Welcome to the SF Dispatch, a daily newsletter round-up to save you some time catching up on the latest headlines from billionaire funded to independent news.
🌁 Featured News
A strange move to allow city donations to a law-enforcement group, and why SF should buy apartments from a bankrupt landlord. That's The Agenda for Sept. 28-Oct. 5
48 Hills
Tim Redmond
On Monday/29, the Rules Committee will consider an item that would add Protecting San Francisco to the list of charitable organizations that city employees can support with payroll deductions, along with such groups as the Asian Pacific Fund, Bay Area Black United Fund, Community Health Charities of California, EarthShare California, Global Impact, and United Way of the Bay Area.
The privatization of public spaces could be a cause of the San Francisco condition or it could be a symptom — but it’s definitely a thing and, under Ginsburg, it accelerated. Private dollars being leveraged to build new parks is great. But those private dollars are directed where donors want. That tends to be in neighborhoods that already have their fair share of resources.
Mission Local
Joe Eskenazi
Last week, Phil Ginsburg announced he’ll leave city employment by year’s end and take a position atop the Resources Legacy Fund, directing scores of millions of dollars toward worthy endeavors.
Given the depth of his knowledge of where the bodies are buried inside San Francisco government, I asked Ginsburg what he would do to make it operate better. Pretend you’re a benevolent dictator, I said — how would you overhaul the city?
He offered a proposal with zero chances of happening soon: creating a hybrid Board of Supervisors, with some members elected by citywide vote and some voted in by district.
SF Standard
Adam Lashinsky
Ginsburg also pines for a more harmonious environment in city government. “We should all really refocus on being civil and kind to one another,” he said, specifically praising Mayor Daniel Lurie for lowering the partisan temperature and calling out a frequent nemesis, former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, for raising it.
Lurie’s changes this year aren’t the first time the city has pulled back on harm reduction, an approach pioneered in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis. In 2021, the city pulled the plug on a safe consumption site following legal concerns and complaints from neighbors and local businesses over long lines outside the facility, which was located in United Nations Plaza.
KQED
Sydney Johnson
Last spring, Lurie controversially ended public health programs that handed out clean smoking supplies to drug users on the street, and the city now requires people to participate in counseling in order to obtain any safer drug use supplies, like clean needles, from city-funded public health providers.
Franklin Liu
Against the odds, last year, this unassuming store in an East Bay suburb became the first Half Price Books in California to win a union.
Adhiti Bandlamudi
📰 Local Headlines
City Hall
How Scott Wiener is undermining affordable housing
via 48hills.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
‘Sustainability’ bond money paid for Sunset Dunes hammocks, skate park
via missionlocal.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
As longtime SF parks boss steps down, his conquests outshine his controversies
via sfstandard.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
How San Francisco’s Harm Reduction Strategies Are Changing Under Mayor Lurie
via ww2.kqed.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Politics
With a Government Shutdown Looming, Here’s How the Bay Area Could Be Affected
via ww2.kqed.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
California’s EV carpool era is coming to an end. Will it unleash traffic chaos?
via www.sfchronicle.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Public Safety
San Bruno Police Witness Driverless Waymo Make Illegal U-Turn, Can’t Issue Ticket
via sfist.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Labor
Unionizing the Strip Mall
via bayareacurrent.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Business
Snowflake wanted in on the AI party, so it signed the Bay Area’s largest lease in years
via sfstandard.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Culture
Why the Chronicle is launching a new beat focusing on the East Bay’s I-680 corridor
via www.sfchronicle.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
The ultimate guide to speaking tech bro
via sfstandard.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Tech Bro 2.0: The new Silicon Valley archetype dominating the AI age
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Where did the Fairyland dandelions go?
via www.coyotemedia.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Environment
Video: Lightning Strikes Bay Area Hundreds of Times, Also, Rain Expected Monday, Wednesday
via sfist.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Education
UC Berkeley Gives Names to the Feds, Valero’s Benicia Refinery Closing, and Robotaxis at the Airport
via ww2.kqed.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Opinion
Letters to the editor: The lack of fire safety on the West Side of town
via 48hills.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Arts and Events
Pateka: ‘Night Stairs’
via ww2.kqed.org | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Folsom Street Fair: S.F.’s kink festival has hot new item: Labubu leather harnesses for stuffies
via www.sfchronicle.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
‘Pushing the envelope’: Kinksters gather in SF for world’s largest fetish fest
via sfstandard.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
San Francisco's Castro Theatre to reopen in early 2026 with different look
via www.cbsnews.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Sports
Oakland Ballers Win First Baseball Championship, Parade to Be Held Next Sunday
via sfist.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link
Instant reactions: 49ers drop first game of the season with loss to Jaguars
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Bob Melvin’s future unsettled as Giants finish season .500
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Kawakami: When Brock Purdy stumbles, the 49ers lose — it’s undeniable now
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Miscellaneous
What we know about the suspect in the deadly Michigan church shooting
via www.nbcbayarea.com | Push to Kindle | Source Link