The Rules Committee met on February 9, 2026 (broadcast via SFGovTV) to advance several ordinances and appointments to the full Board of Supervisors, including: (1) an Administrative Code update affecting Fire Department leadership qualifications and physician selection authority, (2) creation of a Fisherman’s Wharf Entertainment Zone, (3) an appointment to the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) Public Authority, (4) multiple appointments of Supervisor Chen to outside bodies/commissions, and (5) an ordinance restricting unauthorized use of City property and clarifying that civil immigration enforcement is not a City purpose. All committee actions were approved without objection on 3–0 votes (Walton, Sherrill, Mandelman).
Good morning and welcome to our February 9th, 2026 Rules Committee meeting. I am your Chair Supervisor, Shimon Walton, joined by Vice-Chair Supervisor Steven Sherrill, and soon to be joined by Committee Member President, Rafael Mandelman. Today's clerk is Victor Young, and we are joined by James Kawano with SFGovTV to make sure that this meeting is broadcast and available to the public for viewing. Mr. Clerk, do we have any announcements this morning? Yes, public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda. When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak on your right. Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways. Email them to myself, the Rules Committee Clerk, at victor.yong at sfgov.org. If you submit public comment via email, it will be included as part of the file. You may also submit written comment to us via U.S. mail at our office address of City Hall 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, room 244, San Francisco, California 94102. Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. Items asked upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors' Agenda of February 24, 2026 unless otherwise stated that completes my initial announcements thank you so much would you please call item number one item number one is ordinance amending the administrative code to remove the fire commission's authority to appoint the fire department's physician and to revise the required qualification for one of the deputy fire chiefs and i believe we have our fire chief dean Crispin here to discuss this item this morning. So good to see you this morning, chief. Good morning. Good to see you too, members of the committee. Dean Crispin, chief of department. Thank you for allowing us to present on this administrative code change that we are requesting. So there's two pieces to it. One is the qualifications to be a deputy chief of emergency medical services and community paramedicine, and the other piece is who is able to select our department physician. So I'll start with our deputy chief position. So this vacancy was created by the retirement of Deputy Chief Simon Pang, and in evaluating that position with a vacancy, we decided as a department, after collaborating with the union and our other affinity groups, that we needed a more diverse and wide pool of applicants. So the problem with the current administrative code as it stands is the position is only available to community paramedics who are rescue captains and other chiefs in the EMS division. And what we're trying to do in integrating the department is have a chief in this position that understands all of the pieces of our emergency medical response and our community paramedicine. So the folks that were excluded under the administrative code is our battalion chiefs, who are frontline incident commanders who manage multi-casualty incidents, active attacker incidents, fires, specialized rescues. So we felt it was really important to open that up to those folks in that position because they are our frontline commanders. And as we reviewed our disaster response manual, we realized that as the succession planning gets down to what we call CD4, which is this deputy chief position, we need somebody who has command experience should something horrible happen. we would need them to actually be the chief of department in succession planning. And as it currently stands, unfortunately some of the folks that are applying for it or would be interested don't quite have the command experience that a battalion chief would have. So, and understand that it is the chief of EMS and community paramedicine in conversations with local 798 and other affinity groups and other interested parties, we decided to require that they had been a paramedic in our department so that they have that clinical knowledge