California city chief’s troubling exit speech from top SF job revealed

The California city leader caught allegedly trying to steal a yacht after bizarrely ransacking the vessel spoke only months prior to the incident about needing less stress in her life during a farewell speech at her former job.

Sausalito City Manager Elaine Forbes, 53, was arrested early Saturday after authorities said she boarded multiple vessels at a local marina — including a 66-foot yacht investigators believe said may have attempted to take.

Forbes had only been in job for three weeks after previously serving as the Port of San Francisco’s executive director for nine years.

In September, she announced she was leaving the job, saying she was “tired” of being in charge of such a large city and was looking to make a change.

“Honestly, it’s time for me to go. I have been the director for nine years,” she said during a meeting of the Port Commission.

“I’m tired. I want a job with fewer than 280 employees.”

“I don’t want to run a port city anymore. But I sure did these last nine years,” she added. 

Later, she added that her decision to move on was not an “easy decision.”

“I had to pull myself out because I needed to make a change,” Forbes explained. “And sometimes that’s really hard to do.”

In her final speech in December, she said she was stepping down “with profound gratitude and complete confidence in the Port’s future.”

“The waterfront is in capable, committed and courageous hands. The Port of San Francisco will always be part of who I am. I was born in the city. “

The arrest on the yacht came days after the city council recently voted to grant Forbes a leave of absence.

A family spokesperson said Forbes was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the yacht incident.

The owner of the boat, Andy Cunningham, said Forbes ransacked clothes, ate food and got through four bottles of wine on board the vessel.

“She took all my clothes and tried them on. They were inside out,” he said. “There was a jar of maraschino cherries she dumped into a shoebox. She had drunk a lot of alcohol, four bottles of our wine.”

Days before the incident, a missing-person report was filed for Forbes, according to the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.

Family spokesperson Sam Singer said Forbes has also been going through a divorce from her longtime partner Angela Calvillo, who is the clerk of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

He added that Forbes lives on a houseboat near the marina and suggested her condition may have contributed to the alleged incident.

“She does, in fact, live on a houseboat,” Singer explained. “In her mental health crisis, she may have believed she was on her houseboat but didn’t recognize it wasn’t hers.”

Forbes remains in custody at the Marin County Jail and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

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