In a decision with perilous implications for his agenda, Mayor Daniel Lurie has made his highly anticipated appointment for District 4 Supervisor — and the pick was on nobody’s bingo card.
Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz, a 29-year-old former pet store owner with no City Hall experience nor civic leadership roles on her resume (opens in new tab), will be the next supervisor of the Sunset and surrounding neighborhoods, Lurie plans to announce Thursday.
The appointment of Alcaraz, a virtual unknown in San Francisco political circles, runs dramatically counter to rumors buzzing through the Sunset since the recall of Joel Engardio in September. Among the names that were whispered for months as potential appointees were several local power players, including former fire chief Joanne Hayes-White, former assemblymember Phil Ting, and even firebrand Albert Chow, himself an Engardio recall leader.
Alcaraz, an alumni of Holy Name School and St. Ignatius College Preparatory School, is being touted by the mayor’s office for her work creating a pet food bank and a fire-relief donation drive. But she is perhaps best known for her effort this year to give away her Irving Street pet store, “Animal Connection.”
The Standard reported in April that Alcaraz’s decision came about “because her family recently moved back to the Philippines, and she [couldn’t] balance regular flights around the globe with independently owning a small business in San Francisco.”
Keeping tabs on SF’s movers and shakers.
Get the inside scoop on City Hall and local politics in our weekly Power Play newsletter.
Now, she will be far more tethered to the restive district, which has been roiled in the past year by the bitter dispute over the closure of the Great Highway. Alcaraz’s first task will be cooling the district’s temperature, she told The Standard in a phone interview on Wednesday.
“After the past few months, anyone can feel how tangible the anger and frustration is,” she said. “I am going to be a leader bringing people together.”
Lurie said he picked Alcaraz because The Sunset deserves accountable leadership, someone who is “of the Sunset and works for the Sunset.”
“Beya Alcaraz is a bridge builder and problem solver who cares deeply about this neighborhood. She will bring a fresh perspective to City Hall, and I am honored to appoint her as the next supervisor for District 4,” he said.
Alcaraz said she did not take a position on Proposition K in last year’s election, but expressed frustration with how the measure to close the Great Highway got on the ballot. She said she shared concerns that the Sunset wasn’t included in the process.
“We had a compromise people were really happy with and were blindsided with this decision,” she said.
Though Prop. K passed with 55% of the vote citywide, some supervisors have recently floated the idea of returning the issue to the ballot to reopen the highway to cars on weekdays. Alcaraz seemed open to the possibility that there would someday be cars back on the road, which has been transformed into the popular Sunset Dunes Park.
“What I’m focused on is finding a compromise or solution that works for us,” she said. “That likely means bringing cars back to some capacity, but I’m not going to make that decision without talking to people.”
Unlike some of the rumored other contenders, Alcaraz said she had no connections to Lurie.
Alcaraz’s family and friends urged her to throw her name out to the mayor for consideration, which she did when she spotted him at a “Sunset After Dark” event in September and approached him to ask for the job. She gave Lurie her phone number and told him to call her.
“When I saw him, in my head, I said, ‘this is something that has to happen,’” Alcaraz said. “I was very determined in that moment. It felt like an obligation.”
Alcaraz said she intimately knows the challenges San Francisco’s small business owners face, noting that she once waited six months for city approval to build an outdoor shed for her pet store. Alcaraz’s parents met at San Francisco State University and both worked at Holy Name, with her mother serving as parish manager and her father as athletic director.
“Beya has spent her life in the Sunset and truly understands our community — its families, small businesses, and the diverse cultures that make our neighborhood special,” Ed Siu, Chairman of Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco, said in a statement.
But she also faces difficult choices representing a deeply divided district still reeling from the Engardio recall, a challenge even for a seasoned politician. Alcaraz has no legislative background, nor does she have any experience with the ways of City Hall. Instead, she said she plans to talk with neighbors — many of whom were outraged by what they saw as Engardio’s betrayal of the district with his support for Prop. K — about their hopes for the district.
“It’s so clear that is what the Sunset deserves,” she said. “I’m going to be including everyone in decisions.”
The future of the Great Highway won’t be the only controversial decision she will face as soon as she takes office. Lurie’s Family Zoning Plan, which calls for tens of thousands of new housing units over the next several years, has already drawn condemnation from D4 residents who fear more development.
Alcaraz declined to take a position on Lurie’s proposal, which needs the board’s final approval and is currently under consideration at the Land Use and Transportation Committee before a final vote this fall. Instead, Alcaraz said she will propose amendments to the plan, which she is still working on and declined to share.
“I want to advocate for my community and what they want,” she said, “My biggest worry is if we don’t support this the state will come in and we’ll see what everyone is fearing: giant skyscrapers on Sloat Boulevard.”
Those tricky decisions will likely determine Alcaraz’s political future. Alcaraz was appointed to fulfill the remainder of Engardio’s term through next year, when he would have been up for reelection. At 29, she’s the same age as another D4 supervisor when she was first appointed in 2013 (opens in new tab), Katy Tang, though Tang was armed with previous experience in City Hall.
If Alcaraz runs to keep her seat, she would face at least one formidable opponent in Natalie Gee (opens in new tab), a San Francisco native, Lowell High School alumnus, and now chief of staff to Supervisor Shamann Walton.
Alcaraz feels ready, however. When she approached Lurie at the night market, she didn’t feel nervous, or afraid — she felt certainty, she recalled. The foundation of growing up Asian in a largely Asian area; the recent neighborhood anger over Prop. K, and Engardio; her own experience as a frustrated business owner — it all flashed through her mind.
“As a product of my community, what I experienced here culminated to that moment,” Alcaraz said. “And like talking to the mayor at this event, as a district supervisor, I also want to be a leader who’s out talking to everyone else. I am going to be a leader bringing people together.”