The Greenberg Brief: PandaGate

In a triumphant announcement, San Francisco Mayor London Breed gloated about the agreement signed between China and the city of San Francisco, to bring a pair of Giant Pandas to our zoo. Breed was in China, having just returned from meetings with heads of state, along with a contingent of thirty San Francisco business and government leaders in tow.

It's happening: the pandas are coming to San Francisco!

These Giant Pandas will honor our deep cultural connections and our Chinese and API heritage. They will bring residents and visitors from all over who come to visit them at the SF Zoo. pic.twitter.com/IInDO26QyI

— London Breed (@LondonBreed) April 19, 2024

Breed smiled brightly in her latest message announcing the panda plan. She also recorded a video where she marveled at China’s high-speed rail, extolling the merits of their infrastructure investment to make citizens’ lives better and brighter. She is apparently quite smitten with the state of affairs in China.

She, of course, ignored China’s role in our fentanyl crisis, here.

Back home in San Francisco, meanwhile, drug dealers sling their fentanyl cheaply to addicts purchasing the lethal drug with taxpayers’ subsidies. Our police department and sheriff’s offices are both understaffed, so much so the jails are experiencing near riots, lockdowns required and the national guard has been considered to quelle violence. A huge annual budget deficit, building even higher, is plaguing city hall, and further retail and restaurant closures accumulate. And by the way, a just published report shows the dismal state of our zoo, both from standpoint of workers’ safety and the health of animals as well. Our zoo is no stranger to criticism and controversy. Voters are pissed, primarily at her.  The contrast between the place Breed was visiting over there, and where she governs right here, cannot be starker.

Yet London Breed feels, amid budget, crime, economy, safety, and deteriorated zoo conditions, that now is the best time to conclude a new panda agreement. Never mind it is 2024 and elections will be in seven months. Pay no attention to the effort by Breed to pander to the city’s Chinese voters. Nothing to see here with spending taxpayers’ money to renovate existing zoo facilities – specifically for housing the pandas – in the tune of five million dollars plus panda leasing costs, or as an alternative, spending funds to build an entirely new habitat, for twenty million dollars.

Some yay-sayers assert the pandas will be money well-spent; Pandas will bring benefits including a rising of civic pride, more tourism and stimulate the economy offsetting the initial outlay. More realistic, nay-saying residents lament yet another boondoggle of Mayor Breed’s irresponsible burning taxpayers’ dollars for an effort at the wrong time. We as a city have a humanitarian crisis in our midst and Breed and her supporters pretend the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods are not overrun with tent-dwelling addicts, several dying daily. Plus, placing emphasis on the pandas, giving them premier billing, care, facilities when the rest of the zoo’s animals and infrastructure are not up to snuff. It’s a delicate balance; placing top-tier animals in an otherwise dilapidated facility is not the best experience for tourist making a pilgrimage to the city.

Bringing in pandas will require extraordinary security.  Remember the deadly disaster of the 2007? The Christmas Eve tiger rampage?

In reviewing PandaGate, the city’s legislative leaders – the San Francisco Board of Supervisors – must push back on Mayor Breed, expanding on the reasons to question her judgement.  She needs to get our city in order first, even if it means the giant panda deal will not be implemented until after Breed’s been out of office.

Forty years have elapsed since the last time China’s Giant Pandas have resided at the San Francisco Zoo, thought at that time in 1984, was a temporary, three-month showing. There are reasons for this; the zoo is in no shape to host such high cost and high maintenance animals. And in this current 2024 time and place (and leadership), San Francisco’s dubious reputation, the city hall budget crisis and zoo safety concerns all point to rejecting this Panda plan for the foreseeable future.