Before the Board of Supervisors can adjourn for the year, it has some serious business to take care of at this afternoon’s regular meeting: approving the city’s ever-evolving America’s Cup bid, requiring party promoters to register with the city, giving final approval to the local hire ordinance, modifying the affordable housing requirements on developers, mandating building owners to study creating on-site childcare facilities, creating new special districts, strengthening local purchase standards for city contracts, and, oh yeah, selecting someone to replace Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Whoa, that’s quite a list, but you can follow the highlights – particularly on the successor mayor nominations and votes – by following the Bay Guardian’s Twitter feed at SFBG.
Despite strong progressive plays this week to elect David Campos as interim mayor – and the fallback plan of electing former Mayor Art Agnos as a caretaker interim mayor – the word around City Hall these days is that there probably aren’t yet six votes for anyone. But, asked about the chances of selecting a new mayor today, Sup. Chris Daly channeled Harvey Milk by saying, “You gotta give em hope.”
If the current board can’t make a decision today, it will get one more crack at it on Jan. 4 before the decision falls to the new board after it is sworn in on Jan. 8. While the new board is ideologically similar to the current one, its most progressive new member, Daly replacement Jane Kim, sounded very moderate themes in her recent interview with the Guardian.
Board President David Chiu will become acting mayor once Newsom becomes lieutenant governor (which he won’t delay if the current board fails to pick a new mayor), the city’s first Chinese-American mayor, something that will be politically difficult for the board to undo, particularly given his good relations with new supervisors Kim, Malia Cohen, and Scott Wiener.
But it’s still too early for that kind of speculation, particularly given the high stakes and squirrely politics at play right now. So stay tuned.