San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston has introduced a resolution to the Board of Supervisors urging them to reject the mayor’s proposed slashing of funding for the city’s Community Ambassadors Program.
In Mayor London Breed’s recently announced two-year budget, she plans to cut funding in the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs that would eliminate the Community Ambassadors Program. The proposed cuts are part of Breed’s attempt to close the city’s $800 million deficit.
“The mayor’s proposal to completely defund this essential program is inexplicable and disrespectful of the dedicated OCEIA staff, the hardworking ambassadors and the neighborhoods across our city that are benefiting from OCEIA’s important work to improve safety and quality of life for everyone in our communities,” Preston said in press release.
Community ambassadors can often be seen walking around nearly every San Francisco neighborhood wearing neon yellow jackets. Their job is to serve multilingual communities by helping neighbors, small businesses and visitors.
“Many of the ambassadors are bilingual and each ambassador team is tailored to meet the linguistic needs of the community,” Preston said Tuesday.
Providing safety escorts, reporting safety hazards and street cleanliness issues, reversing overdoses and reporting emergencies and crime are just a few of the services ambassadors do.
“This is a nationally recognized program that honors the diversity of San Francisco’s neighborhood and works to bridge the linguistic and cultural barriers that exist between residents and city services,” Preston said.
Preston has been a supporter of the Community Ambassadors Program since he first took office. He won funding for expansion of the program into District 5 and beyond, Preston said.
But he’s not the only supervisor trying to save the program. Supervisors Shamann Walton, Connie Chan, Hillary Ronen, Joel Engardio and Aaron Peskin are co-sponsoring the resolution.
‘They do a really good job’
Engardio championed the program on Tuesday by giving an example of how ambassadors provided help for residents in the city’s Sunset District.
“We had an incident in the Sunset at a preschool and the parents were very on edge and unnerved,” Engardio said. “We have an extreme shortage of police officers especially out in the Sunset Taraval Station and they just didn’t have the ability to patrol and monitor the area in the way the parents wanted them to. But these community ambassadors in their yellow jackets showed up and walked around the preschool and gave peace of mind to the parents.”
Members of communities where ambassadors work have also praised the program.
“They do a really good job in helping the businesses and the community members enjoy Hayes Valley and other locations. They’re a great support for the law enforcement at Northern Station, and they are also very friendly,” said Bob Barnwell, chair of the Public Safety Committee of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association.
“This is an embodiment of how we can make the city work for everyone and this program is just invaluable so I hope that we can honor it and preserve it,” Engardio said Tuesday.
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