A $9.25 million Crankstart gift and $3 million in state money will pay for lighting, ambassadors, safety technology and work around Marshall Elementary, alongside more evening police, sheriff’s deputies and a 60-day CHP deployment.
For years, the brick plazas at 16th and 24th streets have been the places where San Francisco’s promises about the Mission are tested. The latest promise comes with a price tag: $12.25 million in private and state money, announced by Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Jackie Fielder of District 9 on Friday, Nov. 6, along with an immediate increase in police, sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers around the two BART stations.
The money is real. Much of how it will be spent is not yet settled. The number of new civilian ambassadors, when they will start and where they will patrol had not been determined as of the announcement, Mission Local reported, and neither had the specific “public safety technology” the gift is meant to buy.
Where the money comes from
According to the mayor’s office release, $9.25 million comes from Crankstart, the family foundation of the venture capitalist Michael Moritz, and $3 million was secured in the state budget by Assembly Budget Chair Jesse Gabriel, with help from Assemblymembers Matt Haney and Catherine Stefani.
The Crankstart money is earmarked for lighting upgrades, public safety technology and expanded ambassador coverage at the plazas and at Marshall Elementary School, near the 16th Street station. It will also pay for a dedicated Spanish-speaking ambassador at the school’s arrival and dismissal times, which the release says Marshall families asked for, and for new fencing, murals and landscaping around the campus. The state money is intended to activate the plazas, with infrastructure for vendors and community events, lighting, cleaning equipment and other safety tools.
“Moving the problem from one block to the next isn’t good enough—this community deserves concrete steps that will make a real difference,” Mr. Lurie said in the release. Ms. Fielder said her office had pressed “for over a year” for more ambassadors and plaza upgrades, and called the funding “a shared commitment between my office, the Mayor’s Office, and philanthropy to ensure equity for the Mission.”
Missy Narula, Crankstart’s chief executive, said the foundation was “clear-eyed that there are no quick fixes.”
The enforcement surge, already underway
The spending will take months. The enforcement started immediately. The Police Department is adding officers for evening operations around the plazas, along with regular narcotics operations and more nighttime vending enforcement. The Sheriff’s Office has begun a six-month nighttime deployment along Mission Street from 16th to 24th streets. And 16 CHP officers have started a 60-day deployment in the city to supplement local law enforcement.
The city is also cleaning the plazas and stations nightly, adding street outreach workers at night and paying nonprofit partners to sweep for syringes around Marshall three times a day. Lighting upgrades and expanded ambassador coverage could take a few months as the city works through grant applications and implementation, KTVU reported.
The mayor’s office frames the effort as part of a broader record on public safety, saying citywide crime fell nearly 30 percent in Mr. Lurie’s first year and that the Police Department has had its first staffing increase in years.
What is new, and what is not
The plazas are not a new priority. Over roughly 20 months, Mission Local reported, the city has tried a 90-day multi-agency strategy, a police command van parked on the plazas around the clock, weekend vendors, community ambassadors and street teams offering treatment and shelter. Six weeks before the announcement, the city launched a public dashboard tracking citations, arrests and 311 complaints at the plazas, which offers one way to measure whether the new money changes anything.
The ambassador numbers show why the details matter. Earlier this year the city laid off 14 ambassadors, citing budget constraints, according to Mission Local, including some who escorted Marshall students. The city currently contracts 12 ambassadors and two street workers, employed by the contractor Ahsing Solutions, to cover the plazas from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The mayor’s office told Mission Local the new ambassadors would be hired through outside contractors rather than as city employees, and that the grant is expected to fund them for two years. Whether the gift increases the net number of ambassadors in the corridor, or partly restores what was cut, is not yet clear.
Hours are another open question. In August, Ms. Fielder called for round-the-clock ambassadors. The city declined, saying it was not safe for them, and stepped up police patrols instead; it estimated that 24-hour coverage would raise costs from $2.2 million to nearly $8 million.
Questions without answers yet
The gift’s origins also drew attention. Ms. Fielder told Mission Local she pitched Mr. Moritz and members of the business group Partnership for San Francisco on more ambassadors, plaza programming and public art, and that safety technology did not come up. A few weeks later, Crankstart committed the money. The city has embraced police drones and Flock license-plate cameras in recent years, Mission Local noted; which tools the gift will buy, and under what rules, has not been announced.
Residents interviewed by KTVU welcomed the added patrols but worried that enforcement at the plazas would push drug dealing onto side streets, a concern Mr. Lurie’s statement addressed directly.
Several basics remain unanswered in the public record: whether the Crankstart grant flows through the city’s budget or a nonprofit intermediary, who will decide how the technology money is spent, what targets will define success, and what happens to the ambassador program after two years. The Office of Economic and Workforce Development, BART, the Police Department’s media relations unit and the Mission Economic Development Agency did not respond to questions sent Tuesday. City offices are closed Wednesday for Veterans Day.
Celia Marroquín covers San Francisco City Hall, the Board of Supervisors, city departments and the neighborhoods where their decisions land, for the Inquirer’s City Desk. More from Celia Marroquín
