fireside chat<\/a>\u201d showcasing celebrity guests.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The event, timed to coincide with a Congressional Black Caucus conference, was to feature crab cakes, braised short-rib crostini and an open bar. The hotel would charge $20,000 for the reception and $10,770 for rooms for 10 city employees, including Davis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m Shakirah and my organization will help cover the cost of this event,\u201d Simley wrote in an\u00a0 Aug. 28, 2024 email to the party planner. \u201cMy community partner James Spingola will assist as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The records do not show the total amount that Booker T. or Collective Impact paid. Simley declined to explain why her nonprofit helped pay for the event or how much it spent.<\/p>\n
As of August 2024, city records show Booker T. had received $1.75 million in Dream Keeper grants from city agencies other than the Human Rights Commission. City auditors have previously found Davis controlled Dream Keeper spending beyond her department.<\/p>\n
Supervisors Mahmood and Melgar said they had been unaware of the references to Booker T. in the affidavit. Both vouched for the nonprofit and stressed the importance of the city ensuring children can participate in programming at Ella Hill Hutch this summer.<\/p>\n
Mahmood said Booker T. had a \u201cstrong track record stewarding city resources and delivering services for families, with no substantiated findings of wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Right now, our focus is making sure no child or family falls through the cracks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Melgar said she was thankful \u201cpeople are not found guilty by association.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need this right now,\u201d Melgar said. \u201cIt would be irresponsible of us to just stand up hundreds of families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julian Davis, a former president of Booker T.\u2019s board of directors, opposed the lease. He said Simley\u2019s leadership had eroded the independence of a nonprofit that he believed should be more representative of the neighborhood than of City Hall. He said he views Simley as an extension of Breed\u2019s administration, in part because of her past job under Sheryl Davis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community deserves better than to have City Hall continue to lean on the same people and continue to appoint them from the outside without a genuine community process,\u201d said Davis, who said the Booker T. board improperly removed him in 2021 after he raised concerns about Breed\u2019s connections to the board, Simley\u2019s hiring and other issues.<\/p>\n
Davis said he was not aware of Booker T. \u201csponsoring city officials to go on a travel junket to another city\u201d during his time on the board from 2006 to 2012 and again from 2017 to 2021. He said he would not be comfortable with the spending described by the Chronicle and that the money would have been better spent directly serving the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
There is no indication that Booker T. or Simley violated city ethics law by helping Sheryl Davis pay for the event. San Francisco law currently prohibits any person from providing \u201canything of value\u201d with intent to influence or reward an official. However, that law was less restrictive when the spending took place, and there is no evidence in the emails reviewed by the Chronicle that Booker T. or Simley intended to influence or reward Davis.<\/p>\n
Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager at Common Cause California, a government watchdog group, said the spending did not raise any obvious legal red flags and cautioned against making any presumption of guilt by association.<\/p>\n
But McMorris said the spending raised questions about its purpose, including whether it was purely a goodwill gesture with \u201cno expectation of influence or benefit in return.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of whether any laws were broken, the situation underscores the importance of the city carefully vetting the individuals and entities with whom it conducts business in order to avoid both actual conflicts and the appearance of impropriety,\u201d McMorris said.<\/p>\n
Rev. Amos Brown, pastor emeritus of Third Baptist Church near Ella Hill Hutch, called the Booker T. lease a \u201cpower grab.\u201d He said the city did not consult with its historically Black institutions before picking the nonprofit and argued that Booker T. does not have as deep a connection to the Fillmore community as city officials have portrayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat institution had no solid ongoing relationship with this Black community,\u201d said Brown, past president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP.<\/p>\n
Simley said Booker T. had \u201cdeep roots\u201d with the Fillmore and Western Addition tracing back 107 years through \u201credevelopment, gentrification and a pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahmood said the city discussed its plans publicly at a town hall earlier this month. He said the city was committed to a \u201ctransparent long-term process\u201d for finding its next operator.<\/p>\n
Sherrice Dorsey, executive director of San Francisco\u2019s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, said city staff members were on a time crunch to find a temporary operator for Ella Hill Hutch after Collective Impact notified the city of its intent to terminate its lease this spring, and Booker T. had the relevant qualifications, including experience in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
She said the city plans to launch a competitive selection process and engage the community about the long-term vision for the site.<\/p>\n
DCYF and the Human Rights Commission said they planned to update existing contracts with Booker T. to pay for its proposed management of the center, but declined to say by how much. The commission said the dollar amount was being finalized.<\/p>\n
The proposed lease was approved \u201cas to form\u201d by the city attorney\u2019s office, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Sally Oerth, San Francisco\u2019s director of real estate, said in a letter that the nominal $1 rent was justified by the importance of the programming Booker T. would offer at the site.<\/p>\n
Mahmood said he expected a Board of Supervisors committee to vote on the lease May 27. City officials hope to have the lease signed by June 15. If approved, it would be in effect until June 30, 2027, with the option to extend six months.<\/p>\n
Booker T. isn\u2019t the only nonprofit interested in running the center.<\/p>\n
Renard Monroe, who runs a nonprofit that provides programming for children in the Lakeview neighborhood, said he would apply to run the center once the city launches its request for proposals process. But he was not optimistic about his prospects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have an organization that is already in there and they apply for the RFP, who is really going to get the RFP?\u201d Monroe said. \u201cLet\u2019s not be silly about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie this month introduced legislation authorizing the city to lease the Ella Hill Hutch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,13,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-325125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-california","tag-politics","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}