This page documents our formal correspondence to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and its Government Audit & Oversight Committee seeking Board-level review of recurring governance and public-process concerns in Hayes Valley. Prompted by records concerning the proposed Hayes Valley Community Benefit District (CBD), the letter asks that a Board member sponsor a hearing to examine broader questions of neighborhood representation, the role of private organizations, and City decision-making across multiple initiatives.
October 2, 2026
Members of the Board of Supervisors and Government Audit & Oversight Committee:
Hayes Valley Safe (HVS) is requesting Board-level review of the development of a proposed Community Benefit District (CBD) in Hayes Valley and the broader governance and public-process concerns that the circumstances surrounding this effort bring into focus.
This request does not arise from opposition to Community Benefit Districts as a concept, nor from a disagreement over whether private parties may fund exploratory CBD work. Our concern is more fundamental: who has been positioned to explore, shape, fund, and advance a potential governance structure for Hayes Valley; how that group came to occupy that role; the involvement of the District 5 Supervisor’s office in facilitating the effort; and why this represents yet another consequential Hayes Valley initiative developing through substantially the same narrow network of private organizations and individuals.
What recently disclosed records show
Records obtained through Immediate Disclosure Requests establish that discussion of a Hayes Valley CBD has been underway for an extended period.
In 2024, Hayes Valley merchant Lloyd Silverstein contacted City officials concerning formation of a CBD, identifying himself as having recently helped form a PBID in Sausalito and stating that he had support for exploring a similar effort in Hayes Valley.
By early 2025, CBD discussions were occurring directly with the District 5 Supervisor’s office. Correspondence subsequently connected the proposed CBD to other initiatives already being advanced in Hayes Valley. In April 2025, Silverstein described the CBD, Car Free Hayes, and an Entertainment Zone as “interdependent,” stating that ongoing CBD funding would be needed to keep a car-free Hayes clean and safe and support Entertainment Zone activations. Supervisor Bilal Mahmood responded that a CBD would be “the best mechanism for maintaining these respective initiatives once they’re live.”
OEWD’s CBD Program Director contacted District 5 staff the following month after learning that the Supervisor might be interested in exploring CBD feasibility. A May 29, 2025 meeting titled “Jackie + Raynell / CBD Chat” followed.
The effort continued.
On June 3, 2026, Supervisor Mahmood introduced a group of Hayes Valley organizers to Michael Seibel, former President of Y Combinator, describing him as interested in supporting their efforts to establish a CBD.
Six days later, following a meeting with Seibel, Silverstein wrote to Supervisor Mahmood:
“He has agreed to fund our exploratory CBD work and to connect us with people who can inform our process.”
Silverstein further thanked the Supervisor for making good on a commitment dating to their first conversation during Mahmood’s campaign to help with the Hayes Valley CBD effort. The Supervisor responded that he was glad the conversation went well and was excited to see the effort progress.
Subsequent records show organizers communicating with outside CBD expertise regarding formation, stakeholder engagement, governance, services, and consensus-building.
OEWD has since informed HVS that, beyond earlier inquiries reflected in its records, it had not been made aware of an organizing body undertaking exploratory CBD formation work in Hayes Valley. OEWD also clarified that community groups may independently undertake privately funded exploratory CBD work before the agency is aware of an effort.
That clarification does not resolve the concern presented here; it sharpens it. If significant elements of a proposed CBD may be shaped privately before the City’s formal formation process begins, then the identity, representativeness, and City-assisted access of the group conducting that work become especially consequential.
The question is who is being empowered to shape Hayes Valley before a broader public process begins.
This did not occur in a vacuum
If the proposed CBD were an isolated occurrence, these circumstances might simply warrant questions about one developing initiative. They are not isolated.
For years, HVS and affected Hayes Valley residents and small businesses have documented concerns regarding a recurring model of neighborhood decision-making in which a relatively narrow group of private organizations and affiliated individuals receives early access to City officials, helps develop or advance neighborhood initiatives, and is repeatedly treated as a principal channel for neighborhood input.
Those concerns have arisen in connection with the Hayes Street weekend closure and Shared Spaces operations, recurring street activations, Head West, the Entertainment Zone, the Hayes Valley Farmers Market, the Hayes Valley Community Bulletin Board at Parcel K, and related uses of public streets and neighborhood resources.
The projects differ. The recurring structure does not. Again and again, consequential initiatives affecting public streets, commercial access, neighborhood programming, transportation, and the future operation of the Hayes Valley commercial corridor have been developed through engagement with many of the same organizations and individuals.
And again and again, HVS and other unaffiliated stakeholders have had to use public-records laws to understand discussions and relationships that were not otherwise visible while those initiatives were taking shape.
Public-records requests should not function as Hayes Valley’s community-engagement process.
The City was already on notice
These concerns are not being raised for the first time because HVS recently discovered the CBD effort.
On February 5, 2026, HVS issued a formal notice to City agencies concerning patterns of exclusionary engagement, stakeholder representation, and City reliance on a limited set of neighborhood organizations.
On April 17, following the emergence of the proposed Hayes Valley Farmers Market, we supplemented that notice because another substantial corridor initiative was again moving forward through substantially the same network.
On May 22, we issued a broader formal notice concerning governance, representation, and public-process concerns in Hayes Valley decision-making. That notice expressly advised City officials that our concerns had evolved beyond any single permit, activation, or project and warned of the increasing concentration of influence and coordination among a relatively narrow group of private organizations, selected stakeholders, and institutional actors.
On July 28, HVS issued a further formal notice concerning the Hayes Valley Community Bulletin Board on City-owned land at Parcel K, raising related questions regarding private administration of a public-facing neighborhood resource, equitable access, and civic participation.
Across these notices, the cumulative record raised structural questions regarding representation, accountability, and public-process integrity. The City therefore cannot reasonably characterize the concerns presented here as newly raised or previously unknown.
What is new is that records obtained after those notices now show the same underlying problem extending into the exploration of a potential Community Benefit District.
A CBD is not another weekend event. It is a potentially durable neighborhood institution involving defined boundaries, assessments, services, governance, and an organization charged with administering and managing those resources and functions. The question of who shapes such an institution at its formative stage therefore matters enormously.
Private organizations are participants, not the neighborhood government
Neighborhood nonprofits are private organizations. Individual merchants represent themselves and their businesses. Private funders may support causes and projects they believe in. None of these actors inherently represents Hayes Valley as a whole, nor does their status or participation confer representative authority over an entire neighborhood or commercial corridor.
The governance problem arises when City institutions repeatedly rely upon a limited network of such actors as the principal mechanism through which consequential neighborhood policy is conceived, developed, coordinated, or advanced.
The CBD records make that concern particularly difficult to ignore. Here, the District Supervisor did not merely receive a proposal from constituents. His office supported the CBD effort over time, discussed its relationship to other Hayes Valley initiatives, met with OEWD concerning CBD feasibility, introduced the organizers to a prominent private funder, participated in the resulting meeting, and received confirmation that private funding for exploratory CBD work had been secured.
Meanwhile, the broader affected community was not participating in a comparable public process through which the future structure, objectives, governance, boundaries, services, or relationship of a Hayes Valley CBD to existing neighborhood initiatives was being considered. We learned these facts through disclosure requests.
Why we are bringing this to the Board
We have spent years raising individual operational, permitting, outreach, and public-process concerns with the agencies and offices responsible for individual Hayes Valley initiatives. That approach has not addressed the underlying problem. We therefore believe the time has come for the Board of Supervisors to examine the system producing these recurring outcomes, rather than treating each resulting project as an isolated neighborhood dispute.
We respectfully request that a member of the Board sponsor a hearing before the Government Audit & Oversight Committee to examine the following governance and public-process issues:
• how City departments and elected offices determine which private neighborhood organizations and individuals are engaged during the early development of neighborhood initiatives;
• whether any written standards govern when an organization or individual is treated as representative of a neighborhood, commercial corridor, or affected stakeholder population;
• what safeguards ensure that residents, merchants, property owners, and organizations outside established or favored networks have a meaningful opportunity to participate before proposals are substantially developed;
• the role of District offices in facilitating private funding, consultants, organizing bodies, or other resources for initiatives that may later require City approval or legislative action;
• how privately funded exploratory work involving proposed public-private governance structures such as CBDs should intersect with transparency and broad stakeholder engagement;
• and whether existing City practices adequately distinguish between consulting with neighborhood organizations and effectively allowing particular organizations to function as de facto intermediaries for a neighborhood.
We also ask that the proposed Hayes Valley CBD receive particular attention while it remains exploratory. If this effort proceeds, questions concerning representation and process should be addressed before boundaries, governance, services, assessments, and institutional relationships become settled facts presented to the broader community for reaction.
Six years is enough
HVS has attempted to address these issues project by project, agency by agency, permit by permit, disclosure request by disclosure request, and notice by notice. The result is now a substantial documentary record.
Reasonable people can disagree about closing a street, holding a market, establishing an Entertainment Zone, hosting recurring activations, or creating a Community Benefit District. That is not the issue presented here.
The issue is whether the same limited network of private actors should repeatedly be permitted to occupy the formative space in which major decisions about a public neighborhood are shaped, while everyone else is expected to participate after the architecture has already been built.
After years of documenting the same structural concern across multiple initiatives, and after repeatedly placing City officials on formal notice, we believe continued treatment of these matters as unrelated project-level disputes is no longer adequate.
We are asking the Board to act on that record.
HVS respectfully requests that a member of the Board sponsor a Government Audit & Oversight Committee hearing so these recurring governance and public-process concerns can finally be examined as a whole, rather than project by project after decisions are already underway.