Issues
I'm running because our city has a crisis of leadership. Our government lacks transparency, accountability, and most of all, integrity. When I take office, I will put an end to the corrupt way city hall does business. I am interested in straight talk and real solutions. These are the main issues of my campaign:
1. COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF THE OPEN AIR DRUG MARKETS.
This is objectively the worst crisis in San Francisco. In 2023, over 800 died from drug overdoses. Many of these open air drug markets happen in full view of city hall. As a firefighter/EMT, I have personally administered Narcan to dozens of overdose victims, not all of whom survived. I will accomplish this by:
-
Ending Sanctuary Protections for convicted drug dealers and felons
-
Lobby at the state level to pass legislation to strengthen penalties against dealers such as Alexandra's Law
-
Offering treatment on demand and advocating for more abstinence-based treatment for addicted users.
2. FULLY FUND AND STAFF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, AND REFORM THE POLICE COMMISSION.
As I knock on doors around the district, the most common concern I hear is concerns about public safety. I work with police nearly every watch as a firefighter. Never was this more apparent when I responded to the UPS Shooting in June 2017 and performed life-saving measures with SFPD in the back of an ambulance on a patient whom I later learned was the shooter. I will begin to restore public safety to San Francisco by:
-
Fully staffing our police and sheriff departments
-
Reforming the police commission so that they no longer have ability to obstruct public safety in service of a political agenda
-
Rebuild our Hall of Justice, making it seismically safe and safer for deputies, inmates, and the courts.
-
Reduce paperwork requirements for SFPD and the Sheriffs
-
Use innovative technology to supplement law enforcement efforts
3. ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS RESPONSIBLY BUT COMPASSIONATELY.
As a firefighter, I have worked at some of our city's busiest fire stations and have hundreds, if not thousands, of contacts with homeless individuals. As such, I am acutely aware of the nature of homelessness in San Francisco. We must treat homelessness primarily for the nature of its cause - it is a primarily a crisis of drug addiction and mental illness. Here is my proposal:
-
Shut down the open-air drug markets
-
Require a minimum of 25% of all supportive housing to be clean and sober
-
Strictly enforce laws against tent encampments while offering shelter, but evicting those who refuse to comply
-
Audit all of the 280 plus non-profits that deal with homelessness - immediately suspend funding to non-profits who have not filed a form 990, who have not registered with the state, or who are non-compliant with other regulations
-
Stand up FEMA-type shelter spaces immediately
-
Enforce laws in accordance with Martin versus Boise
4. END CORRUPTION IN CITY HALL
Everyday there is a new scandal in which department and non-profit heads embezzle money and defraud the taxpayer. I am the only supervisor who has clear proposals to reduce corruption.
-
Shrink the size of government by consolidating and reducing unnecessary and redundant commissions, departments, and positions
-
Mandate zero-based budgeting for all non-profits
-
End sole-source and no-bid contracts
-
Line item veto authority for mayor for individual expense items in a budget proposal
-
Require strict metric-based evaluations for all city contracts
5. PROMOTE EXCEPTIONAL EDUCATION.
As a public school and Lowell High School Alumni, I have been a beneficiary of high quality public education. As supervisor, I want nothing less than the opportunities that I had for kids in San Francisco. This is one of my most important values. I will accomplish this by:
-
Personally inspecting all schools not only district wide, but city wide and ensuring kids are getting high quality education
-
Using power of the office to be an advocate for high quality education
-
Supporting early advanced education such as early math, foreign language, art, music, and vocational education opportunities
6. PROMOTE HOUSING AND SMALL BUSINESS
Our permitting process is convoluted which discourages new housing construction and burdens small businesses. It can take up to 87 different permits to build a unit of housing, each of them subject to discretionary review. Here is my proposal to make housing less expensive and approve the opening of new small businesses:
-
Reform the permitting process to a split process in which building permits are ministerial and planning remains discretionary
-
Eliminate and consolidate unnecessary and redundant permits for housing and business
-
Reform rent control to incentivize more landlords to enter the rental market and increase supply
-
Protect small businesses from abuse by large city departments like the SFMTA
7. UPGRADE AND FULLY MODERNIZE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, FIRE PRTOECTION, AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE
Our public transportation infrastructure has long been neglected, and MUNI has suffered as a result. Our automatic train control system (ATCS) runs on floppy disk software and was in need of an upgrade 20 years ago. Rather than spend resources to address this, our city would rather focus on projects that are unnecessary and ineffective. Our auxiliary fire protection systems are in need of expansion and upgrade. Here are my proposals:
-
Immediately modernize MUNI's ATCS
-
Expand MUNI metro
-
Expand Auxiliary Water Supply System the the west side to ensure earthquake resiliency for fire protection
-
Re-pave all roads in need of repair
-
Plan for placement of all utility wires underground