Mischief Looming

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” The foregoing observation is attributed to Albert Pike – whoever he is or was!

Last month we learned from a reported City Hall audit that a wily operator, former Chief Assistant Treasurer Tajel Shah, ignored procurement rules to ensure that a $7 million City Hall contract for a new tax collecting system went to tech corporation Mechanical Orchard. The system handles billions of dollars in San Francisco‘s infamous business taxes. City Attorney David Chiu, City Controller Greg Wagner and the Controller’s Auditor of City Services uncovered Shah’s perfidy. Shah never revealed her friendship with the chief revenue officer of Mechanical Orchard whose subcontractor (Ratio PBC) then hired Ms. Shah’s niece. A complaint was thereafter filed by a knowledgeable citizen with the Ethics Commission in late 2024. The San Francisco Standard reported such malefeasance on Sept. 25, 2025. Mechanical Orchard pulled out of contract talk the day before Shah’s perfidy was revealed. Shah resigned on Nov. 21, 2025.

The Great Highway

Nearly 16,000 signatures were filed with the Department of Elections at City Hall on July 6 with petitions to qualify a Nov. 3 ballot measure to restore motor vehicle travel on the Upper Great Highway, and on July 23 their validity was ratified. That leaves us with three months to persuade voters in the Marina, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, North Beach, Telegraph Hill, South of Market, Potrero Hill, the Mission, Excelsior and Bayview districts to effectuate the 2021 compromise which banned vehicular traffic on the taxpayer-financed Upper Great Highway from Friday at noon to Monday at 6 a.m., and holidays.

That’s what most Richmond and Sunset voters wanted – a compromise. Now, it’s claimed by the sand-dune lovers that it would cost almost $14 million to effectuate such a compromise. Once again, I have no confidence in “City Hall truth.”

For example, City Hall claimed sand removal on the Upper Great Highway was costing $1.7 million annually and the road was closed 65 days per year for sand removal. That’s untrue. Maintenance costs on the Upper Great Highway, including that of sand removal, actually range from $300,000 to $700,000 annually, according to a Department of Elections guide from 2024. In 2024, the road was only closed once and that was overnight, after a chunk of equipment broke down on the highway. There were 14 days in 2024 when sand was being removed, but two lanes were always open to vehicles while two were being worked on. Since the Upper Great Highway closure last year in April, the Recreation and Park Department has requested sand removal every week, which requires hand-shoveling because of the new structures placed on the Upper Great Highway. In the past, the Department of Public Works simply incurred taxpayer costs twice monthly if needed. About 14,000 to 20,000 motor vehicles are now forced to use Lincoln Way, Sunset Boulevard or 19th Avenue each work day. Moreover, the Great Highway provides evacuation facilities in case of fire, police action or an earthquake. Not now.

Central Subway

There’s more public mischief looming for taxpayers. A historic Muni Railway watcher – Jerry Cauthen, president of the Bay Area Transportation Working Group – alerted us in June to a study showing what increased effort would look like to extend the Central Subway – that Willie Brown-Rose Pak caper while Brown was mayor, at the expense of taxpayers – to Fisherman’s Wharf. The so-called T Line is 6.8 miles long. The Central Subway section of that line is 1.7 miles long. The Subway’s depth is inordinate, and there’s a general lack of convenient transfers available, so most San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) riders have continued to ride the crowded Stockton Street buses. As my friend Jerry Cauthen points out, the capital cost, when voters were sold this bag of untruths in 2003’s Proposition K, the capital project cost was represented to the public and taxpayers as $648 million. The eventual cost was nearly $2 billion! The Environmental Impact Report represented to voters would reduce Muni Railway costs by $13.7 million annually. The extra cost of operating the Central Subway today is about $20 million per year. We were also informed the project would be completed in late 2010. Full revenue service, however, didn’t commence until January 2023. The Grand Jury in a 2010-2011 report denounced SFMTA’s performance regarding the project. If pursued this year, extending the line as a subway to Fisherman’s Wharf will be yet another unjustified project. Other parts of San Francisco are linked to Muni Metro Subway by surface rail lines. An underground extension of the disastrous Central Subway to Fisherman’s Wharf isn’t necessary or cost effective. Such a project should be surface-level running light rail lines.

Incidentally, former San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was responsible for the Central Subway, boasting of its “reasonable” cost, insignificant local taxpayer contribution and huge predicted ridership and persuaded Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to secure a nearly $1 billion grant from the federal government.

Cost of Living

Meanwhile, as of January our heretofore diminishing local population had increased to 848,658, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About one-third of our residents are immigrants, and approximately 42,000 are undocumented. The California Department of Housing and Community Development considers households earning only 50% to 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) as “low-income.” This means, for counties like San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and Marin – a $100,000 annual income may be seen as low-income! Santa Cruz is the highest at just more than $120,000 for a one-person household, a nearly 10% increase from 2025 as what is meant by “low income.” Solano County remains “low income” from 2025 at $76,950, and so does Shasta at $54,500. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office reports that California’s “home prices continue to be much more expensive than the rest of the U.S.” The Public Policy Institute of California last month reported: “Homeownership is the second lowest in the nation and housing has become a dominant reason people leave the state.” Homeownership among Californians ages 30 to 34 is about 31%, nationally, average homeownership in that bracket is approximately 49%. California monthly rental costs average $2,234 compared to the national average of $1,663. Coastal cities confront the highest costs which result in numerous people moving inland to obtain lower costs.

Mail-in Ballots

Once in a while, the San Francisco Chronicle is good for information. On June 20, it reported that the great “Draft-Dodger” Donald J. Trump, has alleged California’s election voting and management thereof are “crooked.”

That insult is applied to our election officials at City Hall and all points north, south and east. He calls voting by mail as “mail-in cheating.” Asked by reporters why he himself voted by mail recently in his current home state of Florida, his response was, “Because I’m president of the United States, and because of the fact that I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida, because I felt I should be here.”

Exercising Our Rights

Here, we’ll have “other things to do” from now until Election day on Nov. 3. That ballot measure to restore the use of the Upper Great Highway under prior time conditions as existed in 2024, qualified for the ballot on July 23. It’s time to “take back our City” and county. There are plenty of San Franciscans responsible for such exercise of our citizen rights but get in the campaign by telephoning retired Police Commander Richard Corriea from the Richmond District at 415-292-7927, or Judi Gorski, 415-716-3004, who’s had to absorb motor vehicle traffic from the Upper Great Highway at her residence. We need your time, effort and, if possible, your campaign contributions. We somehow must persuade our fellow voters in the Mission, Crocker-Amazon, Bayview, Ingleside, North Beach, Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, Pacific Heights, the Marina and Haight-Ashbury districts as to the justification of our campaign.

In Rememberance

I must give expression to my personal sorrow over the deaths of two marvelous men who were part of our political scene for more than 56 years, namely, Jeremiah Hallisey, a lawyer and Democratic Party stalwart from the era of Governor Jerry Brown, and Clint Reilly, who was a winning campaign manager and later a downtown commercial Realtor after running unsuccessfully for mayor in 1999. They died within two days of each other, and San Francisco has lost two of its political stalwarts.

Celebrations and City Spending

Meanwhile, a happier community event occurred on June 22 at the Forest Hill Community Center, to wit, celebration of the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council, now composed of 17 neighborhood clubs and founded in 1936. Its president, Denise LaPointe, presented your faithful scribe the “Living Legacy Award” and the event included a personal appearance and address by San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who now presides over a $16.9 billion 2026-2027 budget, the largest in San Francisco history, which includes $400 million in case of federal funding decreases and $900 million reserved for overspending. This was the first time in years that district-elected supervisors voted unanimously to pass the proposed annual budget, thanks to the Budget and Appropriations Committee Chair, Connie Chan (my Congressional candidate to replace Nancy Pelosi). In my 15 years as a Board of Supervisors member, the unwritten rule was that all supervisors had to vote “yes” on the budget bill, and the Board of Supervisors clerk kept calling the roll until that occurred. We did, except for one year when the late Supervisor John Barbegelata “got away” with refusing to vote for the proposed budget.

Anyway, I leave you with no further noteworthy tales except: The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying: “Mrs. Cohen, your check came back.” Mrs. Cohen answered: “So did my arthritis!” Happy Labor Day!

Quentin Kopp is a former San Francisco supervisor, state senator, SF Ethics Commission member, president of the California High Speed Rail Authority governing board and retired Superior Court judge.