A chance to talk to the mayor

Grabbing some face time with San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell will require a bit of legwork and some luck.

On Monday, Farrell’s office launched a website where any San Francisco resident can sign up for a chance to sit down with the mayor for 10 minutes to talk about whatever is on his or her mind.

After registering, residents hoping to meet the mayor will be chosen by a lottery. The first of the twice-monthly “open-door chats” will take place Friday and will last from 8:30 a.m. until noon. They’ll be held on the first and third Fridays of each

month in the mayor’s office, City Hall’s Room 200.

“I want to make sure people feel like they can talk to the mayor themselves,” Farrell said.

The registration form, available at http://bit.ly/ mayorfarrell, asks residents for their contact information, a brief description of what they intend to discuss and what times they’d like to meet with Farrell. It also asks whether residents have previously raised their issue with a city department or flagged it to the city’s 311 service portal.

Former mayor and current Chronicle columnist Willie Brown held similar opendoor meetings while he was in office.

Farrell is the first mayor since Brown to take up the practice. — Dominic Fracassa A date is a date: A state appeals court on Monday shot down a lawsuit seeking to move the District Two supervisor’s race from November to June, widely viewed as a ploy to defeat incumbent Supervisor Catherine Stefani.

Candidate Nick Josefowitz sued the city days after Mayor Mark Farrell picked Stefani to be his successor. Josefowitz is a member of the BART Board of Directors and was seen as the District Two front-runner until Stefani pulled her official candidate’s papers last month.

But the San Francisco Superior Court rejected Josefowitz’s argument that voters should elect a new supervisor in June, only to hold another election in November. Josefowitz and his co-plaintiff, district resident Noah Shanok, hinged their case on a 2001 City Charter amendment that calls for limiting the amount of time a political appointee spends in office.

They failed to persuade Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn or the state Court of Appeal, which also scrapped the case.

In an interview Monday, Josefowitz was resolute.

“We stand by our interpretation of the City Charter that voters should have the right to choose their elected representatives,” he said. “We’re disappointed that City Hall and the appointed supervisor have managed to convince the court to delay this election,” Josefowitz added, referring to City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Stefani, the only District Two candidate named in the suit.

Herrera’s spokesman, John Coté, praised the state court’s ruling, calling it “a common-sense result that squares with what voters intended.” — Rachel Swan