North Carolina is a purple state that often gets labeled red, but we're not a red state. We are a state of working-class folks who just want their elected officials to champion the issues that are impacting them.
Lurie says he will have to eliminate at least 500 San Francisco City Hall jobs. The Chronicle cites an email from Lurie's budget director Sophia Kittler in which she tells various City Hall departments that SF 'cannot afford to sustain current spending on personnel costs' and that 'meeting this target requires eliminating filled positions.'
Despite some idealistic intentions, that framework is in fact what put Muni in the financial hole in the first place. Working from a scarcity mindset, namely trying to preserve an already pilfered service, is a losing battle. To guarantee the service that citizens and workers expect from a city like San Francisco requires a committed vision of the future, one that centers Muni as the public good that it is.
San Franciscans deserve a Congressperson who represents their values—not the extreme, progressive agenda that has failed our beautiful city. I've done a lot to fight back against radicalism in San Francisco, promoting commonsense policies and leaders. Now, I'm ready to do the same in Washington.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by SFMTA (@sfmta_muni) San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie only stepped in to help with negotiations during the teachers' strike a week and a half ago, even though they officially began negotiating a new contract almost a year ago, and an impasse was declared in October, leading to a practice strike in November. [Mission Local]
"I am in touch with the Rapid Response Network and community organizations to ensure communities continue to receive accurate information," Lurie said. "We are not aware of any other immigration enforcement action in the city today. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and remain committed to upholding the values and laws of our city."
Sumeet Singh showed up to answer questions about the December blackout, and none of the members of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee seemed to accept, or even believe, most of his answers. Singh in essence said that, hey, these things happen, we are very sorry, and we will try to do better. He said that PG&E had worked closely with the city from the start-although he couldn't explain why it took two hours for his staff to alert the Department of Emergency Management.
Roughly a month after neighborhood and small business groups sued San Francisco over a housing plan they said went too far, a coalition of housing activists are filing their own suit arguing the city's plan doesn't go far enough. "We are here today on the precipice of St. Valentine's Day out of love: love for the San Franciscans who can't afford where they live, who are forgoing essential items like health care and saving for the future," she said.
After coming off of the high of participating in citywide teacher strikes, a group of around 20 people gathered at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital's courtyard for a different cause. "We're going to get the Zuckerberg off of San Francisco General Hospital," said Sasha Cuttler, a retired nurse and organizer of the event. The effort was simple; get a group of 10 people to replace each letter in Zuckerberg's name with a hand-made construction paper box to spell out "Pretti Good," the last names of two Minnesotans who were shot dead by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.
The Board of Supes Budget and Finance Committee Wednesday sent forward without recommendation a plan to give a private developer $40 million for a hotel project that appears to be a direct violation of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance. Supporters of the plan, including Mayor Daniel Lurie and Sup. Matt Dorsey, say that turning an old, historic office building on Third Street into a modern hotel would help revitalize downtown.
The Chronicle reports today that Lurie has spent $870,000 out of his own pocket since taking office in early 2025, with most of that sum going to outside speechwriters, PR consultants, and top advisers to the centrist political agitator group GrowSF. More specifically, the Chronicle found that Lurie's own personal dollars were spent getting advice from local PR firm Szabo and Associates ($130,000), Democratic mega-consultant Lis Smith ($50,000), speechwriter Jennifer Pitts ($60,000), and political consultant Tyler Law ($60,000), among others.
Mission District street food vendors say new regulations drafted by the Department of Public Health could run them out of business. "Our community is already living with so much uncertainty, costs have risen and our stability is fragile," said Rosi Villanueva, in Spanish. Villanueva was one of two dozen street food vendors who gathered on Tuesday for a rally at the 24th Street BART station.
For 50 years, the non-profit MCCLA at 25th and Mission has run arts programming from the four-story building it leased from the city for a dollar a year. The Arts Commission has also given them funding, with the expectation that they will raise more funds from donors, classes and events. This month, however, the Mission Cultural Center ran out of money and on Jan. 26 it closed indefinitely.
BART is partnering with Uber Transit to fully integrate seamless end-to-end journey planning and payment all within the BART app. Riders will no longer need to use multiple apps to plan their BART trip and plan and pay for an Uber ride. Everything can be done without leaving the BART app, and the total trip time will be displayed, making things faster and easier for users.
In an attempt to assuage concerns that the proposed four-story building to replace the shuttered Western Plywood warehouse at 2600 Harrison Street in the Mission is incompatible with the "design, scale and mass" of the neighborhood, Kerman Morris Architects has redesigned the project. The new design reduces the street-level wall along Harrison, includes a more open Production, Distribution & Repair (PDR) space, and adds an area with benches and raised planters along the street.
On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered in Golden Gate Park to celebrate the life and legacy of a San Francisco icon. The California Academy of Sciences honored Claude, the beloved albino alligator. Claude was 30 years old and lived at the academy for 17 years until his death last month. Sunday's festivities included a NOLA-style second line parade in a nod to Claude's Louisiana roots, a Claude costume contest for kids and stories shared by the late gator's care team.
Though he was better known before running for his charitable leadership as founder of the poverty-fighting nonprofit Tipping Point, Lurie immediately after getting elected began focusing on crime, homelessness, housing bottlenecks and quality-of-life issues like cleaning the streets. Lurie streamlined housing approvals, re-organized and sped up city safety responses, launched an anti-homelessness campaign and won a 73% approval rating at Thanksgiving among local voters.
