Board President Rafael Mandelman and congressional candidate Supervisor Connie Chan among those arrested at May Day protest.
San Francisco city officials, including Board President Rafael Mandelman and Supervisor Connie Chan, and a California state senator were arrested at San Francisco International Airport on Friday during a May Day protest against conditions for airport workers and federal immigration agents’ presence in airports across the country.
The airport workers’ union picketed for higher wages and fully funded healthcare. Activist groups who joined the protest on Friday decried Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s presence at airports…
Chan, Mandelman and other city and state officials, including state Sen. Josh Becker and former supervisor Jane Kim, blocked the street to the international terminal, holding a banner in support of the union…
At 1 p.m., approximately one hour after Chan and other city officials were arrested, the San Francisco Police Department released a statement saying that there are “no arrests or reports of injuries at this time.”…(more)
The state would purchase and forgive many Californians’ medical debt under a legislative proposal announced Monday.
Around 40% of Californians are struggling with some kind of medical debt regardless of whether or not they have some form of health insurance, said Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who authored Assembly Bill 2123, during a press conference Monday.
“Many people do have coverage,” she said, but they “still end up with bills they can’t afford, high deductibles, copays, denied claims — [it] can leave families owing thousands of dollars, and they never expected [it] would happen.”…
The Medical Debt Relief Act of 2026 is based on an existing pilot program launched in Los Angeles County in 2024, where the Board of Supervisors invested $5 million to purchase debt for pennies on the dollar and erase it for people whose household incomes are at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, or have medical debt that equals 5% or more of their annual income…(more)
We should first try fixing the California Public Utilities Commission
As we gear up for the 2026 election season, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is in the crosshairs. Tom Steyer is running for governor and loudly vowing to “break up” the electric utilities. Meanwhile, in the San Francisco congressional race to replace Nancy Pelosi, all three major candidates — Scott Weiner, Saikat Chakrabarti and Connie Chan — support a takeover of the city’s electric system.
Politicians and voters have every right to be upset at PG&E. Rates have gone through the roof as the company has presided over a string of deadly failures and costly outages. But moves to take over the grid should give us pause. San Francisco City Hall, with pressing challenges and its own history of mismanagement, seems ill-equipped to launch an electric utility, and advocates of municipal power are often unrealistic about what would be involved. There are better ways to get the electric system we want.
Here’s the thing: The large investor-owned utilities are already publicly controlled. As state-sanctioned monopolies, they are comprehensively regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has the responsibility to approve their actions. So if we’re unhappy with the utilities, why don’t we just try regulating them better?
We should be asking much more of the five members of the commission, who are appointed by the governor. As a developer of solar and energy storage projects in California, I have seen firsthand how our regulators have failed to produce effective energy policy or to provide even a modest check on the utilities.
The truth is, the commission has not been meeting the moment…
Now’s the time for a fresh start. Leadership is turning over at the commission, and we’ll soon elect a new governor who will appoint new regulators. As voters, we should be asking pointed questions and demanding better results.
Can we unpack the rate increases? How are costs categorized, and do we agree? What returns are utilities receiving on their investments, and are they appropriate? Are there more cost-effective solutions to grid challenges that aren’t being considered? How can we empower communities to develop the next generation of energy assets?…
Let’s organize with our neighbors — using existing groups and forming new ones. Let’s take a hard look at utility profits and, in this era of budget cuts and hard choices, insist that they do belt-tightening just like the rest of us. Let’s increase the pace of energy development and fight for the right to develop local resources to prevent future blackouts, just as PG&E has.
We should be unabashed about these goals with the incoming governor’s administration. We want a transformed utility system and intend to work effectively across the different stakeholders to effect real change. Of course, we can always keep a city takeover in our back pocket…
Ultimately, there isn’t one solution to our energy woes. The grid is a large, multilayered system, and we have to do many things at scale to ensure that we have the energy we need over the coming years. But having regulators who recognize the urgency of the situation is a must, and right now, we don’t.
So we can keep talking about a long-term breakup with PG&E, but let’s recognize that we have the opportunity to demand better outcomes now… (more)
Sam Maslin is CEO of Eddy Energy, a developer of community energy storage projects, and the president of the Noe Valley Democratic Club in San Francisco.
Horses are welcome in Los Altos Hills, among other communities in the Peninsula that appreciate a rural lifestyle, where some vineyards and orchards struggle to survive.
Last fall, CalMatters covered the saga of the well-to-do Silicon Valley suburb that set aside some land for denser development in compliance with state housing law, only to scale back its plans once a developer proposed a major apartment project for the site. Since then, regulators with California’s Housing Department signed off on the town’s about-face.
Now, the California Housing Defense Fund, a pro-development legal advocacy group, is suing the town, arguing that its housing plan violates state law — even if the state’s own regulators don’t see things that way.
Is it possible the legal YIMBY arm is reaching too far as it attacks the root of its support? How much is too much and when is it time to retreat? The peninsula is known for its excellent local food sources that feed fine restaurants in the Bay Area.
Initiatives Have Primarily Helped Tenants SF also requires by far the lowest amount of signatures for measures to qualify for the ballot. This incentivizes politicians and special interests to overload the ballot with poorly conceived, divisive, and often contradictory measures. The result is a system that forces San Franciscans to fill out lengthy, confusing ballots that often result in unintended consequences.— Press release, MAYOR LURIE FILES CHARTER REFORM MEASURES TO CLEAN UP CITY HALL, March 11, 2026
Does the actual history of San Francisco ballot measures confirm the above account? Not by my research. To the contrary, gathering signatures under the current law has brought enormous benefits to the city’s non-wealthy residents. It’s been the primary strategy keeping the non-wealthy in San Francisco…
Ballot Measures Increase Economic Equity I encourage other media to investigate which San Francisco constituencies have benefited most from initiatives secured by signature gathering. My research says the answer is obvious: tenants have far and away gained the most.
I have authored and coordinated signature gathering for two tenant campaigns. In 1992, Prop H cut annual rent increases by more than half. Its passage has saved tenants billions of dollars and kept working people in the city. People who would have eventually been priced out by the annual guaranteed 4% rent increase previously in effect.
The organization I head, the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, was the chief funder of Prop H. We could not have afforded to pay for enough signatures to qualify under the proposed new rules (even grassroots campaigns rely heavily on paid signature gatherers).
Had the proposed new signature rules been in effect in 1992, landlords would have continued getting annual rent increases well above inflation. But for Prop H this would have continued for the past 33 years.
In 1994, I authored Prop G, a charter amendment to create a Department of Building Inspection. We had to collect 60,000 signatures because charter amendments have a higher requirement. We spent every campaign dollar we had on qualifying for the ballot. Had the proposed new signature requirements been in effect it would have been impossible for us to qualify.
Thanks to Prop G, San Francisco went from having terrible housing code enforcement to becoming a national model. The Housing Inspection Division was fully funded for the first time ever. The City Attorney went from only filing lawsuits against in=law apartments to targeting landlords who flagrantly violate the housing code.
These two measures alone show tenants have gained enormously from the current system. But there’s even more examples of how tenants benefit from the existing signature rules…
I have an entire chapter in The Activist’s Handbook on the strategies for using ballot initiatives to achieve progressive change. The mayor needs to rethink this part of his charter amendment…(more)
By Tim Redmond :48hills – excerpt… Lurie and his allies also want to make it more difficult for citizens to put a measure on the local ballot. The mayor wants to eliminate the rule that allows four supes to sponsor an initiative with their signatures—and want to raise the threshold for community-based signatures… Shaw doesn’t mention it, but the most important progressive land-use measure in San Francisco history, Prop. M in 1986, would never have made the ballot under the new rules. The proponents gathered enough signatures, but the City Attorney’s Office, apparently bowing to Mayor Dianne Feinstein and downtown pressure, produced an utterly bogus argument at the last minute saying the signatures were invalid on a technicality. So the backers found four (and only four) supervisors—Harry Britt, Nancy Walker, Willie Kennedy and Dick Hongisto—willing to put in on the ballot instead…. That would not have happened under the mayor’s proposal… (more)
Grocery Outlet, the Emeryville-based discount grocer with a large Northern California footprint, said it plans to close 36 financially underperforming stores as it tries to improve profitability after reporting a steep quarterly loss.
The closures are part of a business “Optimization Plan” adopted by the company’s board on Monday and expected to be “substantially completed during fiscal 2026,” Grocery Outlet said in anews releaseWednesday announcing fourth-quarter and full-year financial results.
“We made progress on our strategic priorities in 2025; however, our fourth-quarter results made clear that we have more work to do, and we’re moving quickly,” Jason Potter, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “At the same time, we’re closing underperforming stores, reshaping our new store growth strategy and reallocating resources to strengthen operating results and returns on capital. ”
Grocery Outlet did not disclose which locations will be shuttered. The company, which has stores nationwide, also did not specify how many of the 36 stores are in California or the Bay Area.
Grocery Dive, an industry publication, reported that 24 of the stores slated to close are on the East Coast, citing Potter’s remarks to investors…
The company attributed some of the pressure to the timing of government assistance. Comparable sales were hurt by delayed disbursements from “federally funded assistance programs that many of our customers depend on, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” the company said.
MarketWatch reported the company’s stock fell about 24% in after-hours trading following the announcement.…(more)
Re-Zoning is going to create a food shortage as agricultural land is now non-agricultural land, and water sources for farmers are not secure, thank to the state water board run by the Governor, farmers are not willing to continue takin on more debt in definitely. How much longer will California be able to claim it has the fourth large world economy when we are losing our food and wine industries that accounts for a huge percentage of the exports. We don’t so far hear anything about his from the candidaates for governor or Congress. All we hear is their opinions on AI and tech, and concerns over the high cost of housing and energy in California. Who is raising alarms about the loss of food production and the closure of supermarkets?
Numerous San Francisco elected officials ratcheted up the pressure for a potential takeover of Pacific Gas & Electric’s transmission grid in The City this week, reflecting deep discontent with the utility after recent outages that at one point in December left 130,000 people without power.
“We are done, and it is time for San Francisco to break up with PG&E,” state Sen. Scott Wiener said Monday on the steps of City Hall, where he was flanked by Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and Supervisors Matt Dorsey, Bilal Mahmood and Danny Sauter.
Wiener, a longtime PG&E critic who in 2020 unsuccessfully pushed legislation to turn the company into a public utility, was there to unveil state Senate Bill 875, a measure aimed at making it easier for cities to seek separation from private utilities through the California Public Utilities Commission…
…San Francisco already provides more than 75% of the electricity consumed in The City through its not-for-profit CleanPowerSF program and its hydroelectric Hetch Hetchy Power System… (more)
How will San Francisco ownership changer the fate of the people who own or want to invest in rooftop solar systems? Will the city rollback the anti-solar legislation that was put in place by the CPUC and supported by the state legislature?
View from a Treasure Island residence indicates the distance residents must travel to get to markets.
With no supermarket and limited transit, residents support each other with a community garden and food pantry
In 2003, Abdo Nasser and his family found themselves on Treasure Island on an uncharacteristically warm San Francisco day. There as tourists, Nasser and his family grew thirsty and searched for a grocery store. However, as they roamed, it became clear there were none.
My wife and I and the kids needed water — it was a hot day,” Nasser said in a recent interview. “There was no water, no snacks, nothing.”
Treasure Island has long been a neighborhood without a retail ecosystem because of its isolation from services available in the rest of San Francisco. While a massive redevelopment project is underway, it has not translated to basics like supermarkets.
Nasser saw an opportunity and approached the Treasure Island Development Authority board of directors. He was told that no long-term lease would be available, since big real estate development projects on the island were imminent. It wasn’t until 2008, Nasser said, that he was given a 600-square-foot “shack” by the lone road connecting the island to the mainland via the Bay Bridge.
Nasser quickly learned that residents wanted and needed more. He moved to a 3,000-square-foot location in 2012 before finally setting up Treasure Island Cove’s current location in 2016. More than two decades after Nasser first searched for a grocery store site, his remains the only one on the island…
Food pantry doubles clientele
But for many residents, off-island food shopping is too burdensome or expensive. One Treasure Island runs a weekly food bank in coordination with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. Established more than 20 years ago, the partnership provides access to fresh produce and non-perishables, with limited amounts of eggs, milk, bread and meat, every Tuesday…
Garden, meet farm
According to Treasure Island Development Authority’s president, V. Fei Tsen, an urban farm was always part of the original Treasure Island master plan.
The plan allocates 13 acres in the center of Treasure Island for farming. Originally the plan set aside 25 acres, but part of that was turned over for a training facility for Bay FC, as well as a potential site for a job training program, Allison Albericci, the development authority’s major sites principal planner, said at a November agency meeting...(more)
Our February 17 zoom panel discussion will be on street trees. Mayor Lurie and Supervisor Wong have proposed legislative amendments that will harm San Francisco’s already small urban tree canopy. If this passes it allows developers to choose between planting trees and paying an (inadequate) in lieu fee which means fewer trees will get planted. It will eliminate the public’s right to appeal tree removal.
Our panelists so far are Josh Klipp, an accessibility consultant and Dave Osgood who is fighting to save trees in his neighborhood. I’ll update the website as more panelists are confirmed.
If your organization hasn’t paid dues for 2026 yet you now have the option of paying by zelle using our email address – treasurer@csfn.net or mail a check made out to CSFN to Greg Scott 637 Noe Street, SF CA 94114
We love to hear from you! Please email me at president@csfn.net or bridgelady@earthlink.net and let me know when and where your neighborhood organization is meeting. I want to keep attending as many meetings as possible and continue learning about the issues in our city neighborhoods.
