Vol. I, No. 53 · San Francisco — Wednesday, October 21, 2026 · Price: uncapped, for a ballot measure
BY CONSTANCE FEENEY, CITY HALL
On September 29, five weeks before the vote, a committee called No on G, Save Sunset Dunes reported a single contribution of $375,000. It came from Jeremy Stoppelman, the co-founder and chief executive of Yelp, who had given the committee $25,000 in August. Two years earlier, under another name, the same committee took $350,000 from him to turn the Upper Great Highway into a park.
Across the two elections, Stoppelman has supplied 47 percent of everything the committee raised. It was 44 percent of the $790,873 it raised in 2024 for Proposition K, which passed. This year it is 49 percent of the $816,761 raised so far against Proposition G. That measure would reopen the road to cars on weekdays and close it again from Friday evening to Monday morning. His $400,000 this year is nearly three times what the whole Yes on G campaign has raised: $141,458, from 259 named donors.
These totals run through reports filed October 19, and they probably overstate the park side’s lead. Since September 19 the only filings have been 24-hour reports, which are required only for gifts of $1,000 or more. Smaller checks from those weeks will appear on full reports due October 22. They matter more to Yes on G, which has drawn 42 percent of its money from donors who gave less than $1,000.
San Francisco caps a gift to a candidate at $500. A committee for or against a ballot measure can take a gift of any size, under a line the Supreme Court drew in 1981. One donor paying for a big share of a measure campaign is common here. In 2024, 9 of the 29 measure committees that raised $100,000 or more got at least 40 percent of their money from one donor. In eight of the nine, that donor was an organization, most often a union or a political committee. The ninth was Stoppelman, and his 44 percent was the largest share any one person gave any of the 29. The filings are firm on amounts and dates and say nothing about why anyone gave.
The committee’s filings with the Ethics Commission read like a biography. It registered on July 8, 2024, as Ocean Beach for Everybody. By August 16 it was Yes on K, Ocean Beach for All. By late October the name had grown to Yes on K, Ocean Beach Park for All, Sponsored By Community Nonprofits. Voters passed Proposition K that November, 55 percent to 45. The park, Sunset Dunes, opened on April 12, 2025. The committee reported no contributions in 2025. On July 28 of this year it renamed itself Save Sunset Dunes, sponsored by Friends of Sunset Dunes. On August 13 it put No on G at the front.
Stoppelman’s 2024 gifts were a $300,000 contribution on August 6 and $50,000 in slate mail on September 9. Slate mail means mailers listing endorsements, and the committee reported it as a non-cash gift. This year’s second-largest donor is Laura Yakovenko of Oakland, listed as retired, at $200,000; she gave $50,000 in 2024. The two have given 73 percent of this year’s money. Donors who listed addresses outside San Francisco gave 32 percent of it, against 8 percent of Yes on G’s. The committee’s 98 named donors who gave less than $1,000 account for 2 percent. More than half of this year’s total, $479,000, has arrived since September 19.
Both times, the money against the park was smaller. In 2024 two committees against Proposition K raised $276,760, about a third as much as the park’s side. Their largest donors were the group Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy, at $89,000, and Michael Boschetto, at $50,000. Counting each side’s two largest donors, 2024 was close to even: 54 percent of the park side’s money and 50 percent of its opponents’. This year it is not: the park side’s two largest donors gave 73 percent of its money, and Yes on G’s gave 25 percent. Yes on G’s largest is the Chinese American Democratic Club, at $25,000. The park’s side is ahead almost six to one.
More money can arrive until November 3. Spending by outside groups has been small so far. SPUR has reported $5,823 of its own spending against the measure. The committee’s sponsor, the nonprofit Friends of Sunset Dunes, has given it $42,696, and the nonprofit’s own donors do not appear in these filings.
In 2024 the side with nearly three times the money won the citywide vote, and that did not end the fight. The Sunset’s own district voted 64 percent against Proposition K, then recalled the supervisor who had sponsored it, Joel Engardio. This paper’s October 16 edition found that the closure has moved the Sunset’s sales tax and crash counts less than either side said it would. The filings show something narrower. In both elections the park’s side has leaned on its largest donor more than the other side has: 44 percent from Stoppelman in 2024, against 32 percent from the opposition’s largest, and 49 percent this year, against 18 percent.
Across the two elections Stoppelman has given $750,000. The three committees formed to oppose the park have raised $418,218 between them.
A 22-year-old Alzheimer’s study got San Francisco’s top NIH grant this year, $26.9 million
The study has drawn $321 million from the National Institutes of Health since 2004. Most of this year’s money pays for work led from other cities; the parts led from San Francisco get $2.9 million.
BY MAXINE DOLAN, CITY DESK
On September 30, 2004, the National Institute on Aging started paying for a study of how Alzheimer’s disease shows up in brain scans and blood before it shows up in memory. It is still paying. On August 12 it sent this year’s installment, $26.9 million. That was the largest award the National Institutes of Health made to any San Francisco organization in fiscal 2026.
The study is the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, and it has drawn $320.8 million in 61 federal awards, all on a single grant. NIH pays the money to the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, a nonprofit that works with the San Francisco VA Health Care System and UCSF. The grant’s lead scientist, then and now, is Michael W. Weiner. Volunteers get brain scans, memory tests and blood and spinal-fluid draws at more than 60 clinics in the United States and Canada. The study hands the results to any scientist who applies, with no waiting period. By its own count, more than 3,600 papers have been built on that data. Its grant summary says the data have changed how Alzheimer’s drug trials are designed.
The grant is paid to a San Francisco nonprofit, and most of it pays for work led from elsewhere. NIH splits this year’s award into 11 parts. The largest, $11.9 million to coordinate the study’s clinics day to day, is led by Paul S. Aisen and managed at the University of Southern California, where his other NIH grants are. The second-largest, $5.6 million to recruit volunteers from groups at higher risk of dementia, is led by Monica G. Rivera-Mindt, whose own NIH grant is at Fordham, a New York university.
Two parts are led from San Francisco. Weiner’s office, which runs the study, gets $2.4 million. A project led by Duygu Tosun-Turgut gets $523,437, and her own grants also go to the San Francisco institute. Together the two get $2.9 million, 11 percent of the total. Seven parts, with 86 percent of the money, are led by scientists whose other grants are elsewhere. Two small ones were not traced.
The study has grown as it aged: its first award, in 2004, was $8.75 million. Two years show no new money, 2021 and 2024, because the award before each covered two years. The dollar figures are NIH’s own, and they are firm. The count of research papers and the effect on drug trials are the study’s own claims.
The federal record still lists the project’s start as September 30, 2004. It lists the current award’s end as July 31, 2028, which would make it 24 years on a single grant. That is long but not rare here: 37 NIH projects in San Francisco this year began earlier, the oldest a UCSF training grant in gastroenterology from 1975. The biggest of them, UCSF’s cancer center grant, gets $8.1 million this year, under a third of this one.
ON THE CALENDAR
A World Model for Biology. Jean-Philippe Vert, chief executive of the Paris company Bioptimus, talks about an AI model of biology that reads tissue slides and single-cell data together. The room is full: 198 people had registered as of October 20, up from 6 when the page first appeared on September 25, and the page now takes only a waitlist. The hosts, MBC BioLabs and the Bits in Bio SF group, list it as a one-time night rather than a series.
Wednesday, October 21, 6:00 PM · 135 Mississippi St, Potrero Hill · free · lu.ma/mupawovc
From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of 1:54 a.m. October 20. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. San Francisco Ethics Commission filings via DataSF (pitq-e56w, qizs-bwft, 4c8t-ngau), queried October 21, 2026. Committee 211776936 (FPPC 1471154). Totals are Form 460 Schedules A and C (latest versions), plus Form 497 late contributions after September 19, 2026, plus unitemized gifts; 2026 through reports filed October 19, 2026. Donor cities as listed on the filings. The 2024 comparison covers every primarily formed measure committee that reported $100,000 or more in 2024 contributions, donor names matched by spelling. Stoppelman’s 2024 gifts also appear on the original report, NetFile 212198461. Other committees: 215573474 (Yes on G), 211875154 and 212422408 (No on K, 2024), SPUR 217609977. 2. SF Public Press, September 27, 2026, and Bay City News via NBC Bay Area, September 17, 2025, as cited in No. 51 (October 16, 2026). 3. sfethics.org, candidate contribution limits; Citizens Against Rent Control v. City of Berkeley, 454 U.S. 290 (1981); California Fair Political Practices Commission, filing schedule for local measure committees, November 3, 2026, election. 4. Wikipedia, “Sunset Dunes,” accessed October 21, 2026. Queries in receipts.json.
2. NIH RePORTER (api.reporter.nih.gov), queried October 21, 2026: grant U01/U19 AG024904, contact PI Michael W. Weiner. 61 awards, fiscal 2004–2026, $320,834,731; the 2020 and 2023 awards each covered two budget years. FY2026 award, August 12, 2026: $26,866,193, the largest of 1,850 San Francisco projects; Clinical Core $11,859,096, Engagement Core $5,648,188, Administrative Core $2,368,713, Project 1 $523,437. Core leaders’ other awards, fiscal 2024–2026: Aisen and Toga, University of Southern California; Rivera-Mindt, Fordham; Jack, Mayo Clinic; Jagust, UC Berkeley; Perrin, Washington University; Saykin, Indiana University; Tosun-Turgut, Northern California Institute for Research and Education. Shaw and Beckett not traced. Fiscal 2012 award $814,442, budget September 1, 2012, to August 31, 2013. Older San Francisco projects: fiscal 2026 projects with start dates before September 30, 2004. Abstract: “over 3600 publications.” 6. ncire.org. 7. adni.loni.usc.edu/about, both accessed October 21, 2026. Queries in receipts.json.
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