Mission Local is tracking Daniel Lurie’s appointments on a live page here, where you can see the comings and goings at the major city departments and the mayor’s office as they happen.
Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie this afternoon named Alicia John-Baptiste, the president and chief executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) to be his chief of infrastructure, climate and mobility in the mayor’s office.
In this new position, John-Baptiste will help Lurie coordinate with the Environment Department, the MTA, the Port of San Francisco, the Public Utilities Commission, the Department of Public Works and the Recreation and Parks Department.
John-Baptiste is the third of four new first-ever deputies to be named by Lurie. The mayor-elect earlier named former police commander Paul Yep as the chief of public safety and ex-Twitter executive Ned Segal as the chief of housing and economic development. Only one deputy, the chief of public health, is yet to be named.
“Alicia brings extensive expertise in shaping bold, transformative policies, and whose leadership will enhance communication and transparency as we pursue a more sustainable, connected, and resilient San Francisco,” Lurie said in a press release.
SPUR’s recent report on better governance is one that several political groups have pointed to as a road map for amending the city’s charter. It recommends eliminating rules restricting “mayoral staffing and management” by striking portions of the city charter instituted by Prop. H back in 1991. It also suggests restructuring the mayor’s office to allow for “a more manageable number of direct reports.”
“I am thrilled to be returning to government service at such a critical time for the future of San Francisco,” John-Baptiste said in the press release. “I’m also excited to directly implement a recommendation from SPUR’s good government work by joining the newly created team of policy chiefs.”
John-Baptiste has been leading urban policy nonprofit SPUR as its president and CEO for about six years, and as its deputy director for three years. Prior to her time at SPUR, John-Baptiste worked for about 16 years at City Hall between the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the Planning Department.
John-Baptiste worked nine years at the SFMTA, including three years as chief of staff between 2012 and 2015, and some other roles between 1999 to 2005. She also worked for seven years at the Planning Department, including as chief of staff for four years, from 2008 to 2012, and chief administrative officer for three years, from 2005 to 2008.
Some other commenter on here was disparaging SPUR a few days ago and I was curious why. Can anyone provide links or a summary of why this organization is full of it? I honestly have no opinion as yet and this seems like a good time to read up on it. Supportive statements about SPUR also welcome. Thanks, thanks…
Trying to answer this somewhat neutrally:
In past decades, SPUR was involved in some urban renewal efforts that are now generally considered a mistake – demolishing a lot of homes, replacing walkable streets with car infrastructure, and generally ruining some neighborhoods – and they still carry some stain from that.
Today SPUR generally advocates for building more housing and transit infrastructure in SF, and some San Franciscans are just opposed to basically all existing efforts in that vein, either for purely aesthetic reasons or because they associate it with gentrification (or both).
SPUR got started during the redevelopment (the R used to mean redevelopment before it got cleansed to stand for Research) era 50s-70s, when whole neighborhoods were clearcut and extirpated of existing residents in favor of soulless new development. Read Chester Hartman’s “City for Sale” and previous work if you can find it for the gory details of SPUR’s violence and popular resistance to it.
Over the past few decades, SPUR’s marketed itself as a “good government” operation, but under the covers it is nothing but a developer and corporate lobbyist and booster organization. SPUR puts forth so many ideas that they make the stopped clock test not infrequently. SPUR is not always wrong, just almost always.
SPUR’s idea of “good government” is a government that is as closely held by corporate interests as it is distant from any meaningful participation by the public.
I recall going to one SPUR brown bag in the 2000s when there was a representative of the Zurich, Switzerland train station redevelopment. When he presented a discussion of the details of the mixed use non-residential project, someone asked him why there was no housing. He answered “because it would be too expensive and nobody would be able to afford it.” There were audible gasps from the audience that someone from hypercapitalist Switzerland would take a comprehensive, balanced approach to urban land use planning.
SPUR likes to tout examples in other global cities, but once you delve into the real world details, significant deviations from SPUR’s developer booster party lines abound.
SPUR’s main reason to exist is to put lipstick on the housing and office developer pigs.
Thanks, _city for sale_ is definitely on my list. I know enough to understand the significance of “redevelopment” in 20th century San Francisco, so the name change alone speaks volumes
City for Sale was the last compendium of Hartman’s previous work. I came to know him from “The Transformation of San Francisco” that I picked up at the SFSU bookstore when I first arrived here. There was “The Yerba Buena Land Grab” that I had in hardcover but I think someone borrowed and never returned. Having read that history practically upon arrival, my view of my new city was colored by that knowledge from the ground up.
John Elberling at the F- – rated political hedge fund known as TOCDO is the rotten scion of the unbelievably difficult organizing work that working class SRO tenants did around 3/4th and Mission/Folsom for Moscone redevelopment before the nonprofits snuffed resident organizing.
Pro tip: if you turn the corner four times, you get right back to where you started out from. SPUR has pretty much had its way with city government over the past 20 years, yet SPUR has led us to a place where voters revolted about the status quo.
If anyone represents San Francisco’s failed status quo, it is someone with two decades of leadership experience at the SFMTA, Planning Department and SPUR.
100%. I’ve long noticed the hypocrisy of how critical SPUR is about so much of the Bay Area status quo, when the fact is that SPUR, along with the Bay Area Council, are largely the ones that shaped it. Circular, same result as 4 left turns.