For many of us, focusing on a task is difficult when we’re working in a chaotic, disorganized space. Cluttered room, cluttered mind as they say.
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco’s system of governance is a mess. There’s a fix — but it will take a village
Streamlining San Francisco’s City Charter, empowering the mayor and raising the threshold for placing measures on the ballot will help the city function better.
The same is true for the government. When you have rules and laws that are messy and conflicting, solutions to intractable problems can easily become obscured by towering piles of bureaucracy.
Here in San Francisco, our rule books are a hoarder’s house of clutter.
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San Francisco’s charter is akin to a constitution — it outlines central rules and principles for governing our joint city and county. But over decades, this document has become filled with so much legal ephemera that it now spans 548 pages — the longest of any city in the country.
By way of comparison, Seattle’s charter is only 23 pages.
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Unsurprisingly, this has led to less-than-ideal outcomes.
Among them: A literally uncountable number of commissions, including commissions that oversee departments that no longer exist, a lack of clarity over who’s responsible for what and unnecessarily complex and opaque processes that breed corruption.
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This mess is largely San Francisco’s own creation, which means the city needs to do the vast majority of the work to clean it up. The law dictates there’s no way to fix these bloated rules without a ballot initiative.
That effort is already underway.
Voters passed Proposition E last November, which ironically created a new commission to evaluate existing commissions and recommend which could be combined or shuttered. The Prop E committee is scheduled to release its recommendations to Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors in February. Prop E also requires these recommendations to be placed in a draft charter amendment that will go through the typical legislative process at the Board of Supervisors before being sent to voters in a likely November 2026 ballot measure.
But commission reform is only one necessary component of overhauling San Francisco’s charter. Larger changes are needed — and they form the heart of a report released Monday by the urban think tank SPUR.
The report, dubbed “Charter for Change,” makes 10 key recommendations that SPUR argues should also be incorporated into the November 2026 ballot measure.
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Many of the recommendations reinforce those SPUR made in a similar report last year that focused on improving San Francisco’s governance. For example, the group argues the mayor should be given the authority to hire and fire most department heads.
Some will no doubt cry foul over the idea of expanding executive power — especially after the fiasco this week with the resignation of Mayor Lurie’s pick to fill the open District 4 seat left by the recall of Joel Engardio. But this is nevertheless a common-sense suggestion.
San Franciscans largely hold the mayor responsible for the state of the city. Under the charter, however, the mayor has unilateral authority to appoint just four of the more than 50 department heads and lacks explicit authority to fire some of them.
Citizens have limited ability to hold their government accountable when power is spread out over diffuse boards and nominating commissions. But when the mayor controls departments, you know who to vote out when things aren’t getting done.
SPUR also suggests empowering the city administrator by turning the position into a chief operating officer focused on essential city operations, long-term projects and reforming San Francisco’s byzantine purchasing rules.
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None of these changes will mean much, however, if we continue to expand our monstrous rule books with ultra-long, complex ballots that give voters the chance to add even more clutter.
Right now, it’s too easy to place measures before voters. Non-charter amendments can be put on the ballot unilaterally by the mayor, with only 4 of 11 Board of Supervisors votes and by any group that collects signatures from 2% of registered voters.
These low thresholds invite political posturing and disincentivize thoughtful policymaking. In 2022, for example, then-Mayor London Breed and progressive supervisors placed two competing housing measures on the ballot instead of finding a legislative compromise. Unsurprisingly, confused voters rejected both measures. And last year, Prop E was — ironically — one of two competing commission-streamlining measures on the ballot; voters rejected the alternative, Prop D.
SPUR recommends raising the threshold for non-charter amendment ballot measures: The Board of Supervisors would need a majority vote, the mayor would need board approval and groups would need to gather signatures from 5% of registered voters, a percentage in line with other charter cities.
What about proposals that would amend the charter?
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To keep San Francisco’s charter from getting even more clogged, SPUR proposes raising the threshold for putting charter amendments on the ballot. Right now, it can be done by a majority vote on the Board of Supervisors or by groups that gather signatures from 10% of registered voters.
SPUR wants to see the signature-gathering requirement pushed to 15%, and it also wants to empower the mayor to veto a charter amendment proposed by a board majority — although the board could then override that veto with its own supermajority vote.
These changes, however, would require a tweak to state law. We’re hopeful that one of San Francisco’s state lawmakers will take up the cause in Sacramento.
Far from diluting voters’ power, the tweak would bring San Francisco in line with other charter cities in California — while also accounting for our unique status as the only joint city and county in the state.
Other large charter cities and major economic centers in California — such as Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego — require groups to gather signatures from 15% of registered voters to place charter amendments on the ballot.
But San Francisco is also the only California city and county governed simultaneously by a mayor. Given this distinctive setup — and the unique responsibility it confers on the mayor — it makes sense for the mayor to play a role in shaping charter amendments.
The state should do its small part to help San Francisco improve its governance. That said, California cannot save San Francisco from itself. If we want to clean up our system of governance, we’ll have to do it ourselves.
Some version of charter reform will be on the ballot next year.
The editorial positions of The Chronicle, including election recommendations, represent the consensus of the editorial board, consisting of the publisher, the editorial page editor and staff members of the opinion pages. Its judgments are made independent of the news operation, which covers the news without consideration of our editorial positions.
Can our leaders set infighting aside and craft a comprehensive measure to meaningfully improve our charter? And, if so, will residents be willing to relinquish some of their power of direct democracy so that the city can function as smoothly as they insist they want it to?
The California Legislature can’t answer that question. Only San Francisco can.
Reach the editorial board with a letter to the editor:www.sfchronicle.com/submit-your-opinion.
San Francisco, CA
I own a Turkish Restaurant in San Francisco. Turkey’s World Cup match here has changed my business.
This as-told-to essay is based on an interview with Aziz Aslan, 45, the owner of Turquaz, a Turkish restaurant on Mission Street in San Francisco. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I opened my Turkish restaurant, Turquaz, in San Francisco in February 2025. Typically, most of our customers are locals, and Turkish diners make up a small minority.
But Turkey’s World Cup appearance in San Francisco has brought a different type of customer through our doors.
Over the past week, we’ve had far more Turkish customers dine with us. Reservations are up, walk-in traffic has increased, and we’ve hired additional staff to keep up with demand.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
Turkey qualifying for the World Cup changed my business
As soon as we heard that San Francisco would be one of the World Cup host cities, we were thrilled. We knew it would bring visitors to the city, and potentially new customers to our restaurant.
At that point, we didn’t yet know whether Turkey would qualify.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
In March, Turkey secured its place in the tournament, and we later learned the team would be playing at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium on June 20. That’s when I knew we needed to start preparing for the tournament.
Over the last few weeks, we launched targeted advertising campaigns on social media. One Instagram post was written in Turkish. In another, we told visitors that wherever they were traveling from, if they were looking for good food, they should come to us. It helped spread the word about our restaurant.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
Most of my customers aren’t usually Turkish
I’m originally from Istanbul, although I’ve been in the Bay Area for about 10 years. Compared with places like New York and New Jersey, there aren’t as many Turkish people in this part of California.
Usually, our customers come from a wide range of backgrounds, with Turkish people making up only 5% to 10% of those who dine with us.
With our usual customers, our most popular dishes are chicken kebabs and lahmacun, a flatbread topped with minced meat, vegetables, and herbs. We’re a traditional Turkish kitchen, and our pastry section is popular as well, especially our fresh baklava.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
In recent weeks, however, we’ve had a lot of Turkish customers, which is unusual for us. Some have come from places like New Jersey and Texas, while others have flown in from Istanbul, all to watch Turkey play.
Turkey’s World Cup match in San Francisco has changed who our customers are and what they’re ordering. Dishes like beans and braised meats aren’t as popular with our usual clientele, but we’re selling a lot more of them now because of our Turkish customers.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
They’ve been ordering foods like white beans with pilaf, braised meat with pilaf, and salads, all of which are really traditional dishes. Turkish customers can be tough critics because they’re comparing our food to what they have back home, but I feel confident in our food, and we’ve received compliments so far.
It hasn’t really affected our stock, thankfully. We have good inventory management, and my warehouse for the wholesale food business is only a short drive away, so we can pick up products whenever we need.
We’ve hired extra staff to meet demand
To prepare for the World Cup, we’ve had to hire additional employees. On top of the 24 staff members we already had, we added three more because of increasing demand. The staff is also working longer hours than usual.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
For Turkey’s first match, against Australia, we didn’t do anything special, other than create a football-shaped cake. We decided to host watch parties for Turkey’s second and third matches because customers kept asking for them. We set up a big screen for fans to watch together.
I think the World Cup is giving Turkish people a reason to gather, reconnect, and talk about soccer.
I hope the World Cup leaves a lasting impact
The first few months of opening a restaurant are never easy. We spent them getting things set up, perfecting our recipes, and building awareness. We’re still a relatively new restaurant, so it’s been encouraging to see this positive momentum from the World Cup.
Gabriela Hasbun for BI
The city feels busy. You can see it on the streets. There’s an energy in San Francisco right now that’s having a positive effect on businesses like ours, and I hope we can keep that going.
Of course, the World Cup is a one-time event, but we’ll do our best to serve these customers well. If we can meet their expectations, I hope they’ll come back.
And who knows? Maybe the Turkish national team will stop by for a meal before the tournament is over. I’m still holding out hope.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A recent Civil Grand Jury report has identified wildfire risks in San Francisco’s Glen Canyon, warning that vegetation management is needed to reduce the potential for a fire in an area not typically associated with wildfire danger.
The report focuses on the canyon’s large population of Blue Gum eucalyptus trees, an invasive species originally imported from Australia.
Historical photographs show Glen Canyon was largely treeless in the late 1800s, when the land was used primarily as a dairy farm.
The eucalyptus trees were planted after investors believed the fast-growing species could be harvested for timber.
“And these people were so stupid, they didn’t realize they were going to build railroad ties and use the wood for building, and it’s worthless. It warps, it splits. it has no commercial value,” said Rick Carell, a member of the Civil Grand Jury.
While the timber venture failed, the trees remained.
Today, their flammability is a concern for fire safety officials and grand jury members.
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“The leaves have a lot of oil in them, and so actually, if it’s very hot, and it’s been very, very dry, they actually explode, because it’s highly flammable. And so, you can see here, look at all the debris right next to this road. So somebody throws a cigarette out into there, and you have a potential fire,” Carell said.
Carell said assessments of the trees have raised additional concerns.
“They evaluated something like 427 eucalyptus trees and 80% of them, back in 2012, were in bad shape,” he said.
Although CAL FIRE has repeatedly rated San Francisco’s wildfire risk as low because of the city’s cool, foggy climate, the grand jury report points to the 2025 Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles as an example of how fires can occur in urban areas where vegetation management is inadequate.
The report notes that Glen Canyon has only two fire hydrants, one near the Glen Park Recreation Center and another near a day camp building.
However, San Francisco’s Emergency Firefighting Water System provides additional resources through reservoirs, high-pressure hydrants and underground cisterns.
One nearby cistern at Chenery and Surrey streets can supply 75,000 gallons of water. Based on a fire engine’s typical pumping rate of 1,500 gallons per minute, that amount of water would be exhausted in about 50 minutes. Additional cisterns are located in surrounding neighborhoods.
MORE: CAL FIRE urging Bay Area residents to create defensible space as wildfire season begins
Despite the concerns, the report concluded that removing all eucalyptus trees is not a practical solution because of the canyon’s steep terrain. Large-scale removal could increase the risk of landslides. Instead, the report recommends managing vegetation by clearing brush and fallen debris and removing diseased trees.
“To remove any brush that might be a fire hazard, if something could really ignite quickly. We’re going to raise up the branches, the lower branches of the tree because that’s where a lot of the problem is for the spread of the fire, and if there are any dead trees that are really hazardous or branches that may hang over the roadway, that we can take them out as well,” said Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Department of Public Works.
Public Works officials are expected to coordinate closely with CAL FIRE on vegetation management efforts.
“CAL FIRE guys, they train in the type of environment, and so what they do, they get their chainsaws out, they eliminate. They limb the trees, they bring out the debris and that sort of stuff so this is an ideal training site for them,” Carell said.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages a small portion of the canyon, has already removed trees on its property to prevent them from falling across O’Shaughnessy Avenue, a potential emergency evacuation route.
The agency has also hired habitat experts to remove non-native vegetation and replace it with fire-resistant native species, including coast live oaks.
“That has all these tannins in the foliage that resist fire. You can put a lighter right under that thing in the middle of the hottest day of the year, and it will not burn like these willows. They will not burn, and so that’s what we want to load our parks with instead of having things like the eucalyptus and the pine — which, as we all know, they just burn like a crazy Christmas tree fire,” said Habitat Specialist Josiah Clark.
The majority of the 66-acre canyon is managed by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which agrees that improved coordination among city agencies is essential to maintaining fire safety in the area.
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Presidio Heights is proving to be a center of gravity as luxury housing supply in San Francisco vanishes and the city’s well-to-do scramble to claim their slice of the artificial intelligence industry’s nerve center.
On the same day last week, the city recorded two home sales in the wealthy neighborhood for $9.2 million and $10 million.
The first reflected the fortunes being created by the AI industry. Venture capitalist Kenneth Wallace and his wife, Moriah Lewis, sold their five-bed, 4,755-square-foot home at 3875 Clay Street for $9.2 million. Josh McAdam of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller. The property last sold for $6.8 million in 2021.
The buyer initially kept their name hidden behind a Delaware-incorporated LLC named after the property’s address. However, according to public loan documents, the LLC is managed by Daniel Berrios and Kimberly Tan, a couple in their early 30s who graduated from Stanford into the San Francisco tech sector. Berrios works on special projects at OpenAI, and Tan is an investing partner with blue chip venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Wells Fargo Bank provided a $5.4 million loan for the purchase.
Ten blocks east, sellers Herbert and Shwu-Ling Wei sold their six-bed, 5,000 square-foot home at 2881 Jackson Street for $10 million. Kyle Vineyard, a CPA with Realize Tax Advisors, is the trustee of the buyer, RKLA Trust. It is unclear whether Vineyard’s involvement is purely professional or if he’s connected to the trust.
The home last sold in 2014 for $6.8 million.
Presidio Heights, the neighborhood that runs along Presidio Park at San Francisco’s north end, has experienced a hot streak during the first half of 2026. Earlier this month, two mansions in the area sold for a combined $32 million, marking the fourth and fifth sales this year to eclipse $10 million. There were seven sales above that benchmark in Presidio Heights in all of 2025, according to Zillow data.
San Francisco, where the median home sale fetches $2.2 million, is dealing with its own version of champagne problems: a mansion shortage. The AI boom has attracted a wave of high-paid employees, apparently leaving the city with more millionaires than mansions. Steep capital gains taxes have made some mansion owners hesitant to let go of their property. Others are holding out for the expected spike in luxury home demand following Anthropic and OpenAI’s initial public offerings of stock, which are expected to come later this year.
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