Mayoral aide’s perspective on lost friend, city’s needs
He spent nine years at San Francisco’s City Hall. He served as chief of staff to three mayors (one of whom held the job twice). But in those thousands of days spent helping to run the city, one in particular stands out for Jason Elliott.
Dec. 11, 2017. The last day he spent with his boss and good friend Mayor Ed Lee.
Elliott recalled that day in an interview in his office shortly before packing up and leaving to join Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign for governor. He had intended to work for Lee until the mayor was termed out in January 2020, but fate interceded when Lee died of a heart attack in the early morning hours of Dec. 12.
“There’s certainly a level of grief and sadness and remorse,” said Elliott, 35, noting that upon Lee’s death, the mayor’s inner circle immediately went to work for Acting Mayor London Breed and then Mayor Mark Farrell and then Mayor London Breed again, never really getting a chance to deal with the sadness. They could, he quipped, spark the creation of a “Therapist Full Employment Act.”
But neither man had any idea what the next 24 hours would hold as they ate breakfast Dec. 11 at one of Lee’s favorite greasy spoons, Sam’s
Diner on Market Street. Never one for healthy choices, Lee ordered pancakes. He made fun of Elliott for ordering a veggie omelet.
Elliott and Lee had a good rapport, and the chief of staff described his boss as “a sweet guy who cared about our families and wanted to know what we did on vacation and how we were feeling, wanted to hear about our professional goals.”
And then, of course, there were Lee’s notoriously corny dad jokes, which only he found funny.
“Oh God, the jokes,” Elliott said with a smile. “But then he had this laugh he would do and then we would laugh at his laugh, and I think he thought we were laughing at his jokes! But we weren’t, because the jokes weren’t funny.”
After breakfast that morning, the pair headed for the mayor’s office, Room 200 in City Hall, where they had a full day of meetings, including one about clean streets and another about a development project that had piqued Lee’s curiosity.
Elliott drove to Oakland that evening for a Golden State Warriors basketball game. Elliott, who is Jewish, was excited that his favorite player, Omri Casspi of Israel, was starting. Lee was watching the game at his home in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood, and the two texted throughout.
“I still have those text messages,” Elliott said. “I’m going to save those.”
The Warriors beat the Portland Trail Blazers 111-104. A delighted Elliott began the drive back across the bridge to his home in the Inner Sunset, and Lee headed to the dingy Safeway on Monterey Boulevard to buy apple juice.
Elliott’s phone rang. It was the San Francisco Police Department sergeant in charge of Lee’s security detail.
“I could hear it in his voice,” Elliott recalled. “He told me Mayor Lee was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital.”
Elliott raced to San Francisco General Hospital instead of heading home and was one of the first people to arrive, other than police and paramedics. Elliott made calls to key people, and soon a waiting room full of city officials was there “to prepare for what we hoped wouldn’t happen,” Elliott said.
“Unfortunately, despite really heroic efforts by the nurses and the doctors and the EMTs at San Francisco General — they did everything and more — life has its way,” Elliott continued.
The next six months were incredibly tumultuous, with the mayoral musical chairs and the June election to fill out Lee’s term. But now that a semblance of calm has returned to City Hall, Elliott said he’s proud of what he and Lee achieved.
Their biggest achievement, he said, was creating the city’s first Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and opening several Navigation Centers, homeless shelters with relaxed rules and case managers on site.
Elliott’s biggest frustration with city government is the unbelievably long time it takes to approve new housing.
“There are so many opportunities to stop a good project,” he said. “I mean little projects. I mean accessory dwelling units. I mean 500-unit mega-developments. It takes us way too long to approve housing in this city.”
He said it’s partly the fault of city bureaucracy, but he also blamed San Franciscans in general for not accepting enough growth and density.
Perhaps if his new boss, Newsom, wins the governorship, he can help him speed up building housing statewide, and in his own backyard.
Time to spiff up: Everybody knows San Francisco is downright filthy. It may be blanketed in fog, but it’s also blanketed in paper cups, pizza boxes, food scraps and dumped junk with a sign reading “free” taped to it, as if that absolves the owner of disposing of it properly. (Hint: it does not.)
We can point fingers at who’s to blame — or, for one morning, we can wrap those fingers around a broom handle and get to work.
Public Works is hoping San Franciscans opt for the latter during its “Love Our City” citywide cleanup scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. It’s simple, really. Grab a broom, a dustpan and a trash bag and clean up the area in front of your home. Or if you’re feeling really ambitious, get one of those metal grabbers and go to work all over your neighborhood.
If you participate, take a photo of yourself with your haul and send it to me. I’d love to know how much you collected and the weirdest item you found on the streets of San Francisco.
Reaching high: We can all use some good news these days, and Nour Aissaoui, 17, provides it in spades. I told you in January about the senior at John O’Connell High School in the Mission who was born in the United States but moved back to Algeria with her family when she was a baby.
She longed to move back to the U.S., and at the age of 15, she did, despite traveling all by herself and speaking hardly any English. She lived with her aunt, uncle and cousin in a studio apartment in the Tenderloin, doing her homework in the bathroom late at night while everybody else slept.
She quickly learned English and now speaks four languages. She got a 4.09 GPA and aced her SATs. When I told you about her, she’d just gained admission to Princeton. She was thrilled, but a little hesitant about moving across the country and leaving her family behind.
Now? Problem solved. After that column ran, she found out she had also won admission to Stanford, all expenses paid.
“I was so excited! I couldn’t believe it!” she recalled. “I kept jumping and screaming. It felt so unreal. It has always been my dream school. Now I’m the very first person who got into Stanford from John O’Connell.”
She wants to take premed courses and also take classes related to social justice.
“I’m all about activism and diversity and empowering people who aren’t represented,” she said.
Congratulations, Nour!