Editor:
The closure of the Upper Great Highway has made the west side less safe and significantly degraded the quality of life for countless residents. It is simply a terrible, harmful policy.
To those who missed the Ballot Simplification Committee meetings, which determined how Proposition K was described in the voter pamphlet that informed voters citywide, many D4 residents attended and witnessed representatives for Supervisors Engardio and Melgar vehemently object to, argue, protest and eventually succeed in deleting the word, “commercial” from the description of the type of vehicles using the Great Highway. By doing so, the issue was misrepresented to voters, and with the passage of Prop. K, huge, multi-level open-air car carriers, oversized grocery vans, and other commercial traffic daily overwhelm our residential streets driving within feet of homes and next to pedestrians and bicyclists.
Everything about how Prop. K was written to cut short the Pilot Project and make it a citywide vote instead of a Board of Supervisors’ vote was underhanded, as Engardio kept it secret from his district’s constituents before it was submitted on the last day before any proposition could be filed, a tactic to prevent the community’s opportunity to file opposition to it. Engardio justifies blindsiding his constituents by claiming this was more democratic than allowing the Pilot Project to continue through Dec. 31, 2025. He strongly believed that the Board would vote to permanently close the Highway 24/7 and used this as an excuse for Prop. K.
The November 2024 election brought new members to the Board, so Engardio had no way to predict how supervisors would vote at the end of 2025. By hiding his months of work on, and surprise filing of, Prop. K, Engardio undemocratically excluded impacted voters from the opportunity to create and timely file a counter ballot measure to include extending the weekdays open/weekends closed compromise, which many District 4, 1 and 7 residents would have united to do.
Engardio’s Yes on Prop. K promotional speeches included repetitive false claims that the cost of replacing rusted traffic lights made it too expensive to keep the Upper Great Highway open. However, investigation revealed SFMTA worked for two years to develop a plan to replace the traffic lights and money was set aside for it. Money is apparently plentiful, since SFMTA employees were sent to the Highway on weekends at time-and-half pay to rush the removal of all traffic lights, which were functioning.
Furthermore, SFMTA with Engardio’s urging, immediately erected 22 new traffic lights, 14 new pedestrian signals, 17 poles, six painted crosswalks, a green box to house the electrical, new concrete, and traffic cameras at one concentrated spot on Sloat Boulevard where Skyline, Sloat and 39th Avenue intersect. This does not include other traffic-calming costs on Sloat east or west of this one intersection, or on Lincoln Way or Sunset Boulevard, or from PUC, or other possible expenses related to the diverted traffic. For a City in debt, this approved expense of multiple millions is surprising.
As a former champion in leading recalls, and with expensive advertising about his questionable accomplishments paid for by rich donors from Russian Hill, Pacific Heights and the Marina, Engardio is oddly doing everything possible to prevent D4 residents from even exerting their right to vote on his character and qualifications to continue as their representative. What do his wealthy backers expect in return? He’s not their supervisor.
Engardio’s recall is D4’s justified response to his secret legislation, lack of transparency, dishonest and manipulative narrative, and refusal to include and respect his constituents’ rights to participate in decisions that affect their safety and quality of life.
Judi Gorski
SF Resident, D4
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Judi Gorski is correct in her assessment of Engardio’s dismissal of and lack of respect for the very constituents who voted him into office in 2022. This was the same year he was gerrymandered in to D4 from D7, where he ran unsuccessfully 3 times for supervisor. D4 voted for him because he manipulated voters by mispresenting his stance on the future of the highway. He visited hundreds of homes, including this writer, during his campaign and maintained that he supported the Compromise weekend closure. He never mentioned that he really was planning a permanent closure of the UGH.
That was just the beginning of ongoing misrepresentations throughout his tenure so far. He went too far when he gleefully and secretly planned and placed Prop K on the ballot last June. When I asked why he didn’t include the compromise on the ballot, he replied in a dismissive and smug manner that we could put it on the ballot in 2026.
Joel Engardio is not infallible. He cannot ignore the constituents who put him into office in favor of the bike lobby, developers and billionaire Tech Bros, with whom he has obviously some quid pro quo arrangement. Regardless of your opinion on the GH closure, do you want this sort of unreliable person as your supervisor? We will get a supervisor who is trustworthy and who respects us, and it is not Joel Engardio. Recallengardio.com
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How anyone could reject a recall, especially after reading this, is incomprehensible to me. Engardio made a significant decision with no input from his those who voted him into office. And now, he is creating “traffic calming measures” in the same way – with no input from the community he was elected to serve. I expect a district supervisor to not only represent but also to respect his constituents. Engardio does neither, and it is time for him to go!
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Regarding the recall, it’s too bad that people in the Richmond District can’t sign the recall petition or vote on it, should it get to the ballot, because we are even more impacted (along with folks in Daly City and southward) than people in the Sunset. The UGH was the main way for us to get down the Peninsula and for people there to get to the VA hospital and other places on the western edge of the city.
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You can still help the recall campaign out! We are in DIRE NEED of donations! Please tap the link here: https://www.efundraisingconnections.com/c/RecallofSupervisorEngardio
You may also volunteer to collect signatures too!
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As a D1 (Richmond) resident you can still volunteer to help collect signatures and most importantly donate to the recall effort and encourage your friends to do so as well (I got two neighbors to donate two days ago plus friends the week before). I agree we have more at stake regarding closure of the GH than people in the Mission/Haight/rest of the eastern part of the city who voted yes on K. Stop the Recall has been funded largely by huge donations from wealthy tech people who don’t live in the western side of SF like Jeremy Stoppelman and Gerry Tan. The recall effort is funded by small donations. https://www.recallengardio.com/
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The Richmond is D1.
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Typo, have asked the editor to correct D1 (Richmond).
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The division and hatred this man has caused in D4 and beyond is beyond comprehension. The traffic is horrendous- we now have big rigs and large grocery delivery trucks on our avenues next to preschools and elementary schools. Someone is going to get hurt- I hear the brakes screeching and horns every day. We are not used to this kind of traffic in front of our schools and homes. The way this all happened is despicable and shameful. I pray the recall and the lawsuit are successful!!
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Another reason to support this recall and the lawsuit to open the great highway is to send a message to our elected officials across San Francisco, that they cannot arbitrarily remove infrastructure that their constituents rely upon. And have paid for. Otherwise, what’s next ? Close the Embarcadero ? Turn to Dolores Street into a park? 19th Ave arboretum It will never end.
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Not only that, but the manner of the operation from funding to last-minute filing to hiring PR liars to push propaganda to a citywide vote that only negatively impacts the Sunset and Richmond, all of that was and remains dishonest and unethical in the extreme. The entire legality of the Proposition is in question due to the baldface lies that the Wiener crowd think they’re entitled to skip CEQA review with, all of that is a trial balloon with an aim to ram development down our throats for developer profit – removing West Side long term tenants and their rent controlled units. That’s really what the YIMBY movement is all about, though most are too simple and mind-controlled by greenwashing propaganda to think critically about who they’re marching for and what towards. Ultimately they want to remove local input and install a voting bloc they totally control – YIMBY’s are willful idiots in that movement. They actively support gentrification, they even say it every time they mention “Paris” or “Manhattan” – they hate the wonderful Sunset district and everyone in it, they want to raze it and charge us for the privilege of its destruction. Qui bono? We know who – and they hire Sam Singers and Jen Nossokoffs to lie for them.
Recall Engardio – end the lies, elect a local.
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