Get back to work, don’t reinvent downtown S.F.

In response to “This halfempty office tower could help transform downtown San Francisco” (Bay Area, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 28): Why does downtown San Francisco need a “reinvention” now, when it was fine preCOVID? There is only one thing currently wrong with it, and that is the fact that entitled people have used COVID as an excuse to work remotely forever. Mr. Benioff ’s company (Salesforce) should lead in pushing back against this selfabsorbed mindset, which is permanently damaging surrounding businesses.

Eric Roddie, San Francisco

Trash consultant

Regarding “This is the trash can that finally won San Francisco’s contest for a new receptacle” (San Francisco, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 22): I love it that it does not seem to have occurred to anyone in the San Francisco bureaucracy that the solution to overflowing trash cans is to empty them more frequently.

The trash cans in Alameda’s parks are recycled oil drums, painted green. There are no issues with trash that doesn’t fit into the opening, they are

way cheaper than San Francisco’s $3,000 cans, and taggers don’t seem particularly interested in marking anything so low-budget. The cans are emptied regularly and rarely overflow. S.F. can pay me a $1 million consulting fee for this brilliant solution and still come out ahead.

A fourth option

Regarding “No, soft-oncrime liberalism isn’t fueling San Francisco’s drug crisis. Libertarianism is” (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 27): Keith Humphreys neglects a fourth possible future for San Francisco’s drug scene, namely that safe consumption and

treatment sites be established where addicts can use and obtain their drugs legally off the streets.

Under true libertarianism, the sale of heroin, cocaine and other narcotics would not be criminalized, but available in pharmacies, like they were in the 19th century before the prohibition of addict maintenance created the current illicit drug market. If addicts had safe access to pharmacy-grade narcotics in treatment facilities, many of the evils of our current street-drug scene would vanish.

Dale Gieringer, Oakland

A New Year’s wish

Will another year pass without the former president and his lemmings being incarcerated?

My wish for the new year will be that they all will be sporting striped suits, with each having a ball and chain attached to an ankle.

(I am sorry, lemmings. I just insulted you. You are very cute creatures, unlike the old, white men to whom I just compared you.)

Diana DiPietro, Pleasant Hill

Escrow accounts?

What if property owners in San Francisco simply established escrow accounts into which they can deposit their property taxes, holding the funds until the city and its partners are able to get the unhoused population crisis under control?

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle Salesforce Tower puts on a light show in August as S.F.’s fog returns after a brief storm.