A group hoping to bounce San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee from his job has filed a notice of intent to launch a recall petition.

Organizers filed their notice Tuesday, the same day another group launched an apparently unrelated recall effort against Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.

In listing reasons Lee should be recalled, the San Francisco group cited recent Police Department scandals, tax breaks for corporations, the worsening homeless crisis and the city’s hosting of “frivolous revelries” such as the America’s Cup and Super Bowl.

Organizers of the recall effort include Francisco Herrera, a candidate for supervisor in District 11 and a 2015 candidate for mayor. He and other organizers could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

The group faces a tough challenge in qualifying the recall for the ballot. It will have to collect 47,000 valid signatures of registered voters, 10 percent of the city’s total, within 160 days.

There’s not enough time for the group to make the November ballot, so any recall would go before voters in a special election. John Arntz, director of the Elections Department, said that would cost the city an estimated $3.5 million.

Arntz, who has been in the job since 2002, says history indicates that the recall proponents’ chances of success are not good.

“There’s always an impulse to start,” he said, “but they never seem to make it through. Since 2002 there have been three or four, and nothing has made the ballot. I don’t think a petition has even been circulated.”

Arntz said the last special election in the city was in April 2008, to elect a replacement for Rep. Tom Lantos, who died in office. That was the first special election since 1983, when a far-left group called the White Panthers, arguing that then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s support for gun control would deprive poor people of the right to defend themselves, tried to recall her. Feinstein won a resounding victory, with 80.4 percent of voters opposing recall.

The San Francisco filing came the same day that a group of Oakland activists called the Anti Police-Terror Project filed a notice of intent to recall Schaaf. The San Francisco filing did not mention the Oakland group, instead listing 26 people, all of whom gave San Francisco addresses.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius