Supporters Protest Wording Change to Initiative That Would Reopen Upper Great Highway

Supporters of the proposition said the revised summary is unfair and misleading.

Otto Pippenger, treasurer of Great Highway for Everyone, speaks to the media after a rejected appeal in a Ballot Simplification Committee meeting on July 27, 2026. Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times

SAN FRANCISCO—The city Ballot Simplification Committee on July 27 rejected reconsideration of the changes it made to a summary of a measure that would reopen the Upper Great Highway in Sunset Dunes Park to vehicles.

About two dozen supporters of the measure attended a committee meeting, hoping for the opportunity to speak in opposition to the text change during the public comments. However, the committee would not hear any comments beyond what was on the agenda.

The proposition was certified on July 23 by the Department of Elections, which vetted a random sample of the 15,924 signatures it received. If passed, it will reverse Proposition K, a 2024 voter-approved measure that transformed the two-mile Upper Great Highway into a park for recreational use such as walking and biking.

The previous draft of the summary on July 21 stated that voting “yes” on the measure means that “you want the City to reopen the Upper Great Highway to private motor vehicles at all times, except from Fridays at 6:00 p.m. until Mondays at 4:00 a.m. and on holidays.”

On July 24, the committee changed the text to “you want to close Sunset Dunes Park from Monday at 4:00 a.m. through Friday at 6:00 p.m., unless a holiday falls on a weekday, in order to reopen the roadway known as the Upper Great Highway to private vehicles during that time.”

The supporters at the meeting wanted the committee to revise the summary, saying the current version is unfair and misleading.

“It is to change the intent of the legislation. The legislation is to open it up for everyone,” Sunset resident Josephine Zhao yelled to the council members after finding out they wouldn’t allow public comments on the topic.

“You just want to shut us out. People like us are working. We’re coming because we think this is very urgent,”  Zhao said.

The Ballot Simplification Committee is in charge of creating summaries, or “digests,” of local ballot measures. These digests are included in the pamphlet given to voters.

After the July 21 draft of the digest was written, the committee made changes based on requests from Supervisor Myrna Melgar, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the nonprofit Friends of Sunset Dunes, and others.

“Voters cannot make an informed choice on this measure if they do not understand that they are closing a park in order to reconstruct and open a roadway,” Melgar, who co-sponsored Proposition K in 2024, wrote in a July 22 letter to the council, citing park protection as a core value written into San Francisco’s City Charter.

Sunset Dunes, a two-mile, 50-acre park, was opened on April 12, 2025. Proposition K requires the park to open to authorized vehicles, including emergency vehicles, government vehicles, and park transit shuttles.

The former Upper Great Highway and the land around it constitute the park, according to a map by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department.

“Sunset Dunes is not just the road, although they act like it is—the proponents of that act like it is when it suits them. It is the broader structure. It is the green sidelines with amenities,” Otto Pippenger, treasurer of Great Highway for Everyone, said to the media at the hearing.

Lucas Lux, president of Friends of Sunset Dunes, told the Ballot Simplification Committee in a July 22 letter that since the digest of Proposition K mentioned both the roadway closure and the opening of the park, the new measure should be drafted the same way.

Lux also asked the committee to state in the digest that a “yes” vote would “close Sunset Dunes Park, and remove all park features,” but the latter part was not adopted by the committee.

“The attitude that they left us with on Friday should be that we should be happy that they’ve only taken one political, slanted, untrue fact and put it into the ballot language and that we should be happy that they didn’t put the second one in,” said Pippenger, who attended a committee hearing on July 24.

Ballot Simplification Committee senior member Betty Packard told the protesters, “I’m sorry, very sorry that you all misinterpreted because you didn’t understand the process that Friday was the time to actually present the public comment.”

“And unless there’s a legal problem with that, it cannot be changed,” Packard added.

The committee referred Zhao to the City Attorney’s Office when she requested a formal appeal.

City Attorney David Chiu’s office wrote on July 28 in an email to The Epoch Times, “The City Attorney’s Office does not decide reconsiderations of ballot digests.”

The Ballot Simplification Committee needs two hearings to decide on a measure’s final digest, according to the City Attorney’s Office.

“Both of those steps are complete, and the Council finalized this particular measure,” the office stated.

Pippenger told The Epoch Times at the hearing, “People feel ambushed with this procedural maneuvering to prejudice the vote.”

Pippenger said the second hearing was arranged hours after the measure was formally certified, and it was “very difficult for us to bring hard-working members of the public to contest these people who have been planning for this for some time.”

Sunset resident J. J. Hollingsworth said she didn’t know what to do next after being rejected.

“I think there should be a lawsuit here somewhere. This isn’t a democracy!” she told The Epoch Times.

The Upper Great Highway was temporarily closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2021, the roadway has served as open space for recreational activities on weekends.

In 2024, then-District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio sponsored Proposition K, which passed with 54.7 percent in support.

In a special election in September 2025, District 4 voters recalled Engardio for supporting Proposition K.

“Now that San Franciscans have experienced both the compromise and 24/7 closure, I believe that voters can fully weigh the pros and cons in the ballot box,” District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong said in an email to The Epoch Times. “At the end of the day, I have to prioritize those commuting to work, home or school over weekday recreational use of the highway.”

In January, Wong tried to put in a ballot measure to reopen the Upper Great Highway but couldn’t secure the four cosponsors required for the Board of Supervisors to adopt such a measure.

About 14,000 commuters used to drive on the Upper Great Highway on each workday, according to Wong’s office.

Crystal Lu contributed to this report.