeless shelters.
Market-rate housing is currently infeasible to build in San Francisco even though it's being built elsewhere, such as Seattle and Minneapolis. San Francisco's fees and requirements make building housing much more expensive here, including the requirement that 12-16% of homes must be sold to income-restricted households at below market rates. Do you support lowering this requirement to an economically viable percentage, even if that percentage is 0%?
Yes! I'm in favor of eliminating inclusionary zoning rules that dictate a certain percentage of "affordable" units in new developments. Rather than trying to force private development projects to pencil out with these onerous requirements, we should drop them altogether and have the City shoulder the burden of providing housing at the low end of the market. I want to see us build tens of thousands of units of social housing, with rents pegged at a small percentage of profitability for the developers and no restrictions on income for tenants, so that we can allow all other development to proceed unfettered.
Should San Francisco retain, loosen, or even abolish existing limits on height, density, and bulk for residential buildings? If so, where and how?
I understand the fears of some people who don't want San Francisco to become a new Manhattan, but I think we have to loosen up the zoning restrictions at least somewhat. As a compromise, I'm proposing that we allow up to 4-story, mixed-use buildings throughout the city. This simple and relatively modest zoning change is projected to result in the building of 50,000 homes within 5 years. A 4-story building can have a commercial space on the bottom floor and three floors of residential units on top. That ratio of residential to commercial units means the buildings typically qualify for more favorable loans, making them more economically feasible to more potential buyers. Having more mixed-use buildings also increases the city's ability to support higher density, and it could increase the vibrancy of neighborhoods that are currently almost exclusively residential.
San Francisco Planning requires that new street-facing windows comply with City-imposed design requirements. Supporters argue that this policy enhances 'neighborhood character' while critics argue that these policies raise the price of window replacements while lowering their thermal and noise insulation. As Mayor, you can direct the Planning Department to maintain or discard these requirements. What will you do?
I would direct the Planning Department to discard these requirements. This type of micro-managing of citizens' choices about how they want their homes or rental properties to appear is a clear example of government overreach that places an unnecessary burden on home/property owners. The increased costs of making necessary upgrades to aging buildings causes owners to delay those upgrades, which causes larger energy bills and a decreased quality of life for inhabitants to persist longer than it otherwise would. Even after the windows do finally get replaced, the new windows still provide inferior thermal and noise insulation relative to more modern window designs/materials, which again causes larger energy bills and a decreased quality of life for inhabitants relative to what could exist without these requirements. Ironically, many of the buildings that these requirements are enforced on were built as replacements for even older buildings at a time when no such restrictions on street-facing building features existed. At some point, we have to accept that time marches on and architectural styles—and building technologies—change. The City of San Francisco should not be acting like an HOA.
| In general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expand your home (adding new stories, rooms, decks, etc)? | ✔ | ||
| Renovate your home (update bathroom, kitchen, etc)? | ✔ | ||
| Demolish your home and redevelop it into multifamily housing? | ✔ | ||
| Redevelop things like parking lots and single-story commercial into multifamily housing? | ✔ | ||
| Build subsidized housing? | ✔ | ||
| Build market-rate housing? | ✔ | ||
| Build homeless shelters (including navigation centers and "tiny homes")? | ✔ |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
In general, we need to increase economic freedom.
Small Business
Should all businesses be permitted by-right? If not, which business categories should require special government approval?
Yes, enable more economic freedom.
For businesses that require government approval or permits, what will you change about the process of new retail business formation in San Francisco?
Automate as much as possible, reduce costs as much as possible, and reduce the timeline as much as possible.
Some in the small business community have argued that San Francisco should increase the number of available ABC permits (also known as liquor licenses). Currently, some bars and restaurants buy licenses from each other because there aren't enough licenses available, which increases those establishments' operating costs and deprives others who don't participate in trading licenses of revenue opportunities. Others have argued against increasing the number of permits because they don't want more competition, or have already paid a lot of money for their liquor license. What do you think the City should do?
Allow as much economic activity as possible.
| Should San Francisco… | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce the time to obtain all permits to open a new business to no more than 3 months? | ✔* | |
| Reduce the cost of obtaining permits to open a new business? | ✔ | |
| Reduce the number of activities which must obtain permits, and expand the number of by-right activities? | ✔ | |
| Try to attract businesses of all sizes to the City? | ✔ |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
In general, I think the City should be much more permissive of economic activity that doesn't harm anyone in any overt way. I put an asterisk on the first answer only to point out that it could be even shorter than 3 months. I want to see the City use modern automation technology and simplification of regulations, policies, and procedures, to make all permitting simpler and quicker.
Transit Infrastructure
Some have argued that the cost of fare enforcement exceeds the benefit. Others say not enforcing fare payment starves Muni and BART of revenue, lowers the quality of service, and makes the systems less safe. What is your position?
I think we should make public transit free to everyone, as a public service.
As Mayor, will you direct SFMTA to build a citywide protected bike lane network? Why or why not? Please also explain how you will hold MTA accountable for this task. Yes, but we need to ensure that the specifics are taking into account the needs of individual citizens.
As Mayor, will you direct SFMTA to install more automated red light cameras and automated speed enforcement cameras?
Yes, I think it's a great way to take advantage of technology to improve the city.
Should Market Street remain off-limits to private vehicles and remain a bus/bike/taxi-only street? Why or why not?
Yes, I'd like to eventually make Market Street a pedestrian-only promenade.
Should San Francisco prioritize buses over car traffic by creating more bus-only lanes and directing traffic enforcement officers to ticket drivers who ignore the restrictions?
Sort of. We need to get to a point where we're prioritizing pedestrians over bikes over cars, but also allow self-driving cars to provide individualized transportation to seniors and the disabled. This is a continuously evolving issue that will require lots of ongoing thought.
As Mayor, how will you increase the frequency and reliability of buses and trains?
I'll have to think more about this to give a reasonable answer.
As Mayor, will you order SFMTA and DPW to install more pedestrian safety infrastructure, such as protective barriers, bollards, crosswalks, and lighting?
I'll have to think more about this to give a reasonable answer.
Budget
San Francisco is facing a large budget deficit due to declining tax revenues from our struggling downtown, increasing payroll costs, and inflexible budget set-asides for special programs. What will your approach be to fix this?
One interesting idea I'd like to explore is bringing vertical farming operations into our empty office buildings. This could simultaneously decrease the city's carbon footprint while improving our self-sufficiency and resilience to natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Aside from that, I think we should do whatever we can within reason to make it easier for any company to move into the city—including reducing excessive taxes that they wouldn't face in any other city and reducing general bureaucracy and red tape that makes it expensive and unpredictable to try to set up shop here. Finally, I'd do a deep dive on the nearly 11,000 contracts we have with about 4,000 individual vendors. I'm certain we could consolidate many of the contracts, identify costdowns, and begin to build in-house capacity for items that we know will be recurring expenses in perpetuity.
| Do you think San Francisco spends too little, too much, or just enough on… | Too little | Just enough | Enough, but badly | Too much |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police and public safety | ✔* | |||
| Street cleanliness | ✔* | |||
| Homeless services | ✔* | |||
| Affordable housing | ✔* | |||
| Parks | ✔* | |||
| Roads | ✔* | |||
| Bus, bike, train, and other public transit infrastructure | ✔* | |||
| Schools | ✔* | |||
| Medical facilities | ✔* | |||
| Drug prevention and treatment | ✔* | |||
| Arts | ✔* |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
This was a bit of a copout for me, but I chose "too much" for every line item in the budget. I honestly do think we are spending more than we need to for pretty much everything in the budget, given the outcomes that we're getting. For each line item, I could probably produce an example of where our spending has produced a great outcome, and a dozen other examples of where our spending has been wasteful and ineffective. As Mayor, I would focus intensively on reducing costs while simultaneously improving outcomes. This was the way I had to operate for the past 12.5 years at Tesla, and I would bring the same mentality to the city's budget.
Personal
Tell us a bit about yourself!
How long have you lived in San Francisco? What brought you here and what keeps you here?
I've lived in San Francisco for 12 years, but I have family roots that go back 5 generations (all the way to 1870, when my dad's great-great grandparents, Mary Frances and Stephen Wright Manley, moved to the City so Stephen could work as a Teamster). I was born in Los Angeles in 1981, but like many Californians of the 20th Century, my family moved back and forth between LA and SF based on employment opportunities. My dad's mother was born in Pasadena, but she spent most of her childhood in San Francisco (partly in Potrero Hill and partly in Bernal Heights). Likewise, my mom's maternal grandfather lived in Noe Valley as a kid before his family moved down to LA. I guess there was something in my blood that drew me to San Francisco, because I always knew deep down that I would end up here eventually.
What do you love most about San Francisco?
I love that San Francisco has been the final frontier for 175 years. Ever since the gold rush of 1849, people have been coming here from all over the world to explore new ways of living, to develop new technologies, and to push boundaries wherever possible, regardless of political or legal roadblocks. I think it's one of the last places on Earth that provides an outlet for revolutionary ideas. Part and parcel to that spirit of exploration and innovation is the diversity that has developed in San Francisco over time. The wide variety of lifestyles, ideas, and political persuasions (yes, there are even Republicans in San Francisco, though they are few and far between) provides a rich tapestry that will keep the city vibrant for many years to come. It's a live-and-let-live mentality that cultivates interesting and important subcultures. I also love how different each neighborhood feels, and that there are local watering holes, and local corner stores, and local groceries, and local barbershops. San Francisco's neighborhoods are so rich and vibrant, and the people who live here are rightfully proud of the place they inhabit.
What do you dislike the most about San Francisco?
I dislike the extremism that certain segments of the San Francisco political landscape engage in. I think we need to remain committed to maintaining dialogue and maintain the high ground of always seeking understanding. I also dislike the exclusionary, unwelcoming attitude that can sometimes make it difficult for new transplants to integrate into the community. For example, when I first arrived in 2011, I was treated with a lot of disrespect and contempt as a recent transplant from LA, even though I had deep family roots. Many people that I met didn't really care to understand who I was or where I really came from. Instead, they were quick to jump to conclusions and decide that I didn't belong here. This sentiment was exacerbated because I worked for Tesla, so I was ostensibly just another member of the tech industry who was moving to the city and destroying it by increasing the cost of living and gentrifying neighborhoods. Nevermind that my family was here generations before most of the people who judged me as unworthy. I agree that many tech industry employees moved here in the past 20 years without attempting to integrate into the community—or to even understand its history—but at the same time, native San Franciscans didn't exactly make it easy. Given the history of the city, with its constantly evolving demographics, it runs counter to the true spirit of San Francisco to reject anyone who moves here, for whatever reason.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.) I'm a member of my neighborhood association, the Potrero Boosters, which holds monthly meetings (usually via Zoom). I also volunteer occasionally to do street cleanups around Potrero Hill or in the Mission (organized through Manny's). I have helped keep civic engagement in the city alive and well through a Forum Membership at the Commonwealth Club. I helped feed thousands of homeless individuals through my sponsorship of the Glide Foundation's 2022 Holiday Jam. I have helped provide job training and a second chance at life to dozens of formerly incarcerated and otherwise at-risk youths through my support of Old Skool Cafe over the past couple of years. I have also volunteered to serve as a teacher's assistant for a course on web development taught through Code Tenderloin's Code Ramp program.
Thank you
Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!
If you see any errors on this page, please let us know at contact@growsf.org.