Just one Individual at SF Metropolis Corridor Is aware of the Reply to This Easy Query

Within the means of reporting an extended story about Mayor London Breed, one seemingly routine query proved to be exceptionally tough to reply: What number of departments, commissions and advisory boards are there in San Francisco?

This looks like a simple query. Hardly.

Dozens of calls, emails and texts had been despatched asking the identical query, however nobody at Metropolis Corridor was prepared or in a position to give a definitive reply. Employees on the Mayor’s Workplace stated they as soon as knew the numbers—an intern apparently had been assigned the unenviable process of counting—however the report couldn’t be situated. 

As a substitute, the mayor’s staff, a majority of supervisors and a number of metropolis departments despatched alongside a string of incomplete or regional stories and instructed I give so-and-so a name, solely to have that individual ship me the identical stories and refer me again to the locations from which I got here. 

Weeks glided by with no single individual at Metropolis Corridor prepared to supply arduous numbers. For anybody who pays taxes in San Francisco, this can be a bit troubling contemplating it’s the equal of asking a father or mother what number of youngsters they’ve. 

“Who, him? I feel that’s Gary, quantity eight. Or is it 9?”

It wasn’t till I circled again to the Metropolis Lawyer’s Workplace {that a} knight in shining armor emerged. Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the workplace, hand-counted metropolis departments—primarily based on statements of financial curiosity filed by division heads—to come back to the conclusion that San Francisco has 53 departments, 56 boards and commissions, and 74 extra advisory our bodies, bringing the grand whole to 183 totally different entities. And that doesn’t even embody different casual teams created by the mayor and metropolis businesses.

If that looks like so much, that’s as a result of it’s so much in contrast with different cities. A lot in order that San Francisco presently has greater than 180 vacancies for members of the general public to serve throughout an array of boards, commissions and advisory our bodies.

“San Francisco has so many commissions the quantity is nearly farcical,” Joel Engardio, a first-year supervisor for the Sundown District, stated in a textual content message. “There are most likely 60 or 70 commissions the general public has by no means heard of. Many of those commissions have vacancies or giant numbers of absences, which implies even the individuals who learn about them don’t care sufficient to fill the seats or present up. We’ve got to ask, ‘What’s the purpose of all these commissions in the event that they’re solely catering to a small group of political insiders speaking to one another?’”

Engardio isn’t alone in admitting that San Francisco’s distinctive model of participatory democracy has turn into unwieldy and costly. Despite the fact that a lot of the fee and advisory board positions are unpaid, there’s a price to searching down appointees and staffing them.

After all, many commissions are established by the Metropolis Constitution and make good sense. San Franciscans need citizen oversight for apparent issues like police and historic preservation. Eliminating these or altering them would require voter sign-off to replace the Metropolis Constitution.

However critics of the huge variety of advisory boards and oversight commissions say that, mockingly, they result in opacity as an alternative of the transparency they’re meant to supply. Many teams have been created as the results of poll measures being handed, which bundle taxes and updates to the regulation with process forces. 

One Metropolis Corridor insider instructed the work of a gaggle just like the Sugary Drinks Distributor Tax Advisory Committee could possibly be overseen by the Well being Fee, however a 2016 poll measure that slapped a tax on candy drinks—San Francisco’s try and tackle Massive Soda—created the committee.

“Some commissions are value-added, and a few are a waste of time,” stated Aaron Peskin, president of the Board of Supervisors. “You probably have good commissioners who assist metropolis division heads and their employees and ask good questions and assist optimize issues, it’s value-added. When you’ve a bunch of bloated, self-important individuals who need to run round and say they’re a commissioner, it may be value-subtracted.

“As to advisory boards, it’s a relentless means of winnowing them down when they’re now not of utility,” Peskin continued. “Yeah, it is most likely time for an additional spherical that eliminates superfluous advisory our bodies.”

Throughout my first espresso assembly final yr with Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, I floated the concept of a “clear slate” initiative. The idea was merely to take a look at Metropolis Corridor with recent eyes. If we began with a clear slate and didn’t have any commitments to ordinances handed within the 1800s or the prevailing dogmas of more moderen a long time, would we create a metropolis authorities that operates the best way San Francisco presently does? Or would we perhaps redirect our priorities and put town’s $14.6 billion finances to raised use?

“The clear slate initiative would take a really shut have a look at these commissions and both restructure or eradicate lots of them,” Mandelman half-jokingly stated in a latest telephone interview. “I feel there are definitely administrative prices related to them. The way in which they’ve developed over the past couple of a long time with constitution reform, they do play into the problem of governing San Francisco.”

Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Workplace, stated the difficulty of removing metropolis commissions and boards to make San Francisco extra environment friendly is a precedence for Breed. However constitution reform can be a beast to tackle when most individuals in San Francisco are centered on public security and Downtown restoration.

An unlimited overhaul of town’s governmental construction could possibly be on the desk if Breed wins a second time period and secures a majority of allies on the Board of Supervisors. As a result of the established order—and town’s ridiculous roster of commissions and advisory boards—clearly isn’t working.

“It simply creates a system the place accountability just isn’t the first goal,” Cretan stated. “It dilutes authority, it dilutes accountability and it’s complicated for residents, as a result of they don’t know these seven members which can be sitting in a fee assembly on Wednesday afternoon. And it’s an excessive amount of to ask them to know that. They’re residing their lives. They only need to know that somebody’s working to ship service.”