Mayor London Breed’s nominees for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board — a small business owner and an accessibility advocate —were approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.
Manny Yekutiel, the owner of café and political event space Manny’s in the Mission, and Fiona Hinze, system change director at Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco, will help oversee the agency that runs Muni, streets and parking during a tumultuous time, with ridership and finances devastated by the pandemic.
Supervisors battled the mayor, who appoints all seven members of the agency’s board, on one of her nominees last year. In August, the board rejected Breed’s nomination of transit advocate Jane Natoli and approved Sharon Lai, a former city planner.
On Tuesday, supervisors unanimously supported Hinze, who has cerebral palsy and uses an electric wheelchair, and voted 9-2 in favor of Yekutiel. Sandra Lee Fewer and Dean Preston dissented, saying they wanted a Latino board member instead. Latinos make up 15% of the city’s population, but at least 30% of Muni ridership, the SFMTA’s Local Government Affairs Manager Joél Ramos told supervisors.
“I think it is 100% disheartening and a travesty that we don’t have Latino representation on the SFMTA board of directors,” said Supervisor Shamann Walton, who voted in favor of Yekutiel. “That is a problem and we will continue to fight to make sure that changes.”
Supervisors, including the two who voted no, applauded the accomplishments of each nominee and pledged to approve a Latino member of the board in the near future, although another seat won’t be open until 2022. The two approved appointments mean that the seven-member SFMTA board will be filled for the first time since May.
Ramos, who formerly served as an SFMTA board member, said the agency’s director Jeffrey Tumlin has acknowledged the need for more diverse representation and met on Monday with the agency’s Latinx Affinity Group. In December, the SFMTA board adopted a multi-step racial equity plan that included data showing the agency’s leadership was disproportionately white compared to its workforce. The plan was required by the city’s Office of Racial Equity, which was created in 2019.
“This is why we…
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