I don’t hate San Francisco; in fact, I can’t imagine ever thinking of it with anything but love. Not only is SF a beautiful and remarkable city, but it has also been incredibly good to me. I’ve had a great life here and continue to look forward to a happy future. Certainly I have no intention of ever living anywhere else but the Bay Area; even if were to move out of the City proper, I would still be rooted here, given my employment at the SF Conservatory and SF Symphony.
But while I couldn’t hate San Francisco if I tried, I hate what it has been becoming: dirty, dangerous, decaying, infested with vagrants and drug addicts, hamstrung by criminally incompetent government, and in general almost languishing from a malaise that has resulted from decades of mismanagement and irresponsible public leadership. To be sure, it isn’t Detroit or Calcutta, but that’s the direction it appears to be heading.
The causes of the disease are so clear. More than anything, the entrenched public interests that thrive on a steady stream of indigents are to blame. The centers for homelessness, coalitions for homelessness, lawyers for homelessness, programs for homelessness, and the like, have nothing to gain by shrinking the burgeoning numbers of professional vagrants and everything to lose. End the epidemic of vagrancy in San Francisco and a lot of people lose their jobs. But it must be done sooner or later because it’s destroying this city. A strict time cutoff is needed and certainly much more stringent requirements—such as medical clearance that the recipient is not a drug user—before any public assistance is given. San Francisco will never get a grip on its vagrancy problem until it stops inviting vagrants and derelicts to come here.
But the city government, apart from the armies of leeches whose livelihoods require urine-soaked sidewalks and public nuisances, is also to blame. There are far too many people in City Hall. Too many supervisors, elected from too small a voting block. At the very least, let’s have an end to district elections. But I would go much farther: emend the city charter to cut the number of supervisors in half, and put an absolute top limit on the number of non-critical-service city employees per capita of the population. Cut it down by, oh, three quarters. In other words, plenty of cops and firemen but a lot fewer phone answerers, commission members, consultants, assistants, staffers, and the like.
A lot fewer people legislating about what kind of shopping bags I have or whether I am sorting my trash. Just people who will deal with the true quality of life issues here. People who will not tolerate addicts lying comatose on public sidewalks. People who will make it difficult for a crackhead to wander about public areas, instead of easy. Where the crackheads go is their business; whether or not they kick their addiction is their business; whether or not they even survive the mess they’ve made of their lives is their business. A municipality’s business is to ensure a civilized municipality, not playing doctor or saint or fixer to its citizens.
Nor have we had a decent mayor in ages. Probably the last really effective, strong mayor this city had was Dianne Feinstein. Our current incumbent has disintegrated into a pathetic laughingstock. A recent TV interview showed Newsom giggling in response to questions and doing everything he could to dodge saying anything specific about his miserable performance of late. Not that Newsom has ever shown much in the way of maturity. He was elected on his pretty-boy looks, a lack of a credible alternative, and a handful of rash promises made to gay community folks who studiedly avoided noticing the obvious shortcomings of his statements. It was all smoke and mirrors, and now the reality has arrived: he’s a half-assed adolescent who would never have merited a second glance from a mature and informed electorate. He is a strictly San Francisco-only pol, but even the hyper-liberal chickens of Baghdad-by-the-Bay eventually come home to roost.
It’s a damn shame. The example of New York City under Giuliani shows just how quickly a city can turn itself around with the right leadership. There’s really nothing wrong with San Francisco that couldn’t be fixed, but it would require real leadership and the courage to risk a single term or even a recall election. Be unpopular, make enemies, but prune out the deadwood. Ain’t gonna happen, though, not as long as the voters in this town are concerned only with their petty, personal interests instead of the greater good.
Until then, watch where you step: that puddle might not be rainwater.