LGTBQ health advocates, along with City Clinic doctors and members of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club are rallying today outside the clinic on Seventh Street to protest Mayor London Breed's omission of clinic funds in a proposed bond measure.
Alarms were raised earlier this week when details of a $360 million proposed bond measure were released, as Mayor London Breed hopes to put the bond on the November ballot — on which she will also be up for reelection in what is sure to be a contentious race. Members of the LGBTQ community in particular raised objections to the fact that $25 million of the bond money is allocated to the renovation of Harvey Milk Plaza outside the Castro Muni station, while a planned $29 million for the relocation and modernization of City Clinic was missing.
As the Bay Area Reporter explained, the Harvey Milk Plaza project, which has been in the works for over seven years, was expected to be covered by mostly private funding, and was never part of the city's capital spending plan. Meanwhile, a $28.5 million allocation for the relocation of City Clinic, whose current building the city has called "functionally obsolete," was part of the plan.
The bond measure does include $167 million to be used to expand or improve three other city-owned healthcare facilities: the Chinatown Health Clinic, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and Laguna Honda Hospital. And there are also allocations for addressing erosion on the Great Highway, and renovating Hallidie Plaza at Powell Station.
While City Clinic, which serves around 85 people per day and is an important sexual health resource for the uninsured, is not in danger of closing, advocates worry that it is being shunted from the priorities of the Department of Public Health.
"Never once before was Harvey Milk Plaza or Great Highway or $70 million for downtown renovations or Hallidie Plaza mentioned for the bond measure — that's not how capital projects and general obligation bonds work," says Jeffrey Kwong, the president of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, speaking to the Bay Area Reporter. "I 100% support Harvey Milk Plaza but that's no excuse for cutting the $29 million planned for critical capital improvements at the City Clinic — which has been in the plans for years."
And as as Vince Crisostomo, director of aging services at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, tells the paper, "For people of my generation, I am 63 years old, City Clinic has been a huge part of our history... I do think the people of my generation, if they had to choose between their sexual health and making the plaza pretty, they would choose their sexual health."
A rally is scheduled for today, Thursday, May 2, at 5 pm outside the clinic at 356 Seventh Street. In a release, the Milk Club says that advocates will be "taking a stand against Mayor Breed’s $350 million bond proposal cutting vital public health services, including the City Clinic, to instead fund pet projects like downtown sidewalks and panda-related traffic."
Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, told the Bay Area Reporter this week that City Clinic is in no danger of closing. "The City Clinic is an important public health resource and we are exploring options for the future of the clinic. Some have said the clinic is being closed or shut down, which is not true," Cretan said. "It will continue to operate and we will continue to work with DPH on investments to improve the patient experience."
Update: Mayor Breed quickly relented and said Thursday that the bond can grow by $30 million in order to include funding for the relocation of City Clinic.
Related: Mayor Breed Proposes a $360 Million Bond Measure to Fund a Potpourri of Seemingly Unrelated Causes