San Francisco's fentanyl crisis getting open-air hearing with Mayor Breed at UN Plaza
SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is about to question Mayor London Breed in a first-of-its-kind outdoor hearing, right in the heart of the city's challenges with drug addiction and drug dealing.
The mayor's monthly question-and-answer session with city supervisors will be held in United Nations Plaza on Tuesday. At least, that's the plan.
The city says it's going to be a pretty basic setup: a few tables, some chairs, and enough A/V equipment to get the hearing online. Assuming it happens. No one is quite sure how Tuesday will unfold, or what it might accomplish.
"Well, I just pray that something really comes out of it," said Gwendolyn Johnson, walking through the plaza Monday. "All that talking that they're doing in the middle of the street, you know."
Like many others in this part of the city, Johnson has her own questions about city hall's field trip to U.N. Plaza, bringing the mayor's monthly question time to the heart of the city's drug crisis.
"But see, when they go out there doing their little talk, who are they talking to," she asked. "You know what I mean?"
"A humanitarian crisis with two deaths per day from drug overdoses," said Board of Supervisors Aaron Peskin. "And it's happening in the shadows of City Hall. Literally, I mean just across this plaza."
Peskin proposed the on-location hearing. He says it's about holding the mayor accountable.
"We say often that this is a crisis and it's an emergency but it's time for us to treat it as one," Peskin said of his plan. "I think we need to stand up a constant coordination center where we can coordinate between law enforcement, public health, the courts, protective services, the Highway Patrol. As it should be transparent, everybody should know what's going on."
Mayor London Breed declared her own state of emergency in this neighborhood back in 2021. Since then, a service center-turned-safe-use site has opened and closed, and the city has recently pressed harder on drug dealing.
The problems, however, have been vexing for years, and substantial progress has been elusive.
"I'm actually optimistic," Peskin explained. "That by focusing attention, by bringing departments who have not been well coordinated, that have a lot of inefficiencies, they are talking together, and standing it up and treating it like an emergency consistently, is going to yield results. I'm confident of that."
"Honestly, regardless of where they have the discussion, it doesn't matter," Johnson said. "Because a discussion is the discussion. It's more of the action that you need to take."
There are security concerns, or what one might call order concerns. What if there's a protest? What is the threshold for disruption when trying to have an official question-and-answer session? Does the meeting even get started out here, before the supervisors head back inside?
Those questions will be answered Tuesday afternoon.
