Mayor Daniel Lurie gets to make an unchallenged speech tomorrow at the Board of Supes. That’s because nobody offered to ask any questions at Question Time. The mayor will no doubt do what he did on KQED this morning, and talk about his proposals to increase the power of the Mayor’s Office.
Since the supervisors from Districts 5, 6, 7, and 8 had no questions, let me suggest a few.
For Sup. Bilal Mahmood, District 5:
A tech worker associated with Y Combinator just released, and then shut down, a first-person shooter game that turned Black people in the Tenderloin into zombies who need to be killed. Many local politicians have denounced the game and its sponsor. Do you think your tech-positive-at-all-costs policies and your attacks on unhoused and desperate folks could be creating this kind of alarming attitude, and what will you do to stop it?
For Sup. Matt Dorsey, District 6: A Maryland developer is proposing a data center at the City Centre Mall. The city has imposed a 45-day moratorium on data centers, but when that expires, will you commit to opposing any sort of data centers in the city? If you tell the developer now that this project will never happen, it will save everyone a lot of money and time.
For Sup. Myrna Melgar, District 7
On KQED Monday, you said the following:
Let me tell you, Prop C, an affordable housing measure that I am all in on, worked with Supervisor Myrna Melgar. All 11 supervisors are supporting this, as are affordable housing advocates and tenant groups. It’ll be the largest increase in affordable housing spending in our city. It was done thoughtfully. It was done in collaboration with each other. And we are so excited to see Prop C pass.
Then we had another measure come in. No discussion, no nothing. It could blow a $120 million hole in our budget. It says it’s for affordable housing. And yet, if you really read the fine print, not one unit of affordable housing has to be built for that prop. So once again, you have two measures that now are competing for attention, when one was really thoughtfully planned out and one just kind of did an end run around the system.”
You know very well that Prop. I was discussed for months, that some affordable housers who helped develop it made a deal with you not to support it if you gave them Prop. C. You also know very well that the $120 million a year would not exist if the voters hadn’t approved that money for affordable housing. You know that all the Prop. I money would go for affordable, non-market housing, administered through your own office, and that the No on I campaign is flat-out lying. Isn’t your No on I campaign, which denounces the same nonprofits that would implement Prop. C., threatening Yes on C, which would send the same money to the same place—your office?
Melgar told me she can’t ask any questions since she’s in Asia. But someone needs to ask this.
For Sup. Rafael Mandeman, District 8: For just $250,000, San Francisco legal groups could save thousands of immigrants from ICE detention. That’s about a third of what one sheriff’s deputy makes in overtime. Any one of your big donors, who are spending $10 million on your agenda, could fund this in a second. Why are you refusing to put a tiny amount of resources into opposing ICE?
This is what Question Time is supposed to be about. None of these supes will ask any of these questions.
