EGN NEWS DESK
Within minutes on Wednesday morning, San Francisco obtained a brand new mayor — and a brand new plan for an emergency declaration meant 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 exterior the gold-domed City Hall and started 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, automotive crashes and homicides mixed. Mr. Lurie mentioned that he had instructed his police and sheriff’s departments to redirect their personnel — shifting from a brief, sporadic effort to interrupt up drug markets to a everlasting, 24/7 operation.
He vowed that by this spring, cops would have someplace new to take individuals picked up for utilizing medication or for performing erratically in public — not only a jail or a hospital emergency room. A disaster middle within the Tenderloin neighborhood will likely be staffed with well being staff who can information those that want remedy.
“Widespread drug dealing, public drug use and consistently seeing individuals in disaster has robbed us of our sense of decency and safety,” Mr. Lurie mentioned from an outside stage beneath sunny blue skies. “I refuse to imagine that that is who we’re.”
His declaration of a fentanyl emergency, which he promised after successful the hotly contested mayor’s race in November, consists of a package deal of ordinances that may pace its strategy to the Board of Supervisors, akin to a City 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 remedy services. A brand new ordinance may also enable 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, mentioned that fixing town’s drug issues could be the one approach to make sure that San Francisco itself makes a full restoration. Doing so, he argued, could be central to luring again workplace staff to downtown, vacationers to lodges and small enterprise house owners to vacant outlets.
“Recovery is feasible, however it must be greater than a risk in San Francisco,” he mentioned. “It have to be our mission.”
Many of the proposals are acquainted, and the packed crowd on the inauguration was stuffed with former mayors and different metropolis officers who have 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 tasks; and with lowered tax income that interprets to a finances deficit approaching $1 billion over the following two years.
And then there’s Mr. Lurie’s whole lack of expertise in authorities. The job of mayor is his first elected place.
Still, there was an aura of hope, as a who’s who of San Francisco stuffed 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 House 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 house in Malibu, a seaside city west of Los Angeles that suffered intensive harm within the fires. When he was requested Wednesday morning whether or not his house was nonetheless standing, a marketing consultant whisked him away. His spouse, Becca Prowda, an aide to Governor Newsom, mentioned 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, mentioned 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 baby.
Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr addressed the group, evaluating Mr. Lurie to a coach who can succeed solely with the assistance of top-notch gamers.
“We have been by an terrible lot in recent times, and our metropolis has taken some hits, however we’re bouncing again,” Mr. Kerr instructed the group. “Just just like the Warriors, we now have to deliver our particular person abilities to the desk with the thought of constructing the entire higher.”
If Mr. Lurie is the coach, it’s not clear who will likely be City Hall’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 mentioned that when it comes to division heads, “you all will see plenty of change.”
