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Oct. 21, 2023 - Epoch Times
58:15
Former Mayor Explains How San Francisco was mismanaged | Frank Jordan
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San Francisco is always called the can-do city, the city that knows how.
When I would travel as mayor to different parts of the world, you would be treated like you were the president of a country.
You were the mayor at the good times.
Did you ever think you would become like this?
$14 billion, $800 million budget for a city that's only 49 square miles in size.
This is unheard of.
When you look at our homeless issue, we've spent in the last seven years $2,800,000,000.
But when you break that down, nobody seems to know, is it 7,000 homeless or is it 17,000 homeless?
The Hoover Institute came up with a study showing that it looks like we're spending about $70,000 per homeless person in San Francisco per year.
Wow.
That's outrageous.
How did that happen?
My guest today is Frank Jordan.
He used to be the mayor of San Francisco.
Today he's going to discuss why the city is facing the challenges it is facing now and what's going to take to turn things around.
It is out of control with the free drugs and all the fentanyl that's killing people.
It's the city of St.
Francis and we thrive on the fact that we welcome all diversity, all nationalities and lifestyles, but we've lost something in overdoing it to the point that everybody sees You're doing so much, why shouldn't I go there?
We've had guests from San Francisco, they dress better than anybody else in California, and they're more eloquent in talking.
Are they getting worried about the situation?
So I think that a reality check is coming now.
I'm Siyama Karami.
Welcome to California Insider.
Frank, it's great to have you on.
Welcome.
Oh, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here.
We're very excited to have you on.
You're a former mayor of San Francisco.
And what's going on with San Francisco?
Can you tell us what's happening?
Well, I look back, you know, I'm 88 now.
I'm an elderly citizen, I guess, of San Francisco.
I've been through a lot of the wars over the years.
I've seen the ups and downs, the good years, the bad years, but right now we're not having a good time.
I looked at San Francisco as a native son, everybody's favorite city, it was always called, and the can-do city, the city that knows how.
Now all of a sudden I'm looking at books that are coming out called The Left Coast City and San Francisco and it hurts.
You can feel the changing because internationally we were everybody's favorite city and when I would travel as mayor of San Francisco to different parts of the world you would be treated like you were the president of a country because San Francisco was a magic name and The Golden Gate Bridge and the cable cars and the beautiful weather and the diversity of its people and everything going for it.
Now we see that when you're looking at recent polls are saying is that 70% of the people of San Francisco are saying the city is now going in the wrong direction.
And 66% are saying that the mayor, they're dissatisfied with the mayor's approach and leadership and some of the reasons why we can get into.
One is that we now have a $14,800,000,000 budget for a city that's only 49 square miles in size.
It's a huge budget, right?
A huge budget.
But that means we have 34,000 city employees.
And if you add the temporaries and the ones that are just there as a...
Contractor.
Contracting out.
You're up to 39,000 employees.
That, to me, is outrageous.
City Hall has become a hiring hall in some way, if it makes no sense, because the money seems to be coming in, but it's going out just as fast as it's going.
Because we had great technology, we had hospitality industry, the banking industry, the insurance industry.
We had great talent all around us in the business community who were doing very well, including philanthropy.
But now they're seeing what's happening with the taxes are going up, gross sales tax is going to large businesses of 0.5% that would be an extra $300 million going into the conference of city government just to look at the homeless issues.
Well, now that's another problem because when you look at our homeless issue, we've spent in the last seven years $2,800,000,000.
Now that's in seven years, and we're averaging now $700,000,000 a year just on homeless.
But when you break that down, nobody seems to know, is it 7,000 homeless or is it 17,000 homeless?
But the Hoover Institute came up with a study showing that it looks like we're spending about $70,000 per homeless person in San Francisco per year.
That's outrageous.
How did that happen?
We have 59 different non-profits that are working with our housing and homeless organization in the city, and they're giving 70 different hotels they're working with to give rent-free to homeless people in the streets of San Francisco.
But the trouble is these homeless people, there are 70% of them either have mental health, alcohol or drug related problems.
They can't take care of themselves.
You put them in a hotel and they're fighting with people in the hallways, they're lighting fires, they're disrupting.
We now have of those 70 hotels, we have approximately 30 that are suing the city because of all the damage that's been done in the hotels.
Not only that, but when you're talking about all this money, where is the long-term, positive, measurable outcomes with the money we're spending?
Any business would tell you that when you start putting large amounts of money into a program, you want to take a look at where you're going, what direction, and make course corrections along the way.
We seem to be just perpetrating the homeless program and perpetuating it rather than solving it.
We have hired people, we've attempted to study it, evaluate it, work on it, but somehow nothing to resolve it.
And the public are getting very fed up with it.
We're seeing out-of-control drugs because now with the fentanyl disaster that's happening in San Francisco and other cities, but particularly San Francisco, you're seeing now on the national scene, We're averaging 700 overdose deaths a year in San Francisco just on opium and fentanyl.
That's two deaths every single day.
I mean, that's out of control.
That's more deaths than we're having during the whole coronavirus epidemic.
Well, the public is looking at this too and saying that, what are we doing to offset it?
Do we really need all this?
59 nonprofits working with 70 hotels and working with the homeless issues in terms of outreach and housing.
Is anybody promised a permanent home?
Nobody.
When you come to our city or any city, you have to pay for a house normally and you have to work hard to do so.
But in San Francisco, we will always be compassionate.
We will be a sensitive and a caring city.
It's the city of St.
Francis, and that's part of what we appreciate.
We thrive on the fact that we welcome all diversity, all nationalities and lifestyles.
Religions.
But we've lost something in overdoing it to the point that everybody sees you're doing so much, why shouldn't I go there?
I can get free drugs, I can get free hotel rooms, I can get a tent.
If somebody wants to give me a tent, I can sleep on the street and I don't seem to have too much hassle at all of just living in the great outdoors.
When you have people that are 70% of them with alcohol, drugs, and mental health problems, just because of their illness and their sickness, they don't want help.
They'd rather be on the street, many of them.
So you have to find ways to regulate them.
I believe there should be a level of conduct that nobody ever goes below.
Whether you're a bank executive or whether you're a homeless person.
You know, the quality of life in the city is important.
Public safety is important.
If you do something to endanger others or...
If you endanger yourself and everybody around you, you have to start mandating health care.
And that's where I think the courts have to come into play here.
We do have a system in San Francisco where some of it is being regulated but nowhere near where it should be.
Right now we have involuntary hospitalization for 72 hours for anybody who has a mental health problem or is really causing a danger to anybody in the streets of San Francisco.
But they stabilize them with drugs and then 72 hours later they're back on the street.
So it's a revolving door and no solution in place.
We need, to me, with all this money that's being spent on the homeless issues and social services, let's redirect it.
And also this hiring hall of City Hall, let's redirect it to where we think we can solve the problem.
Number one would be, let's look at re-establishing more mental health wards in San Francisco.
Let's look at group housing, not individual hotels where somebody can go in and destroy or damage it with no supervision, no controls whatsoever.
There has to be, and we have a sheriff's department that has a farm that does Work outdoors and open just in San Bruno, which is adjacent to the city of San Francisco.
Maybe some of those who need detoxification and alcoholic problems can work in the great outdoors and in a better environment that's healthier to them, but also not to have them on the streets and doorways of San Francisco.
We have to be more creative with what we're doing, but we have to look at what are we doing with the money we have now.
Do you think they're looking at it?
No, the mayor just recently said that now, even though we're spending $700 million a year, plus that $2,800,000 we've already spent in the last seven years, she said she needs another $1 billion in the next two years to continue to work on the homeless issues.
That, to me, is the wrong approach.
Let's look at reevaluating what we've done with the money we already have and redirect it where we think we can do much better good.
Those long-term, positive, measurable outcomes are not there.
They have to be.
And when you look at those as you go down two or three months down the line, you make course corrections so that the money will be spent in the right way.
To me, it's like a bottomless pit.
We are just perpetuating the homeless program.
We're not solving it.
And when you think about the mayor saying we need another billion dollars in the next two years, what does that say to every other homeless person around the country?
Why not come to San Francisco?
Look, I can get free drugs, free alcohol, I can get a free hotel room.
I mean, why wouldn't I come to San Francisco?
That's the place to be, and there's no hassle.
Not only that, but they hear we have 500 police officers short now.
We normally have 2,000 police officers.
We're down to 1,500 today.
And at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, The protest and defunding the police.
Our mayor, London Breed, was one of the first mayors to jump in and say, I'm going to defund the police $120 million, police and sheriff's department, take that money away, and it's going to be for past transgressions in the African-American community and how they've been treated with housing and Health care and education and criminal justice as if the police department is the cause of all these problems and social ills.
But then she added two more things.
She wants more evaluation and supervision over the more accountability for the police department.
And to overcome bias in the police department, which gave all the police officers a feeling, wow, she's tarring the whole department with the same brush here.
If there's individuals who are causing problems, we deal with them.
But you don't say the whole department needs to have racist treatment training.
We have to look at...
Closer supervision of them because the whole department, they're feeling that they're not being trusted and that the politics, the game playing is starting to be used against them.
They don't feel like they're targets.
And we interviewed some police officers.
They told us that they have to always worry about these rules and regulations and paperwork.
So they feel that they were first defunded, then they were demeaned, and then they're demoralized.
And so what happens is We had, in the last three years, 500 police officers left the police department and the 173 of them were outright resignations.
So it wasn't that their terms was up, they just did not like the way they were being treated and the political posturing that goes on.
So with all this happening, we're seeing 6,000 crimes and auto break-ins and retail theft in San Francisco, and all of a sudden the crime rates are starting to become more difficult.
So the mayor recently got the message, and now she's saying, oh, I need 220 more police officers in the next two years in the budget so we can help to shore up the police department.
And the first class that came in were 18 and the second class only 12.
Because they feel, why would we come in when we don't get the respect we need or that we're targets or that somehow there's political posturing that doesn't make me feel like I want to go to work and feel like I'm accomplishing something.
And that their families are worried.
And it's a very difficult job too, right?
When police officers have to, to me, they have to be a cut above the average person.
They have to have a way of communicating with people to defuse rather than escalate issues.
They have to have good common sense and judgment.
They also, to me, I always feel that the police officers now say that when we go out on the street, we're second-guessed on every tough decision we make.
And instead of being innocent until proven guilty, we're guilty until we prove our innocence.
They feel it's backwards now.
It's not going working the way it should.
And that why would we put ourselves in this position?
Because now our families are worried about us, children.
Are we going to lose our home in a lawsuit because of some split-second decision we made out on the street under stressful situations?
So the politicians and as well as the public have to look at the police in a different light here.
Yes, when there's indiscretions, they have to be dealt with on an individual basis, but you don't condemn a whole department or a whole nation of police because of what the actions of one or two or ten people that make around the country.
I use a good example.
Jesus Christ had selected twelve apostles and even one of them went sour.
When you look at that, out of twelve people, you don't condemn the other eleven.
You work with the other eleven and you deal with the one who is a transgressor.
Well, if you have two thousand police officers, you're going to find a few percentages that do not do the right thing and then you deal with it.
You call them into account and you fire them and if necessary they're put in jail if there's something really wrong with the situation.
But you don't put the whole department in jeopardy in terms of their prestige, their tradition, and the fact that they feel that they're accomplishing something positive.
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Now let's go back to the interview.
Frank, you mentioned these non-profits, and a lot of people are becoming frustrated that there's not a lot of accountability.
Can you tell us how they work?
I can give you one example here, a classic example.
During the COVID epidemic, we had high-tech companies that donated $30 million to the city in the form of credit gift cards.
And those gift cards are given to our Office of Homeless and Housing, who then gave them to 59 different non-profits around the city, these $30 million in cards.
It was to go to people who were disabled or shut-ins, homeless.
They were given out indiscriminately all over the city, and now the assessor is looking to see, well, let's see the checks and balances.
Where did this money go?
There is no accountability.
No one knows what happened to all those $30 million of gift cards that were doled out around the city.
Were they given to the right people?
Were some kept?
Were they given to friends?
Who knows where that money went and no accountability.
That's a good example of one of the problems with the city government without checks and balances.
Long-term measurable outcomes I keep mentioning.
Another one is we have the Department of Public Works now in the last few years.
The head of it and a number of others down the line in the chain of command have all been arrested for graft, theft and corruption.
And it wasn't the city that uncovered all this.
You'd think that with all the people we have investigating it to our district attorney's office and city attorney that somebody would have uncovered this.
It was the FBI who investigated it and uncovered it all to bring these people to justice.
That to me shows that what's happened in City Hall.
Where is the leadership that will uncover millions of dollars in theft and graft and corruption?
That needs to be done internally first, not to have outside help.
Now the third one would be with the out of control drugs.
You see the governor just decided a couple of weeks ago, he agrees it is out of control in San Francisco with free drugs and all the fentanyl that's killing people.
So he's asked for the California Highway Patrol and the National Guard to help with San Francisco.
This is unheard of.
Where is the leadership in City Hall?
I'm watching them.
We're starting to see more socialism in the city, too.
And I do think the sanctuary city has to be corrected.
My family is from Ireland, both my parents.
I'm a first-generation Irish-American.
But yet, the opportunities in America are there.
I can become, in one generation, I can become a police chief, I become a mayor of a city.
So can anybody else if you just apply yourself and do what you need to do.
But at the same time, You don't want to come in and say, I'm an immigrant, I'm undocumented, I'm illegal, now what can you do for me?
Where's the work ethic?
Where's the educational incentive?
Where's the family values?
All the things that we feel that make you proud to be an American.
We're missing some of that right now.
There was a poll recently that shows that 60% of young people now wouldn't even want to be drafted if they thought they were going to be going into, if the United States was attacked by an outside country.
Sixty percent would not want to.
That means that you can just give your country away just by walking away.
It doesn't make sense.
Where's the patriotism?
Where's the sense of pride in your country?
It's scary.
Now, do you think this situation San Francisco is in, did you ever think it would become like this?
No, I didn't.
And over the last seven or eight years, I think there's a prevailing sense that we are a caring, sensitive, compassionate city, no question about it, and we always will be.
But there is a limit to what you can do in terms of expenses, and so you have to ration them in a way that makes sense to the taxpayers of San Francisco as well, and to the business community.
Right now we're driving the business community out of San Francisco because they see not only the coronavirus pandemic that occurred where everything was shut down, but then they see now with the out-of-control drugs, free drug everywhere in the city, and you also see it with the retail theft where Walgreens drugstores and Target and Safeway are all having all kinds of shoplifting and theft.
Our civic center in terms of Union Square, our shopping business area, many 10, 12, 14 people come in and just break glass windows and take jewelry or expensive purses and clothing and run out the door and disappear.
We have a change in the criminal justice system now where there's a Proposition 47.
That says that any misdemeanor that was normally $400 is now all the way up to $950.
And so that means that a person could go in and steal up to $950 and it'd still be a minor crime, not a major one.
And so they're starting to see, well, why not just go in and help ourselves because we're not going to see any repercussions.
We're having early release in the jails.
As you know, we had a district attorney who was recalled in San Francisco in just the last couple of years.
Chester Bodine was his name, and he was early release of prisoners in the jails.
He also was looking at recidivism as just a constant revolving door.
Nobody was receiving any kind of sentences or penalties in San Francisco, frustrating the police as well as the citizens.
And 60% of the people voted him out on a recall.
But even then, Mayor London Bree at that time stayed neutral.
He didn't say one way or the other whether he was good or bad.
Look at the public.
The public says that we want change.
We want to see some public safety quality of life change in San Francisco, and we can't do it with this district attorney.
But to stay neutral, that to me was kind of a negative.
That's the Pontius Pilate where you wash your hands of something and let somebody else deal with it.
That's not leadership.
You have to make a decision and try to find a way to make some changes or say that you don't believe this is the right way to support the public and not just let it play out on its own.
Numerous things like this that the city needs to look at that I think need corrections.
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Now let's go back to the interview.
The city, as you mentioned, the businesses are leaving, they're not doing well, and this is going to cause a big problem with taxes, right?
The tax base that the city is collecting.
That's where we have to, number one, you have to be supportive of business.
My philosophy when I was the mayor of San Francisco, I was pro-business, and it's a very simple formula.
When you support business, you expand the business space, you create more jobs, you diversify the economy, and then you don't have to raise taxes.
It's an easy, simple formula, but when you start looking at a bureaucracy of different roadblocks along the way to get permitting processes, Delays, years of delay sometimes to create a business.
And then you see the tax base going higher and higher.
And when you look around you see the quality of life that's starting to dissipate with the drugs, the alcohol, the mental health and the homeless issues.
Why would you want to go back down to the downtown area and start to re-establish a business after the COVID virus problem?
They're saying, let's turn it around and make the city better before we even think about coming here.
But you have to show incentives to the business community.
Maybe tax this whole idea of taxing large businesses to take care of the homeless program when you see that the program is a bottomless pit.
That's not going to satisfy a business committee that wants to come to San Francisco.
What are the incentives that will make me want to come back to San Francisco or to start a new business?
I would give them tax breaks, maybe the first, second, and third year when you establish a new business.
The mayor now has a program where $30 million is being allocated to just minority and women community in San Francisco to start up a business.
But what I mentioned, we have every culture, nationality, lifestyle, religion in San Francisco.
The African American community is 5.6% of the city.
The Asian community is 37% of the city.
The Hispanic community is 16%.
Native Americans are even higher than African Americans.
So why would we look at just looking at the African American side?
This diversity, when you start to create opportunities and incentives for the business community, let's do it for the diversity of the community, not just one nationality.
Because that causes splits and it causes friction.
And when you want to see coming together, you want to see unity, and that's what makes a city work better instead of divisiveness.
And that's what we're doing right now.
You have the Hispanics, the Asians, and you have the Caucasians that have minorities and Poor and low-income people too, they need the opportunities to pursue whatever benefits that San Francisco can offer as well.
So don't divide and conquer.
Try to find it e pluribus unum, out of the many, one.
I love the breakdown of the nationalities.
And I've also noticed that the Asian community, it was a good education for me, as we see all the homeless people, The Americans have a sense that you have the beauty of youth and vitality, but then when you become elderly, you're just kind of put off on a shelf somewhere.
You don't count anymore.
All that experience and wisdom doesn't count.
The Asian community sees that you are a A gem to be treated just as a special person.
Your education, the talent that you have can be passed on to younger generations.
And the family associations, they take care of each other.
You don't see Asians on the street homeless because it would be an insult to your ancestry to do that, to leave one of your, the Lee family, the Wong family, out on the street to the devices of the world.
It would be insulting your ancestors.
How do we help them and take them in?
We'll work with them.
We don't have that dynamic in America.
Frank, how did we get here?
This is puzzling.
So you were the mayor, you have this philosophy, and you're a Democrat, right?
I'm starting to become more and more of an independent lately, because I see that the Democrats, to me, are...
I love the philosophy of John F. Kennedy, where it's not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.
Now it's just the opposite.
What is my country, or what is my state, or what is my city going to do for me?
Well, let's turn that around.
Where is the work ethic, the hard work ethic, the educational incentive, the drive to be successful on your own?
That's a sense of accomplishment when you do that.
But that comes from parents, it comes from school, education, it comes from your ministers, it comes from your friends, a lot of different ways.
We're finding that the giveaway society is more beneficial to the younger generation than the hard work ethic.
And so now, this philosophy, has it come to the San Francisco leadership?
Is this what you're seeing?
I am seeing that, what can you do for me, kind of situation, yes.
And I see it more in the younger generation now.
They're more free and open about things, too.
In our day, you'd be looking for a permanent position as a career path.
Younger generation today like to pick and choose and five years of trying this philosophy and, oh, let's try a little different direction than another five years over there.
They're not looking at security as much as opportunities of interesting subjects, issues, career paths, and none of it is permanent.
It's more And movement.
We see more movement.
You might be in San Francisco and then all of a sudden you want to go to Arizona.
Then you want to go to Hawaii.
There's not that sense of neighborhoods that you used to have before or even religious organizations where you have social groups or you even have Kiwanis clubs or different organizations that come together, religious organizations that will meet and look at the neighborhood problems and solve issues on their own.
See, I think we have to go back to that even from a police standpoint.
They can't do it today because there are 500 police officers short and that's going to be a real problem for the next four or five years in order to recoup that loss.
But in my day, I had a program called SAFE, Safety Awareness for Everyone.
I would have police officers respond to neighborhood block clubs even when there was no emergency.
We know there's going to be a meeting between 7 and 9 o'clock in the neighborhood.
You respond as a police officer and say, I'm Officer Tim Brown and this is Officer Mary Smith, and we would be the ones to respond to your neighborhood if we had a crisis tonight.
And this, based on our experience, is what we see happening crime-related in your community.
Now you're opening up communications.
You're also talking to people so to make them more aware of the kinds of crimes that are happening.
We see burglaries that happen maybe between 10 o'clock at daytime and to 3 in the afternoon.
Neighbors before would see a moving van and they just assume somebody is leaving the neighborhood, but they're watching all day long somebody moving furniture into a van.
And they don't even think about it as a crime taking place right in front of their eyes, unless a police officer would say, we've seen five or six burglaries like this in your neighborhood, so now you have something to look for so you can prevent and cooperate and work with us to do this.
And I had 3,000 of those neighborhood block clubs going with citizens involvement.
It was wonderfully done at that time.
And we had a senior citizen outreach program, too.
That would take seniors to doctor's appointments or to shopping excursions where they felt safe.
They wouldn't get purse snatchings.
Right now we have the Asian community in San Francisco that seems to be a target to particularly the elderly and street crimes.
They're being assaulted on the street and taking their wallets and their jewelry and their purses.
And so, I would have police officers dressed up in elderly clothes, male or female, and we'd have backup with them working on radios so that they could, you would warn the person as you're walking down the street, there's two people about to approach you, be careful, and just as they start to attack, then the others can grab them and take them.
Then the word got out, well, is that person a police officer or an elderly person?
So it was a preventative measure.
You have to start thinking creatively to do things like this now rather than just the way it is now with the shortage.
Response time is now something like 12 to 15 minutes for an emergency, where in my time it would be two and a half to three minutes because you had the staffing to do it.
And that would prevent things from getting more serious if we get on the scene quick.
That's the kind of thing that I kind of look at as important, the response time.
Because the minority community of San Francisco has been victimized probably more than most, and so they need the police, they want the police.
And I think you're starting to see a ground swell around the country, even a backlash to this defunding the police for that very reason.
They realize that this thin blue line we call the police department, that's the only thing standing between public safety and anarchy.
And if they don't have that thin blue line, and the way it's going now, it's not even a line.
It's starting out to be a shadow because every department is underfunded and short personnel.
The next thing I'm worried about is, will the politicians panic and start to look to recoup these losses of police officers by lowering the standards to bring people into the department?
That are not qualified to be good.
Yeah, they're not qualified.
And then they're going to cause problems.
And then I'm talking about that fast, quick thinking that you're in split-second decisions that actually made on the street.
How do you deal with communicating with people to defuse other than escalate?
Those are things that have to be worked out.
I'm looking at a program right now in San Francisco with the president of the University of San Francisco who would like to partner with the city to upgrade the police department.
Let's start two-year and four-year classes in human Communication and how do you deal with race issues and how do you deal with diversity and all the different hate crimes and things that come up in a major city to get young people prepared more to get into a profession like police work.
Let's upgrade it, not downgrade it.
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Everyday people like you tell their stories about why they have to move out of the state even though they don't want to.
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Together, we get to the root cause of this exodus.
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Now Frank, when you're saying this, to me it feels like there might be a disconnect between, is there a disconnect between politicians and the people that are actually providing the service, like the police officers and the people that have been doing that work?
Is there a disconnect between what politicians say and do versus what's happening on the ground?
Well, you see, politicians many times look to the next election rather than to the next generation.
That's one of the problems, too.
And they're always looking for the next spot.
Police are always caught in the middle, and they're always controversial.
Whenever something unusual comes up, then they're brought before the city council or the board of supervisors to explain what happened.
But it's grandstanding sometimes on the political side.
It's giving them notoriety, and I'm trying to find out why the police did this or that.
What I would do, in my day we had 200 demonstrations a year in the police department, and some of them were 5,000 people and some would be 200.
Some were very peaceful and some were very violent.
And so I remember in some of the violent ones where the Board of Supervisors would then call me as police chief up to the Board of Supervisors and they'd have a public hearing.
And they'd have all these people who were demonstrating, yelling and screaming and telling how bad the police were.
They used their batons.
The forces to move down the street.
They made us feel uncomfortable and some of us were hurt.
And I let them all talk for hours and then I would be the last speaker.
And the first thing I would do is not yell or scream or swear like I heard some of the others do.
Calm methodically explained what happened from the police point of view.
Here's a jumpsuit from a police tactical officer that has paint thrown all over it or has urine thrown on it.
Here's a shield that they had from a tactical helmet and it was broken with a dowel that somebody hit the police officer in the face and cracked the shield right now.
I said, you're not hearing that from the people who just spoke here.
There are two sides to every story.
We also have bullhorns and we give you 15 minutes to disperse before we do any kind of movement.
We give you opportunities to leave the scene before we have to then have an order to move and clear the street to protect maybe a president or a dignitary who's coming out of a hotel that's in a controversial time over a subject that some particular group is unhappy about.
So it always puts the police in a difficult situation.
But it can be political posturing too because it gets in the news and it's a highlight for this supervisor or that mayor to say that they're talking to the police, they're dressing them down, they're making them look good but not the police.
So in many ways there has to be better communication there too.
And do you think that the politicians that are now involved more in the city, are they more about themselves?
No, I think what it is is that there's too much money coming into San Francisco that is not being spent in the right way.
When I see 34,000 people in city government, I think they really need to look at all of those 34,000 now and say, Which ones are essential and emergency services and which ones are just added to the payroll that we really don't need?
We could redirect the money in another way to say to work on the homeless program or social services.
When I see $14.8 billion going out plus what the mayor has done this year.
She had an $800 million deficit last year and now she's mortgaged the future.
She's gambling on the future right now to balance the budget.
It's balanced, but on the reality that maybe the money will come in this coming year and maybe it will not, so they could have a deficit again because they're not sure.
They don't have a revenue surplus sitting there.
It's always gambling on you are going to get one in the future.
That has to change.
They have to look at how much money is coming in and also the fact that there's less and less of a tax base because of what the environment in the city at the present time is.
So you can't spend money that you don't have.
So how do you now redirect that?
So I would look at it as maybe the hiring freeze and the evaluation of existing jobs and start to eliminate them through attrition.
And then with that money that you do save, Now, let's look at the homeless program and say, do we need another mental health ward at the Sinian County Hospital?
Do we need more nurses and medical technicians to help them around the clock?
Not put them in a hotel room where there's no supervision and they're going to light a fire in the building or they're going to assault somebody in the hallway.
How do you redirect it?
Let's look at group homes where there's supervision around the clock 24 hours a day.
Those people are making a positive difference and you can see when you say measurable results, it's there.
But the way it is now, that's just anybody who comes into the city, they say they're from San Francisco, well that's good enough.
Then we'll just put them in a hotel room, we'll give them whatever services, we'll even give them free drugs, we'll give them a free hotel room, we'll give them a free education.
And now they're even talking about maybe even people who are undocumented immigrants to vote in San Francisco.
Who knows where this is all going to go?
And I think another part of that I might bring up is we are a sanctuary city.
And in my time, we had a good reason for being a sanctuary city.
As police chief, I supported it because I saw that many undocumented immigrants were being attacked.
Maybe they're assaulted.
Maybe they've been injured.
A woman had been raped and she's afraid to go to the police because she's an undocumented immigrant.
So who does she go to?
A person who then gets a job and says, I'm going to give you $25 an hour, you're going to work me for a month.
And the month is done and they only give him $10 an hour.
Who is he going to go to?
He's an undocumented immigrant, so he's afraid to go to the police because he'd be deported.
So there were very good reasons for having a sanctuary city at first.
Now, all of a sudden, you have open borders all over Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and the undocumented immigrants are coming in, and there's no accountability for them.
But at the same time, it's also, once they do come, you have to clothe them, feed them, house them, take care of them.
And so, that's where a lot of this expense is coming into right now, too.
Cities that are sanctuary cities.
I do think that we have to start looking at the federal, state, and local level to straighten this out.
We cannot be all things to all people.
And San Francisco, as I say, is more generous than most, but is to a fault.
We cannot keep doing this.
The taxpayers see a city that will go bankrupt the direction we're heading.
Let's redirect the money and put it in a way where we can see that we're making a difference and making a dent in it and not just expanding the program because with these billions of dollars, we don't see the results.
It's not there.
Frank, you were the mayor and you know how the cities run.
You were the mayor at the good times.
How does all this make you feel?
It hurts.
I'm a native son, as I say, and I'm very proud of San Francisco and all the things.
We are free thinkers.
We have great people from all over the world.
Come here to our city.
We have great universities in the area.
We have natural beauty.
We have everything.
It's a paradise, but we have to take care of it in the right way.
And I love the diversity.
I think, as I say, we are a mini United Nations all to ourselves with the religious backgrounds, the cultures, the lifestyles.
And we have to live and work together in a 49-mile confined square area.
And so we're proving it can be done as long as we treat everybody fairly and equally.
But it's divisions that we see that are causing the problems, and it's an unequal distribution of funds in certain ways that is just not making people feel comfortable.
There's a number of things that can be done, but it has to be communication.
There is a groundswell in San Francisco right now of people who are starting to say enough is enough.
We're not happy with what we see.
As I mentioned, 70% say that the city is moving in the wrong direction.
They're looking for change at City Hall, too, because 66% say the mayor is not doing the job that they expected her to do.
And you're starting to see people line up now to run against her next year.
And I think that's going to happen, there's no question about it, because I don't see right now in the immediate future changes that are going to Have the city become what it was before in terms of more stable and balancing budgets and having a homeless program in a drug-free city.
There's more tough decisions have to be made in order to have this happen.
They're going to have to have another person who believes in maybe tough love is the word to use here.
I think the courts have a big role to play here and the public will back it.
I think that when somebody who is, and as I say, 70% of them that are mental incapacities or drug related where they don't know what they're doing, you have to mandate health care to them.
Force them into situations where freedom of the individual is not as important as freedom of the whole people around them, too.
They're a danger to themselves and to everybody else, so you have to force them in to get help.
And that means maybe three months into a medical facility or maybe six months, whatever it might be.
So the money has to be channeled where it does the most good, not hire more people to evaluate, study, and monitor it.
It's a losing, losing battle at the present time.
Other, I think, people who are business-oriented or who have seen the city as long as I have and have loved it will come forward and make those kinds of comments at election time and to see who surfaces, who run against this mayor and the board of supervisors.
We need more moderation, we need more of the balance in the city government, and we need someone who can balance a budget.
And be a good communicator with all diversity of the city, not just certain factions of it.
Now, Frank, when we cover San Francisco, some people have no sympathy for San Francisco.
They say, oh, they voted for it.
And are average San Franciscans really happy with what they see on the streets?
No, I think that's why the beauty of elections are every four years.
Because you think you have, somebody makes promises.
And I've heard politicians tell me, even those who ran against me, you know, you can promise anything you want when you're running for government and running for an office.
But then once you're elected, you're in.
You don't have to do it.
I say, well, that's unethical.
No, no, you don't understand, Frank.
That's not unethical.
That's politics.
Well, that's not me.
You have to look at...
To me, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard than just a victory at the polls.
You're raising your right hand to swear that you're going to serve the public.
You're going to look at the job that you have and take it as a very serious responsibility and deal with it accordingly.
But we have too many people that have come into an office and they're How do I get myself notoriety so that I can move to the next station in the position?
Go on from a supervisor to a mayor to a assemblyman to a senator to a governor.
You're looking at hopscotching along the line rather than...
You're only hired to do a job.
Thomas Jefferson had a great line.
He said that anyone who wants to become a public servant and run for public office, don't elect them.
You, the public, look around and see who really represents you in the best way.
That really seriously wants to be a healer and somebody who can coalesce people working together.
Elect them, but only give them a one seven-year term.
That way they don't have to worry about re-elections and special interests and raising money, and that they can work for the best they can, as hard as they can, for the community, public service, and then go back to what you normally did before you were elected into this office.
That way you eliminate a lot of these games that we see happening in politics today.
Great thought, but there's so much money in politics, it'll never happen, unfortunately.
It's a pipe dream that makes sense, but it's not going to happen.
Because even think about at election time, all the money that's spent, all the people who are hired to go out and But then it's in the news media, radio, television, newspapers, all the money that comes in, the special interest groups, the lobbyists, they all see how do I get my oar into the water here to make sure that they understand where I'm coming from, I want to get my piece of the action.
And so that's re-election time, that's what you do.
You have unions that'll come to you and have their union contracts to do the year that you're running for re-election so that they can now, oh, I could put some pressure on the mayor to do that.
I had the muni unions tell me we had never gone against an incumbent mayor.
And I said, well, it looks like I'm going to be the first one because you want a pay raise, but you have some work rules here that don't make any sense to me at all that previous mayors have given to you in that last year of their time when they wanted your endorsement.
Well, I want your endorsement, but I cannot give you a pay raise unless you give me back some of those outrageous work rules that you're doing.
An example would be a person could be driving a bus and decide they don't want to come to work.
And 16 times a year they could just stay home and not even call their supervisor and tell them they're not coming to work.
And so you're waiting for a bus and it normally comes every 15 minutes.
Now it's going to be at every half hour and you don't even know why or what happened.
Or another one would be the bus breaks down and you'd go sit at the car barn while your bus is being repaired when somebody else who didn't come to work, well let's move you over and take that bus line.
Oh no, you'd have to leave that person waiting there reading the newspaper waiting for the bus and you hire somebody else on overtime to take that other bus.
I'll say, I'll take those work rules back and I'll give you the pay rate.
Can't do it.
So they, for the first time, they went against me because they said, we want that.
But the next one, the one who won the election, came in and said, I'll give you both.
But it turned out after the election that there was a number of people who heard what I was trying to do.
And they said, we'll start what we call a citizens action movement called Rescue Muni.
And they did.
And they forced the mayor to make the changes that I was talking about at the time.
The whole point is you have to be honest with yourself.
I'm out of office now, but I can look in the mirror and say that I think I treated people fairly and equitably and honestly and openly.
Ethics, integrity, honesty means something in politics.
As a public servant, you raise your right hand, you swear you're going to do the very best you can, so let's do it and not keep looking at my career path or my next stepping stone to the future.
We need more people to be public-related conscious of how do you serve people.
Do you think it's become more like a position that you reach?
Like so when you become a mayor or you become a governor or a president, you actually reach that goal versus like that's a job.
That when you become a mayor, your job starts.
It's not something...
No, well, I'll tell you how I found it.
When I was the police chief, I had a good reputation.
I think we were doing well.
Crime was down 21%, and we had very good community relations with everybody in the city.
And then, when I elected to run for mayor, all of a sudden, people were attacking me from positions I'd never...
I've been friendly with you all these years, and all of a sudden, you're attacking me.
Supervisors...
Even people who were in public office who I had been working with in different departments of city government who are now running for mayor too.
And it took me three months to realize that what they're doing is attacking me and my credibility on things that never happened at all.
So I'm trying to defend myself and I'm not even telling the public what I would do if I were to become the mayor.
They've sidetracked me off into a different direction where I'm defending myself on things that never happened.
So it took me three months to start to, whoa, I better stop that.
You have to develop alligator skin and don't worry about all these negative comments they make about you, but then tell the public what you would do if you were actually the mayor.
I can give you examples.
As a police chief, in 33 years, you're dealing with the public and doing everything honestly, openly, and then I had a campaign manager who did a good job helping me, and then as soon as I won the election, he came to me and said, Frank, I helped you win the election.
Now, I have a contract coming up here with Motorola, which is a We're trying to combine police, fire, and emergency services into one central location now for communications.
And I have a contract with Motorola that I'd like you to sign.
And I said, well, we'll send it out to bid, you know, competitive bid.
Oh, no, I want a no-competitive bid contract.
And I looked at him and I said, you know, I appreciate the fact that you helped me become the mayor, but I didn't run to give you a no-competitive bid contract.
I can't do that.
He went out.
This was only a month after I was elected.
He went out looking for another candidate to run against me.
Now, Frank, the leaders of the city, whether they're the business leaders, community leaders, nonprofit leaders, this is a very sophisticated city.
We have had guests from San Francisco.
They dress better than anybody else in California, and they're more eloquent in talking.
Are they getting worried about the situation?
Yes, they are.
I'm sure they see the city that's moving dramatically in the wrong direction.
I've seen it for 80 years now, so I've seen the good times, the bad times, and we've had great...
The city sells itself.
It's just the beauty and the environment and the weather and everything that I mentioned earlier.
But we've had companies that love it, too.
We've had the banking industry, we've had the...
The insurance industry, then we have the high tech, we have the medical industry.
There's always something, but the one main one is always the hospitality industry, the hotels, the tourism.
Millions of people come into our city because they love it, they hear all these great things about it.
So we have a revenue stream that always seems to be filling Backfill when some other company leaves.
But now we're getting to the point where we better start saving those companies because we're running out of all these different companies that have come here, enjoyed it, and been great philanthropists in helping us, but then get fed up with the tax base or the environment and move away.
So I think that reality check is coming now, where there's great competition from lots of cities, not only in California, but all over the country.
And some good companies are leaving our city that never would have left if they saw a better environment.
And right now, we're not doing it.
We have to be more business friendly.
We have to find incentives for the business community.
They know it because when they look at their tax base here and they compare it to Nevada or Texas or Florida, they're getting a much better deal there.
And so we better wake up to that fact here and do the very same things.
Find incentives, maybe even a no tax for the first year.
40% tax for the second year, 60% tax for the third.
Give them incentives to create a business and to get a foothold so they can become successful.
Because that formula I mentioned about the more you support business, you diversify the economy, create more jobs and don't raise taxes.
It's a wonderful formula and they just have to follow it for a little longer and make it work.
Do you have any recommendations for San Franciscans?
What should they do?
Well, get more involved.
I think there is a groundswell right now of people who feel that we love our city, we're not happy with the direction it's going, we're not happy with some of the political leaders we have.
So let's start looking around and finding people that will do what we know is best for the city because everybody wins.
That's what I would say.
And I will be helping.
I'll be looking around for candidates to run for office too.
I'm 88.
I've done my service and I love it.
I've said to Dr.
Albert Schweitzer had a great quote.
He said, I don't know what your destiny will be, but this I do know.
The only ones among you who will be truly happy, those of you who have sought and found how to serve others.
That's what public service is all about.
It's not looking to the next election or the next job promotion.
How do you, when you get into a position of importance, how do you fill that role so that you are serving the public?
I want people like that to run for public service.
Do you have any other thoughts?
I think programs like this are very beneficial.
I think that it's nice to see a balance where you can let people freely express their opinions.
Sometimes you see too much slanted in the news.
You only hear one side.
Or, as I mentioned earlier to you, I could talk for 45 minutes and only two minutes will show up, but it won't be what I really wanted to say.
This gives me an opportunity to express myself and let people decide for themselves whether they like what I say or they don't.
Frank Jordan, former mayor of San Francisco and former police chief.
It was great to have you on California Insider.
It's been my pleasure to be here too.
Thank you.
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