Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Matt Haney announced on Tuesday that they will put their plan for a universal mental health care measure on the March 2020 ballot — despite Mayor London Breed pulling out of negotiations last week. The revised measure, dubbed Mental Health SF, narrows the eligibility pool and creates a clinically trained street crisis team to provide continual services to people experiencing a mental health crisis. Breed said she disagrees with the measure’s scope of eligibility, construction of a new mental health drop-in facility and use of the ballot process.
San Francisco Examiner | Mission Local

Department of Public Health Director Grant Colfax said his staff will have a plan to fix chronic understaffing and compliance issues at the long-term care unit for adults with severe mental illness in the next two weeks.
San Francisco Examiner

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice to the San Francisco Public Utility Commission over violations of the Clean Water Act. The letter, the latest salvo between the Trump Administration and Democratic California, claims San Francisco’s wastewater treatment and sewer system has discharged raw and partially treated sewage into the ocean, bay and sometimes streets and homes. “The letter alleged that some discharges contained heavy metals and bacteria and said the city hasn’t kept up proper cleaning, inspection and repair schedules for the system nor properly reported or issued public warnings for sewage diversions,” the Associated Press reported. Mayor London Breed said the letter contains “mischaracterizations, inaccuracies and falsehoods.” SFGate

"There's needles and drugs all over the street. There's tents, there's people that are dying in squalor — in the best location, in San Francisco. It used to be a great city. Now you have to see what's happened to San Francisco,” President Donald Trump said on Wednesday. SFGate

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency recently launched “green zones,” stretches of roadway where buses will run on battery to eliminate diesel fumes in neighborhoods with high concentrations of low-income households and people of color. “It’s like a ladder — we’re making incremental progress toward this bigger goal,” SFMTA’s Transit Director Julie Kirschbaum said.
San Francisco Chronicle

The SFMTA will dedicate Cable Car No. 17 to Reynaldo Morante, an operator who died of a brain injury months after he was struck by a drunk motorcyclist while on the job in 2015. San Francisco Examiner

Mayor London Breed and City Attorney Dennis Herrera issued an advisory in September clarifying that the Board of Supervisors resolution labeling the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization” and calling on city agencies to assess possible ties between its contractors and the organization was nonbinding, and that no action should be taken. The NRA, which took City Hall to court over the resolution, took the letter as a victory.
New York Times | NBC

San Francisco International Airport employees held a demonstration for better working conditions Wednesday as their union negotiated a new contract. “Many of the workers are organized with a union contract, but the [rally is meant] to encourage the big airlines like United and Southwest to use responsible contractors across the board,” a union organizer said. San Francisco Examiner

Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee requested that the Controller’s Office examine the costs of replacing the 160 police officers stationed at SFO with sheriff’s deputies to put those officers back on patrol in San Francisco.
San Francisco Examiner

Mayor London Breed and city officials hailed a court decision that found a Philadelphia nonprofit’s plan to open a safe injection site does not violate federal law, potentially paving the way for San Francisco to open its own site for controlled and monitored drug use. “Safe injection sites save lives,” the mayor said. “They help prevent overdoses, reduce public drug use, prevent the spread of disease, and connect people to medical care that can help treat their addiction.” San Francisco Examiner

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law on Wednesday a measure to allow California cities to create public banks. San Francisco is expected to be one of the first municipalities to attempt to open its own bank. Sacramento Bee