The Weekly Digest (August 3, 2025)

Written By Bill Jackson

Happy Sunday, Brionies! Here’s what you need to know about local politics this week and beyond:

San Francisco City Hall

  • The supervisors are off for their August recess. Thanks to intrepid reporting by the SF Standard, we know that Bilal Mahmood will be getting married near Mt. Fuji while the hard-working Matt Dorsey will be in Richmond, Virginia to tour a jail known for its innovative addiction-recovery program. Meanwhile, one supervisor’s “vacation” looks more like a marathon: recall-targeted Joel Engardio will be pounding the District 4 pavement all month, selling voters on why he still belongs at City Hall.

  • Mayor Lurie signed the City’s fiscal 2025-27 budget on July 24. With this year’s budget battles in the rear view mirror, it’s a good time to step back for some perspective. The San Francisco budget is a behemoth. At $15.9 billion for a city of 835 thousand people, it’s larger than the budgets of 17 U.S. states. At over $19 thousand per resident, it roughly equals the per capita spending of the federal government. No other major American city comes close to this level of per capita spending.

  • By 2030, the City is projected to run an annual shortfall of well over $1 billion. Despite what you may hear in the media, revenue — up almost $5 billion since 2019 — is not the primary problem. Rather, the real culprit is the projected $2 billion in projected additional spending. Employee compensation, healthcare, and pensions alone are forecast to grow by almost $900 million in the next five years.

  • The math is straight forward: Balancing the budget will require some combination of reducing headcount by about four thousand — or 11 percent of the current workforce — and reducing non-profit grant spending to pre-pandemic levels, adjusted for inflation — or about $700 million lower than the levels in this coming year’s budget. Buckle up for more drama next year!

San Francisco Board of Education

  • Things were less quiet over at the Board of Education. For the first time in seven years, SFUSD commissioners heard a proposal for a new charter school: Dragon Gate Academy, which would offer San Francisco families a K–8 Mandarin immersion program under one roof. About two dozen parents showed up in support, but the proposal is expected to be rejected when the board votes on August 26. As Briones Society co-founder Bill Jackson and intern Iliya Zamanabadi argued in an SF Standard op-ed this week, Charter Schools Are Not the Enemy, SFUSD’s hostility toward charters is ironic for a district that claims to care about equity. Unlike SFUSD, high-performing charters have shown that low-income Black and Latino students can achieve at the same academic level as their white and Asian peers. San Francisco should welcome educational entrepreneurs — just as it does tech entrepreneurs.

  • And then there’s Ethnic Studies. In recent years, a home-grown course meant to boost student sense of belonging and achievement veered toward polemics, sparking backlash. Superintendent Maria Su tried to hit the brakes and pause the course for a year, but teachers revolted. So, she pivoted to an off-the-shelf curriculum called Voices. Trouble is, when the board convened Tuesday, commissioners and the public still hadn’t been allowed to review the new curriculum. Commissioner Supriya Ray bristled: “How did we reach a point where Ethnic Studies is required for graduation and every ninth-grader is enrolled, yet we have no adopted curriculum?” In other words: full speed ahead, eyes closed. What could possibly go wrong? Lawsuits, for one.

  • But there’s a deeper issue at stake. By design, Ethnic Studies frames the histories of Native American, Black, Latino, and Asian American communities primarily through the lens of oppression — flattening the texture of their stories. A better approach would invite students into a deeper study of one or two of these groups through nuanced historical and literary exploration. This would help foster a sense of identity rooted not in the binary of “oppressed” and “oppressor,” but in the perspective and confidence that come from understanding both the broader American story and the particular story of one’s own people.

We’re hiring!

  • Are you or someone you know eager to advance a solutions-oriented conservative movement in America’s cities? The Briones Society is looking for an Operations Manager to lead Briones operations and help build a vibrant volunteer network. See the job description here and reach out to diana@brionessociety.org for more information.

Happenings around town

Calls to action

What we’re reading

  • Crime is down, but still horrible. Colton Kimber, a 28-year old, was murdered as he was trying to protect a mother and her two children from a deranged stranger threatening them at a Muni stop in Ingleside. According to court documents, Kimber "decided to position himself... so should anything happen, (he) could intervene and protect those around him.” While Kimber was looking toward the approaching “K” train, his attacker  “completely and utterly unprovoked -- took a knife and stabbed the unsuspecting victim on the right side of his neck." Rest in peace, hero.

  • Tie-dye meets Tocqueville. Under Karl the Fog’s soft cover, some 60,000 Deadheads a day are jamming the Golden Gate Park Polo Field for Dead & Company’s 60th-anniversary run, pumping tens of millions of tourist dollars into hotels, taquerias, and corner coffee shops that normally see a midsummer lull. In addition to helping normalize the anything-goes ethos (and pharmacology) of the 1970s, the Dead inspired a Tocquevillian capitalist bazaar outside their concerts known as Shakedown Street. This weekend, a 200-foot stretch of JFK Promenade has become the latest iteration – lined with nearly 100 vendors hawking vintage merch, original art, and, of course, tie-dye. As ever: yesterday’s outlaws are today’s establishment.

Quick hits

A brief note from our editors

  • This edition of the Digest is our last before we head out on hiatus for the month of August. But, fear not! We aren’t taking a whole month off to go lie on the beach somewhere. We’re not French socialists, or — y’know — the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. This will be a working holiday. Starting in September, we’ll be back with a new, improved, and expanded version of the Digest, featuring dynamic dashboards, deep dives on policy, and broader coverage of local government shenanigans at BART, Muni, and SFUSD. Keep an eye out as well for new, interactive sections on SF culture and history. And all of it will be delivered with the same voice you’ve come to know and love from Briones: Erudite yet plainspoken, irreverent yet constructive, principled yet pragmatic. See you in a few weeks!

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Bill Jackson
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The Weekly Digest (July 27, 2025)