Here are some examples of what David has done to improve our neighborhoods as District 3’s City Hall representative and to serve our city as President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Fighting For Our Neighborhoods

Every day, David has worked hard to better the lives of his constituents in every District 3 neighborhood, such as:

• Rebuilding and expanding the North Beach Library
• Fighting for neighborhood playgrounds, such as Joe DiMaggio Playground, Chinese Recreation Center and Sue Bierman Park Playground
• Working with neighbors from Russian Hill to the Barbary Coast to Polk Street to Telegraph Hill to ensure proposed developments fit within the unique character of our neighborhoods. 
• Requiring owners of vacant buildings to ensure they do not contribute to neighborhood blight.
• Increasing community arts funding and programming by expanding flexibility on a 1% art fee requirement on downtown development.

Creating Jobs and Economic Growth in San Francisco 

Job creation and turning around our economy has been David’s top priority as President of the Board of Supervisors. His successes include: 

• Leading efforts to reform the city’s business payroll tax, which will create thousands of new jobs, keep businesses in San Francisco, and provide incentives for new businesses to relocate to the City.  
• Supporting small businesses by passing legislation to eliminate dozens of restrictive business fees, to streamline the City’s invoices, and to increase opportunities for local, diverse firms to receive city contracts, and by promoting city programs to help small businesses receive tax credits, city loans and other forms of assistance.
• Stewarding corporate social responsibility by leading the efforts for San Francisco to become the first city in the country to provide city-contracting preferences to socially responsible Benefit Corporations, as well as the first city in the country to support the right to counsel in civil legal cases for low-income individuals deprived of certain basic rights.  

Boosting tourism while generating local jobs

Generating billions of dollars and creating thousands of jobs, tourism is the backbone of District 3’s economy.  David has worked to bring about significant opportunities that will pay huge dividends to San Francisco, such as:

• Bringing the America’s Cup in 2013.
• Moving forward waterfront projects such as the Exploratorium at Piers 15-17 and the new Cruise Ship Terminal at Pier 27.
• Tripling the size of the Union Square Business Improvement District, to promote the destination neighborhood for locals, visitors and tourists.
• Delivering funding for the Fisherman Wharf Public Realm Plan and the redesign of Jefferson Street.

Ensuring public safety in our neighborhoods

David believes that all District 3 residents must be safe in their neighborhoods.  As President of the Board of Supervisors, David has championed numerous pieces of legislation to improve public safety, such as:

• Cracking down on nightlife violence by beefing up security requirements, granting the Entertainment Commission the power to shut down clubs with a history of public safety concerns, regulating the party promoter industry for the first time, and requiring parking lot operators near places of entertainment to ensure the safety of their lots after hours.
• Regulating tour buses that have created safety, parking and quality of life issues for District 3 residents.
• Improving earthquake readiness by spearheading the successful campaign to pass June 2010’s Proposition B, a bond measure that is rebuilding a reliable water supply for our City in emergencies and disasters.
• Expanding funding for fire and police stations, securing resources to build a new police command center and seismically upgrading critical firefighting facilities with June 2010’s Proposition B bond.

Improving Transit

As someone who doesn’t own a car, David bikes or rides Muni daily.  Ensuring that San Francisco has a 21^st century transportation system has been one of his top priorities at City Hall.  David has worked to improve our transit system by:

• Tackling Muni by pushing to successfully restore Muni service cuts in an era of fare increases and reduced service and crafting a reform package to require performance audits, explore governance challenges, and establish written work order agreements.
• Promoting cycling by establishing a San Francisco goal of 20% of trips by bicycle by the year 2020, pushing for more bike lanes to ease traffic congestion, and advocating for increased enforcement of traffic rules for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians.
• Expanding car-sharing by passing legislation to expand car-sharing options in residential developments and car-sharing requirements in non-residential buildings, and championing the city’s first on-street car-sharing sites.

Bringing New Solutions and Transparency to City Hall

David came to City Hall committed to changing it.  He has worked tirelessly to increase transparency, transcend personality politics and make City Hall more efficient, open, and effective for all San Franciscans, by:

• Protecting vital services with balanced budgets, working with his colleagues to negotiate agreements that balanced budget deficits of $522 million in 2009-10, $483 million in 2010-11 and $306 million in 2011-12, while protecting vital city services.
• Leading budget reform by leading the successful campaign to pass November 2009’s Proposition A, a budget reform measure that now requires two-year balanced budgets and five-year financial forecasting, is doubling our City’s general reserves, and saves 75% of unanticipated revenues in good fiscal years for difficult fiscal years.
• Pushing new ethics standards for lobbyists by passing legislation governing lobbyists, making compliance, monitoring, and enforcement more transparent, and requiring an online system to track lobbying activity.
• Bringing city government into the 21^st century by leading reforms of our city’s Information Technology system, consolidating 7 different email platforms and dozens of data centers, investing in our city’s dark fiber assets, and requiring multi-year capital planning for our city’s IT expenditures. 

Increasing Access to Affordable Housing 

Prior to his tenure on the Board of Supervisors, David, a tenant, served as the Chair of the Board of Directors for a non-profit housing developer in Chinatown.  David has always been committed to protecting and expanding affordable housing to all San Franciscans.  As President of the Board of Supervisors, David spearheaded affordable housing efforts such as:  

• Creating housing cooperatives that permit affordable home ownership by low-income residents.
• Developing incentives for the construction of senior housing.
• Creating permanently affordable rental housing for homeless veterans.
• Fighting Ellis Act evictions in District 3.
• Building housing for transitional-age youth who were formerly homeless.
• Responding to the mortgage crisis by helping to establish socially responsible investment goals in our City’s Investment Policy that encourage investment in financial institutions with responsible mortgage foreclosure policies. 

Improving our Environment and Public Health

San Francisco must be a leader in our nation’s efforts to clean up our environment and promote public health.  David has legislated first-in-the-country solutions to make San Francisco the greenest and healthiest city possible, such as:

• Increasing energy efficiency in buildings by strengthening legislation that sets the nation’s highest standards requiring regular energy audits in our City’s commercial buildings, lowering energy costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating green jobs.
• Expanding urban agriculture by sponsoring legislation to streamline bureaucracy and allow residents to grow produce and sell the fruit of their labor in urban gardens and farms, putting San Francisco on the forefront of the national urban agriculture movement.   
• Decreasing unwanted Yellow Pages through David’s pilot program to restrict yellow pages distributors from dropping unsolicited phonebooks on the doorsteps of residents who have not requested deliveries. 
• Greening nail salons by creating a first-of-its-kind program to encourage the phasing out the “toxic trio” of chemicals commonly found in nail polishes by positively recognizing nail salons free of such products.