Strange (and maybe inappropriate) actions at the Planning Commission …

There were some weird moments at the Planning Commission meeting Thursday, where the mayor’s plan for increased density in many neighborhoods, particularly on the West Side, was approved 4-3.

The Yimby folks who support the “Family Zoning Plan” were on hand with buttons. Fair enough; at public hearings, people from all perspectives often wear shirts or buttons or other low-key insignia stating their positions. (Signs aren’t allowed.)

But Rachael Tanner, a staff member who is director of citywide planning, was on the dais with the seven commissioners—and she was wearing one of those Yimby buttons.

That in essence put a senior member of the staff on record endorsing a position that the commission had not yet considered. I’ve been watching the Planning Commission for more than 40 years, and I’ve never seen that before. I spoke to several other longtime observers who said the same thing.

There’s no law against a planning staffer wearing a button taking a political position during a hearing. But Aaron Peskin, a former supervisor who has followed Planning Commission politics for decades, told me he found it highly inappropriate. “It is critical for people’s trust in the government that city employees have the appearance of not being biased,” Peskin said. “When you have such an open display of bias by a high-ranking city official it taints the entire process.”

I reached out to Tanner for comment, but have not heard back.

More: Principal Planner Lisa Chen, who is always very professional, told the commissioners that if the city wants to meet the state mandates (created by Sen. Scott Wiener), and planners or later the supes want to lower height limits in certain areas, they will need to raise them elsewhere. Fair enough.

But then Tanner started listing examples of blocks, and in some cases specific sites, where property owners were asking for expanded height limits. She mentioned a property on Sutter Street, where the owner wants the right to expand what is now a small single-family home to 65 feet. She said a person who claimed to represent the owners of Park Merced also asked for greater height limits.

Commissioner Derek Braun said he didn’t want to make changes “line by line,” but suggested the supes might do that.

Again: Strange. A member of the commission staff actually discussed the idea of giving special zoning favors to certain areas and maybe certain property owners.

With the politics of the country so warped, we are used to far worse—but still: Unusual.

The Planning Commission will consider Thursday/17 a measure by Sup. Danny Sauter that would eliminate a wide range of zoning protections in North Beach and Jackson Square. The measure would eliminate the North Beach Special Use District, which has been in place since 2012, and includes limits on the sizes of commercial spaces, protects residential uses about the ground floor, restricts the number of bars and restaurants (new ones can replace existing ones) and protects historic buildings, among other things. It would eliminate the restrictions on bard and restaurants in the Jackson Square Historic District.

The idea of those special zoning district was to preserve the mixed-use character of these areas and the small merchants that operate in modest storefronts (merging and creating bigger commercial spaces means higher rents and a different type of business).

The elimination of that zoning is all part of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s effort to “revitalize” downtown, although Jackson Square and North Beach are not exactly “downtown.”

Some business owners and residents of Nob Hill and Pacific Heights like the idea. A letter to the commission from Ted Bartlett states:

As an owner of Nob Hill Compass and a director of the Nob Hill Association, located in District 3, we care deeply about the vitality and future of our neighborhood. Through this work, we’ve seen firsthand the challenges our commercial corridors face from high vacancy rates to outdated zoning that makes it harder for new businesses to open and thrive. We support this legislation because it’s a necessary and long-overdue step toward revitalizing our neighborhood. By modernizing zoning regulations and streamlining permitting, District 3 Thrives will make it easier for small businesses to fill empty storefronts and for existing businesses like mine to grow. I have considered expanding [or adapting] my business to better meet community needs, and these changes would make that a more realistic possibility.

But the Jackson Square Historic District Association is strongly opposed:

The current Data-informed controls were enacted with support from diverse community stakeholders, unanimously endorsed by the City’s Small Business Commission, and unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors on March 6, 2018. They were designed to preserve a balanced mix of commercial uses and a sustainable residential community aligned with the City’s goal of attracting residents to invest in living downtown. These controls were informed by voluminous data from other cities and planners, and have proven remarkably successful both pre and post-pandemic, as evidenced by simply walking the district, as well as numerous articles in local media highlighting Jackson Square as a downtown success story. And again by contrast, the proposed destructive legislation is not supported by any data showing how it will improve the tiny district.

Charles Carbone, a lawyer and resident:

The success of Jackson Square is not accidental. Since 2018, the current land use protections—crafted with broad input and unanimous City support—have preserved historic buildings while sustaining a healthy mix of shops, galleries, bars and restaurants, offices, services, and homes. This stability has encouraged investment from residents and businesses alike, making Jackson Square one of the few Downtown districts to thrive even through the pandemic. The proposed legislation threatens to unravel that success. Our small district already has more than its share of bars and restaurants. While these uses bring activity, they also create serious impacts on retail and residential: noise, vandalism, trash and worse, and constant enforcement challenges. Allowing additional saturation without careful review would tip the balance further, undermining the very qualities that make this district livable. Driving working residents out of Downtown seems backwards. Process matters, too. None of the Jackson Square business and residential friends I asked said they were aware of this proposal, and were against it once informed. How does oversaturating bar and restaurants vs. balanced mixed use improve a district that is already working well?

Stuart Watts, president of the North Beach Business Association:

The NBSUD was designed to protect and enhance the special character of one of San Francisco’s most important, historic, and celebrated neighborhoods. It has been successful in safeguarding commercial uses and use sizes, Legacy Businesses, and our renowned architectural and cultural heritage. We strongly oppose its elimination unless you can incorporate the same protections in the NBNCD as currently exist in the NBSUD. As written, your proposed legislation can significantly diminish protections for recognized historic resources and storefront mergers.

The Telegraph Hill Dwellers note:

We oppose the proposed amendment to allow mergers without even a Conditional Use Authorization. Discouraging storefront mergers has helped to preserve our vibrant neighborhood, minimize commercial vacancies, and retain small businesses, including our numerous Legacy Businesses, that would have long disappeared without these controls. These provisions have long proven successful in protecting the delicate ecosystem of our celebrated neighborhood-serving businesses by incentivizing landlords to retain existing small business spaces that command lower per square foot rents than larger storefront

We oppose the amendment proposed by Supervisor Sauter to allow Flexible Retail uses to be principally permitted on all floors in the North Beach NCD. While THD can support allowing Flexible Retail uses on the first floor only as principally permitted, we strongly oppose allowing Flexible Retail uses on the upper floors where conversion to retail uses should continue to be prohibited in order maintain upper floor housing units and to protect tenants from eviction and displacement. 

That hearing starts at noon.

The San Francisco Zoo has been a mess for a long time. In December. 2024, the supes asked the Budget and Legislative Analyst to conduct a full performance audit, but:

On June 2, 2025, Dan Goncher, a Principal with the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office, sent a letter to the former Executive Director of the Zoological Society as well as selected members of the Board of Supervisors, indicating that Zoological Society management was not fully cooperating with the performance audit.

So the supes took $3 million of the $4 million to city gives to the private Zoological Society to run the zoo and put it on reserve.

Now the Zoo operators want that money released. And

The Budget and Legislative Analyst notes that Zoological Society management has shown much greater cooperation since the $3,000,000 was put on reserve in June 2025.

But the performance audit is not done. The conditions for the animals are still a matter of concern. (And what ever happened to former Mayor London Breed’s dubious promise to bring pandas to the SF Zoo)?

The Budget and Finance Committee will consider releasing the money Wednesday/17. Perhaps part of the discussion could be this: The Zoo has been privatized for decades. That experiment appears to have failed.