There Goes the Neighborhood

After much deliberation amongst the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Breed leading up to the budget vote, the Board approved the roughly $14 billion budget per the fiscal year 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 budget in a 10-1 decision—Supervisor Preston was the lone dissenter. The new budget focuses on a variety of priority areas such as economic recovery, public safety, investments in affordable housing, community development, and a range of other critical issues essential to the revitalization of San Francisco. To highlight one area of contention during the budget process, the Mayor and the Board came to an agreement on public safety as the budget accounts for 220 new police officers and increased funding for the police department by more than $50 million.

After several stops and starts of COVID restrictions throughout the past year, the City has gone full speed ahead into bringing life back to “normal” as much as possible, yet, that has not translated into a bustling and thriving downtown. Who knows when downtown San Francisco will return to its pre-pandemic glory—or if it ever will—and that uncertainty has prompted city, community, and business leaders to start adjusting their plans and crafting new pathways for the City’s success. Whether it’s bringing in more conventions, streamlining permits for small businesses downtown, or changing the downtown landscape as proposed in the “Public Realm Action Plan,” we need to find a way to reinvent the downtown core to ensure the City’s long-term success.