On Wednesday, District 1 Supervisor Sandra Fewer publicly announced that she will not run for re-election in the 2020 Fall election.
Fewer won her Supervisor seat in November 2016, earning just under 40% of the vote.
Prior to taking office as District 1 Supervisor, Fewer served as PTA President for 12 terms at Richmond District public schools, and served as a Commissioner on the San Francisco Board of Education from 2008 to 2016. In 2010, she was also elected to the San Francisco Democratic Party and served for two years.
Fewer and her family have lived in the Richmond District for over 50 years.
“It has been a demanding job,” Fewer told The Examiner this week. “It has been all-encompassing.”
It is with heartfelt appreciation that I share that I will not be running for reelection as District 1 Supervisor. I’ll be making the most of my last year, but today just feeling grateful for the opportunity to serve. It’s been an honor, Richmond District.https://t.co/KdNFeGJQHK
— Sandra Lee Fewer (@SandraLeeFewer) January 15, 2020
During her 3 years in office, Fewer has served as the Chair of the Finance & Budget Committee, and is a member of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.
Fewer has spearheaded several initiatives in the Richmond District to address tenants rights, small businesses, neighborhood blight and cleanliness, as well as infrastructure improvements.
Our blog worked with Supervisor Fewer twice on #FewerPotholes campaigns, where after residents reported potholes, SFDPW dedicated a crew to repair them. In the first campaign in 2017, 368 potholes were repaired in the Richmond District in just one month.
Fewer has also focused on affordable housing initiatives. Most recently, she helped the Small Sites Program acquire a 12-unit building on 3rd Avenue, offering protections to the existing tenants.
“We hope to keep more people in their homes in the Richmond, and keep our residents stable here. 65% of my neighbors are renters. They are vulnerable in this housing market,” said Supervisor Sandra Fewer.
Fewer also focused on the problem of commercial vacancies in the Richmond District, and citywide. In 2017 she launched a #FewerVacancies campaign to enlist D1 residents to report commercial vacancies after being told by the City that “the Richmond District has none”. That was far from reality – residents identified over 150 commercial vacancies in the April 2017 effort.
Fewer built on that campaign and introduced legislation to improve the accuracy of the city’s vacant storefront registry in an effort to make landlords more accountable.
The legislation was approved by the Board of Supervisors in March 2019, and it requires landlords to register their vacant storefronts within 30 days and pay a fee; if they don’t, they’ll be penalized with a $2,844 non-registration fee. They’ll also need to conduct annual building inspections to keep their buildings fit for occupancy.
“When you have commercial property owners holding multiple storefronts vacant for long periods of time, that hurts all the other small businesses in the area who rely on a vibrant commercial corridor to attract customers,” said Supervisor Fewer. “The enforcement mechanisms in this legislation are vital to addressing our vacancy problem head on and complement ongoing efforts to streamline permitting and increase retail flexibility so our small businesses can thrive.”
Fewer also created “One Richmond“, a neighborhood campaign designed to strengthen a collective identity for the neighborhood that promotes the values of inclusiveness, compassion, community pride and shopping local. Some small businesses display the One Richmond sticker in their windows, and Fewer’s office has helped organize annual One Richmond neighborhood gatherings.
One of our favorite things that Fewer accomplished early in her term was seemingly simple but not: returning garbage cans to Ocean Beach. After the National Park Service / GGNRA decided everyone should pack out their trash, Fewer helped restore garbage cans to the area to reduce the littering that increased after the NPS decision.
When we spoke to Supervisor Fewer today, she said her future plans will include continuing to volunteer in the neighborhood. She told the Examiner she will try to do a “One Richmond” act each day.
She also told the Examiner that she may find service on a city commission in the future.
“Noting the lack of Chinese representation in city commissions, an issue often raised in Chinese-language press, Fewer said she would serve on important city commissions should a need arise, including the Police Commission.”
Her last day in office will be January 8, 2021. We thank her for her dedication to improving our neighborhood, and we look forward to seeing what more she can accomplish in her last year.
Sarah B.
Thanks for listing all Sandra’s accomplishments! Too many people seem to be unaware of what she’s gotten done for the district. (Nextdoor, I’m looking at you in particular.)
One important accomplishment that you missed was that Sandra got legislation passed authorizing San Francisco to establish its own city bank, so it wouldn’t be beholden to Wells Fargo after its accounts scandals. Enabling legislation passed the Legislature in Sacramento, so cities all over the state can now do the same.
Sandra has been a huge disappointment. As a native San Franciscan, born and raised in the Richmond, I’ve never seen it so bad.
1) Muni has gotten significantly worse and there are not enough 38 buses running to handle the morning commute.
2) Huge increase in vacant buildings all across the Richmond with hardly any new business.
3) Huge increase in the number of homeless people visible in the Richmond.
@Anthony: A local district supervisor has little or no control or influence on any of those things.
I know the 5 Fulton has gotten much better in the last few years. Ms. Fewer has moved aggressively on the issue of storefront vacancies, first inventorying them and then getting a vacancy tax passed. She can’t do anything about landlords who charge rents that new (or old) businesses can’t afford. And homelessness is a city-wide (and statewide) problem, not confined to the Richmond. There’s not much a single district supervisor can do about it, and it’s not fair to blame her for that.
Look instead to the list of accomplishments in the blog post.
Wait, why isn’t her large collection of selfies on her Facebook page listed as an accomplishment?
Progressive politics in SF has deteriorated from providing equity to the disadvantaged (health care, good programs, tuition fee waivers, etc.) to rooting for the SJW cause du jour. A district supervisor could spend more time about helping the homeless and mentally unstable than garnishing likes at the latest anti-Trump rally that won’t do anything to impact the electoral college come election season.
Also take a look at her handling of the housing crisis. This is a supply side issue, but fauxgressives champion setting aside available housing for low income folks. This does nothing for the middle class and others who want to live in a city with low housing stock. Policies like this are pushed by the rich and real estate market because they want to keep their property values up. If you were to loosen restrictions on buildings, granny flats (currently you can only apply to have one unit exempted),etc., you’d see more affordable housing. Arguing that opening up development would only lead to more expensive high rises is a lie pushed by the wealthy to keep the rest of us fighting each other.
But yay, let’s celebrate parklets and bike lanes for the college educated able bodied social media users out there.
94121 weighs in with common sense. Were our supervisors as enlightened.
I have no doubt Ms. Fewer is a nice person. But, IMO, her tenure was Eric Mar 2.0. She was promoted/supported/installed by the same groups, and we got the same results; she championed a few progressive issues, and I’m sure there are a few people that benefited. But who can deny that quality of life has gotten worse in the Richmond District over the last 6 years? I’m ready for a new approach. I want to see bold and new actions on quality of life issues – new approaches to addressing homelessness, cleaning up the garbage that is everywhere, and bigger investments in schools, parks and infrastructure.
Three years ago, we almost elected Marjan P. She was an alternative to Eric Mar 2.0. Perhaps we get another chance to go in that direction.
Photo at bottom — Mohamand Nuru and one of questionable pit stop toilets the Feds nabbed him on. LOL. How Timely!!
“94121” has no idea what a supervisor’s job is or entails in reality.
Sandra Fewer and the entire Bord of Supervisors (current and former) are all to caught up in the San Francisco version of a Political Cult. They have in general group think run amuck.
We have supervisors that fall into one of two categories.
The first have intensions, no matter what they say, on running for higher political office. As such San Francisco is just “training wheels” for those people. They will be guarded in everything they do. They know at some point they will be playing for an audience outside of their Supervisorial District. These people are not capable of doing what needs to be done by design.
The second group really think it is their place to “think globally and act locally”. Not a bad thing for a citizen, but a disaster in a Supervisor. Not only does such thinking lead to a focus on Happy Meal polices, but it usurps the citizen choices for State and National Elected office. I vote for people to care for those things in Sacramento and Washington. Who the hades do our Supervisors think that are to substitute their views on those issues for my vote?
We need Supervisors who are not part the San Francisco Progressive Industrial Complex. We need Supervisors who are not interested in higher office or parachuting to some paid appointed job. We need Supervisors who will focus on the nuts and bolts of San Francisco and when done go back to a private sector job or playing with their Grandchildren.
Once we have a city that has roads that are fine for all, that has a MUNI that is on time, a place where if you park your car with a towel on the seat it does not have a window smashed, a place were you do not have to step over people on the sidewalk, then and only then should a Supervisor look out over the bay and ponder greater things.
All the above said, one should always respect the man or woman in the arena.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat”
—T.R