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Don’t gut SF campaign law

Andrew Lam
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0

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 20

Hotel Frank picket line

Since being foreclosed on by Wells Fargo and taken over by a union-busting management team, Hotel Frank has unilaterally subjected its workers to new working condition and benefits and fired two labor representatives who resisted the changes (see “Lembi’s legacy,” 9/21/10, and “Hotel Frank fires key union organizer,” SFBG Politics blog, 10/4/10). Join UNITE HERE Local 2 members and other supporters of Hotel Frank workers in picketing the hotel and calling for management to respect workers’ rights. Repeats each Wednesday, and on Fridays from 1–5:30 p.m.

3–5:30 p.m., free

Hotel Frank, Geary and Mason, SF

www.hotelfranksf.info

 

THURSDAY 21

Summer of Choice kickoff

Concerned about how budget cuts and new campaigns against abortion rights, the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights is launching the Summer of Choice with an event featuring Shawna Pattison of New Generations Health Center, Loren Dobkin of UCSF Nursing Students for Choice, and Belle Taylor-McGhee, president of California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom.

7–9 p.m., $3 donation

Quaker Meeting House

65 Ninth St, SF

bacorrinfo@yahoo.com

 

FRIDAY 22

Living Wage Awards dinner

The San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, which has sponsored several successful local campaigns protecting and expanding the rights of workers, is holding the first of what is intended to be an annual awards ceremony honoring labor’s local heroes. Conny Ford, the secretary-treasurer of Office and Professional Employees Local 3, will be named Labor Woman of the Year, while San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson will receive Labor Man of the Year honors. The event is part of this year’s Laborfest, a month-long commemorate of San Francisco’s 1934 General Strike. And for details on a pair of labor mural tours on Saturday, July 23, visit www.laborfest.net/2011/2011schedule.htm

6:30 p.m., $35 or $300 for a table of nine

Third Baptist Church

1399 McAllister, SF

415-863-1225

sflivingwage@riseup.net

www.livingwage-sf.org

 

SUNDAY 24

Mirkarimi for Sheriff fundraiser

Join supporters of Ross Mirkarimi in a fundraiser for his campaign to succeed longtime Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who has endorsed Mirkarimi. In addition to serving on the Board of Supervisors, Mirkarimi is graduate of the San Francisco Police Academy and former investigator with the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. He’s running against a field of police officers and sheriff’s deputies.

2–4 p.m., $25+ suggested donation

Park 77

77 Cambon, SF

www.rossmirkarimi.com

Big solar, little solar

Andrew Lam
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4
Big solar, little solar

rebeccab@sfbg.com

At a business conference this past May hosted by Wired Magazine, Bill Gates, the billionaire chair of Microsoft and an influential philanthropist, offered his two cents on solar energy. “If you’re going for cuteness,” he told Wired, “the stuff in the home is the place to go. It’s really kind of cool to have solar panels on your roof. But if you’re really interested in the energy problem, it’s those big things in the desert.”

Those big things in the desert are solar farms, designed to concentrate energy from the sun using arrays of mirrors or parabolic troughs spanning vast swaths of land. They’re green versions of the types of power plants big energy companies have always relied on — centralized, dependent on transmission lines, and requiring billions of dollars in investment. Some rely on water from desert aquifers for cooling, cleaning, and steam generation. Yet the plants can replace electricity that traditionally has been derived from burning coal, representing a significant advancement away from fossil fuels.

It’s too early to say whether California’s energy future will follow Gates’ maxim that rooftop solar is “cute” while desert solar represents the serious stuff. Others have argued just the opposite, and momentum is building on both fronts. Gov. Jerry Brown has endorsed the idea of installing 12,000 megawatts of rooftop solar, and was expected to bring stakeholders together in late July to discuss how to accomplish that goal.

At the same time, large-scale desert solar is attracting billions in investment, and big-name companies such as Bechtel, Chevron, AECOM, and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. are engaged in its development. The California Energy Commission approved nine desert solar-thermal projects last year, capable of producing 4,100 megawatts.

As California moves toward fulfilling a mandate of generating 33 percent of electricity from renewable power sources by 2020, there’s bound to be a political edge to solar development too. Giant utility companies profit by sending power along their transmission lines from desert solar farms to the grid. On the other hand, if energy-conscious customers generate more power than they use with rooftop solar panels, the utility company has to cut them a check. So there’s little incentive for utilities to encourage customer-owned, distributed generation of renewable power.

Jeanine Cotter, CEO of San Francisco-based Luminalt, a small solar installer, says it takes her work crew about a day and a half to mount new panels onto a rooftop. “That will produce power for that home for the next several decades,” Cotter notes. “It’s a rapidly deployable technology that is durable and will last a long time.”

Cotter practices what she preaches. “At my house, if you turn on all the appliances, you can look at the meter and see that we’re still relying on PG&E to bring us power,” she says. Cutting down results in the meter showing that the panels are producing electricity for the grid.

Self-empowerment is a major draw for proponents of rooftop solar. “The choice is pretty clear: pay for the ongoing cost of remote central-station renewable power or pocket the savings of locally-generated renewable power,” Al Weinrub of the Sierra Club writes in a pitch for decentralized solar generation in a January 2011 report. “Businesses with large rooftops or parking lots can become small power companies that feed electricity into the grid. Community cooperatives can pool the rooftop area of their neighborhoods to form, for example, an East Oakland Power Company.” The revenue could be rolled into job creation and more green-energy development.

Rooftop solar has gained traction in California over the past five years with a $3 billion program to subsidize installations. The California Public Utilities Commission recently touted the California Solar Initiative (CSI) program’s success — a 47 percent growth in installations since 2009. All told, the Golden State boasts 924 megawatts of solar generation capability, installed at 94,891 locations. Consultants for the California Public Utilities Commission found that 11,543 megawatts of solar could be generated on large urban rooftops statewide, while another 27,000 megawatts could be generated on empty lots near rural substations.

The potential is huge, but a cost barrier remains. Even with incentives, residential solar remains largely inaccessible to people who aren’t rich enough to own property or finance the upfront cost. In San Francisco — recently declared the greenest city in North America by Siemens — roughly 70 percent of residents are renters who almost never have the option of going solar. Proponents of desert solar farms claim that the large-scale, centralized technology offers something that rooftop panels can’t — the potential to bring renewable energy to the masses.

The largest desert solar plant under construction worldwide is BrightSource’s Ivanpah plant, which Bechtel is building in the Mojave Desert. Spearheaded by an Oakland company, the plant uses sunlight and mirrors to generate steam to power a turbine. The energy will flow onto the grid to serve PG&E and Southern California Edison customers. It’s a dramatic improvement compared with burning coal, but there are other issues. On a yearly basis, it will use enough groundwater in the arid desert to cover 100 acres, one-foot deep. And it riled environmentalists who worried that it would affect the habitat of an endangered tortoise.

No one disputes that on a per-watt basis, it’s cheaper to install desert solar than rooftop solar. According to estimates from Go Solar California, it costs more than $8 per watt to install small-scale rooftop solar systems, while recent costs for desert solar farms have been calculated at around $4 per watt. “Because they have the economy of scale, they can be built at less cost,” notes John White, executive director of the Sacramento-based Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.

Yet a renewable energy expert who formerly worked for the California Energy Commission (CEC) says comparing costs of desert and rooftop solar from the point of view of the customer tells a different story. In April, Sanford Miller delivered a presentation at UC Davis that could have been considered subversive. His analysis essentially found that ratepayers shell out less to subsidize rooftop solar installations than they do to finance the purchase of energy from desert solar farms once the full cost of transmission and environmental mitigation are factored in.

“From a ratepayers’ perspective, rooftop solar would be significantly cheaper than the desert solar,” Miller says. When he sent his findings around to his colleagues at the CEC, “no one disputed it,” he said. “But the view was that desert solar was inevitable.”

But that still leaves the question of who can afford solar — and this is where Tom Price, former executive director of Black Rock Solar and now part of a solar investment firm called CleanPath, believes he’s found a middle way. As things stand, every utility customer chips in to subsidize the cost of individualized solar panels for the lucky few who are installing them, he points out, and those same customers are footing the bill for energy companies to buy power from giant solar farms. He’s pushing the Community Solar Gardens bill as an alternative.

Introduced as Senate Bill 843 by Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis), the bill would allow any customer to purchase a subscription to a centralized renewable energy facility, and receive credit on their utility bill in exchange for the monthly fee.

White takes the view that all the different solar technologies are needed — rooftop, desert, and “intermediary” — the kind of small-scale, centralized facility that is located closer to the customers who will use it, like the solar array at the Sunset Reservoir in San Francisco. “After Fukushima [Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan], we need to begin talking seriously about reducing our dependence on nuclear power,” White says. “When you look at what we’re trying to replace and what we’re trying to avoid, it’s like we’re trying to assemble a new portfolio.”

 

State park closures raise difficult issues

Andrew Lam
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0

The recent state budget cuts remind us to treasure the natural beauty of California reflected in our state parks that we’ve taken for granted — until now. For the first time in state history, budget cuts will require closing up to 70 of our 278 state parks by July 1, 2012.

The closures are a result of the budget cuts of $11 million for the next fiscal year 2011-12. Another $11 million will be cut for the following fiscal year 2012-13. In the Bay Area alone, 20 state parks are set for closure, including Samuel P. Taylor State Park in Marin County and Castle Rock State Park in Santa Cruz County. “These cuts are unfortunate, but the state’s current budget crisis demands that tough decisions be made,” Resources Secretary John Laird said in a prepared statement.

Because no state park has ever been closed before, “we’re still figuring out what a closed park looks like,” said Danita Rodriguez, state park superintendent of Marin County.

One option is to continue to let people into the parks, but without facilities—no potable water, no bathrooms. Rodriguez hopes to create new partnerships and operating agreements in an effort to keep some of the doomed parks open, at least seasonally. “We’re in a whole new ball game right now,” she said.

Though the state park system has no intention of privatizing its parks to keep them open, it is still developing plans and guidelines and could allow private companies to operate parks under state rules as equipment rental places and restaurants within parks already do.

“In Little Basin, there’s United Camps Conferences and Retreats that operates the campground for us,” said California Department of Parks and Recreation Deputy Director of Communications Roy Stearns. “If we can find more professional campground organizations that can run campgrounds, under our rules, we’re going to consider it.”

The goal is to keep the land public, but to keep it open with private sector help if necessary, a scenario that could raise controversial privatization issues depending on what the department allows. At least 92 percent of today’s park attendance will be retained, even with the closure of 70 parks. But no one knows how the individual parks will be affected. “There are many unanswered questions,” said Chet Bardo, state park superintendent of Santa Cruz County. One such question is, how do you close a beach?

“It would be very difficult to keep people out,” Rodriguez said. But if you continue to let people in, they could act as extra eyes and ears to discourage vandalism.

Bardo suggested shortening the parks’ open seasons. “We’ve just never done this before,” so they don’t know what’s going to happen. Bardo is in the middle of submitting draft proposals for alternatives to full park closures, which could begin as early as February 2012, according to Stearns, as park employees begin getting laid off or moved to vacancies in other parks.

“Anybody who cares for their parks should visit them now and in the future, if they can,” said Bardo. 

 

PARKS IDENTIFIED FOR CLOSURE IN BAY AREA

Candlestick Point State Recreation Area

Gray Whale Cove State Beach

Samuel P. Taylor State Park

Tomales Bay State Park

Castle Rock State Park

Portola Redwoods State Park

Henry W. Coe State Park

Twin Lakes State Beach

Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park

Brennan Island State Recreation Area

Benicia Capitol State Historic Park/Benicia State Recreation Area

Olompali State Historic Park

China Camp State Park

Petaluma Adobe State Historic Park

Jack London State Historic Park

Annadel State Park

Sugarloaf Ridge State Park

Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park

Bothe-Napa Valley State Park

Austin Creek State Recreation Area

For a map of all parks identified for closure statewide, go to www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=26685.

 

Parks Inc.

Andrew Lam
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6
Parks Inc.

steve@sfbg.com

Should the city be trying to make money off of its parks, recreation centers, and other facilities operated by the Recreation and Park Department? That’s the question at the center of several big controversies in recent years, as well as a fall ballot measure and an effort to elevate revenue generation into an official long-term strategy for the department.

So far, the revenue-generating initiatives by RPD General Manager Phil Ginsburg and former Mayor Gavin Newsom have been done on an ad hoc basis — such as permitting vendors in Dolores Park, charging visitors to Strybing Arboretum, and leasing out recreation centers — but an update of the Recreation and Open Space Element (ROSE) of the General Plan seeks to make it official city policy.

The last of six objectives in the plan, which will be heard by the Planning Commission Aug. 4, is “secure long-term resources and management for open space acquisition, operations, and maintenance,” a goal that includes three policies: develop long-term funding mechanisms (mostly through new fees and taxes); partner with other public agencies and nonprofits to manage resources; and, most controversially, “pursue public-private partnerships to generate new operating revenues for open spaces.”

The plan likens that last policy to the city’s deal with Clear Channel to maintain Muni bus stops with funding from advertising revenue, saying that “similar strategies could apply to parks.” It cites the Portland Parks Foundation as a model for letting Nike and Columbia Sportswear maintain facilities and mark them with their corporate logos, and said businesses such as bike rental shops, cafes, and coffee kiosks can “serve to activate an open space,” a phrase it uses repeatedly.

“The city should seek out new opportunities, including corporate sponsorships where appropriate, and where such sponsorship is in keeping with the mission of the open space itself,” the document says.

Yet that approach is anathema to how many San Franciscans see their parks and open spaces — as vital public assets that should be maintained with general tax revenue rather than being dependent on volunteers and wealthy donors, subject to entry fees, or leased to private organizations.

That basic philosophical divide over how the city’s parks and recreational facilities are managed has animated a series of conflicts in recent years that have soured many people on the RPD. They include the mass firing of rec directors and leasing out of rec centers, the scandal-tinged process of selecting a new Stow Lake Boathouse vendor, new vending contracts for Dolores Park, the eviction of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Center recycling facility, plans to develop western Golden Gate Park and other spots, the conversion by the private City Fields Foundation of many soccer fields to artificial turf, and the imposition of entry fees at the arboretum.

Activists involved in those seemingly unrelated battles united into a group called Take Back Our Parks, recognizing that “it’s all the same problem: the monetization of the park system,” says member John Rizzo, a Sierra Club activist and elected City College trustee. “It’s this Republican idea that the parks should pay for themselves.”

And now, with the help of the four most progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, the group is putting the issue before voters and trying to stop what it calls the auctioning off of the city’s most valuable public assets to the highest bidders.

The Parks for the Public initiative — which was written by the group and placed on the ballot by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi — is intended to “ensure equal public access to parks and recreation facilities and prevent privatization of our public parks and facilities,” as the measure states. It would prevent the department from entering into any new leases or creating new entry fees for parks and other facilities.

Even its promoters call it a small first step that doesn’t get into controversies such as permitting more vending in the parks, including placing a taco truck in Dolores Park and the aborted attempt to allow a Blue Bottle Coffee concession there. But it does address the central strategy Newsom and his former chief of staff, Ginsburg, have been using to address the dwindling RPD budget, which was slashed by 7 percent last year.

“What a lot of us think the Recreation and Parks Department is actually doing is relinquishing the maintenance of park facilities to private entities,” says Denis Mosgofian, who founded the group following his battles with RPD over the closures and leases rec centers. “They’re actually dismantling much of what the public has created.”

He notes that San Francisco voters have approved $371 million in bonds over the last 20 years to improve parks and recreation centers, only to have their operations defunded and control of many of them simply turned over to private organizations that often limit the public’s ability to use them.

By Mosgofian’s calculation, at least 14 of the city’s 47 clubhouses and recreation centers have been leased out and another 11 have been made available for leases, often for $90 per hour, which is more than most community groups can afford. And he says 166 recreation directors and support staffers have been laid off in the last two years, offset by the hiring of at least nine property management positions to handle the leases.

Often, he said, the leases don’t even make fiscal sense, with some facilities being leased for less money than the city is spending to service the debt used to refurbish them. Other lease arrangements raised economic justice concerns, such as when RPD evicted a 38-year-old City College preschool program from the Laurel Hill Clubhouse to lease it to Language in Action, a company that does language immersion programs for preschoolers.

“Without telling anyone, they arranged to have a private, high-end preschool go in,” Rizzo said, noting that its annual tuition of around $12,000 is too expensive for most city residents and that the program even fenced off part of the playground for its private use, all for a monthly lease of less than $1,500. “They don’t talk to the neighbors who are affected or the users of the park … We’re paying for it and then we don’t have access to it.”

They also refused to answer our questions. Neither Ginsburg nor Recreation and Park Commission President Mark Buell responded to Guardian messages. Department spokesperson Connie Chan responded by e-mail and asked us to submit a list of questions, which department officials still hadn’t answered at Guardian press time. But it does appear that the approach has at least the tacit backing of Mayor Ed Lee.

“In order to increase its financial sustainability in the face of ongoing General Fund reductions, the Recreation and Parks Department continues to focus on maximizing its earned revenue. Its efforts include capitalizing on the value of the department’s property and concessions by entering into new leases and developing new park amenities, pursuing philanthropy, and searching for sponsorships and development opportunities,” reads Mayor Lee’s proposed budget for RPD, which includes a chart entitled “Department Generated Revenue” that shows it steadily increasing from about $35 million in 2005-06 to about $45 million in 2011-12.

And that policy approach would get a big boost if it gets written into the city’s General Plan, which could happen later this year.

Land use attorney Sue Hestor has been fighting projects that have disproportionately favored the wealthy for decades, often using the city’s General Plan, a state-mandated document that lays out official city goals and policies. She also is concerned that the ROSE is quietly being developed to “run interference for Rec-Park to do anything they want to.”

“By getting policies into the General Plan that are a rationalization of privatization, it backs up what Rec-Park is doing,” Hestor said, noting how much influence Ginsburg and his allies have clearly exerted over the Planning Department document. “It’s effectively a Rec-Park plan.”

Sue Exeline, the lead planner on ROSE, said the process was launched in November 2007 by an Open Space Task Force created by Newsom, and that the Planning Department, Neighborhood Parks Council, and speakers at community meetings have all influenced its development. Yet she conceded that RPD was “a big part of the process.”

When we asked about the revenue-generating policies, where they came from, and why they were presented in such laudatory fashion without noting the controversy that underlies them, Exeline said simply: “It will continue to be vetted.” And when we continued to push for answers, she tried to say the conversation was off-the-record, referred us to RPD or Planning Director John Rahaim, and hung up the phone.

The rationale for bringing in private sources of revenue: it’s the only way to maintain RPD resources during these tight budget times. A July 5 San Francisco Examiner editorial that praised these “revenue-generating business partnerships” and lambasted the ballot measure and its proponents was titled “Purists want Rec and Park to pull cash off trees.”

But critics say the department could be putting more energy into a tax measure, impact fees, or other general revenue sources rather than simply turning toward privatization options.

“We need to see revenue, but we also need to stop the knee-jerk acceptance of every corporate hand that offers anything,” Mosgofian said. “Our political leadership believes you need to genuflect before wealth.”

And they say that their supporters cover the entire ideological spectrum.

“We’re getting wide support, everywhere from conservative neighborhoods to progressive neighborhoods. It’s not a left-right issue, it’s about fairness and equity,” Rizzo said.

In sponsoring the Parks for the People initiative and unsuccessfully trying to end the arboretum fees (it failed on a 5-6 vote at the Board of Supervisors, with President David Chiu the swing vote), John Avalos is the one major mayoral candidate that is raising concerns about the RPD schemes.

“Our parks are our public commons. They are public assets that should be paid for with tax dollars,” Avalos told us. He called the idea of allowing advertising and corporate sponsorships into the parks, “a real breach from what the public expects from parks and open space.”

When asked whether, if he’s elected mayor, he would continue the policies and let Ginsburg continue to run RPD, Avalos said, “Probably not. I think we need to make a lot of changes in the department. They should be given better support in the General Fund so we don’t have to make these kinds of choices.”

ROSE will be the subject of informational hearings before the Planning Commission on Aug. 4 and Sept. 15, with an adoption hearing scheduled for Oct. 13. Each hearing begins at noon in Room 400, City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Dr., San Francisco.

 

Dismantle death row

Andrew Lam
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0

The moment has arrived to eliminate the death penalty in California and, for the first time in decades, it is a goal we can accomplish.

My legislation, Senate Bill 490, would close death row and replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Last week it passed its first legislative test by a vote of 5-2 in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

The witnesses who appeared in support of the bill were most certainly not people we think of as the usual suspects. One of them — Don Heller — was the author of the 1978 initiative that reinstituted the death penalty in California. A former prosecutor and a Republican, Heller now believes it should be eliminated. He says it has been applied unequally, that at least one possibly innocent person has been executed, and that it is not making us safer in our communities.

More striking testimony came from Jeanne Woodford, who presided over four executions as the warden of San Quentin State Prison, where she worked for almost 27 years. She called the death penalty process a “broken, costly, failed system.”

Finally, Judith Kerr testified about the heartbreaking murder of her beloved brother in 2003. “I want Bob’s killer to be apprehended and punished — I do not want someone else’s brother to be killed and I do not want to wait 25 years for the case to finally close,” she said. “Public safety would be better served by spending the money solving the 46 percent of California murders that go unsolved every year.”

Reconsidering the death penalty is particularly important at a time when the state is making heartbreaking cuts to higher education, children’s health, help for the elderly and disabled, and all the great public institutions took decades to build and that are now being allowed to wither. The fact is, the death penalty is costing us a fortune.

Since 1978, California has spent approximately $4 billion on death penalty costs and has executed only 13 people. That’s $308 million per condemned inmate. And every year it costs Californians $185 million more to maintain the 714 prisoners on death row than if they were housed in a maximum-security prison.

We aren’t being tough on crime; we’re just being tough on the taxpayer.

Those stunning figures come from a study released earlier this week by U.S. Ninth Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell. Their neutral analysis, based on previously unavailable data from the California Department of Corrections, estimates the state could save $1 billion every five years by replacing the death penalty with life in prison without parole.

It might seem counterintuitive that sentencing people to death is more costly than life in prison without parole. But death penalty cases require longer trials, careful investigation, heightened security, and legal reviews mandated by both the state and federal constitutions. A death penalty trial can cost as much as 20 times more than sentencing an inmate to life without parole.

It’s more likely for a death row prisoner in California to die of illness, suicide, or old age than execution.

As a state senator, a mother, and a grandmother, I cannot justify this expense. Not when we are all tightening our belts and accepting deep cuts to education, health care, and environmental protections — cuts that diminish the life prospects for us and for generations to come.

My bill would also eliminate the risk of wrongful execution. At least 138 people across the country have been released from death row after new evidence emerged proving they were innocent.

Opponents claim that public support for the death penalty is strong in California. However, a 2011 poll released by David Binder Research found that 63 percent of likely California voters support replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment without the chance of parole. It seems that voters have had enough.

Now is the time. Eliminating the death penalty will save hundreds of millions of dollars every year. It is the right thing to do.

State Senator Loni Hancock represents the East Bay.

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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16

tredmond@sfbg.com

I’m not prone to agreeing with right-wing nuts from Riverside County, but there’s a county supervisor down there named Jeff Stone who has a dandy idea. He wants to secede.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Stone is proposing that 13 counties in the southland and inland empire split off and become their own state, which would be called South California. We’re talking everything south of Madera, with the coastal counties (and Los Angeles) left behind. A real conservative haven of low taxes and limited regulation.

And I say: Go for it, pal. I’m completely with you.

Imagine what would happen if Supervisor Stone got his way. There would be no more budget paralysis in the California Legislature. Democrats would control two-thirds of both houses and could pass a budget that included higher taxes on the rich and big corporations. Candidates for governor wouldn’t have to worry about getting votes from the conservative parts of the state, so they could talk more honestly about the major issues. Same-sex marriage would pass the first week. Pot would be legal. The death penalty would be gone in a year or two.

It might take a while longer to amend Prop. 13, but with the ability to raise revenue instead of just cutting, California could begin to fund the schools adequately, rebuild the state university system, and move forward with projects like high-speed rail.

And let’s remember: those counties that want to leave? They elect representatives who won’t vote for taxes — but they are the biggest beneficiaries of state revenues. The northern and coastal counties, the more liberal ones, pay more in taxes than we get in services. Our taxpayers are subsidizing their tax haters.

So go on — leave. We’ll keep our money here.

Now, just to our south and east would be a train wreck of a state with few public services — but South California would still be part of America, so people could move north without worrying about immigration papers. I’d propose that we set up a state fund to resettle refugees from Republicanland.

And maybe, after a while, the people who have to live with crappy schools and crumbling roads will look across the border and say, Why do they have it so good? And maybe they’ll start to think differently about the role of government.

End the BART cover-up

Andrew Lam
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3

Ten days have passed since a BART police officer shot and killed a man at the Civic Center station — and the public still knows almost nothing about what happened. BART will only say that an officer (unnamed) shot a man who was “aggressive” and “holding a bottle and a knife.” One witness told the Bay Citizen that the man “looked like a drunk hippie” and wasn’t running or lunging toward the two officers on duty. The coroner has identified the victim as Charles Blair Hill, 45; he had no known address.

And that’s about it. BART is investigating and so is the San Francisco Police Department, but neither agency has released a single police report or any further information. BART is still withholding a security video from the station that shows part of the incident. All that either police department will say at this point is that the investigation is under way — but nobody will offer any time frame for its completion.

For an agency still reeling from the last police shooting and still trying to win some kind of public confidence in its ability to run a law-enforcement operation, this kind of stonewalling is a big mistake.

We understand that the surveillance video might influence potential witnesses and perhaps should be kept under wraps until everyone on the scene has made a statement. But how long can that take? Two weeks? Three? At a certain point, the cops will have found all the witnesses they’re going to find — and the public needs to know that there will be a reasonable time limit after which the video will be made public.

The same goes for police reports on the incident, including the statements of other witnesses — and the names of the officers involved.

BART’s spokesperson, Linton Johnson, told us he can’t release the names of the officers because state law forbids it. He says he will release the video footage as soon as the investigation is complete. When will that be? Nobody’s giving so much as a hint. Johnson says he doesn’t know because the San Francisco Police Department is the lead agency; SFPD public affairs says the only person authorized to talk about the case is Johnson at BART.

SFPD has no business giving BART the final says on this — San Francisco ought to release the information from its incident reports immediately.

We’d be more patient about this if BART didn’t have such a long, disgraceful history of cover-ups, obfuscation, and lies about police shootings. Since 1992, when the agency completely fabricated a story to justify the shooting of an 19-year-old Jerrold Hall (BART said Hall was struggling for control of the cop’s gun; evidence showed he was actually shot in the back, from a considerable distance) it’s been hard to trust anything the transit system says.

A BART cop shot and killed a naked, mentally ill man in 2001 (and tried to cover up the scandal). And of course, the 2009 Oscar Grant shooting was marked by misinformation and cover-ups.

So BART has a particular responsibility to handle this case with the greatest amount of sunshine possible. For starters, the basic police reports — the officers’ own accounts and the reports of the initial response team — ought to be public (even if the names of the officers and witnesses are redacted). And if there’s a legal issue, the BART board ought to take the initiative to ask a judge to authorize the release of at least some relevant information.

If the officer who fired on Charles Blair Hill acted properly, then there’s nothing to hide. If the officer shot too quickly, then the public needs to know that BART is aware of the problem and is going to act on it — before anyone else gets killed.

 

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 13

“Community Organizing in Radical Times”

James Tracy and Amy Sonnie discuss the forthcoming book Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times, following the trend of young activists reflecting on and writing about U.S. activist history. Also, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz speaks on the extraordinary Rainbow Coalitions built in Chicago and other cities in the late 1960s.

7–9 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

2919 24th St., SF

www.laborfest.net

 

FRIDAY 15

Art of Fumiaki Hoshino

In 1971 Tokyo, Fumiaki Hoshino led the demonstration against Japan hosting and maintaining U.S. bases with nuclear arsenals. As the leader of the movement, he was blamed and given a life sentence for the deaths of a trade unionist and a policeman there, making him the longest-held political prisoner in Japanese history. His wife, Akiko, whom he met during his imprisonment, has been fighting for his release. She will present the watercolors he painted in prison and speak about their international solidarity campaign.

1–6 p.m., free

518 Valencia

518 Valencia, SF

www.laborfest.net

 

Geronimo Ji-Jaga memorial

Honor and celebrate the extraordinary life of Elmer “Geronimo Ji-Jaga” Pratt — a Black Panther, political prisoner, human rights activist, revolutionary, and godfather to Tupac Shakur — who died of a heart attack in Tanzania June 3. Pratt was the target of the FBI in numerous COINTELPRO investigations and was wrongfully accused and convicted of kidnap and murder in 1972. He spent 27 years in prison, eight of them in solitary confinement before his conviction was vacated and he was released in 1997.

6–11 p.m., free

East Side Arts Alliance

2277 International Blvd., Oakl.

(510) 533-6629

www.itsabouttimebpp.com

 

SUNDAY 17

Irish labor walk

Many Irish people immigrated to the U.S. in the early years of the 20th century due to political unrest in Ireland at the time, and many early Irish settlers made the Bay Area their home. This walking tour focuses on the role of Irish workers in the history of San Francisco’s waterfront and includes a discussion of the labor frame-up of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings in 1916 and other historic markers.

12–2 p.m., free

Marine Fireman’s Hall

420 2nd St., SF

www.laborfest.net

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, JULY 7

 

Two years after the coup

Andrés Thomas Conteris, founder of Democracy Now! En Español, along with Adrienne Aron and Theresa Carmeranesi, will share observations from their recent trips to Honduras, specifically the well-organized resistance movement against the repressive coup that ousted their democratically-elected president in 2009.

7–9 p.m., free

First Unitarian Universalist Church

Thomas Starr King Room

1187 Franklin, SF

www.soaw.org

 

Saving labor murals

All over the country, many of the murals created during the WPA-era that depict the history and struggles of the U.S. labor movement are threatened of permanent removal, like the hidden labor history mural in the Maine Labor Department Building. At this event, noted New Deal historians Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith will speak about the unremitting war on labor art and history occurring closer to home.

7–9 p.m., free

Berkeley City College Auditorium

2050 Center, Berk.

www.laborfest.net

SATURDAY, JULY 9

 

Stop the Libya bombing!

NATO intervention in Libya: a massive outpouring of humanity or a blatant display of U.S. imperialism? If you agree with the second viewpoint, stand up against the bombings in Libya, where civilians have been caught in the crossfire. The bombings also cost the U.S. $10 million a day, outrageous at a time when workers in the public and nonprofit sectors are being fired due to a nationwide budget crisis. There will also be a joint action the same day in Washington, D.C. in front of the White House.

12–2 p.m., free

Meet at Powell and Market, SF

(415) 821-6545

www.answersf.org

TUESDAY, JUNE 12

 

Who built San Francisco?

Learn about San Francisco history and 120 years of its architecture from the perspective of the people — the union workers who built these massive artifacts — not from the architectural firms that usually get all the credit. In two hours, you will see 30 buildings, from famous skyscrapers and little-known treasures, that tell a story about the rich labor and political history of the city, as well as the design trends that helped change the concrete face of America.

10 a.m.–12 p.m., free

Meet at Stockton and Maiden lane, SF

www.laborfest.net 2

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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25

tredmond@sfbg.com

I had, as they say, a spirited and frank discussion last week with Enrique Pearce, the political consultant working on the Run Ed Run campaign. I chided Pearce, whose firm is called Left Coast Communications, for leading an effort that, at the very least, involves some touchy legal and ethical issues. (After all, the group is raising money for a campaign for a candidate who hasn’t filed as a candidate. There are reasons why federal, state, and local laws mandate that people who are running for office declare that they want the office before they start raising money.)

Pearce insisted he was doing nothing illegal. (Okay, if he says so.) He also argued that his firm is the most progressive consulting operation in the city. (Whatever.) But the real focus of our discussion — and the reason it’s worth talking about — was the question of whether corruption really matters.

I think sleaze — and the appearance of sleaze — is a defining progressive issue. If Pearce agrees, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Let’s back up here. When Willie Brown was speaker of the state Assembly, he passed some good legislation, and allowed some very bad legislation to become law. But his greatest legacy is term limits — and the terrible public perception of what was once one of the best state legislatures in the nation.

Brown was the epitome of corruption, a guy who actively flouted the notion of honest, open government. Among other things, he had a private law practice on the side — and clients would pay him big money because of his influence on state legislation. Of course, we never knew who the clients were; he wouldn’t release the list.

When he was mayor, his sleazy ways continued — and left even progressive San Franciscans believing that you can’t trust City Hall with your money. Which means, of course, that it’s harder to convince anyone to pay more taxes.

There’s no question that Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak (don’t get me started) were key players in putting Mayor Ed Lee in office, and that they’re playing a big role in this new effort. Which means, as far as I’m concerned, that it’s utterly untrustworthy — and that progressives should be miles and miles away.

I’m not arguing that Ed Lee is a bad mayor (he’s way better than the last guy). He might even turn into a good mayor if he runs for a full term. Pearce thinks he’d be better for progressives than state Sen. Leland Yee. We can argue that later.

But as long as his campaign is directly linked to people whose standard practices undermine the heart of the progressive agenda (which depends on a belief that government can be trusted to take on social problems), then you can count me out.

Campaign for the Woolsey legacy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin, Sonoma counties) is a rarity on Capitol Hill. She’s a lawmaker with guts who speaks from the heart.

Whether focusing on children and seniors at home or the victims of war far away, Woolsey insists on advocating for humane priorities. Several hundred times, she has gone to the House floor to speak out against war. She stands for peace, social justice, human rights, a green future, and so much more.

Last week, after more than 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, Woolsey announced that she will not run for reelection next year.

She has set a high bar for representing the region in Congress. It’s a high bar that I intend to clear.

Back in January, I wrote in the Guardian that “if Rep. Woolsey doesn’t run in 2012, I will” (“Why I may run for Congress,” 1/25/2011).

At the time I noted that “alarm is rising as corporate power escalates at the intersection of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.” I cited such realities as “endless war, massive giveaways to Wall Street, widening gaps between the rich and the rest of us, erosion of civil liberties, outrageous inaction on global warming … “

Six months later — with war even more endless, giveaways to Wall Street even more massive, and overall conditions even worse — my grassroots campaign for Congress is well underway.

Redistricting lines are in flux this month, but the political lines are clear as corporate Democrats salivate for this congressional seat. They want it bad.

This is a grassroots vs. Astroturf campaign. I’m facing opposition with a long history of big corporate funding. But we have something much better going for us: a genuine progressive campaign that’s growing from the ground up.

Already, more than 750 people have made donations to my campaign (we topped $100,000 weeks ago) and nearly 300 have signed up as volunteers. You’re invited to join in at www.SolomonForCongress.com.

We have to hold the North Bay congressional seat for the values that Lynn Woolsey has represented. That means directly challenging the undue corporate power that stands in the way of real change.

As a member of Congress, I want to work on building coalitions to fight for a wide-ranging progressive agenda — including guaranteed health care, full employment, workers’ rights, green sustainability, full funding for public education, fundamental changes in federal spending priorities, and an end to perennial war.

On Capitol Hill, I will insist that we need to bring our troops and tax dollars home — and that caving in to Wall Street and polluters and enemies of civil liberties is unacceptable.

Every day, the ideals we cherish are up against what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism,” running amok in tandem with corporate greed.

Nuclear power is emerging as one of the big issues in this campaign. I reject the claim that we need to wait for more “studies” from nuclear-friendly federal agencies before closing down the likes of California’s Diablo Canyon and San Onofre reactors. We need to fight for serious public investment in renewable energy, conservation, and a nuclear-free future.

Overall, the obstacles to gaining electoral power for progressives may seem daunting. But the narrow definition of politics as “the art of the possible” has led to disaster. What we need is the art of the imperative. 

Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For more information go to www.SolomonForCongress.com.

 

Ghost Fleet wanderers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5

Scott Haefner, Stephen Freskos, and Jon Haeber aren’t the types to stand out in a crowd. Haefner is a web developer, Freskos supervises projects for an engineering firm, and Haeber has a desk job at a company that helps businesses hit high on Google — three straight-laced Bay Area professionals who blend readily into the corporate world.

But everyone’s got their thing — a way to break out of bounds, or scratch the itch of some incessant curiosity.

For these three friends in their late-20s to mid-30s, their thing entails prowling around in rundown deserted places by the light of the full moon, at times taking great pains to avert detection by security patrols. “We go into places that most people don’t go,” Haefner says. They’ve been traipsing into the unknown and documenting their discoveries together for years, motivated as much by art as adrenaline.

This past May, after weighing the consequences, they publicized one of their boldest excursions yet: Sneaking aboard the Mothball Fleet in Suisun Bay to spend entire weekends roaming the bowels of the mildewed vintage ships, while dodging the beams of patrol-boat searchlights.

Unlike many nocturnal wanderers magnetically drawn to abandoned spaces — squatters, taggers, or scrappers, for instance — they don’t break in, vandalize, or steal. Instead, they adopt the same sense of reverence in decaying, chemical-laden industrial places that conscientious hikers assume on backwoods trails. They shoot night photos with professional quality gear, occasionally using flashlights to achieve a technique called light painting.

Haefner, Freskos and Haeber consider themselves advanced practitioners in the art of urban exploration (a.k.a. urbex or UE), an underground activity that’s grown trendier as it draws in adventuresome novices. Now that they’ve publicized their caper aboard the Mothball Fleet, however, they’ve also come under the watchful eye of the feds.

 

EXPIRATION DATE

At first they thought it was a pipe dream. Doubting their ability to access the Mothball Fleet was saying a lot, considering they’d once snuck onto the Vandenberg Air Force Base and wandered amid abandoned missile silos, absorbing the gravity of the military history those Cold War artifacts represented. Another time they’d managed a nighttime excursion to Neverland Ranch, the famed private amusement park of the late Michael Jackson.

But the ghost ships moored at Suisun Bay seemed out of their league. The rows of hulking, government-owned vessels were locked up and berthed offshore, surrounded by a security headquarters and a shoreline barricade plastered with “No Trespassing” signs. Patrol boats equipped with searchlights circled the docks 24 hours a day, and the prospect of climbing aboard without being spotted seemed crazy.

But then they got word that the last of the aging ships would soon be towed away and destroyed. For Haeber, the history nut of the bunch, this changed everything. “It was about the urgency of making sure these ships were documented,” he explained. “Getting them in the current state that they’re in is so important.”

Alternatively known as the Mothball Fleet and the Ghost Fleet, the ships are part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, a collection of cargo ships, tankers, and military auxiliaries overseen by the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD). Created in 1946 to be ready for deployment in case a national emergency arose, the fleet consisted of 2,277 ships at its height in 1950, strategically stationed at eight anchorages nationwide. For most of the vessels, the call to service never came, and they declined into obsolescence. By April, the entire fleet had dwindled to just 178 ships, at dock in Suisun Bay; Fort Eustis, Va.; and Beaumont, Texas.

The ships that have been moored at Suisun Bay for decades have long since deteriorated, and now they’re being hauled off to the scrap yard bit by bit, though the spot will continue to serve as an anchorage for newer additions to the National Defense Reserve Fleet.

Some were constructed in the World War II era, while others date back to the 1960s and 1970s. While many are tankers or merchant vessels, there are also warships, relics of history deployed in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Operation Desert Storm.

Many of the roughly 70 dilapidated ships have become ecological hazards, leaching toxins and heavy metals into the tidal estuary, which flows into San Francisco Bay. The monumental task of removing and dismantling them began late last year, providing badly needed blue-collar jobs on Mare Island, in the economically depressed city of Vallejo.

By 2017, the last of the ghost ships will have met with torch cutters. At least one will be salvaged: the USS Iowa (BB-61) — a 1938 lead battleship that shuttled President Franklin D. Roosevelt to and from the Tehran Conference during World War II — will be donated and turned into a museum.

Aside from being scrapped, outmoded ships meet with a variety of fates. Some are donated for educational use while others are deliberately sunk to create artificial reefs. Still others are used for target practice in the Navy’s sink-at-sea live-fire training exercises program (SINKEX).

“We saw that these things were going to be gone,” Haefner said. “So we planned it out.”

Haeber examined satellite imagery on Google Earth. Freskos, who’d spent time at sea, studied the tidal patterns. The three scoured the Internet for online photos of the Ghost Fleet. They conducted a scouting mission with binoculars in hand, and gained a sense of when they could take advantage of windows of opportunity between the 30-minute patrol boat rounds.

Long before they even discovered a navigable slough that snaked through a marsh into Suisun Bay or spotted the Craigslist post advertising an inflatable raft for sale, Freskos went up to shoreline gate where the “No Trespassing” signs were posted. He peered through at the tantalizing rows of mothballed ships, and hollered as loud as he could. Nobody responded.

 

DECAYED TIME CAPSULES

After the months of planning left them confident that it was indeed possible to access the Mothball Fleet, the trio of photographers set out for their first visit, with about 700 pounds of gear in tow. They split the cost of a 12-foot inflatable Fish Hunter raft with a Minn Kota trolling motor. They carried the raft and their gear through a muddy expanse to a marshy spot where the low-profile craft could be set into a narrow slough, safely out of view.

“We always went on or exited at nighttime,” Haefner said. “We would go on nights near the full moon so we could take pictures. It makes it look even more ghostly.”

Their first target was Row F, a line of ships docked in a straight shot from where the slough filtered into the bay. They maneuvered down the narrow channel in their raft, dodging submerged obstacles along the way. Keeping tabs on the whereabouts of the security boat, they started rowing once they reached the open water, and managed to bridge the 800-foot distance to the first ship.

“Our plans were kept secret to all except our loved ones,” Haeber wrote in an online account of that first excursion. “Nobody, other than my girlfriend, knew exactly where I was that weekend. For all intents and purposes, I was on a fishing trip with some friends.”

“Keep Off” signs announcing an invisible 500-foot barrier that was not to be breached were affixed to the hull of every ship. The intruders maneuvered their raft between two Coast Guard cutters, Planetree and Iris, and tied up.

“It can be kind of a challenge getting on,” Haefner explained. “We’re risking ourselves, obviously, but we also brought a bunch of expensive camera gear.” He was the first one to climb aboard the Iris, reaching high to grab onto a bumper that he could then pull himself up on to gain access to the ship. While Freskos kept watch, Haeber handed the gear up to Haefner bit by bit. Once all three were aboard with their backpacks and camera equipment, they hauled up the raft and deflated it.

The Iris was commissioned in 1944. In 1970, it responded to the scene of an oil-rig fire in Galveston, Texas. In 1987, it assisted with cleanup operations in Prince William Sound after the Exxon-Valdez spill. It was decommissioned in 1995, so their entrance likely marked the first time anyone other than MARAD employees had been aboard in 16 years.

A handy feature of ghost ship exploration is that once aboard a ship, it’s possible to access any ship along the entire row, thanks to gangplanks connecting the vessels. So while many of the mothballed vessels were completely secured, there was always the chance that the next one down would have an unlocked entranceway. Part of the ethos of urban exploration is to avoid breaking anything, so they only accessed the interiors of unsecured ships. “They are fairly vigilant about keeping doors locked up tight,” Haefner said. “But there are just so many doors.”

Haeber found a single open door on the SS Exxon Gettysburg, a mammoth oil tanker constructed in 1957, and entered the ship alone, enthralled. The interior, he later wrote, smelled like a mix of mold, benzene, and soggy newspaper. He turned on his flashlight and began tiptoeing through the corridors and peering into the cabins. “They were like time capsules, untouched since the 1970s,” Haeber said.

“Some of the ships were 15 stories deep, like a maze,” Freskos said. “We’d get lost inside.” The trio split from Row F before sunrise and managed to get back to the slough without any mishaps, but they returned on a handful of other occasions with sleeping bags and enough food and water to last a weekend. On those subsequent journeys, they’d seek out places to sleep, often crashing in the once-luxurious captain’s quarters. They slept by day, so that entire nights could be devoted to wandering in awe of the decayed, post-apocalyptic industrial environs, shooting hundreds of photographs.

They visited rooms where crews once hung out playing board games, still littered with cigarettes. They photographed molded interiors, dark cavernous stairwells, engine parts, navigational equipment, and abandoned cabins with peeling wallpaper. “We found personal letters, cards, things people left,” Haefner said. “We were always looking for signs of life.” They wandered through mess halls, engine rooms, bathrooms, galleys, even chilling places with operating chairs and overhead spotlights. They climbed around on the decks in the open night air, wandering through derricks and cranes.

The old ships would make eerie creaking noises when the tide rushed in, and there was always that mild sensation that one experiences on a boat, of things not staying still. “It was like a cacophony of sound when the current was coming in,” Freskos recalled. Hawks, osprey, and owls nested aboard some of them, so the creaking noises were sometimes accompanied by screeching birds of prey.

“The place is steeped in history,” Freskos said. “I’d always think of what this room was used for, or what went on here, when people were experiencing the suffering, craziness, and nervousness of war.”

 

HIGHLIGHTS AND HAIR-RAISERS

A highlight of their journeys aboard the Mothball Fleet was stumbling across the sleek black Sea Shadow, a stealth ship, which was ensconced within a barge on Row G. Shrouded in secrecy, the angular vessel was developed by Lockheed for the U.S. Navy to test how low of a radar profile could be achieved, and it served as inspiration for a stealth ship featured in a James Bond film. According to the MARAD website, “Sea Shadow was constructed and tested under a high degree of secrecy; until the Navy made its existence public in 1993, all tests were conducted at night.” The ship entered the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in September 2006.

They also found their way aboard the USS Iowa, which bears the distinction of being the only U.S. Navy warship ever outfitted with a bathtub, so FDR could have a soak while crossing the Atlantic. While they didn’t manage to go inside, an eerie photograph of three enormous guns on deck conveys the magnitude of the battleship.

One of Haeber’s most cherished discoveries was a three-story-tall mural he photographed inside the SS President Lincoln, an American President Lines ship constructed in San Francisco in 1961. An early version of a containerized cargo vessel, the Lincoln doubled as a cruise ship catering to a small number of elite passengers, and remnants of the elegant interior décor remained. The ship has since been hauled to the scrap yard.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing for the three urban explorers. Once they narrowly dodged a work crew aboard a ship — “but we saw or heard them before they saw us,” Haefner said. Another time, while paddling back to the slough, they discovered their raft was punctured and had to manually pump air into it as they traveled. Then, at the tail end of their final journey to the Ghost Fleet, they found themselves fully illuminated by the dreaded patrol-boat searchlight for a full 10 seconds. They froze, convinced they’d been caught. But nothing happened, so they powered up and rowed like hell to get back ashore, and never returned.

Of course, posting interior photographs of the Mothball Fleet all over the Internet and delivering a public slideshow about their sneak-aboard escapades has attracted the attention of the federal government. “The Department of Homeland Security has been looking into it,” said Haefner, who can tell by monitoring web traffic on his blog. “I know that they know.” He also noticed hits from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Justice, but so far, none have come knocking.

In response to a Guardian request for comment about the Mothball Fleet photographers, Kim Riddle, a spokesperson for MARAD, e-mailed an official statement. “We were aware of the intrusion,” she wrote. “We are concerned about the safety of individuals onboard our ships. This is a dangerous industrial site, and we take significant precautions for our own workers when they are onboard the fleet to make sure that areas are safe for them to enter. While trespassing on federal property, these photographers put themselves in a very dangerous position and could have been severely injured or killed from a fall or by entering an enclosed space that doesn’t have enough oxygen. Since learning of this incident, we took additional security steps, reviewed our procedures, and reinforced training with our employees to stop these kinds of intrusions.”

Freskos touched on the safety issue in an online discussion about the project. “There were many long discussions about oxygen-deprived spaces such as anchor chain lockers and ballast tanks,” he wrote. “There were contingency plans made for injuries. We carried a medical kit, we wore [life jackets], and took many other precautions.” He also responded to those who questioned the wisdom of publicizing their late-night excursions to the Mothball Fleet. “I think I speak for the three of us when I say that we are well aware of the consequences,” Freskos wrote. “But it’s a passion of ours, and it’s worth it.”

The photographers’ work can be viewed here, here, and here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Is LEED really green?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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17
Is LEED really green?

news@sfbg.com


The archangel of sustainable development has arrived, promising much needed city housing that will add to the “social fabric of the waterfront community” with its glamorous green rooftops and unheard-of bay views. This is going to be the greenest building of them all, or so we’ve been told, but the truth is a bit more complicated.


A condominium development 25-plus years in the making, 8 Washington would transform the site of the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club near Pier 39. The developer plans to renovate the recreation center with a larger fitness facility, provide two new waterfront parks with public access, and supply 30,000 feet of ground-floor retail stores and restaurants beneath its 165 new luxury apartments.


Sounds nice, doesn’t it? The problem with this $345 million project is that it’s being touted, with its “green building” LEED certification, as the most sustainable structure it can possibly be.


But there’s nothing sustainable about building high-end condos in San Francisco, a city with too many high-end condos and not enough affordable housing. And LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the most popular sustainable development certification system in the country, is a lie — at least as your friendly neighborhood building developer is marketing it.


LEED, the baby of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a great marketing tool for developers in San Francisco, the city with the single most LEED certified buildings in the United States. San Francisco was just named the “greenest” city in North America at the 2011 Aspen Ideas Festival, largely due to its extensive representation of green buildings — which normally means structures built with recycled materials, near a transportation hub, featuring some solar panels or other renewable energy sources.


“LEED is certainly a positive thing,” Planning Commission President Christina Olague told us. “There’s this whole push toward green sustainability.”


The project’s “platinum” LEED status is all a San Francisco developer could hope for to attract the green — and more important, the city’s approval.


“LEED certification is part and parcel to the vision for the project,” said PJ Johnston of PJ Johnston Communications, speaking for the developer. “The city, neighborhood, and waterfront deserve healthy, sustainable structures, living spaces, public spaces, and amenities. That’s exactly what 8 Washington will bring.”


LEED has become the final word in green building — if your building is LEED certified, you’re golden. But all this green they’ve been feeding us is really a misleading, incomplete rating system.


The first thing to consider is that sustainable development, even if it uses recycled materials and 10 percent sun-powered electricity, is still development. Any time a structure is torn down, “the energy and materials in that [original structure] are going to get sent to landfills somewhere. You gotta calculate all that,” said sustainable development activist Brad Paul, a former SF deputy mayor, who believes in considering the entire “life cycle of a building” in determining its sustainability.


Even the Environmental Protection Agency sometimes discounts essential considerations of sustainable building. When it sought a new SF office space in 2009, its intention was to find a home that was “a model of sustainable development,” the SF Biz Times reported. But its first choice was to build new development, at the site at 350 Bush Street — with its environmental costs of demolition, throwing out old materials, and starting from scratch.


Last month, the EPA decided to remain at 75-95 Hawthorne Street instead of moving to a new building, but not because it was the sustainable choice. No deal was reached for 350 Bush, and as Regional Public Affairs Officer Traci Madison said, “There was no other option to choose from.”


Although it’s a measure of a structure’s material sustainability, LEED does not consider a building’s life cycle, or even its use. Consider 8 Washington. The developer has boasted that it’s the most expensive housing project in San Francisco history, with a hefty price tag of $3 million to $10 million per apartment.


“Who can afford these luxury condos, and what do they use them for?” Paul asks. “These guys who work for hedge funds on Wall Street,” who use the condo as a second or third home and commute on their private jets to get there.


Johnston said 8 Washington will be marketed to a “mix of buyers, including young professionals, empty-nesters looking to move back to San Francisco, and families … The project has many two- and three-bedroom units, encouraging family living,” he said. But it’s unlikely that those who can afford a condo of this luxury will make it their only home.


“[Board President] David Chiu says he’s worried about SF becoming a bedroom community for Silicon Valley,” said Paul. “I’m more worried about this being a bedroom community for New York, Boston, L.A.”


Instead of providing the affordable housing that San Francisco so needs, projects like 8 Washington attract the wealthy, who aren’t using public transportation. Instead, Paul said, they burn tons of fossil fuels using their new condos as weekend getaways.


 


LEED FOR THE RICH


LEED certifies buildings as “sustainable developments” based on the following categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation in design and regional priority.


Earning points in each category brings a building closer to LEED certification, which requires at least 40 points. Above “silver” and “gold” status, a “platinum” LEED certification requires 80 points. But how builders get the points is what matters. For example, a developer might skimp on the insulation to install extra solar panels and get more points for a less efficient building.


Does LEED consider a building’s actual use? “The short answer is no,” said Jennifer Easton, a communications associate at the USGBC who added, “We want [LEED] to be used by every type of project.” But despite its billing, LEED tells an incomplete story.


“It’s just green drapery,” said SF attorney Sue Hestor, a slow growth advocate. “They’ve really had a PR machine. They keep touting all this greenness.”


LEED certification has value, Paul said, but it doesn’t turn multimillion dollar condos green. “There is absolutely no need for high-end luxury housing in the city right now,” he said.


Building luxury condos in place of affordable housing encourages the “Manhattanization” phenomenon, attracting wealthy out-of-towners to expend fuel on their private jets to get to their new crash pads.


“They aren’t gonna be living there all year,” Olague said of residents of luxury housing. “We hear a lot of, ‘We need more housing.’ If you keep building housing for the top 2 percent, how does it lessen the demand on your average workforce?”


But not everyone sees luxury condo-building as counterproductive. “Building that project actually allows for more affordable housing,” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR (San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association). “It’ll provide housing for some people, and that can only be helpful to the housing market. If you don’t build new condos, then people just compete for the crumbs, and that means people who are rich push the rest of us out.”


In other words, if you give the rich housing, then they won’t take over your flat in the Mission — if they ever really wanted it in the first place. “I don’t think we can impose some kind of hipster elitism that they’re not our kind of people so they’re not allowed in,” Metcalf said of the wealthy out-of-towners.


LEED agrees. “We don’t want [LEED] to be for one specific group of people,” Easton said. “We have LEED-certified homeless shelters, but having a LEED certified luxury condo building is an advantage. We can’t control if someone is flying across the country in a jumbo jet every day — but we can control their energy efficiency in a building.”


 


WHO RIDES BUSES?


For the typical working class San Franciscan, living modestly is a must and public transportation is essential. So there’s an inherent environmental advantage to attracting residents who don’t rely on polluting planes and cars.


“There’s a definite need for workforce housing, middle class housing in San Francisco,” Paul says. “I guarantee you none of those people get there by private jet. The less income people have, the more likely they’re going to be to use public transit.”


But 8 Washington and luxury developments like it don’t foster public transit. The more wealthy people who move in, the more low-income residents get displaced — to the East Bay or other areas with more affordable housing. It’s another strike against sustainability when these workers opt to drive back into the city for work instead paying for BART, says Paul, particularly when they drive older, less-efficient cars.


“LEED was a way to spell an environmentally friendly product, but you have to figure in the extra driving,” said Paul.


But 8 Washington gets LEED points for building on a site close to public transit in an attempt to discourage individual car pollution. But will wealthy condo owner actually take the infrequent F-line with all the tourists instead of parking their $150,000 car in the underground parking garage right below their feet?


“When you’re talking about sustainable practices and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how it relates to land use planning, it makes you wonder if that’s supposed to [solely] relate to housing people near transit corridors,” said Olague. “It seems to me you have to look at equity.”


The garage at 8 Washington, to be built below sea level under the condos, will house 415-plus parking spaces. The developer says that 250 of the spaces will be offered as public parking for the busy Ferry Building down the street, but the 165 additional spaces guarantee one parking space for each residential unit.


“Given the larger size of the residential units and the fact that the majority of the units are two to three bedrooms, we believe that one parking space per dwelling is appropriate,” said Johnston. Appropriate, maybe, but not environmentally friendly.


 


PROMISES AND REALITY


Wealthy people and affordable housing aside, LEED doesn’t actually measure the energy used in a building, says New York City-based architectural associate Henry Gifford. He filed a $100 million class action lawsuit against LEED last October for gaining a monopoly on the sustainable development market by making false claims about buildings’ energy savings.


“They say that the building is required to be energy efficient. But the building doesn’t have to be energy efficient — it just has to earn points, to promise it’s going to be energy efficient,” Gifford said.


It’s up to the developer what computer software is used to predict a building’s energy efficiency, and Gifford says that computer diagrams can easily be manipulated and do not consider inconsistent factors, like weather.


“California is the promise land,” said Gifford. “All you’re required to do is provide a promise. The sad thing is that it removes all the integrity from the process — it encourages lying.”


Furthermore, once the building is built and has achieved LEED certification, the building’s actual energy use in its life cycle isn’t considered. The only way you can truly know if a building is energy efficient is by looking at the utility bills, says Gifford. But once it’s LEED-certified, who cares?


There is a voluntary program called Building Performance Partnership (BPP) that tracks a building’s energy and water use over time. “The idea is we want LEED to be a system where it enacts change in the actual building,” said Easton. But the problem is the building has already gained LEED certification before the first utility bill is even mailed.


“We publish baseball scores. With everything in life, people get scored,” said Gifford, who operates with transparency in developing energy efficient buildings in New York, hosting open houses after buildings are built with printouts of their recent utility bill history.


LEED was never intended to have the final say on sustainable building, to be a seal of green approval, according to a New York Times op-ed by Alec Appelbaum last year (“Don’t LEED us astray,” 5/19/10). “Rather it was to be a set of guidelines for architects, engineers, and others who want to make buildings less wasteful. However, developers quickly realized that its ratings — certified, silver, gold, or platinum — were great marketing tools, allowing them to charge a premium on rents.”


Therein lies the issue. Yes, 8 Washington will “allow for more ‘eyes on the street’ at all hours of the day” and provide two or three-bedroom units for families who can afford them, as it promises. But a sustainable structure is far different than the promise of a sustainable life cycle of a building. And a promise is just that. *


UPDATE: Jennifer Easton at LEED wrote to inform us that, although the 8 Washington website clearly states that the project will include LEED certified buidlings, “We would like to clarify that 8 Washington is not a LEED-certified project, nor a LEED-registered project.”


 


PLANNING COMMISSION HEARINGS


July 7: Community Vision for San Francisco’s Northeast Waterfront


July 14: City demographics and sustainability; the need for low-income housing; presentation of “jet fuel burn rate” argument.


July 21: 8 Washington’s EIR approval hearing


All hearings to be held at 12 p.m. in the Commission Chambers, Room 400, City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place.




JET FUEL BURN RATE FOR LUXURY CONDOS


 


Let’s assume that just five of the 165 condo buyers at 8 Washington (3 percent) are Wall Street hedge fund traders or venture capitalists using them as second or third homes. Let’s also assume they’ll use them 1.5 times a month and commute to SF aboard their business jet, a reasonable assumption for Wall Street execs making tens of millions in salary and bonuses. Why would they fly by private jet rather than take Southwest or Amtrak? Because they can. This must be factored into any environmental analysis of a project that explicitly markets to this demographic and include the following:


Mid to large size business jets used to fly cross country (Hawker 800XP, Gulfstream G2/ G3, Bombardier Global Express) on average burn 400 gallons of jet fuel/hour, take 6 hours to fly New York to SFO and 5 hours for return trip. Therefore, a single round trip burns:


• 11 hours X 400 gallons per hour = 4,400 gallons of jet fuel per trip. A typical family car uses 1,200 gallons of gas per year, so one flight from NYC to 8 Washington equals almost four years of driving a family car.


• 1.5 trips/mo. = 6,600 gallons X 12 months = 79,200 gallons of jet fuel/year or the equivalent of driving a family car for 66 YEARS each month.


Using our example of five residents, the numbers over one year and 20 years are:


• 5 X 79,200 gallons/per year = 396,000 GALLONS OF JET FUEL A YEAR or equal to driving a family car 330 years, A THIRD OF A MILLENNIUM, each year.


• 396,000 gal. X 20 yrs. = 7,920,000 gallons of jet fuel, equivalent of driving family car 6,600 years, OVER 6 MILLENNIUM, in 20 years.


Given this reality, the 8 Washington environmental impact report must analyze such questions as:


How many solar panels are needed compensate for burning 396,000 gallons of jet fuel/year? How many low flow toilets would make up for burning 396,000 gallons of jet fuel/year? Etc.

He’s back!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
He’s back!

steve@sfbg.com

It’s been more than a year since relations between San Francisco’s nightlife community and the San Francisco Police Department bottomed-out following a nasty crackdown and pattern of harassment led by plain-clothes Officer Larry Bertrand and Michelle Ott, an agent with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The pair’s antics included repeatedly shutting down clubs, aggressively raiding private parties, seizing laptop computers and other property, making arrests for minor infractions, roughing up and threatening those who objected to the harsh treatment, dumping out dozens of bottles of alcohol, and, according to one lawsuit, retaliating against those who filed complaints.

There were at least four lawsuits against the city related to the crusade, including one that the city is in the process of settling for $50,000 (involving promoter Arash Ghanadan, who had repeated run-ins with Bertrand) and another federal lawsuit alleging that Bertrand’s harassment of legal businesses amounted to a criminal racketeering enterprise. The federal case is headed for trial later this year.

After cover stories in the Guardian (see “The new War on Fun,” 3/23/10) and SF Weekly exposed the abuses, and the nightlife community formed the California Music and Culture Association to counter the assault, Bertrand and Ott were pulled off the nightlife beat and things slowly got better.

So when Bertrand appeared back on the beat on a recent Friday night, June 17 — targeting two of the same clubs he allegedly harassed before, Mist and Sloan, and shutting Sloan down for the night on a technical violation — many in the nightlife community freaked out, fearing that their improved relationship with SFPD was over and the bad old days were back.

“My phone was blowing up with texts and photos of his raid on Sloan nightclub. People are livid,” attorney Mark Rennie, who works with clubs on permitting and compliance issues, wrote to a group of nightlife advocates in an e-mail titled “Officer Larry Bertrand back on the Streets last night and up to his old tricks.”

Complaints were made to new Police Chief Greg Suhr and others in the command staff. The SFPD initially refused a Guardian request for comment on whether Bertrand would remain back on the beat, citing the ongoing lawsuits. But police spokesperson Sgt. Mike Andraychak eventually admitted it was a mistake to have Bertrand busting clubs and said he won’t be back on that beat anytime soon.

Andraychak said the new commander of Southern Station, Capt. Charlie Orkes, assigned Bertrand to police the clubs for the night and “he wasn’t aware of the history of lawsuits, and so that’s why Officer Bertrand was out there that night doing permit inspections … He won’t have Officer Bertrand in that role again, in the interests of good community relations.”

Those relations have become much better and more cooperative in the last year, according to Suhr, Rennie, and Entertainment Commission Executive Director Jocelyn Kane. “We’re happy with our relationship with the Police Department right now,” Kane told us. “That’s why [the reappearance of Bertrand] was of concern to people.”

During an interview with the Guardian on the morning of June 17, Suhr said he was supportive of nightlife. “I’m pro entertainment and I want the clubs to succeed. It think it draws people to the city and allows us to do a lot of things,” Suhr said, emphasizing the importance of clear communications and good relations between clubs and the SFPD. “If we’re being fair, consistent, and objective in how we treat situations, the clubs will know how it works.”

To many in the nightlife community, Bertrand represents the antithesis of that approach. Mist owner Mike Quan, a plaintiff in the ongoing federal lawsuit alleging Bertrand repeatedly harassed him and his customers, said he was shocked to hear Bertrand showed up at his club and was abrasive with his employees again. “My attorney sent [SFPD] a letter the next day saying this is not acceptable,” Quan told us. “Hopefully they got the message.”

Mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty, who is close to the nightlife community, helped reach out to Suhr after the incident and said he believes it was an aberration. “This is something that is a concern and the leadership needs to be sure that we’re not falling back,” Dufty told us.

Appeals also went out to the City Attorney’s Office, headed by another mayoral candidate, Dennis Herrera, who said he was happy to hear this was an isolated incident. But he said it illustrates something he’s been saying in meetings with clubs and cops — that SFPD’s nightlife enforcement policies need to be clear and consistent.

“We need to get it above the ad hoc way we’ve done it, so that it’s above the captain level and coming from the command staff,” Herrera told us.

Suhr, who has better relations with the nightlife community than any of his recent predecessors, also emphasized the need to lay out clear expectations. But he stopped short of saying there wouldn’t be anymore undercover raids of clubs and parties, telling us, “I think it’s important that people think that’s a possibility.”

The way forward

Andrew Lam
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0
The way forward

sarah@sfbg.com

Two days before President Obama announced his plan to begin withdrawing 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next 15 months, Peace Action West’s political director Rebecca Griffin delivered a box containing thousands of toy soldiers to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in downtown San Francisco.

Tied to each soldier were handwritten messages that gave reasons for demanding a large and swift withdrawal. Many of the petitions came from folks whose loved ones are in the military or are veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Unlike most Democratic Party leaders, Feinstein has not demanded a significant draw-down of combat troops, despite polls showing that Americans increasingly support leaving Afghanistan, particularly after the killing of Osama bin Laden. There’s good reason for the public’s growing restlessness. This 10-year war has already surpassed Vietnam as the longest conflict in U.S. history.

According to the online database icasualities.org, 1,637 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan and 4,463 soldiers have died in Iraq. Another 11,722 service members have been wounded in Afghanistan, and 32,100 in Iraq, primarily by improvised explosive devices. And that’s not counting the thousands who are suffering from depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other ailments.

Griffin said her goal was to draw attention to the political organizing in support of ending the war. But even as she made her delivery, Feinstein was on MSNBC maintaining that draw-down decisions should be left to the military generals.

In the wake of President Obama’s June 22 announcement, which went way farther than the generals wanted, many of Feinstein’s colleagues such as Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the house minority leader, expressed disappointment that the pace of withdrawal isn’t quicker.

“I am glad this war is ending, but it’s ending at far too slow a pace,” Boxer said.

“We will continue to press for a better outcome,” Pelosi stated.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Concord), who visited the troops over Memorial Day weekend, told us that a different strategy is needed. “Our troops are incredible, dedicated, and skilled. But every minute of every day, they are in a very dangerous situation, and many of them are dying. There is no recognition that we are caught in the middle of a five-way civil war.”

And Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) vowed to offer defense appropriations amendments to cut all funding for combat operations. “History shows there is no military solution in Afghanistan,” she said. “We’ve got to engage with the Taliban and engage with those in the region to find some stability.”

But where does Obama’s plan leave the peace movement as the election nears?

Griffin said activists should take credit for getting Obama to withdraw 33,000 troops rather than the smaller number his generals wanted. She sees his plan as a sign that activists need to keep pushing for more, including a concrete timeline for when he will bring all the troops home.

Under Obama’s plan, 68,000 troops will still be on the ground in September 2012, and 2014 is identified as the deadline for completing the transition to Afghan control and ending the U.S.’s combat mission.

“This means there’ll be a significant military presence in Afghanistan for at least another three-and-a-half years,” Griffin said. “By the end of Obama’s first term, the war will be 11 years old and there will be nearly double the American troops on the ground as there were when [George W.] Bush left office.”

Progressive activist and author Norman Solomon, who is running in the 2012 race to replace Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin County), noted that a recent New York Times’ headline read “Obama Opts for Faster Afghan Pullout.”

“But faster than what?” Solomon said, noting that “10,000 troops are only 10 percent of our force. This is a pattern we saw in Iraq, where the withdrawal was too slow and the numbers remaining doubled when you factored in all the private contractors.”

Solomon said that when Nixon pulled 500,000 troops from Vietnam in the late 1960s, the conflict actually increased in terms of the tonnage of weaponry used. “And the U.S. is now engaged in wars in Libya, Yemen, and a Pakistan air war.”

But longtime antiwar activist and former Democratic state legislator Tom Hayden saw a number of clues in Obama’s speech for how to push for a faster, bigger, more significant draw-down.

“Obama said 33,000 troops will be withdrawn by next summer, followed by a steady pace of withdrawal. So that gets you to 50,000 troops by the election, and all combat troops out by 2014,” Hayden told us. “If he could be pushed by the peace movement, that would break the back of the warmongers’ planning.”

In his speech, Obama noted that the U.S. will host a summit with our NATO allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition next May in Chicago, where Obama’s former chief of staff is mayor.

“Get ready, Rahm Emanuel, for big demonstrations,” warned Hayden, who was a member of the Chicago Seven group tried for inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. “But do you imagine Obama would do that if he were going to escalate the war? No — he’s wrapping a ribbon of unity to transfer control to Afghanistan on a timetable.”

He also noted that Obama’s allies aren’t exactly pushing him to stay. “They may not have an exit strategy, but they are heading for the exits,” Hayden said. “So if you organize demonstrations with international support, that gives you an organizational opportunity in multiple governments to press Obama to leave.”

Hayden predicts that Obama is moving toward a diplomatic settlement, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that is pro withdrawal and pro women.

“But Obama’s got a genuine problem of his own making. He escalated the damn war,” Hayden said. “He doesn’t want the military to be attacking his plan. But if he wants to be in the center, he’s going to offend the generals.

Hayden noted that in his speech Obama said, “America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.” It was a statement that sounded in line with a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution calling on Congress “to bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments.”

But Richard Becker, western regional coordinator of the antiwar ANSWER Coalition, described Obama’s draw-down as “a minimal pledge.”

“Given the growing discontent with the war, it’s hard to see how you can claim that this is a step forward,” he told us.

Becker said it has been difficult to mobilize the antiwar movement under a Democratic administration. He also stressed the importance of people coming out in San Francisco for a “protest, march, and die-in” on Oct. 7, the 10th anniversary of the war, and for a major action in Washington. D.C., on Oct. 6. “What’s going to get the U.S. out is a combination of what’s going on in Afghanistan — and what kind of antiwar movement we have here.”

Don’t privatize public safety

Andrew Lam
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3

Four weeks ago, surgeon Dimitry Nikitin walked out of Florida’s Orlando Regional Medical Center to his car and was shot dead by a disgruntled patient who then turned his gun on himself and committed suicide. Last September, a doctor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins was shot and killed by a patient distraught over his mother’s terminal diagnosis.

There is an epidemic of violence in America’s health care facilities. Many of the scenarios are familiar — the news is full of stories of combatants in gang fights following wounded rivals into hospital emergency rooms to finish them off. But the full depth of the problem is largely unreported and extends to hospital wards, clinics, and long-term care facilities

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Labor based on 2009 statistics says health care providers rank third in the likelihood of being assaulted on the job — just behind police and correctional officers. In 2009, there were 38 assaults per 10,000 nurses aides.

Despite this troubling trend, the San Francisco Department of Public Health is asking the Board of Supervisors to approve its proposal to replace institutional police officers in some public health facilities with low-paid private security guards.

Here are two reasons this is a profoundly bad idea.

1. Health care is a stressful environment and growing more stressful every day.

As the providers of last resort, public hospitals and clinics often face a perfect storm of patients who are involved in violence, alcohol and drug abuse, or are suffering from untreated mental illness. But even outside emergency wards, health care workers must work up-close with patients and family members pushed to the breaking point by an overburdened delivery system.

As health care costs spiral, public health budgets shrink and access to high quality care dwindles, many hospitals and clinics are reporting assaults by patients and family members upset by long lines, half-day waits, and unaffordable care.

According to a September report by CNN on rising violence in health care facilities, violence caused by patients’ frustration with health care services is on the rise.

“People are just tired of waiting, or they are just angry that they’re not getting the care they feel is acceptable,” nurse Rita Anderson told CNN. “Instead of saying something, their response is yelling, hitting, screaming, and spitting.”

2. Well-screened and trained security officers reduce health care violence.

According to a study on reducing violence in hospitals by the National Crime Prevention Council, three top strategies for keeping health care facilities safe include reducing patient wait-times through well-organized and managed patient processing; controlling facilities through locked wards, staff ID badges, and security cameras; and hiring carefully selected and well-trained security personnel.

Currently, San Francisco’s hospitals and health care facilities are protected by highly trained San Francisco Sheriff’s deputies and institutional police officers. The Department of Public Health wants to replace some of these officers with private security guards.

But the private security industry is notoriously bad at screening recruits and plagued with turnover, in part because of low salaries. As a result, the use of private security creates unsafe working conditions for employees who deal with difficult or violent patients, such as those in San Francisco’s psychiatric emergency wards.

Unlike institutional police officers, private security guards cannot make arrests. Instead, they must involve the San Francisco Police Department, accumulating costs that quickly defeat the budget savings of using low-paid private guards to do work that should be done by highly trained officers.

Everyone who uses San Francisco’s public health system should contact the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and ask them to make the right choice to keep our hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities safe.

Ed Kinchley is an emergency room social worker at San Francisco General Hospital.

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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5

tredmond@sfbg.com

I’m not going to tell Ed Lee he can’t run for mayor. I know he promised he wasn’t going to. I know that if he hadn’t made that promise, he wouldn’t have had the six votes to win the office. I think Lee believed at the time that he didn’t want to run in November, and he may believe it now.

But this is still a democracy, and if Lee thinks the situation has changed and he’s the only person who can properly lead the city over the next four years, he ought to put his name forward.

Right now, though, he’s allowing the “draft Ed Lee” movement to get out of control.

Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak and political consultant Enrique Pierce (who runs the clearly misnamed Left Coast Campaigns and loves to tout his progressive credentials) have set up an office, are raising money, and have hatched this plan to get Lee to agree to put his name on the ballot and not actively campaign.

The operation — which, let’s remember, carries Ed Lee’s name on it — has already run afoul of the law. The Ethics Commission — hardly an aggressive political watchdog — says the campaign had improperly filed as a political action committee. That’s not Lee’s fault — he has nothing to do with this. But it already taints his reputation.

Lee, by all accounts, has done a far better job with the budget than his immediate predecessor. He’s actually been talking to people. He listens; he accepts logic; he tries to make thing work. I admit, the bar is pretty low — Gavin Newsom was a complete asshole. Still: Lee’s a decent guy.

But he has some heavy political baggage — and most of it has to do with his connections to sleazy operators like Pak and Willie Brown. As long as he’s linked to people who treat campaign finance laws, lobbying rules, and political ethics with disdain bordering on hostility, he’s going to have trouble keeping the public trust.

And right now, those same people are raising money — money that is already being spent on a political campaign — and the noncandidate is letting it happen.

Run if you want, Ed. But if you’re going to keep your promise, then it’s time to call Pak, Pierce and company and tell them to quit.

Three good initiatives for the fall

Andrew Lam
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2

The progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors (including, to her credit, Sup. Jane Kim) has placed three important reform measures on the November ballot. That the measures are headed for the voters is a clear indication of the shift of power at the board — progressives no longer have a reliable six votes. But the progressives still have the ability to push issues — and in an mayoral election year, these measures will provide a valuable gauge for the candidates and create broad-based organizing opportunities.

The measures include a ban on the demolition of more than 50 units of rent-controlled housing; a ban on further admissions charges at parks or leasing park facilities to private companies; and a requirement that participants in the Care Not Cash program get an actual housing unit — not just a shelter bed — before their welfare grants are cut.

The supervisors are under immense pressure to back off from those proposals, and if two of the five supporters pull their names before the final deadline of July 14, the measures won’t make the ballot. Some argue that the controversy over the measures could threaten the mayoral campaign of progressive standard-bearer John Avalos. But Avalos told us he supports all three measures and has no interest in turning back. He’s right — the supervisors should hold firm and insist on a public vote on all three.

The Care Not Cash reform has already generated a lot of controversy. Mayor Ed Lee has denounced it, saying it will destroy the entire program, and two mayoral candidates, former Sup. Bevan Dufty and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, have come out against it. But the measure is pretty simple and straightforward: it says that a bed in a shelter doesn’t count as “housing.”

That’s a critical definition, because under Care Not Cash, the city tries to put homeless welfare recipients into housing, mostly single-room-occupancy hotels — and in exchange, takes back most of the welfare grants. But by law, a bed in a shelter counts as a home — so the minute the city finds someone a cot to sleep on in a noisy, sometimes dangerous shelter with no privacy and arbitrary curfews and rules, that person loses most of his or her welfare grant. Along the way, the city locks up shelter beds for people in the CNC program — so when other homeless people show up for a place to sleep, they’re told there’s no room. That’s a sign of a broken system.

The housing demolition measure comes as a response to a badly flawed proposal to rebuild Parkmerced — tearing down hundreds of rent-controlled housing units in the process. The parks measure is an attempt to stop Phil Ginsburg, head of the Recreation and Parks Department, from turning public property over to private for-profit firms in an effort to raise cash.

The community groups and grassroots sponsors of these measures have a responsibility to organize and mount serious campaigns; there’s going to be big-money opposition. But it’s worth having all three on the ballot in November.

Smooth sailing for developers

Andrew Lam
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3
Smooth sailing for developers

rebeccab@sfbg.com

It’s a mad dash at San Francisco City Hall to put all the pieces together in preparation for the America’s Cup, the prestigious regatta that will culminate in the summer of 2013 along the city’s northern waterfront. But once that spectacle is over, the biggest impact of the event will be a massive, lasting, and quite lucrative transformation of the city’s waterfront by a few powerful players, a deal that has been modified significantly since it was approved by the Board of Supervisors.

As negotiations on the fine terms of the development agreements continue to unfold, the future landscape of a huge section of the San Francisco waterfront is in play. If the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) — the race management team controlled by billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison — aims high in its investments into port-owned infrastructure, it has the potential to lock-in leases and long-term development rights for up to nine piers for 66 years, with properties ranging from as far south as Pier 80 at Islais Creek to as far north as Pier 29, home of the popular dinner theater Teatro ZinZanni.

The possibility of securing long-term leases and development rights to Piers 19, 23, and 29 — provided race organizers sink more money into infrastructure improvements — was added to the deal in the last two weeks of 2010, just before San Francisco won its bid to host the world-famous sailing match. The possibility of obtaining rights to portions of two additional piers, 27 and 80, were also added at the last minute. Race organizers and city officials negotiated the final modifications after the Board of Supervisors signed off on the Host City Agreement on Dec. 14, 2010.

Not all board members knew that three additional city-owned piers were being added as possible extensions of the land deal, and those properties weren’t mentioned in any of the earlier documents that went through a public review process in the months leading up to the approval of the agreement. Yet Board President David Chiu was evidently appraised of how the last-minute negotiations were unfolding and he quietly offered his support.

On Dec. 22, 2010, Chiu sent a letter to Russell Coutts, CEO of Oracle Racing, the team that won the 33rd America’s Cup and is an integral player in laying plans for the 34th. “I understand that Mayor Newsom and the city’s team have been working directly with you since the board’s approval of the Host City Agreement to make the necessary adjustments and clarifications to the agreement to ensure it meets your needs. I am aware of these changes and support them,” Chiu wrote in a letter that was not shared with his fellow supervisors.

Quoting from a section of the agreement that explains that ACEA is ensured long-term development opportunities in exchange for funding improvements and upgrades, Chiu’s letter went on, “This section specifically applies to … Piers 30-32 and Seawall Lot 330, as well as Piers 26 and 28, and if mutually agreeable could apply to Piers 19, 23, and 29. To obtain the community’s support and agreement for future development rights to piers on the northern waterfront, you will need to invest in a strong partnership with the community … I am prepared to help facilitate that relationship.”

Former Board President and Democratic County Central Committee Chair Aaron Peskin, who has closely followed the America’s Cup land deal and has for decades been actively involved in land-use issues along the northern waterfront, interpreted Chiu’s letter to Coutts as a backroom deal.

“There is no question that the president of the board, without the authorization of the majority of the Board of Supervisors, went behind closed doors, out of view of the public, and committed to [long-term development] for three piers,” Peskin said, highlighting the fact that no other supervisors were copied on Chiu’s letter. “That he has done this unilaterally, without the consent of a board’s vote at a board meeting, is not good governance. If there’s one body that’s supposed to do all of its work for the public, it’s the Board of Supervisors.”

Chiu defended the letter by emphasizing the part that asked for a partnership with the community. “This was all within the broader framework of the Host City Agreement that we signed in the middle of December,” he told the Guardian when presented with the letter during an interview and asked to comment. “They had questions about, well, can we develop on these other piers? And what I said was, ‘Well, as I think the language here specifically says if mutually agreed upon … you could possibly do this.’ And we specifically said you’ll need to invest in a strong partnership with the community.”

He added that specific development plans would still have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors. Proposals for each parcel will be made in separate Disposition and Development Agreements, subject to board approval.

On hearing Chiu’s response, Peskin was still critical of the lack of transparency in this deal: “My position is, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

Meanwhile, an analysis prepared by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose in mid-March suggests that the final amendments did reflect new commitments for the city that go well beyond what was discussed publicly. “No city approval of the Event Authority’s selection of Pier 29 for a long-term lease is required in the agreement, as modified by the Mayor’s Office and other city officials,” the Budget Analyst’s report notes. “This entire provision … was not included in the agreement of Dec. 14, 2010 as previously approved by the Board of Supervisors.”

Brad Benson, special projects manager at the Port of San Francisco, explained the Pier 29 provision slightly differently. “The city would have to be acting in its reasonable discretion to say no,” he said, emphasizing that ACEA would have to invest well above the $55 million threshold to obtain rights to Pier 29.

At a time when a new era of civility is being hailed at City Hall, two elements of the city family are essentially agreeing to disagree on the broader question of whether the 11th-hour modifications to the deal resulted in a greater hit to city coffers than supervisors approved. While Rose stated in public hearings that the modifications would deal a greater blow to city revenues, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, a mayoral candidate, has stood with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development in his assessment that the changes did not significantly exceed the scope of what was approved by the board. Fred Brousseau of the Budget & Legislative Analyst chalked it up to “a difference in opinion,” reflecting “the auditor’s standard for materiality versus the city attorney’s.”

Legalese aside, it’s clear that the race organizers stand to gain some highly desirable waterfront property in exchange for investing in the piers and bringing an event to the city that is expected to generate substantial economic activity. If ACEA invests a minimum threshold of $55 million for infrastructure improvements, it can likely secure long-term development rights for Piers 30-32, a 13-acre waterfront parking lot where Red’s Java House is located, plus win the title to Seawall Lot 330, a two-acre triangular parcel along the Embarcadero that has been discussed as the site of a future luxury condo tower that has already cleared city approval for that use.

A high-rise next door to Seawall Lot 330, called the Watermark, currently has condos going for $1.2 million apiece on average, according to a calculation of online listings. Under the America’s Cup deal approved by the board, the port would have received 1 percent of each condo sale plus 15 percent of transfers or subleases made by ACEA. “Such required payments … have been entirely removed from the agreement as modified by the Mayor’s Office and other city officials,” the budget analyst’s report points out.

Waterfront real estate in San Francisco, always expensive, has recently soared to even higher values. According to a June 22 article in the San Francisco Business Times, Farallon Capital Management recently put up for sale a 3.36-acre parcel in Mission Bay zoned for life science and tech office space — and it’s expected to fetch around $90 million. This past April, BRE Properties shelled out $41.4 million for two Mission Bay residential development sites entitled for 360 residential units, and last year, Salesforce.com acquired a 14-acre Mission Bay property for $278 million, or $140 per buildable square foot.

By comparison, the $55 million that ACEA must invest to be granted a two-acre waterfront parcel on the Embarcadero, plus long-term rights to lease and develop an additional 13 acres across the street, sounds like a good deal. “We’re using an appraisal approach. It’s not going to ridiculously undervalue the property,” Benson said. Under changes made to the deal after the board signed off, base rent for Piers 30-32 will be $4 per square foot of building area. Rent for all other possible piers will be $6 per square foot of building area.

The ability to transfer city-owned Seawall Lot 330 outright to the ACEA is predicated on the approval by the State Lands Commission to strip that property of constraints placing it, like all coastal properties, in the public trust. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who pushed the deal as mayor, is one of the three members of that commission.

Under a provision in the agreement, the ACEA’s $55 million investment will be applied toward rent credits on city-owned parcels — and depending on how much the company puts in, that credit balance can increase by 11 percent every year. Benson described this as a typical arrangement, saying, “It’s not out of the line with other rent-credit deals the port has done.”

Two former mayoral advisors from OEWD, Kyri McClellan and Alexandra Lonne, have since gone to work for the America’s Cup Organizing Committee (ACOC), a nonprofit entity working in tandem with the city and the ACEA to secure financial commitments for hosting the race. Newsom has also been named ambassador at large for the America’s Cup effort.

Meanwhile, an OEWD budget proposal includes $819,000 in staffing costs for four management-level positions relating to America’s Cup planning. A refund is expected in the form of $12 million that the ACOC has committed to fundraise by the end of 2011, with an ultimate target of $32 million by 2013. So far, ACOC has only raised $2 million, but plans to seek higher donations once it gains tax-exempt status. “I think the $2 million is a really good start,” said Mike Martin, who transferred in February from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to OEWD to direct the America’s Cup effort. “They’re building a foundation for an effective pitch.”

For now, city departments are scrambling toward completing the environmental review process for the infrastructure improvements, expected to be complete sometime in November. “It’s incredibly compressed,” Martin said. “There’s a lot to be done in a very short time.”

Peskin, for his part, seemed be keeping a watchful eye on the unfolding America’s Cup plans. “What we, the citizens of San Francisco, have to watch out for is that we’re not being taken advantage of,” he said. “We’ve got to be vigilant that we don’t get taken to the cleaners.”

Alerts

Maria Poblet
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0

WEDNESDAY 29

Moon Tides and the women of Jeju Island

Photographer Brenda Paik Sunoo presents her book Moon Tides, an homage to the female divers of Jeju-do between the ages of 39 and 93. Through photographs and interviews, the author presents the lives of these remarkable South Korean women who dive for seaweed and shellfish with little more than a knife and no breathing apparatus. This practice is common throughout coastal Korea and Japan, usually leaving the men to stay at home and care for the family. The film focuses on the older generations who still do it. The evening includes a wine reception; tickets can be purchased online.

5:30–7:30 p.m., $10

Russ Building

235 Montgomery, 12th Floor, SF

(415) 543-4669

www.imow.org

 

SATURDAY 2

Immigration history and Angel Island

Like a Left Coast Ellis Island, Angel Island was an immigration station for newly arrived immigrants and war prisoners. It was also the location of the 1939 trial to deport Australian-born International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) President Harry Bridges for allegedly being a member of the Communist Party. ILWU historian Harvey Schwartz and ironworker Mike Daly discusses the island’s history — from the trial of Harry Bridges to the Pearl River Delta Taishan people of China, who were largely responsible for building the early infrastructure of California. Check the website for ferry and shuttle information.

11 a.m., free

Angel Island Immigration Post

Mess Hall

Northeast side of the island

www.laborfest.net

 

SUNDAY 3

Labor attacks in California

The McCarthy-era “witch hunts” in California that targeted trade union members and their right to make a living also helped shape the future of the labor movement. The backlash included a large protest and sit-in at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings in San Francisco, which resulted in ending the HUAC hearings and their attack on the labor movement. Hear about that tumultuous time from those who were involved, including Phil Mezey (the San Francisco State University professor who was fired for not signing a loyalty oath), labor historians, and a handful of retired workers and protestors.

2 p.m., free

ILWU Local 34

801 Second St., SF

www.laborfest.net 

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Cleaning up UC’s mess

Andrew Lam
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5
Cleaning up UC’s mess

news@sfbg.com

By 7 a.m., when engineering students begin to trickle into Cory Hall at UC Berkeley, Arnold Meza has already scrubbed the floors, wiped clean the chalkboards, and emptied the trash of 30 offices and many of the classrooms and hallways of the six-floor building.

His early shift as a custodian is a gift, he says, because it is steady compared to his former swing-shift schedule, but Meza is still barely making rent. And he is a single father of four. Like many service workers in the University of California system, Meza wonders how the university can refuse to give him a 3 percent wage increase while top UC executives receive six-figure bonuses every year.

“It falls on broken promises,” Meza said while tying up a bag of trash, one of hundreds he would take out that week. Meza was referring to an agreement in 2009 between the university and its service workers unions, including Meza’s union, AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees). At that time, the administration established a minimum wage (currently $13 per hour) for the more than 7,000 service workers and agreed, if funding was available, to increase wages annually to bring their low-wage workers out of poverty.

But the university is going back on its promise, refusing to increase wages with the funding dedicated for that very purpose, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and the Partnership for Working Families (EBASE) notes in its recent report titled “Bad Budgeting, Broken Promises.”

As the UC Office of the President sees it, the 2009 discussion was not an agreement at all, but a “conditional memorandum of understanding” that would only be effective if state funding was available, said UCOP spokeswoman Dianne Klein.

“We’ve already taken $500 million in cuts. We’ll have to take another $500 million in cuts. Because there is no new money, the memorandum of understanding is moot,” Klein told us.

The state budget vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown last week would have set the UC system back $150 million in cuts on top of the $500 million in cuts approved by Brown in January. How much more will actually be cut from UC funding remains to be seen, but the forecast is not promising.

Despite the cuts, the proposed budget bill states that $3 million in distributed state funds should go toward the salaries and benefit of service workers in the UC system. In a March 24 letter to the governor, UC President Mark Yudof requested that the governor veto that restriction so the university could use the dedicated $3 million “to preserve our flexibility in dealing with the $500 million reduction.”

Compared to the total UC budget of $21.8 billion, that $3 million makes up only 0.014 percent — nickels and dimes to give employees a living wage.

Meanwhile, Meza and his fellow coworkers struggle to put food on the table, making ends meet by working two jobs. After his 4 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday shift, Meza works eight-hour shifts as a car mechanic on weekends. Similarly, many UC service workers collect cans to get a few dollars from the recycling center.

“When I started here 20 years ago, I was making close to $9 an hour. That wasn’t enough,” recalled Meza, who put his four children through public high school on that salary. Today, Meza brings home about $2,400 a month, barely enough to cover rent and a few bills at his El Cerrito home.

“I want my kids to go to college. But financially, I can’t afford it,” he said. “For me, it’s a sad reality.”

Meza’s union, AFSCME, is working with UC to lower the workers’ contribution to retirement pensions to 1.5 percent. The university proposes a 3.5 percent pension plan to go into effect this July and 5 percent in July 2012—the same amount requested from top UC executives. At their low wage, that would cost the service workers the equivalent of one biweekly paycheck a year.

Some UC executives, such as UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, receive additional retirement perks. Roughly 200 highly paid UC executives receive a supplemental retirement benefit of 5 percent of their annual pay, said Nikki Fortunato Bas, the executive director of EBASE. That’s a total annual cost to UC of $4 million.

“If UC gets its way in 2011, instead of getting to climb that next rung on the ladder out of poverty, [the low wage workers] will take a step backward through a combination of increased contributions to retirement and healthcare and UC withholding a 3 percent raise,” Bas said. “All the while, UC is showering already highly-paid executives with six-figure bonuses.”

In an infamous budget battle that has required the UC system to restructure its quickly diminishing funding from the state, more than 100,000 employees’ paychecks have been reduced while top execs like UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center CEO David Feinberg receive thousands of dollars in bonuses. In September 2010, Feinberg’s base pay was increased by 22 percent and he received a $250,000 “retention bonus,” for a total compensation of $1.33 million.

These astounding numbers, as part of a $3.1 million package in bonuses for 37 UC executives last September, were quoted in the EBASE report, using data from the UC Regents website (www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents).

UCOP says the retention bonuses are necessary “because we pay below market as it is [for top executives’ salaries],” said Klein, and the UC needs to offer huge bonuses to keep the executives from moving to higher paying universities. “You have two options: sayonara or we’ll match it,” Klein said. “You can’t recruit in the classifieds for these people … and you’ll have to replace them for the same money, anyway.”

The bonuses are not state-funded, said Klein, but are taken from research grants, patient care, and even federal funding. But Bas said the problem is with UC’s priorities: “Time and again, they have shown that they can find money to give bonuses or backfill sports programs,” she said. “UC may look at this as a matter of technicalities, but we cannot ignore the stories of employees and their families who are struggling to get by.”

As it stands, UC is short-staffed when it comes to service workers. “We’ve been short-staffed for the last 10 years,” said Meza, who estimates that UC Berkeley employs about 140 custodians, less than one-third of the 460 or so custodians the university employed in the 1980s. The result is that the students suffer, said Meza. “The students are getting the short end of the stick because we can only clean once a week in some classrooms because we’re short staff. We see the students pay a lot with tuition, and they’re getting less.”

Already, student fees have increased by more than 32 percent, and another 8 percent fee increase is pending, reported EBASE. As the state continues to make cuts, students and low wage service workers suffer the consequences.

According to the California Budget Project, a single-parent family needs to make $68,375 a year just to make ends meet in Alameda County. “UC workers have reduced-cost healthcare, so this number could be adjusted downward to $58,544,” said Bas. “For a custodian at UC Berkeley or UC San Francisco making $30,000 or even $40,000 a year, this means working two jobs and collecting cans just to scrape by.”

When his oldest was nine years old, Meza remembers, he used to drive his family to the recycling center to get cash for cans he had taken out of the garbage. “The kids were happy in the car because I was going to get money for food when I recycled cans,” which meant there would be dinner on the table that night, Meza said, apologizing for getting teary-eyed at the memory.

“I just don’t want people who work here to go through what I went through to raise a family,” he said.

No matter how many cars Meza fixes on the weekend, he never seems to have a break from the stress of trying to cover fuel, rent, heating bills, doctors’ bills, and other necessities. He’s only 43, but he feels much older after 20 years of working two jobs, seven days a week, providing for four children on his own.

UC workers, unions like AFSCME and other stakeholders have proposed $600 million in budget alternatives such as reducing the excessive 7-to-1 employee-to-management ratio (at UC Berkeley, the average is four employees to one manager). Yet UC does not appear to be seriously considering these alternatives; its current goal is to take back the $3 million dedicated to its low-wage service workers.

“We think this is a matter of finding the will within the UC administration to do what’s right by honoring their word to protect working families’ a path out of poverty,” Bas said.

Two months ago, Meza and his fellow union members marched into UC Berkeley’s Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s office and asked him to spend one day in the life of a service worker on campus. He still hasn’t answered their request.

“People are really struggling here. We are committed to working and we give 110 percent — that should be accounted for,” said Meza. “Give us our 3 percent. We earned it.”

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