Inside minutes on Wednesday morning, San Francisco obtained a brand new mayor — and a brand new plan for an emergency declaration meant to fight the fentanyl scourge that has killed 1000’s of individuals within the metropolis over the previous 5 years and has turned some neighborhoods into sidewalk drug markets.
Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, was sworn into workplace exterior the gold-domed Metropolis Corridor and commenced to element his marketing campaign guarantees about combating the town’s drug disaster, which has claimed extra lives within the metropolis since 2020 than have Covid-19, automobile crashes and homicides mixed. Mr. Lurie mentioned that he had advised his police and sheriff’s departments to redirect their personnel — transferring from a short lived, sporadic effort to interrupt up drug markets to a everlasting, 24/7 operation.
He vowed that by this spring, cops would have someplace new to take individuals picked up for utilizing medicine or for performing erratically in public — not only a jail or a hospital emergency room. A disaster middle within the Tenderloin neighborhood shall be staffed with well being employees who can information those that want therapy.
“Widespread drug dealing, public drug use and consistently seeing individuals in disaster has robbed us of our sense of decency and safety,” Mr. Lurie mentioned from an outside stage below sunny blue skies. “I refuse to consider that that is who we’re.”
His declaration of a fentanyl emergency, which he promised after successful the hotly contested mayor’s race in November, consists of a package deal of ordinances that can pace its method to the Board of Supervisors, akin to a Metropolis Council, on Tuesday for what is anticipated to be swift approval.
The declaration would streamline the hiring of recent metropolis employees and the constructing of homeless and drug therapy amenities. A brand new ordinance may also enable the town to just accept non-public donations to assist fund Mr. Lurie’s promised 1,500 new shelter beds inside six months.
Mr. Lurie, an inheritor to the Levi Strauss fortune and the founding father of an antipoverty nonprofit, mentioned that fixing the town’s drug issues can be the one manner to make sure that San Francisco itself makes a full restoration. Doing so, he argued, can be central to luring again workplace employees to downtown, vacationers to lodges and small enterprise house owners to vacant retailers.
“Restoration is feasible, nevertheless it must be greater than a chance in San Francisco,” he mentioned. “It have to be our mission.”
Most of the proposals are acquainted, and the packed crowd on the inauguration was filled with former mayors and different metropolis officers who have been unable to make comparable concepts a actuality. Not in a metropolis with a police division that metropolis leaders say wants tons of extra officers; with a infamous forms that bogs down many metropolis initiatives; and with lowered tax income that interprets to a price range deficit approaching $1 billion over the subsequent two years.
After which there may be Mr. Lurie’s whole lack of expertise in authorities. The job of mayor is his first elected place.
Nonetheless, there was an aura of hope, as a who’s who of San Francisco stuffed the plaza. Paul Pelosi walked slowly to his seat with the assistance of a purple cane, greater than two years after being bludgeoned with a hammer by an intruder in search of his spouse, Nancy Pelosi, the previous Home speaker.
California’s first girl, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, was there, too, although her husband, Gov. Gavin Newsom, couldn’t attend due to the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles.
Mr. Lurie, who will settle for solely a $1 annual wage, owns a $15.5 million trip house in Malibu, a seashore city west of Los Angeles that suffered intensive injury within the fires. When he was requested Wednesday morning whether or not his house was nonetheless standing, a advisor whisked him away. His spouse, Becca Prowda, an aide to Governor Newsom, mentioned the couple didn’t but know the house’s destiny.
Mr. Lurie’s mom, the billionaire Mimi Haas, who donated $1 million to her son’s marketing campaign and knocked on voters’ doorways on his behalf, mentioned she was “very excited” and assured he would flip the town round. She married the late Peter Haas, Levi’s longtime chief govt, when Mr. Lurie was a toddler.
Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr addressed the gang, evaluating Mr. Lurie to a coach who can succeed solely with the assistance of top-notch gamers.
“We’ve got been via an terrible lot lately, and our metropolis has taken some hits, however we’re bouncing again,” Mr. Kerr advised the gang. “Similar to the Warriors, we have now to convey our particular person abilities to the desk with the concept of creating the entire higher.”
If Mr. Lurie is the coach, it’s not clear who shall be Metropolis Corridor’s Steph Curry. Mr. Lurie has thus far employed largely outsiders from the enterprise world to assist him run the mayor’s workplace. On Wednesday, he mentioned that when it comes to division heads, “you all will see numerous change.”
