View the San Francisco for Thursday, January 9, 2025
Mayor Daniel Lurie taking the Oath of Office officiated by Jessie A. Peterson with his wife Becca Prowda and their children at Civic Center Plaza in front of San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025.
Before he was sworn in, before he addressed a crowd of thousands, and before he settled into Room 200 in City Hall, Daniel Lurie spent Wednesday morning with the people who most need him to succeed as San Francisco’s next mayor.. He toured the neighborhood with police Chief Bill Scott, intercepted by neighborhood residents sparing a few thoughts, and fielded across-the-street shouts from local residents. He played tourist in his home city, hopping on a cable car and chatting with visitors along a ride to Ghiradelli Square. His day was a reflection of where he’ll spend much of his attention over the next four years — both inside and outside of City Hall — as he looks to repair The City’s tarnished reputation, restore its tourism industry and reinvigorate its downtown. Mayor Daniel Lurie pauses at the podium in Civic Center Plaza outside City Hall during his inauguration ceremony Wednesday. Lurie’s day was so chock-full of events, one could almost overlook his actual inauguration, which drew throngs of onlookers to Civic Center Plaza on Wednesday to revel in the arrival of The City’s new mayor.also attended the ceremony, and Lurie said he had spoken to her about an hour before taking the stage and paused to credit her service to The City. Gov. Gavin Newsom, tending to wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area, did not attend, but first partner Jennifer SiebelNewsom was present. But in addition to high-profile elected officials, the event also drew curious, everyday San Franciscans, whom Lurie and his supporters are counting on to actively participate in turning The City around. “Just like the Warriors, we have to bring our individual talents to the table with the idea of making the whole better,” said Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr during a brief address during the inauguration ceremony. “Indeed, there is strength in numbers.”Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr speaking at Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Inauguration Day at Civic Center in front of San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. The inauguration took place at Civic Center Plaza, which sits adjacent to City Hall, instead of on its steps or within the building as previous mayors have elected. Much of Wednesday’s proceedings was a bit atypical for an incoming mayor — which is befitting of Lurie, who was, is the first person elected to lead San Francisco in more than a century who did not have previous experience in elected office. Lurie turned inexperience into an asset, promising to bring a new perspective and new ideas to San Francisco. “You voted for accountability and change, a clear mandate that my administration will work to fulfill every single day,” Lurie said. Lurie has already fleshed out his administration with a mix of people touting experience inside and outside of government. He tapped Kunal Modi, a partner at powerful consulting firm McKinsey, to lead his administration’s efforts to combat homelessness. He lured Alicia John-Baptiste, the CEO of influential think tank SPUR, toAlthough he filled the roster of his core team before taking office, much remains to be seen about how City Hall will take shape under Lurie’s watch. He is scheduled to meet with department heads at a 9 a.m. meeting Thursday. Speaking to reporters aboard a cable car Wednesday morning, Lurie wouldn’t hint at what the message would be or who might be staying on under his administration. Despite the uncertainty, police Chief Scott joined Lurie on his tour through the Tenderloin, and the inauguration ceremony was a who’s who of City Hall officials.Daniel Lurie helps serve meals at St. Anthony’s Dining Room in the Tenderloin on the morning of his inauguration as San Francisco’s 46th mayor.Lurie has tasked himself with massively expanding shelter for the homeless, something he plans to accomplish with help from legislation he announced Wednesday. He pledged to declare a state of emergency to address the fentanyl epidemic, and on Wednesday he said he would introduce a package of emergency ordinances to reduce bureaucratic hurdles to doing so.But hope in San Francisco has plenty of justifications. The week she left office, Breed’s administration announced that crime had reached 20-year lows. The City is the hub of a rapidly growing artificial-intelligence industry that could serve as a boon to its economy. Public-transit ridership is up; fentanyl overdoses are down. Still, those in City Hall were imbued with a sense of optimism, including members of the Board of Supervisors, with which Lurie will have to work closely in order to fulfill his goals. That the balance of power has shifted in a more centrist direction might prove to be to Lurie’s benefit. Supervisor Joel Engardio, who represents a district that includes the Sunset, said he shares many priorities with the incoming mayor, including improving public safety. He said he’s already met with Lurie on several occasions and credited the new mayor with spending significant time in the district. “This is a good moment for San Francisco,” Engardio said. “We need to chart a better future for our city. Daniel Lurie embodies that.”Mayor Daniel Lurie signs the Oath of Office document officiated by Jessie A. Peterson at his San Francisco City Hall desk on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. Lurie quickly signaled after taking office, in remarks made directly to the Board of Supervisors, that he hopes for a productive relationship between the legislative and executive branches of government. “We are going to have honest, open, transparent conversations at all times, I promise you that,” Lurie saidInauguration Day demonstrated Lurie’s capacity to handle a variety of environments. There were unplanned interactions with people at St. Anthony’s who were curious to see his plans for the homeless. There was a family visiting San Francisco from Texas who, quite unexpectedly, found themselves riding a cable car with the soon-to-be mayor, his staff and a horde of journalists. There was the spotlight — or, in this case, sunlight — of a major speech. And on Wednesday night, Lurie was expected to be the star of a Chinatown night market that would double as a celebration of his ascension to power. He booked Grammy-nominated electronic-dance-music artist Zhu, a San Francisco native, to headline the night market.For Becca Prowda, the director of protocol for Newsom and Lurie’s wife, “service” was the word of the day. “Daniel and I both believe it’s not enough to just live in a place,” Prowda said. “You have to take action to make that place better. For us, San Francisco is that place.” Lurie and his team took pains throughout the weekend — which saw him lead a litany of neighborhood cleanups — and Wednesday to demonstrate that he is very willing to take action. “I’m asking you to join me in reclaiming our place as the greatest city in the world — with a new era of accountability, service, and change,” Lurie said. “It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work, San Francisco.”Supervisor Rafael Mandelman during the Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall in San Francisco on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors now has a new president after District 8 supervisor Rafael Mandelman was elevated to the role by a unanimous vote from his colleagues Wednesday. Some of those members had sworn their first oath of office to join the body only minutes before, and the vote itself came just a half-hour after the board’s inaugural meeting of its new term began. “It’s a tremendous honor to be able to serve the residents of my district, this board, this beautiful city as a whole,” said Mandelman, after proceeding to the dais to a standing ovation. “I’m looking forward to it.” The lightning-quick vote stood in stark contrast to the last time the body selected its president. That was in 2023, when it tookThis time, Mandelman was the only member to be nominated by his colleagues, putting to rest speculation that Supervisor Myrna Melgar — who just won aLurie said that he had not yet prepared his remarks — “I wasn’t sure if we’d be doing this quickly.” The nomination for Mandelman was put forward first by Supervisor Matt Dorsey, and then by Connie Chan. Both are incumbent supervisors, but they represent opposite ends of the board’s ideological spectrum, with Dorsey generally tacking to the right of Chan, In explaining their support for Mandelman, both described him as a unifying figure on the board and lauded his ability to speak across ideological divisions that have sometimes separated members. Whenever he works with other city officials, Chan said, Mandelman “does it respectfully and with intellectual honesty, and that is all you can ask in a board president who can lead us in unity, especially in tough times to come.” Mandelman — whose district includes the Castro, as well as Glen Park and Noe Valley — was first elected to office in the June 2018 special election, having previously served as a deputy city attorney for the City of Oakland. He will hit his term limit in 2026. One of the board’s openly gay members, Mandelman previously served as president of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club. Since arriving on the board, he has authored legislation to create the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. He has also pushed The City to take a firmer stand on its mental-health and drug crises, co-authoring a measure allowing San Francisco to seek temporary conservatorships for people suffering severe addiction or mental-health challenges. As the name implies, the board president’s chief responsibility is presiding over meetings. The president also has the power to assign members to the board’s various committees, which can alter or block proposed legislation. The president is also first in the line of succession for mayor. In late 2017, following the death of then-Mayor Ed Lee, thewho held the board presidency at the time. About a month later, the board appointed Mark Farrell to be interim mayor, a role he held until Breed won the 2018 mayoral election.“While I’m the first South Asian to be elected to the Board of Supervisors, I’m probably not the first South Asian kid whose parents think he should have gone to medical school,” said Mahmood, who was born and raised in the Bay Area after his parents immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan. The new board president will inherit a familiar list of challenges facing The City: homelessness driven by persistent unaffordability, afrom the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. And these many crises will all need to handled as San Francisco also grapples with a. Whereas the previous board had an often fractious relationship with Breed — sometimes leading to fierce standoffs over housing issues and even the war in Gaza — it remains to be seen what kind of relationship the new board will forge with Lurie. Following moderate gains in recent years — including Mahmood’s win and Sauter’s District 3 victory in November — the board now has a moderate majority for the first time in years, making the new board somewhat more ideologically aligned with the Mayor’s Office than it had been under Breed. Mandelman suggested during his remarks that the factional infighting that has defined city politics in recent years has made city governance less effective. Nevertheless, he said, he sees a chance for a fresh start. “Today is a new day,” he said. “We have a new mayor and a new board of supervisors with five new members, and I know from talking with each and every one of them that they want the mayor to succeed.” “And that is just an extraordinary opportunity, which we need because we are entering a period of extraordinary challenge,” he said. During Lurie’s inaugural remarks hours earlier, he announced that one of his first acts will be pushing forward a package of emergency ordinances to deal with the fentanyl overdose crisis. “I look forward to working with the incoming Board of Supervisors for their quick approval,” he said. The issue could serve as an early test of the board’s unity. In recent days, Dorsey and the newly elected Fielder have clashed over the former’s request that city officials investigate how San Francisco might ramp up arrests of drug users as a means of compelling more of them into treatment. “Arresting people for drug use is not a serious strategy for San Francisco,” Fielder said in an X post last Friday, an apparent reaction to Dorsey’s proposal. Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflect that Supervisor Rafael Mandelman will reach his term limit in 2026 and not be eligible to run for reelection.Mayor Daniel Lurie speaking after taking the Oath of Office on his Inauguration Day at Civic Center Plaza in front of San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025.Setting aside the pomp and circumstance that accompanied the arrival of The City’s first new mayor in more than six years, here are five key takeaways from Lurie’s inaugural address, which he delivered in Civic Center Plaza before a crowd of thousands.by name, he did acknowledge the fears many in San Francisco — a city Trump has targeted with both policy and rhetoric — say they feel as Lurie pointed to The City’s history as a “beacon of human rights,” and said it would not tolerate attacks against immigrants, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized groups. “San Francisco must be a city where every individual feels safe, valued, and empowered,” Lurie said. “That means standing firm against discrimination and fighting for the dignity of all communities, no matter what comes our way.”Echoing sentiments he expressed repeatedly on the campaign trail, Lurie said The City’s “values of tolerance and inclusion” don’t require it to accept a level of homelessness that has stubbornly remained in the thousands of people.declare a fentanyl state of emergency “The fentanyl crisis isn’t a 9-to-5 operation — it doesn’t take breaks, and neither will we,” Lurie said. Lurie announced plans to establish a new drop-off center where police could bring people in need of connections to services. He also announced that he would expand the Journey Home Program, which provides a bus ticket home for people from outside San Francisco who find themselves homeless or addicted to drugs here. He made it clear Wednesday that his administration would take a legislative approach rather than executive action. It’s a path that might have been made more viable by the success of moderates in November’s Board of Supervisors’ races, tipping the scales of power on the board in a more centrist direction. “It is time to move past the politics of demonizing each other on every single issue,” Lurie said. “It’s time to redefine how politics works in San Francisco.”His tone Wednesday matched that which he struck on the campaign trail, repeating promises to make government more efficient. For example, he noted he would focus city investments in “high-performing” nonprofit service providers.Included in that “essential” umbrella would be the police department. Lurie promised “zero cuts to sworn officers” and other public safety personnel. “Our first responders — they need to know we have their back,” he said. “We will do everything in our power to fully restaff the police department, sheriff’s department, and 911 response team, and incentivize them to stay.” Public safety, a key issue during the campaign, was front and center throughout Lurie’s speech. His new proposals included the creation of an “SFPD Hospitality Zone Task Force.” “This dedicated police unit will create a more welcoming and safe environment for workers, shoppers, and visitors in the Union Square, Market Street, and Moscone Center areas,” he said.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. 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