San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie received harsh comments from Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and Supervisor Jackie Fielder after he skipped a four-hour City Hall hearing on public drug use on Thursday, but then appeared on CNN in a segment that aired that day promoting the city's improving safety.
As the Chronicle reports, Lurie was absent for the hearing, where staff from a Mission District elementary school "became teary" as they described sidewalks plagued by needles and feces and students — some as young as 9 — admitted to feeling unsafe while going to and from classes.
During the lengthy hearing, SF's Board of Supervisors also heard from parents at the school who reportedly implored city officials, including Lurie, to make urgent improvements to the neighborhood's street conditions. In Lurie's case, however, these complaints were heard in absentia, as neither the mayor nor any of his staff attended the meeting.
Ironically, a segment in which Lurie was promoting improving street conditions was airing that same day on CNN — though he had filmed this a week earlier.
Per the Chronicle, Lurie's appearance alongside CNN anchor Dana Bash featured the two strolling through a crowded Ferry Building as Lurie touted San Francisco's falling crime rates and declining numbers of overdose deaths. As part of the segment, he did reportedly acknowledge that the city still has a “drug crisis on our streets.”
It makes for a stark contrast with some of the comments issued at Thursday's hearing, which included the words of Daphne Adam, mother to a second-grade student at Marshall Elementary School in the Mission.
“Celebrating our successes does ring hollow, though, when you are stepping over needles on your way to your kid’s school many, many days a week,” Adam stated.
In addition to pressing police and health officials for answers, Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and Mission District Supervisor Jackie Fielder used Thursday's hearing to lodge their displeasure with Lurie's absence.
Fielder said it was “unacceptable for the mayor’s office to be absent in these chambers" while Mandelman later told the Chronicle that he wasn't sure it was "to the benefit of San Franciscans" for Lurie to be missing.
On Friday, in a statement, the mayor’s office said it had offered briefings on the issues discussed to all supervisors who attended the committee meeting the day before it took place.
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*This post has been corrected to show that the CNN segment had been filmed a week earlier, and Lurie did not choose to skip the meeting to instead shoot the CNN segment.
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