SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Mayor London Breed delivered the State of the City Address Thursday setting forth her top priorities for San Francisco in 2023.

Breed said supporting the future of downtown, creating more housing, neighborhood safety, and responding to the fentanyl crisis are at the top of her list.

“If we stand still, we fall behind,” Breed said.

“The last few years have been tough. We won’t solve all of San Francisco’s problems in a year, and we can’t fear trying new things. When we push forward, even if we stumble, we stumble forward,” Breed said. “Through four consecutive elections last year, our voters re-instilled every level of our government with a mandate: to get the basics right, to put children before politics, to put results before posturing.”

The mayor said strengthening public safety is a vital component for helping San Francisco’s economy recover post-pandemic.

Breed acknowledged that the San Francisco Police Department has “critically low officer staffing levels and retention challenges.” She expressed a continued need for increasing incentives to advance recruitment efforts and retain officers.

The mayor highlighted support for police alternatives, including the expansion of Community and Welcome Ambassadors, as well as Street Crisis Response Teams. 

Breed said she will introduce a $25 million budget supplemental later this month to help fund police overtime.

“Our residents are demanding we build back the police force, and we need to deliver. The push for full staffing has to be consistent and it has to be sustained. Because public safety isn’t only about taking care of our residents — it’s also taking care of our economy,” the mayor said.

Breed announced the “Roadmap to Downtown San Francisco’s Future” plan, to reimagine downtown’s economic recovery and role. The mayor said the city will recruit new business sectors and companies to create a more diverse and resilient local economy. 

Downtown and Union Square, once-bustling hubs for shoppers and workers, look like ghost towns, critics of the mayor’s leadership say.

“This isn’t an end to downtown. The truth is, it won’t be any one thing that ‘saves downtown.’ It will have to be many things. Our city’s unemployment rate remains at two percent,” Breed said.

The mayor said the city will reform its tax structure to make San Francisco more competitive. New legislation will protect existing companies by pausing tax increases on San Francisco retail businesses, hotels, manufacturing sector, and arts and entertainment, as well as attract new businesses by offering tax breaks for any company that moves to San Francisco, according to Breed.  

Earlier this week, Breed rolled out her “Housing for All” plan, calling for 82,000 new homes over the next eight years.   

“To build the 82,000 homes the plan calls for, we need to approve and build homes three times faster than we did over the last decade. And that’s in a market where, right now, builders are struggling to make any project financially feasible,” Breed said.   

She pledged to remove unnecessary barriers and open up the city’s stalled pipeline of more than 52,000 units of approved housing.