Inside minutes on Wednesday morning, San Francisco received a brand new mayor — and a brand new plan for an emergency declaration supposed to fight the fentanyl scourge that has killed hundreds 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 outdoors the gold-domed Metropolis Corridor and commenced to element his marketing campaign guarantees about preventing 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 stated that he had informed his police and sheriff’s departments to redirect their personnel — transferring from a brief, sporadic effort to interrupt up drug markets to a everlasting, 24/7 operation.
He vowed that by this spring, law enforcement officials would have someplace new to take folks picked up for utilizing medication or for performing erratically in public — not only a jail or a hospital emergency room. A disaster heart within the Tenderloin neighborhood shall be staffed with well being staff who can information those that want therapy.
“Widespread drug dealing, public drug use and always seeing folks in disaster has robbed us of our sense of decency and safety,” Mr. Lurie stated from an outside stage underneath sunny blue skies. “I refuse to consider that that is who we’re.”
His declaration of a fentanyl emergency, which he promised after profitable the hotly contested mayor’s race in November, consists of a package deal of ordinances that can pace its strategy 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 latest metropolis staff and the constructing of homeless and drug therapy amenities. A brand new ordinance may even permit town to just accept personal 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, stated that fixing town’s drug issues can be the one method to make sure that San Francisco itself makes a full restoration. Doing so, he argued, can be central to luring again workplace staff to downtown, vacationers to accommodations and small enterprise homeowners to vacant retailers.
“Restoration is feasible, but it surely must be greater than a risk in San Francisco,” he stated. “It have to be our mission.”
Most of the proposals are acquainted, and the packed crowd on the inauguration was stuffed with former mayors and different metropolis officers who had been unable to make related 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 funds 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 crammed 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 on the lookout for 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 dwelling in Malibu, a seaside city west of Los Angeles that suffered intensive injury within the fires. When he was requested Wednesday morning whether or not his dwelling was nonetheless standing, a guide whisked him away. His spouse, Becca Prowda, an aide to Governor Newsom, stated 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, stated she was “very excited” and assured he would flip town round. She married the late Peter Haas, Levi’s longtime chief government, 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 now have been by way of an terrible lot lately, and our metropolis has taken some hits, however we’re bouncing again,” Mr. Kerr informed the gang. “Similar to the Warriors, now we have to carry our particular person skills to the desk with the thought of constructing the entire higher.”
If Mr. Lurie is the coach, it’s not clear who shall be Metropolis Corridor’s Steph Curry. Mr. Lurie has to this point employed largely outsiders from the enterprise world to assist him run the mayor’s workplace. On Wednesday, he stated that when it comes to division heads, “you all will see plenty of change.”
