John and a band of San Francisco residents are on a mission to bring equal fire protection to the city’s outer neighborhoods in the aftermath of the next Big One.
Crabtree, who hails form Iowa, is a media and communications director in the environmental nonprofit sector and runs an environmental-focused newsletter. He jumped headfirst into the political scene once he moved to San Francisco in 2024, backing initiatives No on Prop K and the recall of the then-District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio. Now, he is one of the faces of the No on Prop A efforts on the upcoming June ballot.
“I’m not doing this for a job, but rather because we don’t want our community to burn down after the big earthquake comes,” Crabtree said.
The committee Crabtree started with his partner Lisa Arjes and several neighbors, named Equal Fire Protection For All, is opposing Prop A, a measure that aims to authorize the city to issue a $535 million bond for infrastructure improvements for earthquake safety and emergency response.
The problem, Crabtree said, is that a bond like this has been passed before, with resources going toward bigger projects downtown and with little action for neighborhoods in the west and south side of San Francisco, though it’s framed as going to all. Some communities, like those in Districts 4, 7 and 11, among others, are in what retired Judge Quentin Kopp called “unprotected” neighborhoods and are left without a sufficient auxiliary water supply system when disaster strikes.
“This is a fundamental disregard for the people that live in the unprotected neighborhoods,” Crabtree said. “Until the people that live out here stand up to that, it's not going to change. I think that's why we have to stand up.”
The Ingleside Light caught up with Crabtree to hear more about his vision for earthquake and fire protection city-wide.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why should people care about Prop A?
Everybody who lives in the unprotected neighborhoods, they should care for two reasons. One, they're unprotected, and the earthquake's going to come, and the fire's going to follow, and their homes, their lives, and their communities are going to be consumed. So why should they be concerned? Because this program has a 16-year track record of doing nothing to protect, virtually nothing, to protect people in the unprotected neighborhoods. If you live in the unprotected neighborhoods, that should make you angry. That should make you say, "We're going to end this program, and then we're going to build something new.”
The second reason for people who live in the unprotected zone is that bonds, by their very nature, are a request from the city to the taxpayers to say, “Will you help us invest your future tax dollars into whatever it is we want to do?” The voters in these unprotected neighborhoods, up until now, have joined with the rest of the city in supporting it.
Alex Mullaney
This I think is equally applicable to people here [in the protected zone.] They were asked for their money and the full faith and credit of their tax revenue. They were asked to foot that bill too. They also voted in favor of earthquake safety citywide. Their resources were also frittered away.
I know that people in both parts of the city who voted for this in the past did so with good intentions, not selfishly. They didn't say, “Oh, to hell with those people out there,” and then people here didn't say, “To hell with those people.” They did what they were asked, and they were betrayed. The city did not do what it promised, and so that second part, that broken promise, I believe everybody in the city should be offended by that because I know that these people didn't vote for these past bonds just out of selfishness. They didn't. They thought that everybody should be protected.
What do you imagine the solution to earthquake and fire protection for all would be?
I think we're going to need to build a new bond program, but what it should do is prioritize things that need to be prioritized. Number one, the top priority should be the expansion of post-earthquake firefighting water infrastructure across the entire city, and until you've accomplished that, you shouldn't be using earthquake safety money for things like bus bonds in Potrero. Number two, you fix up these neighborhood fire stations, and number three, you fix up the neighborhood police stations.
That could take a few bonds in a couple of years or 15 years. That's what the civil grand jury in 2019 said. If they did it so urgently, they could do it within 15 years, so those priorities over a period of a couple of bonds, and that's what needs to happen. It isn't [on] things like a new big hall for the chiefs and a coroner's office and a muni bus park.
What does accountability in that case look like?
That's actually why we have to defeat this bond because for 16 years this bond has been allowed to exist in an atmosphere where virtually no one has been held to account, no one being held to promise. The program has been broken promise after broken promise after broken promise. I say that broken promises thing is because the reason that exists is that no one has been held to account.
It would look like an actual oversight body that had teeth. When I think of the bond, first of all, it needs to be created in such a way that the bond itself should say, these are our top priorities and that oversight committee should say, “if you're spending money on anything that's not directly related to those top priorities, then you're violating the trust of the people. Stop doing it.” That's my vision of it, and I think the simpler you keep the prioritization, the more likely it is for that oversight committee to have the capacity to push back and ask a question. Then you need to, honestly, remove the people who never ask a question and put some people in who actually want to make it happen.
What is one piece of advice for folks who want to get involved in their community through a political or non-political lens?
I'm not being facetious when I say this. At this particular moment, the best piece of advice I could give people is to vote no on this because, trust me, I think this is going to shake things up. If we defeat this bond, it's really going to shake things up. It's going to provide a lot of opportunities for people to get involved in ways that they've never been able to be involved in.
The only other thing is when you see something in front of your house or on the route that you walk, or something like that, if it doesn't feel right to you, it probably isn't, so ask somebody about it. See if there's an organization that's working on it. Maybe you've got a couple of neighbors that are doing it. Our whole Equal Fire Protection for All committee is an offshoot of a couple of people who just want to see things be different. It's grown into the whole thing because other people share the same vision…So I think that's the advice I have. If you see something out in your community that's just wrong and it sticks in your craw, don't accept the line that “Well, the city can't do anything, or nobody can fix it,” or whatever. Go find somebody else who also doesn't like it and see if there isn't something you can do at that community level.
