SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco has been working under the same legislative set of rules for the past nearly 30 years.
We’re talking about the city’s charter that dictates how things operate. In order to build a better Bay Area, most anyone in city government will tell you it’s time to reform the city charter.
“What we have at this point, I think, is kind of a mess,” according to Supervisor Rafael Mandelman because of how the city’s governance is structured, based, in part, on that charter.
Here’s how the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, SPUR, explains it.
“Who’s in charge and who gets to make which decisions and who ultimately has responsibility and authority and accountability is very confusing,” said SPUR President and CEO Alicia John-Baptiste.
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The charter was adopted in 1996 started out with 173 pages. Through the years, city leaders have added another 365 pages.
It includes proposals and ballots measures that voters have also approved. As a result, a lot of that extra stuff has, little-by-little, weakened the power of mayors that came after Willie Brown.
“I was certainly the last mayor that had the authority to be the mayor,” Brown said.
What most San Franciscans don’t know is that any mayoral candidate who wins in November will have limited authority over who leads San Francisco’s city departments.
Let’s say the mayor wanted to pick the next police chief. The mayor can only select someone from a short list given by the police commission.
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When it comes to hiring or firing the head of the Municipal Transportation Agency, the mayor can’t even do that and has absolutely no say in the matter, because that person is appointed or terminated by the SFMTA Board.
“All of that has made it really difficult, if not impossible, for a person to really be the CEO of a city like San Francisco,” Brown said.
Therefore, one can argue that there are too many cooks in the kitchen slowing things down. Have you tried to open a restaurant in San Francisco? Sure, the health department has to be involved, but why does it take 11 city agencies to get the required permits and licenses?
According to SPUR a new restaurant must go through 61 steps just to open.
“Well, there are too many cooks in the kitchen but there is also too many kitchens. We actually should be consolidating a lot of this. We should be bringing these agencies with responsibility for permitting together and making them function together, a unified authority,” Mandelman said.
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San Francisco also has 126 boards and commissions, some with decision-making power that shape how a department operates.
According to SPUR, with so many commissions and departments sometimes conflicting with one another, it’s like a maze, making advancing a citywide agenda difficult not to mention time consuming.
SPUR says some commissions are very useful to maintain checks and balances. Still, they are recommending a review of all commissions.
“To decide which ones should stay, which one should have their roles changes and which ones have already lived out their useful purpose and can be let go,” Jean-Baptiste said.
For example, voters approved the creation of the Department of Sanitation and Streets, only to have it abolished two years later.
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Even though that department no longer exists today, its own oversight commission is still there.
As a result, people are not very satisfied with how things run in the city. A survey conducted last year by the city found residents gave certain departments mainly Bs and Cs.
There are many now calling the city charter to be reformed.
How do they get there? Let’s just say in the coming months, lots of people are expected to weigh in to develop a charter reform measure so that the board of supervisors can place it on the November 2026 ballot.
“If we want to do better than what we’ve been doing, if we want to improve the functioning of city governance, I do think there are structural changes that we need to make to make our city government is more successful going forward, and I think San Francisco deserves it. I think we should do it,” Mandelman said.
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