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Bad news: the SFMTA Board approved another year of the Hayes Street closure (under its current Friday/Saturday programming).

Good news: Sundays were not added to the permit.

While this outcome was not unexpected, it confirmed what many in our community have understood for years: the process surrounding this permit is not being run in good faith, and the people most directly affected continue to be sidelined.

For a full year, we warned that granting another renewal would be used as the runway toward permanency.

On Tuesday, that prediction was realized.

What happened inside the hearing room made this clearer than ever.

We even saw the same organizations that pushed Prop K and the Upper Great Highway shutdown cheering on the effort to shut down Hayes — confirming that this is not a neighborhood-driven initiative, but part of a broader political project.

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What the Board Heard

• Comments were dominated by non-business voices, despite small businesses being the most affected stakeholders.
• Only two businesses spoke in support — one bar operator on Hayes and one business on Linden — an extraordinarily thin basis for claiming “business support” for a corridor-wide policy.
• Supportive messaging relied heavily on curated volunteer-produced content, not current economic or operational data.
• Safety, ADA access, and spillover concerns were not meaningfully addressed.
• Traffic impacts were omitted entirely.
• The fact that it costs taxpayers roughly $75,000 annually to reroute the 6 bus was never mentioned — an omission that contradicts the city’s stated “transit-first” principles.
• Repeated noncompliance and permitting irregularities were not acknowledged.
• ISCOTT-raised issues — including potential reduced hours and alternate configurations were not referenced… despite being part of the formal review record.
• Sales tax was presented in aggregate, masking the collapse of the 400 block.
• “Joyful streets,” “international reputation,” and “success story” rhetoric overshadowed business losses and neighborhood division.
• Praise was directed at “volunteers,” while the lived realities of merchants and residents — lower sales, increased noise, garbage accumulation, and inequitable programming control — were ignored.
• References to the Public Life Study were presented as broad community consensus despite limited and selective engagement.
• Staff and Supervisor aides invoked “compromise,” despite no negotiation, no dialogue, and no stakeholder process ever occurring… a mischaracterization that borders on coercive.
• A Supervisor’s aide was even moved ahead of the public during comment “because it was during his work day” — a level of procedural accommodation never extended to the residents and small businesses most affected by the closure.
• None of the concerns raised in our formal letter including economic harm, operational burdens, unequal representation, compliance failures, and spillover conditions were referenced or probed.
• No accountability questions were posed, and no follow-up was requested by the Board.

These points should alarm any resident or small business operator who expects public process especially for a policy this impactful to reflect the lived realities of those carrying the burden, not curated narratives designed to predetermine the outcome.

Why Many Chose Not to Speak

Since this item first came before the SFMTA Board in 2023, the last two years in particular have involved residents and small businesses being dismissed, targeted, boycotted, misrepresented, and funneled into a public-comment structure that offers no follow-up or substantive engagement. The pattern has become unmistakable: there is no real avenue for dialogue with anyone outside the permit holder’s circle.

For many residents and small business operators — especially those who have faced hostility for speaking honestly about the harms — this process has become demoralizing. People have been shouted down, targeted online, met with hostility within the neighborhood, and treated as obstacles instead of stakeholders. Encountering this repeatedly, and knowing the outcome was predetermined, most saw no value in walking into another hearing simply to be sidelined again.

This was a deliberate protest.

People did not stay home because they were indifferent, they stayed home because they have learned, through experience, that these hearings do not treat them as equal participants or credible stakeholders. Participating under those conditions only serves to legitimize the outcome. Choosing not to take part in that structure is not disengagement, it’s resistance in the purest form.

What This Closure Now Represents

(Context drawn from ongoing engagement, surveys, and documented interactions)

• A small cluster of actors continues to shape the narrative, access points, and decision-making pipeline.
• Public-facing spaces -from the so-called community bulletin board to flyers and the faux Hayes Promenade branding now reinforce a managed narrative rather than the neighborhood’s diversity of views.
• “Temporary” renewals have become a strategic runway toward permanency, with each additional year used to push the next phase.
• The Public Life Study, activation language, and selective engagement sessions are being positioned to justify long-term redesign without broad consent.
• The closure is increasingly presented as a “success story” or “international draw,” even as retail has collapsed, operational burdens have increased, and safety/spillover issues remain unresolved.
• The narrative pipeline feeding City Hall consistently excludes small businesses that have suffered the most under the closure.
• The future of Hayes Valley is being reshaped by those least affected by the operational burden of the closure, and most insulated from its consequences.
• This is no longer a discussion about one block … it has become a quiet effort to redesign the entire corridor.

Our independent community survey the most concentrated we’ve conducted shows that most residents do not support permanent closure or expansion, directly contradicting the narrative presented by the permit holder.

What This Renewal Really Means

The Board’s decision — paired with the orchestrated messaging, the selective data presentation, and the coordinated push for permanence — makes two things unmistakably clear:

1. The closure is being treated as a foregone conclusion, not a community decision.
2. The next year will be used to advance permanent closure of the corridor.

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Our Position Has Not Changed

• The closure is harming the corridor.
• The process is inequitable and exclusionary.
• And the people making decisions are not the ones living with the consequences.

More updates to come.