e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e yet uh you won't be able to hear her speaking and hear her talking but once the action starts you will see it live and happening right in front of you but we're going to be going live here in about 5 minutes and so once again just hang tight we're going to have a lot of fun here once again thank you for the four candidates for showing up and then uh I'll give you a little bit 30 second count but once again live on television on CBS News Bay Area so stand by of appuse thank you thank you we try sounds good to go we got our pens we got our paper got our topics the woman who did my makeup thought at first that I was a candidate what she say someone else what you interested in politics I was like oh well like you know I've always uh thought government's really interesting and then I Fin and then I got into journalism and she was like oh yeah I don't know if any of the um candidates took advantage of I mean she was available to she said she's coming down here during the commercial break if we need a I said I don't expect I will need that she sweaty or shiny I I said don't think we get sweaty it's possible we get shin yeah yeah yeah e always makes people nervous any anytime so they won't hear the open at all no that'll be weird how long is that couple of minutes I told you give a 90 second any second warning now it's 75 test test test test yep we hear you yes we do yep we hear you is that mic only for the house turn it off e [Music] tonight four candidates live on one stage each hoping to take the Reigns of the city good evening I'm Juliet good and welcome to special coverage of San Francisco's mayoral debate hosted by CBS News Bay Area and our partners KCBS news radio and the San Francisco Examiner we are now less than two months from election day and when it comes to the city's top office it is still anybody's race so over the next 90 minutes we'll hear from our leading candidates Mark Farrell Daniel lurry Aaron peskin and Asha safay as they tackle some of the city's toughest issues you may have been expecting to see mayor London breed here tonight so were we she gave debate organizers written confirmation of her participation in the debate back in April just last week she rescinded her acceptance of our invitation in writing and told us she would no longer participate that could open the door for a very Lively debate among those seeking to replace her it is all happening now at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in downtown San Francisco in front of a live audience and you can see the candidates are ready to go so let's meet tonight's moderators San Francisco Examiner City Hall and political reporter Adam Shanks Adam joined the examiner in 2022 after covering city government and politics for the spokesman review in Spokane KCBS news radio political reporter Doug Sovereign who has covered every presidential election since 1988 and our own Ryan Yamamoto Emmy award-winning anchor and reporter just back from covering the Democratic National Convention let's send it out to Ryan and the others to introduce the candidates well Juliet thank you very much we want want to welcome our audience and we want to thank our candidates for taking part in this evening's debate with us tonight is political newcomer Daniel Lori who founded the nonprofit Tipping Point Community to fight poverty District 11 supervisor Asha safay he immigrated to the US from Iran as a child studied City Planning and he knew early in life he wanted to lead a city current president of the Board of Supervisors and District 3 representative Aaron peskin known well as a progressive fixture in City City Hall after near nearly two decades as an elected official and former District 2 supervisor and venture capitalist Mark Ferell who served as interim mayor after the death of Mayor Ed Lee all the candidates have agreed to the rules of tonight's debate we will introduce each topic with a story about San franciscans directly impacted by the critical issues the next mayor will face and must address the candidates have drawn lots to agree on who will go first each will get two minutes to respond to a question on each topic and one minute to respond to any follow-up question from a moderator they will also be allowed 30 seconds to respond to a challenge from another candidate at the moderator's discretion so with that let's get back to Juliet in studio to kick things off with our first topic Juliet Ryan thank you this issue might be the one woring city residents the most crime and safety here's Lauren Toms for nearly 20 years Greg Cary and Ken Craig have patrolled the Castro is part of one of the oldest neighborhood watch groups in the city in partnership with police they haven't let up on their safety efforts in good times and bad we are part of the overall solution but the fact that all of these different groups are approaching the same problem from different perspectives is a big part of why things are working so well they say a slow night is a good night and that's become a more common occurrence property crime across the city is down more than 35% compared to last year that's according to sfpd and violent crime is down more than 133% the lowest decrease in crime is seen in the mission where rates are down 10.7% and the steepest decrease is in the Richmond where crime is down nearly 45% and while those numbers are promising they're not felt by all just a few blocks away in the outskirts of the Castro Kevin Lou is reeling from his fourth break-in of the year it's his seventh between his two San Francisco locations it's a sense of like helplessness it's something that you didn't sign up for right so we're passionate about food we love making food and we love being people to the tables and we didn't sign up to be crime Fighters and this is just out of our wheelhouse his sense of security is shattered but his sense of hope isn't lost we love the city we we want to see it come back and uh we're going to fight for it all right so our first topic comes as no surprise crime and safety Mr Lori the city has violent crime rates lower than that of many of its peers but property crime in San Francisco remains stubbornly High what is your plan to specifically deter a lower property crime in San Francisco I appreciate the question but I want to start and acknowledge that today is September 11th um uh I want to acknowledge the heroic efforts of our Public Safety and our First Responders and our firefighters that day and every day since I think it's really important that we take a moment to acknowledge uh 911 today um Public Safety is my number one priority has been from the day I launched my campaign we have a mayor um and a group of City Hall insiders uh that have put their finger in the wind and said one day I'm for Public Safety the other day I am not as mayor I will be for Public Safety every single day we have dreamforce coming we know that downtown will be safe next week uh during Apec we had safety the taxpayers and the residents and our small businesses deserve better I'm going to fully staff our Police Department our sheriff's department and our 911 dispatch uh I have a friend in the small business Community he called me on Monday he said he knows of 30 small businesses that have been broken into in the last four weeks many are no longer calling it in because they don't their the response times are too slow 911 call times for highest priority incidents take up to 10 minutes for police to respond because we are down 500 police officers we should be around 2,000 police officers we're down below 1,500 recruiting more police officers and Sheriff's and 911 dispatch office will be my top priority supervisor Safa I know you also have a plan to tackle property crime including more community policing neighborhood foot patrols hiring more cops fixing 911 it's a long list um with the city facing a massive long-term budget deficit how you going to pay for all that Doug you just took my whole answer so how how am I going to answer now just kidding um but listen before I answer I want to just say a little bit more about myself and how I got to where I am I'm a proud immigrant as you referenced I came to this country leaving violence and upheaval uh came to this country when I was about six years old and I was raised uh ended up being raised by a single mom who's sitting in the front row right there I'm a proud husband and father of two um and I've dedicated 24 years to public service in this city working for two Mayors mayor Willie Brown the mayor that knew how and mayor Gavin Nome and those two taught me what it means to be mayor in this city and also working with organized labor for almost a decade um you talk about the different plans that we have and how we're going to face that with deficits all of the work that I did leading up to that point and to this point has emphasize and inform my work so I have a ballot proposition proposition n we have a shortfall in not just officers if you call 911 right now God forbid we're down 40 911 call officers we're down nurses get hit over the head you might have to wait in general for some time we're down police officers over almost 500 we should be at 2100 right now and all of that happened under the leadership and direction of Mayor London Bri she's only put money into recruitment $2500 uh 20 $2,500 um quarter million dollar over the last six years my proposition would say you come work for our city for after three years we'll give you up to $25,000 in student loan forgiveness this is the first year in California history that you have to have a four-year degree to be a police officer and I would pay for that by using all of the additional overtime that we have to pay because we're understaffed in all of those categories workers are being assaulted small businesses are being broken into 12 in the last two weeks in my district it's not theory for me like Daniel lurry this is something that I'm on the ground doing every day supervisor pesin this evening we expect to hear most of the candidates if not all say we need more officers we need to fully staff the sfpd as the most Progressive candidate on the stage Do you believe more police is the answer to help solve San Francisco's crime and safety issue thanks for the question Ryan there are a lot of candidates on this stage who talk tough but in my experience maybe in your experience the tough talkers often don't get the job done we need tough management and we need a balanced approach to make San Francisco Isco safer that is what I have done as a member of the Board of Supervisors and exactly what I'll do as mayor first I've worked with the captains and officers at Central Station for 25 years they know my work and that is why so many of them are supporting me in my campaign for mayor second police Staffing is absolutely critical and as president of the Board of Supervisors uh I have presided over an increase of aund over $100 million uh since I became president in 2023 I co-authored proposition F on this November's ballot uh which will retain 50 veteran officers and I support together with supervisor safay using forgivable college loans to bring in new recruits from our communities to make our department stronger third this is not just about police Staffing I can tell you as someone who is president of the board in 20 8 when our homicide rate almost hit 100 I led the way in providing funding for gang prevention for atrisk youth jobs and the next year our homicide rate fell by more than half and Mark faroh likes to talk tough uh but in the brief five-month period he was interim mayor our violent crime rate was 30% 30% higher than for the same period this year and our property crime rate was 7 % higher and these are not my facts by the way these come from the San Francisco police department so like I said there are people up here who talk tough but what we need is tough management experience management and a balanced approach to make this city safer uh former interim mayor phell I'll first give you 30 seconds to rebut to what supervisor peskin just said about your record thank you very much um good evening everyone I find it hilarious that supervisor peskin is here lecturing me about Public Safety when he is the one on the Board of Supervisors who also presided over the Board of Supervisors over the last few years when we've seen a record decrease in police Staffing did not object when mayor breed defunded the police department three years ago we need a mayor who's going to lead on public safety not talk tough during an election year but actually lead on this issue not because it's political but because they believe it to the core Public Safety has always been my number one issue in City Hall it always will be and as mayor next year I will make that my number one priority well and that actually leads into my next question for you which is that you blamed mayor breed for the city's police officer shortage but most major police departments across California saw a sharp drop off in police Staffing after 2020 what would you have done differently and what's your plan to increase police Staffing in the immediate future my approach to Public Safety is holistically different than mayor breed she has been absent on this issue for the past six years just like she's absent tonight on this debate stage we need a mayor who's going to prioritize this every single day in office when I was a member of the Board of Supervisors and chaired the budget committee for the longest period of time in City's District I partnered with Mayor Lee and we grew our Police Department to record Staffing levels and when I became mayor I did the same thing and grew it even further the reality is since I left office in 2018 I've been gone from City Hall for 6 years police Staffing is down 600 officers our Police Department essentially 25% of it has been eviscerated we need to do different we need to do better we need to turn the page and write a different chapter for the city of San Francisco I will be the leader to do that on Public Safety in particular I also want to acknowledge that we are standing here on the anniversary of September 11th and thank all of our First Responders not only here in the city but around the country for their service and putting their lives on the line for us every single day and I am proud to have the endorsement of the majority of our first responder departments here in San Francisco and their unions proud to be endorsed by our firefighters proud to be endorsed by our sheriffs what we need to do in Public Safety in particular number one I do believe we need a new police chief second of all we need to fully fund our Police Department refund our Police Department take back give back the money that mayor breed took away and then we need to fully staff our Police Department through the drop program we need to do it through lateral hiring and ultimately through our Police Academy so we can train our own officers to make sure that they are under our supervision and we are homegrown in terms of developing the police that we want on the Streets of San Francisco Public Safety and support for our police officers will be Paramount in my Administration uh if I could follow up quickly uh you mentioned that you want to change in leadership in the police department can you articulate why in your view our current police chief has failed at his job and what you would look for from the next police chief that's different Look chief Scott is a good man I said that every single time however the average tenure of a police chief in the US is three years he's been here for eight and along with mayor breed presided over a police department that has been defunded that has lost over 25% of its Workforce that is having difficult ulty recruiting and allowing the police commission to essentially run rough shot over our police officers demoralizing the rank and file that protect us every single day on our streets what I want in a new police chief is someone who's going to fight with me fight for more budget dollars and if I renag on my promises call me out I want a fighter someone who's going to actively recruit and Inspire the rank and file in our Police Department once again we need a leader in the mayor's office we need a leader in our Police Department for the for the next chapter of San Francisco that is what I will bring to City Hall okay from crime and Public Safety let's go back to Juliet in studio for our next topic Ryan thank you so San Francisco's challenges with homelessness and drugs have made International headlines in recent years and now they consistently rank among the top concerns of Voters Wilson Walker shows us why uh basically I woke up I seen some people standing up over me and uh I noticed that they came from a health van Damon slept beneath the noise machines designed to prevent people from camping on this sidewalk but the city's encampment Resolution Team will force him to move again I I can't be nowhere 3 days it seems like people this time he's been referred to an open spot at one of the city's navigation centers and with the backing of recent Court decisions the city has been pushing harder to get people off the streets something that has been discussed in emergency terms in recent years of Emergency Management was December of 2021 when mayor London breed launched a series of initiatives aimed largely at the Nexus of homelessness and drugs in the Tinder loin 32 months later there is evidence that the law enforcement surge is disrupting drug markets at least during the day and overdose numbers which hit a record high of 810 last year are trending down this year a drop of 15% so far versus 2023 though health offic offal say they are not sure why as for getting people off the streets and I'm just hoping that it works out for me I'm 53 I'm still able to work so let we begin with supervisor Safa so following a recent US Supreme Court ruling sweeps of homeless encampments began in Late July but critics of the sweep say this is more about Optics than real solutions do you believe the sweeps are working as mayor would you allow them to continue so listen I think that the word sweeps is clickbait at the end of the day if you go down to many of the stations fire stations in particular in our city in the southeast part of the city they will tell you they have encampments in and around their area and when mayor lendon breed started the so-called sweeps they cleared it on one block and moved it over to another block because there was no real plan and real leadership on the issue and it's been said before it didn't take that Supreme Court case to really formulate a plan and move people under my fivepoint plan one of the first things that we would do and this is crazy that we don't do this in San Francisco we only count the number of people on the streets every two years I would utilize a reformed mayor's office and Neighborhood Services working with Community leaders and the district supervisor go out and we would get an actual count on a consistent basis first and foremost so we're measuring our success we're not going to solve homelessness in San Francisco but what we can do is we can get people off the streets and we have the money the ability to do that we just lack the leadership from the mayor so first thing I would do is we would need to stand up over around 1,500 shelter beds we've always been pushing a a permanent sport of housing housing first model in our city we need to shift to get more shelter beds done I did some of that in the city already some of it also needs to be transitioned to abstinence-based housing because if we're really being honest the crisis on the streets is really a mental health and a drug addiction issue we just passed the Millionaire's tax so we can reform some of that money and get more mental health and drug addiction beds off the street uh uh online so we can get people off the streets and into that Rehabilitation we have to do that and we have to do it aggressively St Mary's and St Francis were just bought by UCSF we have hundreds if not thousands of beds we can get online so we would do that and then lastly I'll say this Homer bound program started I work for May Gavin Nome 20 years ago it got 13,000 people sent back to their loved ones in their home town we need to do that we need to do that aggressively and under and I passed legislation to make that permanent I have a followup question you talked about mental health and drugs there are still a lot of legal and political implications that need to be worked out but what is your take on self- injection or drug uh safe drug consumption sites listen I I've come out and said we need to have the whole gamut surprisingly the police in New York City City working with community- based organizations and and neighbors set up what they called overdose prevention sites and I've said this in many debates one of the first things that I would tackle as mayor is making sure that over 800 of the residents of San Francisco were not dying on the streets and surprisingly in going back to the I conversation about housing first over 65% of them had a h home over their head had a home address so we have to get people off the streets SA their lives first we can do that with overdose prevention done in the right way with the medical professional supervising them but we also need absence base housing and again I did that a few years ago in the city and we want to expand more of those opportunities and then we have Partners like the Salvation Army that have an entire plan to get people into true recovery we can do the whole gamut we can have a whole Continuum of it but if we're really serious about getting people and saving their lives we got to get them off the streets and a supervis way to make sure they're not dying supervisor peskin philosophically is it the city's responsibility to provide shelter to everyone on its streets regardless of whether they've lived here for 10 years or 10 days and what is the consequence if the city chooses not to you know some candidates on this stage are strong advocates for sweeps I can tell you I have never received more complaints than since mayor breed started these sweeps a month ago because sweeps don't solve the problem they just move homeless people from One neighborhood to another and mayor breed and I'm sorry she's not here has had six years to solve this problem and we have more homeless people on our streets today than when when she started and for those of the uh candidates who are doubling down on her fail strategies they have already been shown to be ineffective uh I have a comprehensive plan on homelessness is called from crisis to care I developed it with experts in the field it is entirely implementable and I'd like to outline the points systemic management reform With An Inspector General to root out corruption and to make efficiencies amongst the nine City departments and 248 service providers a regional approach to treatment refurbishing unused and underutilized state facilities that have been vacant since the days of of Governor Ronald Reagan utilizing our prop $1 preventing additional homelessness uh by making sure that we stop evictions and build more affordable housing and yes standing up shelter beds as I have done in my district because New York has shelter for 95% of its homeless population we only have shelter for 47% and providing a focused concentrated effort to find housing for the 18 00 San Francisco Unified School District children who are currently unhoused this plan is on my website I encourage you to read it this is one of the most important issues in this race and I believe that I have the best path forward and if I could ask a quick followup uh and pivot to the fentel epidemic uh do you believe the city needs to revise or erase its Sanctuary policies to help facilitate the deportation of people either ACC accused or convicted of dealing fentel in San Francisco so I think that San Francisco Sanctuary City policy has actually made San Francisco safer I believe that that is the view of every candidate on this stage and every member of the Board of Supervisors we want people to report crime it makes San Francisco safer former interim mayor frell you've promised to clear all the tent encampments within your first six months in office but when the city doesn't have enough shelter beds and camp build enough Supportive Housing quickly what should happen to the thousands of people who are being shuffled around uh the streets after their tents are taken away where should they go and and if they don't leave should they go to jail well let's set the stage of where we are right now as a city of San Francisco mayor breed has completely failed our city in terms of the homeless situation on our streets until a few months ago she was completely absent on the issue and now since Grants Pass we have halfhazard tent clearing we have busting people out of town which is probably one of the worst ideas the city has ever encountered mayor breed really wants to get into busing Wars with the governors of the Southern border states and get into a competition with them we're going to lose that battle uh supervisor Safa said project Homer bound was a program that worked for years inside of the city government when I was budget chair we did a study on it 70% of these people a year later were housed it was Radical success and I quadrupled the budget for that program such that when I left office as mayor in 2018 we were sending over a 100 people home a month to great success we need to replicate that and yes let me be clear when I was mayor I cleared out all of the large 10 encampments in San Francisco and I will do it again but the difference between mayor breed right now haphazard one-off approach is the fact that we did it consistently we treated people with compassion and respect offered them shelter and housing but if they said no we took their tents away because I believe the sidewalks of San Francisco belong to everybody they belong to young families they belong to the elderly not to people who choose to come to San Francisco to pitch a tent and think they could be there for as long as they want that is not the future of San Francisco under my Administration I've done it before we were consistent with it and I will do it again as mayor for homeless in particular we're going to declare a fentanyl state of emergency we're going to get additional law enforcement help from the state and the FEDS to combat that issue and we're going to stand up a 247 centralized intake Center massive amount of additional shelter capacity but most importantly connected with services so we can get people off the streets and hopefully save their lives mayor breed's approach is not working record number of people are dying on our streets every single year once again we need to turn the page to a different chapter of San Francisco if I may follow up uh once you take away their tents uh and if there are no shelters could they go to jail should they be arrested I don't believe in arresting people simply because they are sleeping on the Streets of San Francisco we can do it differently we do it exactly as we did it when I was mayor we have enough shelter beds we will stand up more of them but if they say no to shelter we take their tents away and sure the first time did they move around the corner and have complaints just like what happening with mayor breed but after a second a third and a fourth encounter we saw a much higher conversion into shelter and you know what some people left the city of San Francisco because we made it inconvenient to sleep on the streets for as long as they wish that is the right policy for the city of San Francisco we want to get people into shelter or housing but at the end of the day I'm going to be a fierce defender of our neighborhoods and make sure the quality of life for all San Francisco residents is what I look out for Mr lurry many voters believe San Francisco has an issue of trying to spend their way out of problems as the founder of the nonprofit Tipping Point is well documented your organization had spent close to $100 million with the goal of cutting chronic homelessness in half in 2017 only to see the number of homeless people grow was that money well spent and how might you spend that money different if you become mayor I I appreciate the question and I I want to start by saying I drove uh my kids to school this morning and uh we encountered a man running into oncoming traffic uh we had to stop in the middle of Golf Street um uh I took my kids to School in June uh last year and my son who is 10 years old looked over and saw two people one was doing drugs and one was slumped over and he asked me the question are they on meth or fentel we have a serious problem in this city this mayor has failed to address it uh at Tipping Point I am proud of taking on an audacious goal uh we have housed over 40,000 people since 2015 we've prevented thousands more from falling into homelessness uh we built a building on Bryant Street a 100% affordable housing building we did it in three years and for $377,000 a unit using good paying union labor compared to on average it takes 7 years and $1.2 million to build affordable housing I've also built shelter at 33 Golf Street 78 units it cost us $344,000 a unit to do so it's fully staffed and fully housing people right now because it's safe and it's dignified shelter which we need more of and simply put what we see from the city hall insiders is they took that plan they ran with it they're building shelter it cost $113,000 the city hall insiders of mar against this mayor has completely failed on this issue I've had great success on it by no means by no means have we solved our problems but I'm the only one that has demonstrated measurable results held nonprofits accountable cut funding to groups when they haven't performed and redirected resources to high performing organizations you I have a quick little followup you you had mentioned uh fenel in an opet in San Francisco Examiner Your solution to crime is safety focused on cracking down on those who sell drugs by using a quote find my iPhone approach to tracking drug dealers as mayor what exactly does that mean and how would you implement that it means that if you are arrested in the tender line or in Soma the first time I want to work with RDA I want to work with the judges and I want them to put an ankle monitor on somebody as a condition of their pre-trial release first time people say oh well you know you have you put ankle monitors on people now no you do it after uh someone fails to show up for a court case or you do it after a third or fourth arrest when I am mayor starting in January I am going to stand on the city hall steps every single day and I'm going to tell people you do not come to San Francisco to deal drugs you don't come here to do drugs and you don't come here to sleep on our streets thank you very much let's go back to Juliet in studio for our next topic Ryan thank you we have just begun to scratch the surface of these thorny issues the next mayoral Administration must address so their plans for two more critical concerns more from the candidates when we come [Music] back e e e e [Music] welcome back to the San Francisco mayoral debate presented by CBS News Bay Area the San Francisco Examiner and KCBS news radio let's dive back in with the struggle to revive downtown San Francisco Max darl spent time with the people experiencing the reality every day a look at the reservation list ahead of another night of business at his downtown restaurant perbacco looks it's looking pretty good lberto jabin will take the winds wherever he can we have a good amount of prad at the moment at least is definitely is what helps to say in business like many downtown business owners navigating San Francisco's slow pandemic induced economic recovery he's had to make some tough decisions that included closing his other restaurant just two doors down barbacco a wasn't feasible anymore it wasn't sustainable at the start of 2020 the office vacancy rate was at 6% the start of 2024 32% and climbing we need people like they were here before but to Julian Prince Dash the founder of holy Stitch a denim Factory shop and design school on Market Street the vacancies mean opportunity this is the time for someone like me to be able to affect change patience and creativity are critical in his line of work and he says the replicable in the bigger picture of San Francisco finding its next iteration people need to be patient what what do you expect overnight problems lead to Solutions so I don't even think that the place is getting worse because I see it get better every single day become an asset to the city and I think that you'll not be enamored with the problems but the solutions despite the challenges jabine is betting on the city as he did 20 years ago if there is one city that can bounce back is San Francisco how that future will happen however remains unclear supervisor peskin you've long Champion neighborhood preservation and low-income housing over market rate development I know that you will tell us that you have voted to approve more units of housing than anyone else on this stage uh but how as mayor will you attract developers to convert the empty Office Buildings that surround us here uh to much needed housing and bring downtown San Francisco back to life and do it quickly listen downtown economic recovery is critical but as you said Doug the well-being of our neighborhood commercial areas is equally important let let me start with downtown I know downtown I worked downtown for many years and I've represented downtown for most of the last quarter of a century in good times and in tough times uh and my opponents talk about downtown I'm actually already doing the work to help downtown recover I led the way on passing legislation to ease converting vacant Office Buildings to housing and subsequently I pass legislation to help Finance those conversions and I'm working to bring things downtown that downtown really needs to be a thriving neighborhood that it's never had like parks and libraries and arts and culture but at the same time I'm very worried about the mayor's upzoning plans for our neighborhood commercial corridors that would impact neighborhoods all over this city on Clement on Irving on Chestnut on 24th Street in noi Valley it would be disastrous for our neighborhood um and we're already seeing some of the impacts we just saw it on upper Filmore Street um I mean imagine what it would be like if you if you went out and your favorite Cafe and your bakery and your grocery store were closed and that's exactly what is happening so as mayor yes I will continue to work to help downtown recover but I will also fight to make sure that our neighborhood commercial areas are not destroyed meanwhile there are companies leaving San Francisco as we know they're going to the suburbs they're moving to Texas so at the same time as you try to you know produce more housing downtown how will you induce companies that are here now to stay and entice more to come so I am the author of proposition M on this November's ballot that restructures San Francisco's business tax law precisely to retain businesses giving relief to 2600 small businesses as well as businesses at the top that we want to make sure do not leave like Salesforce and other uh similarly situated businesses and so we did that hard work and it is going to enable uh hundreds of businesses to stay and our our tax laws needed to change phenomenally in the postco period and we did that work and I'm proud that it has been endorsed by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Advan SF and small businesses as well former interim mayor mark we have seen your renderings of what your reimagined downtown and Waterfront could look like under a 20-year plan one of your opponents said it looks like a chat GPT generated content why would it take so long to transform downtown and as mayor what would you do to make downtown a thriving neighborhood in the first year of your Administration so again let's set the stage here I'm the biggest cheerleader for our city of San Francisco I'm lucky enough to be born and raised here my wife Liz and I are raising our three children here this is home but I also think if we want a mayor who's going to lead the city forward to make a sustainable difference on every topic in our city we have to be realistic about where we sit today and today San Francisco ranks dead last in economic recovery across the entire United States postco downtown vacancy rates are pushing 40% this is scary especially for those of us who've been around here for a while so we need to be incredibly proactive out of City Hall first of all we have to fundamentally focus on the issues and the core issues of Public Safety and Street conditions it's the reason conventions left San Francisco we never last lost our natural beauty lost amazing neighborhoods like Chinatown adjacent to our Convention Center that people love to visit it's because people were getting assaulted from their hotel on the way to the convention center and back and forth and finally CEOs pulled rip cord and went to Vegas instead we focus on those core issues conventions come back to San Francisco that feed our restaurants and our hotels downtown year round then we have to get aggressive with tax incentives to bring employers back to the downtown and south of Market core we did it in the 2010s in the mid-market area to great success that neighborhood was starting to thrive once again and we kept companies in town we need to do that again then we have to focus on the long-term conversion from commercial to residential not the 10 buildings we talk about today we have to get bigger and Bolder as a city on so many levels and this in particular let's allow these Class B and Class C buildings downtown to demo let's massively up Zone downtown and south of Market commit to tax increment Vehicles so we can actually get developers investing in San Francisco again people back to work and build for the future of San Francisco and lastly because you mentioned it building a brand new park at the foot of Marcus Street as we think about people coming to San Francisco for the first time at the ferry building a welcome M to our city instead of broken tile Street behavior and a fountain that hasn't dripped water since I was born we need to do different we need to do better and we can make downtown a shining example of the future of our city as opposed to the problem that it is today that Park would also be bordered by uh Market Street you're propos uh you propos opening Markus Street to traffic how do you believe that we going to help downtown recovery very specifically I've proposed that we open up Market Street to ride sharing because the one thing if you've been around San Francisco for a long time is what's scary about Market Street today especially from the San Francisco Center to the ferry building is how many empty storefronts there are the lack of vibrancy downtown nobody comes downtown anymore and these Public Safety incidents like the incident the other weekend on Union Square does not help we have to be honest about that so to me allowing R share vehicles to come downtown on Market Street is just increasing throughput let's get people downtown let's make it easy for them to shop easy for them to patronize the stores and the restaurants downtown we need to do everything we can in our power to enable that and that is exactly what that proposal achieves okay Mr Lori as part of your downtown revitalization plan you have proposed a uh 10-year property tax incentive for companies that lease new office space or retail space downtown uh given this projected deficits that the city is facing how can it afford this program uh you can't afford not to empty office bu buildings don't bring in any Revenue so we need to fill those buildings what we really need to do at Downtown is we have to address public safety first and foremost I did a a walk around Union Square with the the top Commander uh leading the police force actually just three days before Ricky piol uh was shot I applaud sfpd uh for their quick response I applaud uh SF General the nurses and the doctors there that saved his life um and thankfully he's going to be okay but that was a tragic incident that just gave us yet another black eye uh we need to streamline permitting we need to make it easier for small businesses to come in and take over existing space and then we're all saying it we need to transform what we do downtown uh whether it's arts and culture uh I know Julian uh at uh who you featured just now I mean we have to get creative let's have more live workspace let's have more restaurants let's build more housing downtown let's get a university to at least if they're not going to open let's get their uh kids to live in some of these buildings let's lead again on climate change let's draw in uh change makers entrepreneurs and innovators when it comes to that uh we used to lead on climate we've lost that to New York and to Austin and to Miami we need to do better well you know your opponents Reg regularly point out that you lack experience in city government much of what you just described and is outlined in your plans for San Francisco would require the support of the legislative body of San Francisco how would you work with legislators to actually implement the plans that you've laid out I will put my track record of executive management experience up against anybody I'm running against uh I brought a global sporting event in Super Bowl 50 to San Francisco and to the Bay Area generated over a quarter of a billion dollars in economic venue to our city and to our region I worked with mayor Lardo and San Jose mayor sha and Oakland and of course Mayor Lee and all the department heads to pull that event off I talked about getting housing built earlier tonight uh one Union was not happy with this project they said over their dead body would it get built I went around worked with supervisors got an unanimous vote at the Board of Supervisors to get that housing built I have a track record of holding people accountable deling measurable results and I want to do that as your next mayor supervisor Safa you all want to reimagine the financial district transform it into a neighborhood you go to New York you go to Chicago their downtown cores are thriving they're bustling with tourists people going to restaurants they've reimagined their their Central waterways What specifically has mayor breed done wrong at City Hall that has kept San Francisco from following suit that you would do differently specifically what would you do that she hasn't done well unfortunately mayor Brie lacks vision and that's one of the reasons why I think the voters of San Francisco are going to be asking for change this November um a lot of it has been talked about a little bit in platitudes but let me get very specific one of the things and we convened a working group two years ago with property owners large Property Owners uh large companies Frontline workers and a number of different um aspects of the legislative branch office of Economic Development and the private sector and what we heard first and foremost most is people if they want if we want them to come back downtown and populate the 40 million square ft of empty office space folks need to see that the streets are clean and it's safe so first thing I was do would do and I worked for public works I would make that department a true 24-hour department every major city you go to in the world worldclass city has people cleaning the streets on a 24-hour basis we do it on a kind of a skeleton crew in the evening I would up that and make that more robust secondly I talked a little bit about it I passed a Citywide community policing plan in January it's one of the reasons why I would point to that we need to change leadership in the police department we need someone that's going to fully Embrace that Implement that and get the different stations to put officers out on the street and we saw how effective it was when Ricky percel was shot an officer was there within minutes if not seconds to save his life but let's take a step back for a second we're also forgetting to talk about the Frontline workers I was with a round table of Frontline workers this afternoon along with uh business managers and operators of those businesses and they talked about incentives for their business businesses waving fees make it making it more easy for workers to get there and then of course you referenced I passed legislation to bring universities into the downtown we can do that Phoenix Arizona did it 18 years ago fast forward 6 A5 billion dollars of Revenue have been generated they've gotten over 12,000 students not just studying but living thriving and spending money in the downtown and it's been a major Catalyst we have to do that and we have to do that aggressively and we have a historic opportunity with property being at a historic low we can buy those properties and bring universities into the downtown we all know how long it takes to get anything done in San Francisco so how specifically do you turn a grid of skyscrapers into a livable neighborhood like San Francisco's other neighborhoods that coexists with corporations and companies and office workers which is not true in some of those other neighborhoods you know when I worked for Gavin new some 20 years ago I went on a four City Tour because one of the things that Gavin emphasized was looking at Best Practices around the country went to LA San Diego New York and Boston and every single one of those cities I came in I said I'm here to steal your ideas and bring them back to San Francisco one of the ones we did was we got a small business facade Improvement program helping small business businesses but the other one that we didn't do Unfortunately they had a dedicated team to office to residential conversion fast forward 20 years they have converted thousands and thousands of units into livable space we can do that we need a dedicated team I would do that day one um but also look at what San Jose did just a month and a half ago it took them six months to convert a ho an old hotel into student dormatory housing if the will is there and the leadership is there we can get it done very quickly and it will transform our downtown and give the confidence for those to come back into the downtown and I think that's what's been missing thank you okay let's go back to Juliet in studio for our next topic Ryan thank you so the lack of affordable housing in San Francisco is a situation experts call among the worst in the state Kenny Choy learned from one city resident just how tough it can be [Music] Jesse Harris is living off retirement savings including Social Security and a pension he's a licensed general contractor picking up jobs wherever and whenever he can I have to do this job because I only make enough money by um in my retirement to pay my rent a divorce 4 years ago forced him to move back to San Francisco where he was born and raised he's been on a long wait list for affordable housing affordable is anywhere from $24 $2500 $3,000 but $4,000 I just can't afford that the 66-year-old is clinging to hope that he'll have a better chance in a housing lottery or move up the weight list Karen Nik is director of housing Justice at United Way Bay Area we see a really huge gap between wages going up at a very low level and rent speeding up nsic defines affordable housing as tenants paying a maximum of 30% of their income on housing whether you're a teacher retired general contractor or firefighter sometimes things are greater than yourself is going to make it happen and I'm hoping these are one of those times that attitude is admirable but how long he can stay afloat is uncertain okay former inter mayor Ferell uh if proposition 33 passes this November it would repeal the cost to Hawkins rental act which limits City's ability to implement rent control uh if prop 33 passes what should the city do would you support expanding rent control no that's the last thing we should do right now to me the way to increase affordable housing is to Simply build more housing across San Francisco and this mayor mayor breed has failed at building new housing across our city for me this is personal now our oldest daughter Madison she's out in college in Boston right now as a freshman three weeks in and I believe looking on on the live stream so hi mad I want her to move home to San Francisco in four years but in order for her to do that our city has to change and chief among that it has to be affordable from a housing perspective we're under a state mandate to build a approximately 10,000 units a year last year we built 2,000 units and this year we're on Pace to build 400 that is not success that is failure I have always been incredibly Pro housing inside of City Hall to me it's up zoning it's legislation and it's mayoral directives to our planning department to make sure that we streamline housing throughout the city of San Francisco my track record inside of City Hall is a Tracker gr of success as a supervisor built in full housing within District 2 also started the projects that will build now over a thousand units of new housing very close to where we live CPM C's old hospital on California ucsf's Laurel height site and also the Lucky Penny site on giri and Masonic I've always been incredibly Pro housing inside of City Hall and I will be going forward as mayor next year but we can't leave this topic I can't leave this topic without calling out one of my opponents here Mr lurry and his claims around the one project that emanated from its $100 million fundraising effort for homelessness this 833 Bryant project let's be clear about this it's articulated that it only costs a few hundred a square foot to build but he's not including the land costs that's deceiving the voters of San Francisco three years to build he's not talking about permitting that was a five-year project under my Administration anything that long that takes 5 years you're going to get fired in my Administration and he talks about holding people accountable what about holding them self and Tipping Point accountable there are 13 different violations from the department of building inspection someone was electrocuted in that building it was flooded and there's dirty water that that's your time Mr lorri I'll give you 30 seconds to respond I mean Mark has got to be the last person who should be giving a lecture on accountability uh the the city controller actually highlighted your 2011 law to decentralize nonprofit reporting as a key reason that corruption has flourished now let me just be very clear because he just said something that is just not true it was 3 years from the time we bought the project to the time we open the first doors okay and former inter mayor Mark frell again uh as a followup you mentioned up zoning uh I'd love to hear you articulate in what parts of the city you think there should be more density I think we need to build more housing and have more density in every single neighborhood in San Francisco however I do not subscribe to Mayor breed's plan to massively upzone every single neighborhood I believe we can do it programmatically to meet and exceed our state mandated goals the massive opportuni is in the downtown area and south of Market areas to massively upzone this part of San Francisco to take advantage of the disaster that downtown is today and build for the future let's not waste this opportunity but we have to build an every neighborhood along Transit G corridors in particular we have to support legislation like supervisor ml's 4 to sixplex legislation supervisor and guardio corner lot legislation build more form-based density we can do it in every neighborhood we can do it in a smart manner where we retain neighborhoods and the beauty and the diversity that is San Francisco M Mr Larry piggybacking on that question uh San Francisco is notoriously slow at approving permits and then building things uh everyone here will tell us they're going to streamline and accelerate that and now as we said under uh well we haven't brought up this one but under s423 it should speed up uh but how will you ensure as mayor that that San Francisco both meets that state mandate for building new units and preserves its neighborhood charm doesn't run rough shot over over the neighborhood interests uh what is amazing to me is that you are correct everybody on this stage and the mayor talks about building more housing and how that um the bureaucracy styes them but let's all remember they have built this bureaucracy then they exploit it and then they tell you that they're the only ones that can fix it the White House KLA Harris and Joe Biden just smacked down our city saying it is the longest in the country to get through just permitting 33 months that's absurd that's why we have an affordability crisis that's why I'm proud of my project because we got streamlined permitting we got it done in 3 years for $377,000 a unit and we need to do more of it finally the city has taken us up on it and they're building senior housing 135 units of senior housing out on Cesar Chavez and Valencia Street it's going to be affordable uh this model is replicable let's do it all over this city let's do it downtown let's do it at Candlestick point we have Labor and business and neighborhood groups agreeing on stonest toown and 3,000 new units there SF state is going to be building more housing for their teachers which the neighborhood all agrees on we just built and finished the Shirley Chism project uh out in the sunset and the neighborhood agreed on it 135 units of housing for our teachers there were 9900 teachers that applied for it guess how long it took that building to get built seven years that is not what it's going to take I have delivered once and I will deliver again I want to ask you two things F first of all you responded to former inter from mayor frell on the length of the project on Bryant but not to the allegations about violations and electrocution Etc I'd like to give you a little bit to respond to that and second of all if prop 33 passes would you also favor expanding rent control or not um listen uh we all uh live in apartments or condos or rental properties and things go wrong 145 unit building over three or four years now 13 issues I I I honestly have no idea what he's talking about in terms of electrocute I mean this guy I mean it's it's amazing what he's doing right now and on Prop 33 if it passes I I do not support uh expanding uh rent control we need to keep rent control as is keep people here it has done really good work but expanding it at this time will prevent us from getting more housing built and for inter mayor frell I'm going to give you 30 seconds to respond to what he just said about you I don't think he said anything about me look at the end of the day you know from my perspective experience matters in this race competence matters in this race and a strong vision for San Francisco matters in this race I'm the only one on the stage that has the experience of being mayor before I've sat in that seat competence matters when I was mayor our city was in a much different place than it is today and a strong vision for San Francisco matters I agree this mayor right now mayor breed has no vision for the future of San Francisco what I offer is holistically different and a Bright Vision for the future future of San Francisco can I just respond because I didn't say anything about him personally uh and what we're here tonight to talk about is who is going to be uh the best person to serve as your next mayor and it's not about anybody on this stage it's not about our mayor even it's about the people of San Francisco and they deserve better than they're getting right now supervisor SEF finding a San Francisco native who still lives in San Francisco seems to be harder and hard harder to find I call them unicorns as San Francisco becomes more expensive to live in we have seen our neighborhoods become regentrification the theme of my campaign the reason I'm running is because you shouldn't have to be rich to live in San Francisco I'm running to represent all San franciscans and for the past 8 years the good people of the exceler district 11 outer mission in Lake View those are the people that I have fought for every single day 30 40 years ago the janitors that I worked with in this building that clean these buildings all downtown they could buy a home in San Francisco on a janitor salary for a $100,000 home $200,000 home today those homes are going for 2 million the homes are Out Of Reach so many of the people that live in my district are Houser but cash poor same thing I was saying earlier about the Frontline workers and small business owners that I was meeting with today they talked about affordability and that was really what the question was before all the back and forth it was how are we going to make San Francisco more affordable there are 40,000 units in the pipeline right now entitled ready to be built so I passed legislation on Tuesday that would create financing to get them unstuck and built to lower the transfer tax so we can use union pension money to build affordable onsite and build more housing the one thing and I I got to take a lot of uh umbrage with what Daniel lurry said and this is the story that he's not telling you that site that he keeps referring to they use modular housing they built it off site and they use barely above minimum wage the union workers that would be building that the Working Families that are being pushed out of this city every single day they didn't get to be on that job and why there were problems on that job was because the the modular housing was so poorly built the reason that only one was built under the money that he spent is because it's not replicable what has being replicated now is a standard design creative financing but not the modular housing that he used on his site that cut Working Families and workers out so if we want to keep working families in this city for the housing that they built they should be able to live in it Mr lurry 30 seconds to respond it was 100% Union made the Carpenters uh made it was modular this was audacious it was Innovative uh and 13 other unions actually finished the job uh and so you know once again what we see going on here is The Insider it's like a tag team coming after the person that is shining a light on their records EXP closing them showing you all that they have built this system then they exploit it but apparently they're the only ones that can fix it and a followup to supervisor Safa what is your stand on can I respond to that sure yeah because what I would say is again he's leaving out they chose not to use modular on the site on CES Chavez specifically because it's not replicable but the mod the one that they use on Treasure Island the ceilings fell through we had to spend additional millions of I sat on the budget committee to fix those units because they were so poorly built that's not being replicated in San Francisco that's not something that's going to help Working Families and that's why he only Built one project one is being built using the same type of accountable leadership right from the start where you get the Architecture Firm you get the contractors you get the builders up front working together then you set a deadline and you meet that deadline we did that we had a deadline of 3 years and under $400,000 a unit we got it done and they are actually using the exact model of what we're doing it's not modular it's stick built and we're excited and guess what this one's going to cost $577,000 a unit compared to $1.2 million for other projects so I am proud of my record on this supervisor peskin we just had a whole argument about housing and you were not mentioned once uh I I I will ask do you believe in the fundamental economics of supply and demand when it comes to housing and that adding new units whether they're market rate or affordable uh will increase the housing availability and affordability for everyone folks I think we need to reject The Narrative of the developers and real estate speculators and they have this narrative uh look they'll tell you I am the worst but I am actually the best candidate on this stage to build the affordable housing that San Francisco needs um and and let me say this I have and Doug said this have voted to approve over a 100,000 homes in the city more than everybody else on this stage combined including mayor breed who is not here this evening but I did it by working with neighborhoods not against them in my own District we've built every kind of housing homeless shelters permanent Supportive Housing market rate housing and I've never not once voted against affordable housing and to answer the earlier question I am the only candidate on this stage who supports expanding rent control to stabilize our communities and unlike my opponents I have an actual plan to build the middle inome affordable housing that San Francisco so desperately needs many people don't know but there are over 70,000 shovel ready fully approved homes in our pipel that aren't being built because interest rates are too high in my plan because the city will provide tax exempt lower cost interest will finally start building those middle inome affordable homes but at the same time Adam while we're talking about housing I need to go back to uh what so many San franciscans are rightfully concerned about which is the mayor's masses upzoning plans and my opponents uh Mr lurry and Mr frell uh say one thing one week and one thing the next week uh but it is very clear to me that their campaigns are being supported by the exact speculators who are pushing this up zoning so let me be clear I will protect our neighborhoods that is what I've done our entire my entire career and I know I know that San Francisco can build the affordable housing that we need without turning Ocean Beach into Miami Beach to be clear mayor Brie did not invent UPS zoning and it's a fundamental component of the housing element uh new homes have to be put somewhere in San Francisco where do you believe they need to be placed I have the 100,000 over 100,000 units that I have voted to approve we did with neighborhoods not against neighborhoods we did that in the Bay View Hunters Point Shipyard plan we did that in the Eastern neighborhood plan we did that in the Central and Western s plans we did that at the ring con Hill plan and we included the amenities that make neighborhoods great and I brought people together neighborhoods developers the planning department and exhibit that leadership to have the density that we need preserve things that needed to be preserved give protections to our small businesses and that is exactly what real leadership is this is not an either or Mr Shanks um and there have been instances where we need to stand up and protect certain things I am very proud that when a developer wanted to demolish the San Francisco flower market the second largest wholesale flower market in America that I said no unless they found a new location and in a month the San Francisco flower market an over 100y old institution that supports thousands of jobs will open its new location at 16th in Mississippi that's leadership thank you gentlemen this let's go back to Juliet in studio and thank you so much so San Francisco voters have been sending us the questions they would ask if they were at the moderator's table we'll put some of those questions to the candidates when we come back [Music] e e e [Music] good back welcome back to San Francisco's mayoral debate we asked and you answered San Francisco voters sent us questions and they want answers from the candidates this round will be a little bit different each moderator will ask a new question to each candidate who will then have 90 seconds to respond we'll begin with Ryan Yamamoto and his question for Daniel lurry Ryan that we just want to Juliet supervisor peskin did call out uh both Mr lurry and former interim mayor Ferell by name in that last round and we didn't give them an opportunity to respond so we want to give Mr lry 30 seconds then Mr frell 30 seconds Mr lurry go ahead if you want to respond to what Mr peskin said yeah I I'm just starting to feel special that they keep calling me out uh I uh I haven't said one thing one week and one thing the other uh I have been very clear that we need more affordable housing for our nurses for our teachers for our fighter fighters for our creative class uh all over this city I believe that we need to build along commercial corridors 6 to8 story uh where it makes sense I've said that everywhere former interim mayor frell you also have 30 seconds and again I'll put my track record of being incredibly Pro housing inside of City Hall up against anybody else and the reality is under mayor breed our city has failed to build enough housing again last year we only Built 2,000 units this year we're going to build 400 units and as if I think about a month and a half ago our planing Department had only approve 16 new units in our city not 1600 16,000 16 we need a mayor who's going to treat it differently let's get away from ideology yimi nimi Progressive moderate let's focus on results let's build more housing for the future San Francisco that's what you'll get when I am mayor okay thank you gentlemen that's all for the direct questions each campaign now has 90 seconds to address the voters again they drew lots to decide who would go first we begin with Mr lurry and Mr lurry this comes from one of our viewers Britney from the sunset how would you help local business owners continue to thrive in the city with the current landscape of break-ins will you get assistance for them when you become mayor you know we uh just uh opened a space uh on Ninth in Irving and we got graffitied and within 24 hours the city's efficient on this front they put a tag on us and said that we owed money um this Administration and everybody who is built up this system has made it nearly impossible to run a small business it's almost like they are looked at as a fee a revenue Source instead of a source of pride a source of Envy for others and what will draw tourism and Shoppers uh I'll go back to we need to make sure that we have a fully staffed Police Department I want our police officers out on footbeat patrol I want them out uh responding uh and being able to prevent and deter crime whenever possible right now our police officers 80% of their calls and I've done Seven Ride Along alongs 80% of their calls are for Mental Health and Drug crises calls we need to get them off of that we need to train clinicians being the first point of contact not every interaction on our street needs to be with somebody with a badge and a gun so then that allows police officers to get to know the merchants uh and protect them that's what we need to do for our small business make them feel safe again supervisor Safa this question comes to us from Tom from Golden Gate Heights what efforts would you undertake to promote tourism in San Francisco for example how would you get National and international coverage of special events in San Francisco like music festivals and street fairs so actually one of the things that I didn't get to talk about in terms of my downtown revitalization plan but it's also a way to market the city and bring San Francisco back into the Forefront one of the things that we've let slip away under this mayor is utilizing Hollywood the way we did in the past if you think about all of the great movies that were shot in our city if you think of all the different TV shows and commercials that were shot in our city it's one of the best ways to advertise and promote San Francisco in a positive way and unfortunately we had post production space on treasur island that's now pickle ball courts and if we had and that's for real that's not a joke if we have a 100,000 square F feet with 40 foot ceilings and parking we can bring Hollywood back to San Francisco and it'll be a way to promote us in a phenomenal way that no marketing campaign would ever do we have phenomenal festivals we're going to have the all allar game here next year we're fighting for the Super Bowl again maybe Daniel lurry can share that uh one more time and then again we will be doing everything we can to put San Francisco back on the M map in a positive way supervisor peskin Jamie in Laurel Heights another one of our viewers would like to know whether you think Market Street should be completely reopen to cars to help revive businesses along that Corridor and if not why not so Jamie thank you for that question uh first of all I think that having robust public transit is one of the great equalizers in San Francisco and I'm proud of my record working not only to make San Francisco safer for pedestrians with many road diet improvements but also sticking up for the funding to allow the sfmta to do that I was the author of proposition D which charges a tax on Uber and Lyft and now on weo and crws uh to fund those improvements uh so we need to have a safe uh City and we also have to have a robust public transit system uh I was actually for bike Lanes in this city uh 25 years ago at their infancy um but I do not believe that opening Market Street to cars is going to be an improvement there are many many opportunities for downtown things that I'm already working on but opening Market Street to cars is step backwards and interim former interim mayor frell uh this question comes from constant from hate ashbery she says I understand the goal of vision zero but reality is that a lot of people also need to use their cars it seems that SF is intent on creating traffic chaos at what point will the city balance functional traffic flow with safety so thank you for that question and I couldn't agree with the sentiment behind it more why I have called for a new head of our ta moving forward in San Francisco look I believe in our Transit first policy here in our city the next person we can't afford to have that person move here with their own car and drive that car around our car our roads would be clogged more than they are today we need more protected bike Lanes around the city of San Francisco but the MTA has lost all common sense we are doing projects in neighborhoods like terl in the Outer Sunset like what's happened at West Porto like Valencia with the bike planes without even thinking about the impact on small businesses on people that need need to use their vehicles to get around the city of San Francisco I think about our family we have bicycles we walk when we can to our local commercial corridors but we also have vehicles and the reason we do is because I'm raising three kids in San Francisco and they're different parts of the city with their school with their sporting events and I don't think San Francisco should make people that need to drive their cars somehow feel ashamed to do so we need to have a balanced approach inside of City Hall we need to have a balanced approach from MTA that does not exist today when I become mayor we bring that back to San Francisco gentlemen thank you very much for this very Lively debate we now will give you a chance for closing statements once again we drew the lots to decide who would go first we begin with Mr lorri well listen thank you all thank you CBS and the examiner for having us uh you know my wife is here tonight and we talk about the values uh that we want to instill in our two children and it's about kindness and it's about empathy and it's about listening something that our elected leaders simply have forgotten to do uh what we have talked about tonight is there are so many things done to community and not with Community I have a proven track record of getting big things done doing things in an Innovative way uh I built one of the largest most Innovative poverty fighting or organizations in this country uh mayor edley asked me to chair the bid to bring Super Bowl 50 here and we did that we did that successfully and now we have the NBA All-Star game coming in 2025 we do have the Super Bowl coming in 20126 we have that we have FIFA World Cup six games coming $ 1.4 billion do of economic Revenue so proud to be playing a role in that we're at a moment this city is going to rise again but it needs new leadership it needs accountable leadership and we need to break with the old and we need someone new I hope to have your vote this November supervisor peskin we've heard some pretty start differences amongst the candidates this evening I will fight to protect elderly renters from eviction my opponents will not I am a champion of affordable housing they prefer luxury housing I support economic recovery of all of our neighborhoods they just talk about downtown I have a compr comprehensive homeless strategy they keep talking about sweeps which are simply ineffective and when it comes to neighborhoods I have spent my entire career fighting for neighborhoods my opponents are interested in policies that will be ruinous for them I'm a Grassroots candidate with over 3,000 contributions from teachers nurses artists and that is exactly who I will fight for my opponents are mostly supported by billionaires and I imagine that's who they will fight for but the biggest difference between me and my opponents is our vision for the future of San Francisco I will fight for a future that is Affordable to all of us and I hope you will join me supervisor saf thank you just want to start off by saying I don't have any billionaire backers Aaron so let's just be clear on that but I want you to walk away from this debate tonight and ask yourself one central question who has the vision experience and track record to fight for all San franciscans not just the rich and as he said billionaires at this moment are literally trying to buy the mayor's office Daniel L's family has written million dooll checks an outside New York billionaire just last week wrote a check to Mayor lond and breed and as contrast and my mother's here tonight she wrote me a check for $150 and I'm so proud of that check because of public financing that gets multiplied by six and it turns into a $1,000 check I have over 2,000 Grassroots donors donating to my campaign and I'm proud of that because I fought for working in Middle Class families every day that I've worked in the city for the last 24 years of all the candidates on this stage I bring the most diverse set of experiences to this job I worked for two Mayors mayor Willie Brown mayor Gavin Nome I was a deputy department head I ran my own small business I worked for public works and I work for organized labor for almost a decade this is not an entrylevel job this is not a learn on the job opportunity you have to be ready for this job day one the stakes are too high and I come ready for this job I'm proud to be endorsed by endorsed by more union members labor organizations some of whom are here tonight than any other candidate on this stage and why because I fought for working in Middle Class families every single day and from day one I'll fight every single day that I'm in office to build a safe affordable thriving City for all San franciscans I hope you'll join me thank you and finally former interim mayor Mark frell well thank you very much and thank you for everyone tuning in this evening you know this election this mayoral election in November is going to come down to two questions are you satisfied with the leadership inside of city hall or do you believe we need to turn the page and chart a new chapter for the city of San Francisco I'm running for mayor because I believe San Francisco deserves better we need change I'm proud to have served in City Hall for seven and a half years I'm proud to have served as your mayor in 2018 and when I left office our city was in a much different much better place than it is today we grown our Police Department to record Staffing levels I cleared out the large 10 encampments on the streets of our city and our economy was completely humming but I've been gone from City Hall for six years focused on my family and I don't regret a single second of that but I'm running for office right now because we need a change of leadership and for me it's about combining 7 and a half years inside of city hall with over 20 years in the private sector in business and finance to turn our city around I believe experience matters I've been mayor before I know what that is I know how to get the job done I will bring that experience immediately competence matters yes mayor breed has been here for six years and she has an amazing personal story but after 6 years you don't get to have a plan you have a track record and this is a track record in our current mayor of failed leadership and also I believe strong Vision matters for the city of San Francisco we need a mayor who's going to lead with a road map for the residents of our city to inspire every single San Francisco resident to move our city forward my vision for the city of San Francisco is a city that is safe with clean streets a growing economy vibrant neighborhoods and once again a focus on families to to me running for mayor this year is also about what we teach our children because when you see an issue and you have something to offer you engage you fight in the arena and aside from my family the city of San Francisco is the only other thing that I'd be willing to fight for in this race Mr frell thank you very much thank you so a big round of applause for all our candidates [Music] tonight Daniel lurry a F Aaron peskin Mark Barrell thank you very much remember the election is on November 5th you have rank Choice voting first second and third so once again thank you very much for the juliia Morgan historic ballroom and their part may be complete but we are not finished here tonight so I send it right back to Juliet thank you Juliet Ryan thank you so much and to your fellow moderators Doug Sovereign of KCBS radio and Adam Shanks of the San Francisco Examiner and thank you all candidates there who are there and again mayor breed was invited to take part in this debate just last week she did resend her acceptance of our invitation in writing with that said I was going to turn to our moderators we had so much filled up in this uh two and or one and a half H hours that we don't have time for that but I must say it was succinct it was tight It was friendly and it was informative and I want to thank you all for watching our first San Francisco mayoral debate here thank you for watching the special coverage of San Francisco's debate we want to thank all of our candidates and our partners again KCBS radio and the San Francisco Examiner stay with CBS News Bay Area this election season will'll be breaking down all of the big issues leading up to the election day we'll bring you live local and national results on Election night don't forget to get your ballot in by November 5th thank you so much for joining us have a good night [Music] e