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By Cecilia Vega, Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writers
San Francisco Chronicle
Mayor Gavin Newsom was sworn in for a second term Tuesday, promising to make San Francisco a greener city and a national leader in health care reform while praising "San Francisco values" like support for same-sex marriage and protections for undocumented immigrants.
Newsom’s father, retired Judge William Newsom, administered the oath of office using a family Bible under City Hall’s palatial dome in a ceremony that organizers billed as low-key. The mayor was sworn in alongside his sister Hillary Newsom Callan, her two young daughters and his new fiancee, Jennifer Siebel, to whom Newsom referred in his inaugural speech as "the love of my life."
Dignitaries such as U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former Mayors Frank Jordan and Willie Brown, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums gathered for the occasion, as did scores of regular folks who crammed into City Hall’s balconies.
"On the most important issues of the day, San Francisco is providing leadership for our nation and the world," Newsom said.
Newsom ran virtually unopposed in November and easily won re-election despite a rocky year that included a high-profile sex scandal and his admission of a drinking problem.
If his 48-minute inaugural speech Tuesday is any indication, Newsom will spend the next four years focusing on many of the same bold initiatives that have helped to solidify his reputation as a rising star in the Democratic Party and that eventually could catapult him into a run for higher office.
One of the more controversial initiatives the mayor said he will push for during his second term is a congestion-pricing program that discourages drivers from driving their polluting cars by charging them a fee to use certain roads in the city.
Newsom offered few details about the proposal, but said "a sensible congestion-pricing plan is the single greatest step we can take to protect our environment and improve our quality of life."
The mayor also pledged to fight global warming by making all city departments carbon-neutral by 2020 by investing in projects that reduce emissions and having a city fleet of cars that operate on biodiesel fuel.
Despite a federal judge’s recent ruling that the city was violating federal law by requiring businesses to help pay for its efforts to extend health care to the uninsured, Newsom promised that San Francisco will be the first place in the nation to offer universal health care.
He also unveiled an initiative to encourage families to remain residents of San Francisco through a program called the "Baby Savings Bond."
Under the program to help families contend with the high cost of living in the city, the municipal government would deposit $500 into a fund for every baby born in San Francisco. The fund would earn interest - and could be accessed by the child upon graduation from high school if his or her family remains in the city that long. The money would be intended to help pay for college or first-time home ownership.
Every graduating high school senior who participates in public service would be able to access the money, Newsom said.
The idea was met with mixed reaction in City Hall.
"We probably could do other things with that money, but my ears are open," Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said.
Newsom’s first inauguration in 2004 drew thousands after he narrowly beat then-Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. The swearing-in for his second term was much more subdued. When Newsom invited members of the public to shake his hand in a receiving line Tuesday, only about a dozen people initially stood waiting for his office door to open. Four years ago, the line stretched around City Hall.
Instead of actress Joan Chen who served as the mistress of ceremonies in 2004, this year San Francisco Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia was the emcee. Newsom said he plans to work even more closely with San Francisco Unified School District, voicing his support for a parcel tax headed onto the June ballot to raise teachers’ pay and calling on the independently elected school board to institute a community-service requirement for all students.
Dennis Kelly, the local teachers’ union president, called the community-service component a "very interesting idea," but said he has questions about how students and teachers would squeeze another requirement into already packed schedules.
Newsom used his time in the spotlight to plug a number of local ballot initiatives voters will be asked to weigh in on this year. But he also fired an indirect shot across the bow at an affordable-housing measure sponsored by his rival Supervisor Chris Daly and slated for the November ballot, saying it offers "attractive promises but not sound policy."
The mayor pledged to redesign the city’s homeless shelter system to include job training and drug-treatment programs under the same roofs as emergency shelter beds. Not everyone was pleased.
"It’s frustrating because we’ve got a lot of real, true experts in homelessness in San Francisco, and they know how to solve the issues on the ground," said Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness. "They need to be consulted before any new initiative goes forward, because they know what works."
Many of the proposals and policies Newsom touted Tuesday were initiatives he introduced in his first term and ones that he has not yet been able to claim as complete successes.
The mayor’s failed bid to blanket the city in wireless Internet access, for example, is far from over, he said. Newsom now intends to lean heavily on the free wireless networks popping up around the city and linking them to the city’s growing wireless capacity.
"We are not going to stop until this task is accomplished," Newsom said.
When it comes to the city’s sky-high murder rate - last year it reached a decade high with 97 homicides - Newsom said, "we will not rest" until the numbers go down.
The Police Department, Newsom announced, will assign a police commander to specifically work in public housing developments.
And Newsom said he wants to modify the city’s payroll tax and shift the burden from small businesses to larger businesses. His spokesman said the administration would accomplish this through a ballot initiative, which would broaden the payroll tax base by requiring firms organized as partnerships - such as law firms and some accounting agencies - to start paying the tax. Those businesses are now exempt.
The ballot initiative would expand the tax break for small businesses and require larger partnerships that for years haven’t had to pay tax to carry more of the burden.
Steve Falk, president of the Chamber of Commerce, said he’d rather see a shift entirely away from a tax system based on the payroll to one based on revenue, saying the former punishes businesses for creating jobs.
But Newsom said his ultimate goal for the next four years is making San Francisco a healthier place.
"At the end of the day, making San Francisco the healthiest city in America is our ultimate goal," he said.
Newsom’s second-term initiatives
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s new initiatives include:
– $500 "Baby Savings Bond" program to keep families in the city.
– Community-service requirement for public high school students.
– Redesign of city homeless shelters.
– Make city government carbon-neutral by 2020.
– Expanded mentor programs pairing retirees with youth.
– Expanded 311 call line so people can access information via text message or on the Internet.
– A congestion-pricing plan that charges people to drive their cars into the city during certain hours.
– City payroll tax reform.
– Expanded job-training programs for nonviolent offenders, especially those convicted of drug-related crimes.
— A "China desk" in the mayor’s office to coordinate economic outreach between S.F. and the People’s Republic of China
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