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The District 8 dilemma

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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13
The District 8 dilemma

tredmond@sfbg.com

Gabriel Haaland, a longtime queer labor activist, was talking to a friend from District 8 the other day, chatting about the race for a supervisor to fill the shoes of Harvey Milk, Harry Britt, Mark Leno, and Bevan Dufty. “She told me that she didn’t know who to vote for,” Haaland said, “because she didn’t know who the progressive was in the race.”

For supporters of Rafael Mandelman, that’s a serious challenge. “The polls are very consistent,” Haaland said. “Most of the voters in D-8 would prefer a progressive over a moderate, and when they know who the progressive is, they support that candidate.”

But oddly enough, although District 8 — the Castro, Noe Valley, and parts of the Mission — is one of the most politically active parts of the city, where voter turnout is consistently high, the supervisorial race is getting only limited media attention. The neighborhood and queer papers are doing a good job of covering the race, but for the rest of the media, it’s as if nothing’s happening. And that’s left voters confused about what ought to be a very clear choice.

The San Francisco Chronicle featured the District 6 race on the front page Sept. 19, with a long story about how demographic changes in the South of Market area would affect the successor to Sup. Chris Daly. District 10, with the mad political scrum of 22 candidates, no clear front runner and endorsements all over the map, has received considerable media attention.

Yet D–8 — which offers by far the most striking distinctions between candidates and the sharpest divisions over issues — has been flying under the radar.

Three major candidates are in the race, two gay men and a lesbian. All of them, for what it’s worth, are lawyers. Rafael Mandelman, who works for a firm that advises cities and counties, has the support of the vast majority of progressive leaders and organizations. Rebecca Prozan, a deputy district attorney, and Scott Wiener, a deputy city attorney, are very much on the moderate-centrist (some would say, by San Francisco standards, conservative) side of the political spectrum.

“As Barbara Boxer has said in her ads, the choice is clear,” Aaron Peskin, chair of the local Democratic Party and a Mandelman backer, told us. “Not to exaggerate, but this is like Boxer v. Carly Fiornia, and Rafael is our Boxer.”

Yet by almost all accounts, Wiener is ahead in the race.

 

ON THE ISSUES

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has been roughly divided in the past decade between the progressive camp and moderate camp. And while those labels are hard to define (the Chronicle won’t even use the term “progressive,” preferring “ultraliberal”), most observers have a basic grip on the differences.

The moderates, who tend to support Mayor Gavin Newsom, are social liberals but fiscal conservatives. They talk about the city surviving budget red ink without major tax increases. They talk about controlling government spending and increasing public safety. The progressives generally see local government as underfunded after four years of brutal cuts and support the idea of raising new revenue to fill the gap. They support tenants over landlords, seek stronger protections for affordable housing, support Sanctuary City, and oppose sit-lie.

Certainly with Wiener and Mandelman, it’s abundantly clear where the candidates fall. The two agree on some things (they both oppose Prop. B, the pension-reform measure that would reduce health care payments for the children of city employees) and they both support nightlife. But overall, they take very different political stands.

Wiener told us, for example, that the city’s structural budget problems won’t be solved without cuts. “We’re not going to able to tax our way out of this,” he said in an endorsement interview. “We have to lower our expectations for government.”

Other than Muni, public safety, and core public health services, cuts “will have to be across the board,” he said. “What are the things we really can’t do without?”

Wiener supports the sit-lie proposal, saying that he doesn’t think the local police have the tools they need to get poorly behaving people off the streets. He doesn’t support Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s measure mandating foot patrols because, he told us, he doesn’t think the supervisors should micromanage the Police Department.

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who currently holds the D–8 seat, has voted with the progressives occasionally — but almost never on tenant issues. And Wiener, who has the support of the rabidly anti-tenant Small Property Owners of San Francisco, is likely to follow that approach. Although he told us he supports rent control (which just about everyone in local politics agrees on at this point), he’s not a fan of additional protections against evictions and condo conversions. “I’m not prepared to go beyond what we have now” on eviction protections, he said. He supported Newsom’s plan to allow people to buy their way out of the waiting list and lottery for condo conversions.

And when it comes to public power, he’s to the right of the incumbent: Dufty has said repeatedly that he supports the city taking over Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s infrastructure and putting the city in control of a full-scale public power system. Wiener says he supports community choice aggregation (CCA), but not full-scale public power.

Mandelman is a big supporter of local government and says, without hesitation, that the city needs more revenue. “The public sector is dramatically underfunded,” he told us in a recent interview. “There’s great wealth in the city and it needs to be tapped to preserve public services.” Mandelman said he’s not “tax happy,” but told us that the structure of how the city raises revenue is a mess. He supports a top-to-bottom review of the city’s revenue base with the goal of making taxation more progressive — and bringing in enough money to fund crucial services.

Mandelman is a foe of sit-lie, which he sees as punitive and ineffective. He opposes gang injunctions and supports Sanctuary City. And he’s a strong advocate for tenants, supporting stronger eviction protections and limits on condo conversions that take away affordable rental stock.

“You have to look at the candidates and ask what their priorities are,” he said. “Are the displacement of long-time residents critically important or something that’s not on the top of the list? Do you believe we need to rebuild the safety net? Or is queer politics all about property values?”

Prozan told us that she’s the one who can “bring the two sides together” and said that, like Dufty, she is “right up the middle.” She supports the hotel tax and the vehicle license fee and opposes sit-lie, but also thinks gang injunctions are a useful tool for law enforcement. She doesn’t see any reason to split appointments between the mayor and the supervisors for the board that oversees Muni or the Redevelopment Agency. She doesn’t think the city can or should do anything more about the conversion of rental property to tenancies in common, but supports the idea of taking over foreclosed properties to create housing for teachers, cops, and firefighters. So it’s safe to say the Prozan would probably be similar to the incumbent — with the progressives on a few things, against them on others.

 

UNDER THE RADAR?

Wiener and Mandelman agree on two basic points: there are stark differences between the candidates — and the city’s major media outlets aren’t paying enough attention. That’s probably because the relatively tame politics doesn’t compare to the sort of wild excitement you see in Districts 6 and 10.

“There’s less chaos than some of the other districts,” Wiener said. “The three major candidates are all hard-working, respected people who have all lived in the district a while.”

He also agreed that he and Mandelman have “very different visions” for the district and the city, and that there are sharp contrasts and divisions between the two candidates.

Prozan also argued that the political differences on issues aren’t going to be the only — or even the deciding — factor for many voters. “I think they’re looking for who’s got the courage and independence to do what’s right,” she told us.

But Mandelman told us there’s a crucial story here that needs to be told: “It’s a definitional fight about what the queer community is about in 2010. As goes D–8, so goes San Francisco.”

Lembi’s legacy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
Lembi’s legacy

steve@sfb.com

Two of the most outrageous and intransigent political narratives in progressive San Francisco converge at the Hotel Frank near Union Square.

The first involves the relatively new namesake of a boutique hotel formerly known as the Maxwell Hotel San Francisco, Frank Lembi, the nonagenarian who was once one of the city’s largest and most notorious landlords, running CitiApartments, Skyline Realty, Lembi Group, and other related corporations with his recently deceased son, Walter, and others.

Since the Guardian first reported on allegations of illegal and unethical tactics intended to force protected renters from their homes in an award-winning three-part series (“The Scumlords,” March 2006), Lembi’s empire was sued by the City Attorney’s Office and its former tenants (“SF vs. Frank Lembi,” 10/6/09), followed by a financial crash that involved banks foreclosing on dozens of the group’s properties (“Triumph of tenacity,” 6/1/10).

That downfall has now dovetailed into a second prominent San Francisco story: the ongoing contractual impasse and labor unrest between the city’s corporate-owned hotels and workers represented by Unite-Here Local 2, whose list of boycotted local hotels grew to 10 with the addition of the Hotel Frank earlier this month.

After the Hotel Frank and Hotel Metropolis were foreclosed on by Wells Fargo Bank earlier this year, longtime union workers at the two hotels say their rights have been violated, their benefits slashed, and their workloads increased unilaterally by the bank’s management company, Provenance Hotels, whose representatives refused to comment for this story.

“These are troubling signs of the kind of relations they want to have with Local 2,” Anand Singh, a lead organizer with the union, told the Guardian.

Together, the stories that converge at the Hotel Frank are about the plight of renters and workers in San Francisco, and whether they can maintain their economic standing against attacks from powerful corporate interests.

Corporations run by members of the Lembi family once controlled more apartments in San Francisco than any other landlord, growing rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s using highly leveraged real estate purchases and renting units under CitiApartments and other names.

Tenants in rent-controlled apartments are protected under various San Francisco laws, but as the Guardian has reported and the city’s ongoing lawsuit against the Lembi empire alleges, the group’s business model was based on trying to force, intimidate, and cajole tenants into vacating those units in order to increase rents. Those complaints were also the subject of well-attended City Hall hearings in 2006 and a campaign called CitiStop organized by the San Francisco Tenants Union.

A separate class action lawsuit by former Lembi tenants brought by the San Francisco law firm Seegar Salvas LLP in 2009 alleges that the Lembi corporations also routinely refused to return the security deposits of former tenants. Both lawsuits are ongoing, with plaintiffs’ attorneys noting that the courts have fined the Lembi corporations for not cooperating with the discovery process.

Yet while the name Frank Lembi had been tarnished in progressive political circles, it was until only recently celebrated in the business press and by downtown organizations such as the San Francisco Apartment Association, which lauded Lembi as a tough-minded visionary. And it was a name that Frank Lembi’s daughter sought to memorialize in 2007 when the company she ran, Personality Hotels, added the York and Maxwell hotels to its string of four boutique hotels near Union Square.

Yvonne Lembi-Detert changed the name of the Maxwell to the Frank Hotel and rechristened the York as Hotel Vertigo after the Alfred Hitchcock movie set in San Francisco. Those familiar with the deal say she paid top dollar for the hotels — $35 million for the Maxwell, which had sold a few years earlier for $18 million. She then borrowed another $10 million to renovate the hotel she had renamed for her father, putting up the Hotel Metropolis in the Tenderloin as collateral.

“This was a vanity project, nothing more and nothing less, Yvonne’s legacy to father Frank,” one worker at the hotels told the Guardian.

Officials at Personality said Lembi-Detert was on vacation and unavailable for comment, but Director of Operations David Chin told us, “The purchase price was what the market bore at the time” and that the renovations were prudent. “The factor that drove the hotel to foreclosure was really the economy.”

Although the loans for the hotels came from a Japanese-based corporation called Nomura, they were packaged along with other troubled loans into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) — those toxic financial instruments that played such a key role in the crash of the banking system in 2008 — eventually coming to be controlled by Well Fargo.

As the Hotel Frank was put through extensive and expensive renovations that were never completed, the economy turned sour and the Lembis fell far behind in their loan payments. Wells Fargo finally took ownership of both the Frank and the Metropolis in May, contracting the management out to Provenance, which moved quickly to try to turn the financially troubled hotels around.

Workers at the two hotels, most of whom had been there for decades, say the new management team took an aggressive posture from day one, announcing increased workloads, longer work days, suspended vacation pay, and new medical plans with steeply higher costs to workers.

But they arrived in a town with a hotel union energized by clashes with management at hotels all over the city, so the workers at the hotels resisted the changes and their Local 2 colleagues have rallied to their defense. When thousands of workers and their progressive supporters marched through the streets of San Francisco to the Grand Hyatt in July, they stopped at the Hotel Frank along the way and unfurled a banner that read “Frank and Metropolis Hotel Workers United to Fight Provenance and Wells Fargo.” And on Sept. 8, both hotels were added to Local 2’s boycott list.

Singh said Provenance is unfairly trying to hold workers at the hotel responsible for the bad financial decisions that the Lembis made, and he called on Wells Fargo to absorb those financial losses without having its agents attack the union.

“It was not based on anything the workers have done,” Singh said of the financial situation at the hotels. “This huge bank is asking the workers to bear the brunt of this financial strategy even after being bailed out by taxpayers.”

Prop. B is bad medicine

David Talbot
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57
Prop. B is bad medicine

OPINION Proposition B on the November ballot would eviscerate health care for tens of thousands of public workers and their families. It would double the cost of children’s health care for more than 30,000 public employees including teachers, nurses, firefighters, custodians, and gardeners — regardless of their ability to pay.

But you wouldn’t know this is actually what Prop. B does because the recent focus has been on the measure’s "reforms" to employee retirement. You wouldn’t know this has anything to do with children’s health care — because proponents don’t want you to know the true costs of Prop. B.

What are those true costs?

A single mother will be forced to pay up to $5,600 per year for her child’s health care — in addition to the $8,154 she already pays.

A custodian making only $40,000 per year would have to pay the same hike in health insurance premiums as the city’s top brass, who could be making three times as much.

Talk about unintended consequences.

That’s not reform, and it’s not fair. The workers being blamed are the same city employees who this year voluntarily agreed to $250 million in wage concessions. These are the same workers who have willingly taken pay cuts totaling $750 million the last decade.

Proponents have framed Prop. B as an answer to the city’s pension and retirement costs, but in reality, this measure is about health care. San Francisco’s Office of the Controller’s impartial analysis of Prop. B concludes that 70 percent of the savings from the measure would come from dramatically increasing the cost of dependent health care for working families.

A deep recession spurred by costly wars and reckless behavior on Wall Street has had devastating effects on our city and nation. Prop. B punishes city workers for this economic collapse by radically increasing the cost of their health care.

San Francisco has led the nation in providing universal access to health care. As author and founder of our HealthySF program, I encourage you to resist the attempt reverse progress on health care. Vote no on B.

Assembly Member Tom Ammiano represents the 13th District.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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0
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

On Sept. 16, supporters of Proposition B, the pension reform measure that would also reduce health care benefits for the children of city workers, held a fundraiser at Le Méridien Hotel — which is one of the hotels on the union boycott list. That was a bad idea, and it put Public Defender Jeff Adachi, the sponsor of Prop. B, in a difficult bind. His proposition, his fundraiser — and he had to cross a picket line to get in the door. So did former mayor Willie Brown, who was one of the fundraiser’s feature guests.

Labor people were furious about the two Democrats crossing the line. Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson told Guardian City Editor Steven T. Jones that the move was "outrageous." At the very least, it’s highly unusual in this labor town.

And I thought of something else unusual: Brown, who among other things is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, was helping host a political fundraiser. That’s interesting because just a few weeks earlier, the conservative San Francisco Coalition for Responsible Growth invited the Chron’s C.W. Nevius to speak at a fundraising event — and when the SF Appeal reported on it, Chron management told Nevius that wasn’t allowed.

What’s the difference? One columnist can do fundraisers and one can’t? When I asked Chron Editor Ward Bushee, he referred me to a Matier and Ross column, which included a quote on the matter from Managing Editor Steve Proctor:

"When we gave him a column, we never had any illusion he would cease to be involved in politics. I think the readers of the Chronicle understand that."
So it’s one standard for Willie, another for everyone else. Just like old times.

PG&E’s secret pipeline map

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
PG&E’s secret pipeline map

news@sfbg.com

>>CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL-SIZE PG&E SECRET PIPELINE MAP (PDF)

It’s been nearly two weeks since the pipeline in San Bruno exploded and killed four people, injuring many more and destroying 37 homes. And it’s left a lot of people in San Francisco wondering: could it happen here?

Of course it could. PG&E has more than 200 miles of major gas pipelines under the city streets that are scheduled to be replaced — and that means they’re reaching the end of their useful life. Just like the pipe that blew up in San Bruno.

Are any running under your home or business? PG&E isn’t going to tell you.

That’s bad. “The public has a right to this information,” City Attorney Dennis Herrera told us. And Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has introduced a resolution calling on PG&E to make the locations of its pipelines, electric lines, and other potentially parts of the company’s infrastructure public.

But here’s what worse: even the city’s public safety departments — the ones that would have to respond to a catastrophic event involving a gas main break — don’t know where those lines are.

“I’m still looking for that map myself,” said Lt. Mindy Talmadge, a spokesperson for the Fire Department.

The city’s Public Utilities Commission, which, among other things, digs its own trenches to install and repair water pipes, doesn’t have the PG&E map. Neither does the the California PUC, which regulates PG&E.

It might also make sense for the City Planning Department to have the map; after all, zoning an area for the future development of dense housing that sits on top of an explosive gas main might be an issue. “People need to start holding PG&E accountable,” Planning Commission member Christina Olague told us. “Why shouldn’t PG&E release [the map] given the recent tragedy?”

PG&E insists that the exact location of the gas mains should remain secret because someone might want to use the information for a terrorist attack. But if the San Francisco Fire Department and Department of Emergency Services can’t get the map of the pipelines, something is very wrong. Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who has been allied with PG&E against public power issues, agreed that “the public safety agencies should certainly have that information.”

The Mirkarimi resolution urges PG&E “to cooperate with the city’s request for infrastructure information.” Mayor Gavin Newsom has already appointed the fire chief and city administrator to conduct a utility infrastructure safety review that would evaluate the location, age, and maintenance history of every pipeline underneath city streets.

Not every state allows utilities to keep this information secret. In both Washington and Texas, maps of underground pipelines are easily accessible, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Bellingham, Washington-based nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust. Texas even has an online system, he said.

But in California, PG&E keeps even essential safety agencies in the dark. If a fire came near where a PG&E pipeline was buried — or if an earthquake fractured some of the lines and gas started to leak — Talmadge said the San Francisco Fire Department wouldn’t be able to do anything about the explosive gas except call PG&E. Only the private utility can shut off the gas, which is under high pressure in the main lines.

“We radio to our dispatch center and request PG&E to respond … They would contact PG&E and have them respond,” she explained.

The department doesn’t prepare specifically for that sort of event. “We do not have a specific gas leak training … it would be more of a hazardous material training,” Talmadge said.

The remarkable thing is that much of the data the city doesn’t have — and PG&E won’t give up — can be pulled together from publicly accessible data. The major news media, particularly The Bay Citizen, have been pursuing the story and have run pieces of the map. Several newspapers and websites have published rough maps outlining where the major underground pipes are.

But as far as we know, nobody’s done a full-scale look at what the existing public records show.

Using information that the U.S. Department of Transportation has put on the Web, we’ve managed to put together a pretty good approximation of the secret map PG&E doesn’t want you to see.

We took a map from the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and layered it over a map of San Francisco. The maps of the southeast part of the city are more accurate; the information on gas mains going through the north and west side of town are sketchier. But the lines appear to run parallel to major streets, and we’ve put together a guide that at the very least can tell you if there’s a potentially explosive gas line in your neighborhood — and maybe even under your street.

Obviously, every house or business that has natural gas service — and that’s most of San Francisco — is hooked up to a gas pipe, and those feeder pipes run under almost every street. But the gas in those lines is under much lower pressure than the gas in the 30-inch main lines shown on this map, where pressure can reach 200 pounds per square inch. It was a main pipe that blew up under San Bruno.

It’s not surprising that the southeast — traditionally the dumping ground for dangerous and toxic materials — would have the most gas mains, and the most running through residential areas. One line, for example, snakes up Ray Street and jogs over to Delta Street on the edge of McLaren Park and near a playground. It continues under Hamilton and Felton streets, under the Highway 280 and onto Thornton Street before heading into the more industrial areas near Evans Avenue.

Another main line goes under the south side of Bernal Heights, running below Banks Street, around the park, then down Alabama Street to Precita Street, where it connects with 25th Street. That line then heads to Potrero Hill, where it follows Rhode Island Street to 20th Street.

Research assistance by Nichole Dial.

 

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 22

District 10 candidate forum


With all the candidates running for supervisor in District 10, it’s difficult to decide whom to vote for in the upcoming election. Hear from candidates for D10 supe at this forum hosted by the League of Women Voters, Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses, Potrero Boosters, Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, and UCSF.

6 p.m., free

Genentech Auditorium

UCSF Mission Bay

1675 Owens, SF

www.lwvsf.org

Inside Pakistan and Palestine


Listen to viewpoints from humanitarian workers who have spent time in Pakistan or Palestine at this benefit featuring authors Sadia Ashraf and Ethan Casey, Comprehensive Disaster Response Services (CDRS) Executive Director Todd Shea, and grassroots human rights organizer Kathy Sheetz. Proceeds benefit SHINE/CDRS, who provide medical supplies, food, water, and volunteers in Pakistan’s flood-affected areas.

7:15 p.m., $5–$10 sliding scale

Starr King Room

First Unitarian Universalist Church and Center

1187 Franklin, SF

(415) 355-0300

SATURDAY, SEPT. 25

California Coastal Cleanup Day


Lend a hand to help clean up our beaches and shorelines and raise awareness about the importance of coastal environmental stewardship at one of the 800 clean-up site locations. Make Cleanup Day greener by taking public transportation and bringing a bucket or reusable bag, lightweight gardening gloves, and a reusable water bottle.

9 a.m.–noon, free

Various locations, contact for details

1-800-COAST-4U

www.coast4u.org

Reset San Francisco


Learn more about the new online community, Reset San Francisco, which aims to bring San Franciscans together to share ideas and solutions on ways to make the city work better for everyone. Find out how you can weigh in on the budget crisis, Muni reform, public schools, taxes, and more of the issues that contribute to the quality of life in the city.

10 a.m., free

Dianne Feinstein Elementary School

2550 25th Ave., SF

www.resetsanfrancisco.org

Tenderloin Community Health and Safety Fair


Find out about community resources in the Tenderloin at this family fair featuring live music, free health care for teens, free dental screenings for children, flu shots, mental health screenings, parent support and domestic violence services, information about the new Safe Passage program, tenant and immigration rights, legal services, and more. Interpreters available in Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Thai, Arabic, Lao, and Russian.

11 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Tenderloin’s Children’s Playground

570 Ellis, SF

(415) 592-2714

SUNDAY, SEPT. 26

Lymewalk


Wear lime green, bring signs, balloons, and pets and join in this walk around Civic Center to help raise awareness for Lyme disease and funds for the California Lyme Disease Association (CALDA). Following the walk, attend a slideshow and discussion on the spread of Lyme disease by ticks and how to protect yourself and your pet.

1 p.m., free

Meet at Larkin at Fulton in front of Main Library, SF

www.lymedisease.org
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.

Subpoena PG&E’s maps

David Talbot
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0
Subpoena PG&E’s maps

EDITORIAL If you’re worried about the safety of the natural gas mains running below San Francisco — and you should be — you might take a look at a city on the Peninsula, one about 22 miles south of the site of the gas explosion in San Bruno. Since 1927, the city of Palo Alto has been running its own gas and electric utility — and instead of worrying about pipelines blowing up, the city recently won an award for safety.

Palo Alto workers inspected every inch of every gas pipe in 2009, and the steel pipes are replaced every 37 years — well ahead of the rated lifetime of the material. Oh, and by the way: gas and electricity are way cheaper in Palo Alto.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the private utility that operates most of the pipelines underneath northern California, has a different approach. In the past, the company has been nailed for diverting ratepayer money from public safety and maintenance into executive salaries and profits. And the backlog of deferred pipeline maintenance (despite the fact that the company has been given rate hikes to pay for replacing old pipes) suggests that the pattern may be continuing.

That’s yet another in the long line of reasons why San Francisco needs to replace the incompetent, bloated private company with a public utility system.

It’s also the reason the city needs to be moving on every front to find out exactly where all of PG&E’s hazardous infrastructure is.

PG&E, as we report in this issue, doesn’t want anyone to know where the dangerous, aging gas mains run. Even the San Francisco Fire Department doesn’t have the map. So if a fire breaks out a few feet away from a gas line that could explode at any minute, the first responders have no way to know. That’s just crazy.

We’ve managed to piece together, from existing public records, a pretty good approximation of the secret PG&E map (see page 12), and it shows that some of the gas mains run right below densely populated urban neighborhoods. The company acknowledges that more than 200 miles of pipes in the city are due for replacement — but won’t release the maintenance schedule or any information about when the various pipes are in line for upgrades.

That’s an issue of basic public safety — and city officials shouldn’t tolerate it for another moment.

PG&E says it’s concerned about threats to the pipelines — but the real threat is to the public. If the residents of San Bruno who had been smelling gas — and San Bruno police and firefighters — knew that there was a 50-year-old pipeline carrying gas at 200 pounds per square inch underneath the residential area, they might have ordered an evacuation. That would have saved lives.

The California Public Utilities Commission can probably order PG&E to release its maps of all of its gas mains in the state, but the CPUC has never been terrribly good at regulating the utility and can’t be counted on here. So the San Francisco mayor, Board of Supervisors, and city attorney need to act.

The board should, of course, pass Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s resolution calling on PG&E to cooperate with city officials on timely disclosure of the information. But the supervisors should be prepared to go further. They have the legal right to issue subpoenas, and if PG&E doesn’t at least give the relevant maps to the Fire Department, the board should demand that PG&E’s chief executive, Peter Darbee, show up at a public hearing and produce it. City Attorney Dennis Herrera also has the power, under limited circumstances, to issue subpoenas — and this certainly seems to qualify.

Meanwhile, the board should begin to hold hearings on the larger issue — could San Francisco run its own electric utility and a natural gas system too? Or should we just trust our safety to a company that can’t seem to find a gas leak that blew up an entire neighborhood?

Five things you should know about Steve Moss

David Talbot
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29
Five things you should know about Steve Moss

Sarah@sfbg.com

In August 2010, Steve Moss, who is running for District 10 supervisor, took out an ad in the Potrero View, which he owns, titled “Five things you need to know about Steve Moss.”

The ad, paid for by Moss’ political campaign, stated that Moss “edits and publishes this very paper (but got its endorsement on his own merits).” A year earlier, when Moss filed for the D–10 race, he promised in the View that “the paper will not endorse any of the contenders.” Reached by phone, Moss said that part of the ad was intended as a joke.

The other four bullet points seemed to be factual statements about Moss’ accomplishments. But Moss’ misleading ad got the Guardian taking a closer look, and, along the way, we found a lot of other things you probably didn’t know about Moss.

As far as we know, none of these things are illegal, and Moss can certainly argue that none of them are wrong. But since this is a progressive district, we thought voters would want to know a little more before the November election.

1. He’s a carpetbagger

Moss portrays himself as a District 10 resident who spent the last decade raising his family on Potrero Hill. In fact, during 2008 and 2009, Moss wasn’t living on Potrero Hill at all. When he filed his intent to run in the D–10 race in 2009, he was living near Dolores Park in a four-floor, four-unit, $1.6 million apartment building he owns. And shortly before he filed his intent to seek office, Moss’ wife told friends that the family was only moving to District 10 so Moss could run for supervisor, and that if he lost, they would be moving back to the Dolores Park area.

In his declaration of intent to run, a legal document he signed under penalty of perjury Aug. 4, 2009, Moss listed his address as 2325 Third St. That address is where the View; Moss’ nonprofit San Francisco Community Power; and M.Cubed, Moss’ private consulting company, share space. It’s also where where the Moss campaign asked supporters to send checks. It’s not where Moss was living with his family.

Indeed, evidence that came to light in a lawsuit between Moss and his wife, Debbie Findling, and a couple who co-own the property where Moss used to reside on Kansas Street, indicate that he moved out of D-10 in November 2007 and was living at 296 Liberty Street, in District 8, until February 2010.

In a July 8, 2009 e-mail to friends, filed in court in this lawsuit, Moss’ wife noted: “Steven has decided to run for city supervisor in District 10!!! (Sophie Maxwell’s term ends in November 2010) so we’ll be moving back to the hill in early spring! If you hear of any lovely rentals let us know. Or — I know it’s a crazy idea — but if you’re interested in swapping houses with us for a year as an even trade, you can move into our place on Dolores Park! (We’re hedging our bets in case he doesn’t win, we’d be moving back to Dolores Park after the elections. If he does win, we’ll find a long-term place to live … ).”

Reached by phone, Moss told us that it was only his candidate intention statement — a form that allows a candidate to start to raise money — that he filed while living at Liberty Street in 2009, not his official declaration of candidacy form. The language on the two forms is slightly different; the intent form only asks for a “street address” while the actual declaration of candidacy asks for a “residence” address.

Moss said he filed his declaration of candidacy a few days before the deadline, this summer. That form requires candidates to have resided in the district for not less than 30 days immediately preceding the date they file.

Moss insisted that he currently lives in a rental house at 2145 18th Street. “I’m planning to win,” Moss told us. “And we’re very much enjoying the house on Potrero Hill and hoping to stay there.”

2. He managed to avoid the condo lottery.

Moss and his wife bought a two-unit house on Kansas Street in May 2000 for $648,000 and filed for a condo conversion permit in 2002. San Francisco only allows only 200 condo conversions a year. It’s tough to get a permit, it’s very lucrative if you do, and most applicants — including two-unit buildings with a single owner — have to enter a lottery. But thanks to a strange short-term loophole in the law, Moss managed to get away without doing that.

The application, which got tentative approval in March 2004, notes that Moss and his wife — single owners of a two-unit building — did not win the lottery or qualify for a bypass. Asked how he managed this, Moss pointed to a loophole in legislation that former Sup. Jake McGoldrick passed in 2001. “The McGoldrick clause allowed us to directly convert it,” Moss said.

McGoldrick’s law tightened the conversion rules, but allowed two-unit buildings that, like Moss’, had only one owner-occupant, to slip through. The odd thing is that Andrew Zacks, a lawyer who represents landlords, and the Small Property Owners of San Francisco sued to overturn the McGoldrick legislation (not because of the loophole but because of the new restrictions) and the Superior Court ruled in January 2003 that the law was “unconstitutional on its face” and ordered that the city “shall not enforce this ordinance.” That should have ended the loophole, too.

Records show that Moss’ condo application was signed Feb. 10, 2003 by Planning’s Larry Badiner and received tentative mapping approval March 2004.

Department of Public Works Surveyor Bruce Storrs told us he thinks Moss’ case fell through the cracks. “It doesn’t say it was a McTIC,” Storrs said, using the nickname for McGoldrick’s condo conversion loophole, as he reviewed Moss’ file. “But it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

There’s no indication that Moss did anything wrong, but he sure got a sweet deal. Records show that after he got his conversion permit, he sold the upper unit of Kansas Street in 2007 for more than he paid for the entire building in 2000.

3. He has the support of some very anti-tenant folks.

Attorney Zacks, who specializes in evictions and TICs, gave Moss $500, and the candidate claimed it was because his wife knows Zacks from the playground of the school where their kids both go. Pressed, Moss confirmed that Zacks is his attorney in a court case against the co-owners of the Kansas Street property and in another action he filed against a tenant in his Liberty Steet building in May 2009.

Moss also has the support of the Small Property Owners group, which opposes almost all tenants rights and is among the most conservative, pro-property rights groups in the city. He told us he made a mistake in seeking that endorsement.

And on Aug. 24, conservative campaign finance consultant Jim Sutton, who typically represents big business interests, filed papers representing “The Alliance For Jobs And Sustainable Growth,” which is financing three independent expenditure committees, one supporting Moss; another supporting Scott Weiner in D-8; and the third supporting Theresa Sparks in D–6.

4. He’s involved in a nasty lawsuit with his former neighbor.

Records show that after Moss and Findling subdivided their property on Kansas Street, they sold the upper unit to Edward Penrose and Heather Gibbons in 2007 and moved near Dolores Park.

Court filings suggest the couples remained friendly until March 2010, when Moss and Findling tried to sell the Kansas Street lower unit for $600,000 and ran into problems.

After the deal fell through, Moss and Findling turned around and sued Penrose and Gibbons, claiming that their behavior “constitutes a nuisance.”

In their complaint, Moss and Findling claim they suffered emotional distress, loss of sale, and diminution of the value of their lower unit on Kansas Street “due to the need, going forward, to disclose to buyers that [Penrose and Gibbons] have a propensity to engage in malicious and antisocial behavior.”

On July 30, Gibbons and Penrose countersued. They claim that when they offered to purchase 673 Kansas Street, Moss and Findling never disclosed that there was a boundary line dispute or prior instances of flooding, drainage, and grading problems that had damaged an abutting property.

Now Penrose and Gibbons are asking the court to rescind the purchase agreement whereby they obtained ownership of their Kansas Street condo.

Findling and Moss responded Aug. 31, claiming that “cross-complainants have unclean hands in that, beginning in the spring of 2010, they undertook efforts to interfere with the sale of the lower unit 673 1/2 Kansas] by making unfounded noise complaints and did discourage the buyer from consummating the transaction.”

Asked about this messy legal dispute, Moss said, “We were unhappy with the outcome of a sale in escrow that they disturbed.”

5. His nonprofit pays a bunch of money to his private consulting firm.

In 2001, Moss and two partners founded a private consulting company called M.Cubed. A few months later, Moss and his partners also founded SF Community Power, a nonprofit that started using M.Cubed as a consultant. “M.Cubed was subsequently awarded a contract from SF Community Power. I’m paid directly from SF Community Power, and I’m paid a consulting fee at M.Cubed, depending how much I work,” Moss told us.

Records show that as SFCP’s director, Moss made $48,000 in 2009 and $50,000 in 2008. But more than $1 million has moved from Moss’ nonprofit into Moss’ private consulting firm since 2001.

Moss confirms that SF Power has received $350,000, some of it from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. through the California Public Utilities Commission in 2010; $440,000 in 2009; and $500,000 in 2008 — and that some of those dollars went to M.Cubed.

“I intervene in regulatory cases on behalf of SF Community Power,” Moss said, “And then, if you win a case, you get compensation after the case.”

The Potrero View shares office space with the nonprofit and the consulting firm. Last year, SFCP paid $22,000 in rent, and the View paid SFCP $5,000 toward that rent.

Alhough Moss’ campaign asked supporters to mail contributions to the office that all three of Moss’ business entities share, his campaign finance records show that as of June 30, he had paid no rent for campaign headquarters. “I haven’t had a campaign headquarters,” Moss said. “It’s pretty much been at my house.”

The battle against desalination in the bay

David Talbot
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2
The battle against desalination in the bay

OPINION In July 2010, in one fell swoop, the Marin Municipal Water District’s board of directors ambushed an initiative that would force a public vote on an expensive an environmentally destructive desalination plant on the edge of the bay.

In August 2009, the board unanimously voted to approve an environmental study to pave the way for the desalination plant, which would suck up bay water, filter out the salt, and dump the briny extract back into the bay.

In response, a group of unpaid, grassroots volunteers gathered more than 18,000 signatures to qualify Measure T for the November ballot. The measure requires voter approval before up to $51 million in public money is spent on desalination planning.

On July 6, 2010, the board had a chance to avoid the ballot fight by adopting the proposed initiative as an ordinance. Instead, MMWD voted to “study” Measure T’s impact on desalination planning. And at a packed special four-hour meeting on July 26, the board announced that it decided to place its own rival initiative, Measure S, on the ballot, which allows the plant to move forward without delay.

Then, on Aug. 18, the board went a step further and enacted Measure S as law. Consequently, even if S loses in November, the path is cleared for the environmentally damaging project. And the only way it can be stopped is if Measure T wins.

MMWD argues that Measure T ties the agency’s hands and that the 18,000 signatories knew not what they signed. According to MMWD General Manager Paul Helliker (founding member of CalDesal, “a unified voice for water desalination in the Golden State,”) the actual cost of the plant could run as high as $400 million.

Measure T allows MMWD to study desalination, but the agency can’t start making concrete plans for the project — and start collecting permits and issuing multimillion dollar contracts — without a vote.

MMWD argues its desalination plant is a small capital expenditure for ratepayers. As one Measure T proponent, Bill Rothman, observed, MMWD’s profligate spending needs to be checked because its hands are “in our pockets.” In the past three years, for example, ratepayers have shelled out $252,176 in benefits to directors. It’s no wonder MMWD is drowning in $2.56 million in debt.

This November, the choice is clear: Measure T, the people’s initiative, endorsed by 18,000 Marin voters, would mandate a public vote before any further wasteful, costly, desalination proceeds for a plant that poses health risks from the toxic bay.

Yes on T, no on S.

Joan Bennett is a member of the Coalition for the Public’s Right to Vote About Desalination.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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4
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

We’ve been doing a lot of reporting on Steve Moss, a candidate for supervisor in District 10 who lived in District 8 when he filed his initial election papers and launched his campaign. Moss, who owns a residential building on Liberty Street near Dolores Park, insists he is now a full-time resident of Potrero Hill, renting a nice place at 18th and Vermont — and that he moved in long before the legal deadline for declaring an official candidacy.

It’s actually not a high standard — city law says you only have to live in a district for 30 days prior to the filing deadline. And since Moss is hardly the only candidate to make a relatively recent relocation, it’s worth asking the question: how important is long-time residence to a candidate for district supervisor — and how long is long enough?

I’ve always supported district elections, in part — and this is critically important — because you can win in a district without raising a huge amount of money. When the universe of voters you’re trying to reach numbers around 30,000, you don’t need $500,000. You can knock on doors, go to neighborhood forums, mobilize volunteers for a get-out-the-vote operation, and get elected with the kind of money you can raise in a real grassroots campaign. That means downtown, the landlords, the developers, and big business interests don’t carry the day, the way they did when the board was elected at-large.

But the other goal of district elections was to ensure that every part of town got represented on the board — and to bring legitimate activists with roots in a community to the table. That means people who have more than a passing interest in where they live.

The first few times around, it wasn’t much of an issue — with the obvious exception of Ed Jew, and the possible exception of Michela Alioto-Pier, everyone who has been elected so far under the district system ran from a neighborhood where he or she had be living, and doing community work, for years.

But this time, people have been venue-shopping. I heard a lot of potential candidates over the past year talk about moving into one district or another to run, and I think we’ll see more of it in the future. It can get tricky; Moss, for example, owns the Potrero View newspaper and lived in D-10 for years, then moved out and bought a place near Dolores Park. When he decided to run for supervisor, he moved back. At least he has some history and ties to the community — but I don’t think there’s a lot of dispute over the fact that he moved back to run for office, and that if he hadn’t decided to run, he’d still be living on Liberty Street.

Jane Kim, president of the School Board, moved into District 6 about a year and a half ago — about the same time she started talking about running for supervisor from that district. Again: perfectly legal — although her ties to the neighborhood and to neighborhood activism aren’t anywhere near as strong as some of the other candidates in the race.

We’re going to have to watch this, carefully — and the 30-day requirement is clearly too weak. You should have to live in a district for at least a year before you can file even exploratory papers — and every neighborhood questionnaire should ask candidates to list every address they’ve lived in for the past five years. That might slow down the shopping a bit.

PG&E’s deadly failures

David Talbot
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0
PG&E’s deadly failures

EDITORIAL In 1994, a fire raged through the tiny community of Rough and Ready in Nevada County. The inferno destroyed a dozen homes and caused $2 million in damage. The cause: tree limbs that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. should have trimmed brushed against high-voltage power lines.

A furious local district attorney filed criminal charges — and in a dramatic trial, evidence emerged that PG&E had intentionally taken $80 million in ratepayer money designated for tree trimming and diverted it into executive salaries and profits.

After a natural gas line that was installed in 1948 burst last week in San Bruno, killing five and devastating a community, local and state officials should be asking if the company is still taking money that should be spent upgrading and maintaining its system and spending it elsewhere.

There’s certainly evidence that the company’s safety record is shoddy. In 2003, a fire at a Mission District substation caused 100,000 people to lose power — and the CPUC chided PG&E for failing to follow its own rules and for general procedural laziness. In 2005, an underground explosion at Kearny and Post streets caused a fire that seriously injured a pedestrian on the sidewalk above. In June 2009, a fire at a PG&E vault at O’Farrell and Polk streets caused an explosion that roared up through a manhole and cut power to 8,600 customers.

In San Bruno, neighbors reported smelling gas in the days before the explosion. PG&E trucks had come to the scene and left without repairing the problem.

In the Rough and Ready fire, PG&E was found guilty of criminal negligence — and the San Mateo County D.A., James P. Fox, should immediately start looking into the possibility of filing charges against the company. In the meantime, San Francisco ought to be taking a long, hard look at the state of the private utility’s infrastructure in the city — and how much of it is vulnerable to deadly failure.

The mayor, the supervisors, and the city attorney should demand that PG&E produce a map of every gas line, power line, transformer, and substation in the city — with details about age, condition, and maintenance history. The city should hire an independent auditor to investigate how much of what PG&E has under and above the city streets is old, crumbing, poorly maintained, and likely to fail. The results should be made public — and the city should take whatever legal action is necessary to ensure that the company’s equipment doesn’t pose an imminent risk to local residents and businesses.

State Sen. Mark Leno is calling for a hearing, and PG&E officials should be forced to discuss, in public, how this disaster was allowed to happen. City officials, and the local Legislative delegation, should also be pushing the California Public Utilities Commission to investigate how PG&E has been spending the money it collects from ratepayers for maintenance and system upgrades. It’s clear that company profits were healthy enough for PG&E to spend $46 million on a failed ballot initiative that would have blocked public power in the state; why wasn’t that money used to replace the ancient natural gas pipes in San Bruno? Where else is the company skimping on facilities? How much of the company’s system needs immediate upgrades, and what’s PG&E’s budget and schedule for that work?

There’s a larger point here: none of the public power systems in Northern California have had this type of accident. None of the publicly run utilities have been found guilty of diverting maintenance money to executive salaries and profits. San Francisco’s first modest moves toward public power will come with the establishment of a community choice aggregation system — but that system will still rely on PG&E’s grid. The sooner the city can move to get rid of that private monopoly and build its own power system, block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood if necessary, the less likely it will be that a San Bruno-type catastrophe will happen here.

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 15

Solidarity Against Racism


If you’re angry at the revived campaign of racism being unleashed by the Tea Party and other right-wingers, fight back by attending this public forum. The discussion should be lively and serious and will focus on why racism still exists and what all we can do to combat it in the midst of a deepening economic crisis.

7 p.m., free

Red Stone Building

Luna Sea Room, second floor

2940 16th St., SF

www.norcalsocialism.org

FRIDAY, SEPT. 17

Park(ing) Day


Call attention to the need for more urban open space and help generate debate around how public space is created and allocated by transforming a metered parking space into a park-like space. Stay aware of local regulations and stay within the law . For more information on how to be arty and legal at the same time, go to www.parkingday.org.

All day, free

All around the Bay Area

www.parkingday.org

SATURDAY, SEPT. 18

Green Eye


Spend the weekend learning about climate change and how we got here at the series of films, talks, and workshops presented by 3rd i Films. Saturday, Ami and Amar Puri demonstrate the basics of bike maintenance, followed by a group bike ride through the city, ending at a fun food destination. On Sunday there will be screenings of Climate of Change, followed by the multimedia presentation Around the World Without Flying.

Bicycle Workshop


10 a.m., $20

The Bike Kitchen

650 H Florida, SF

Group Bike Ride


11:30 a.m., free

Meet at The Bike Kitchen

650 H Florida, SF

Film Screenings


3:30 p.m., $10

Artists Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

www.thirdi.org

Bike Church


Attend Manifesto Bicycles final bike church of the year, and event designed to bring the local community together and promote riding. Featuring live music by Winifred E. Eye, the Heated, and Anna Ash; half-price coffee from Subrosa; and gourmet brunch from Jon’s Street Eats.

11 a.m.–1 p.m., free

Manifesto Bicycles

421 40th St., SF

(510) 595-1155

Sunday Streets Western Addition

Take over some of the streets of the Western Addition with healthy and family friendly activities at this month’s Sunday Streets celebration. Open streets include Fillmore between Post and Golden Gate, Golden Gate between Laguna and Baker, Grove between Divisadero and Central, and more.

10 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Western Addition, SF

www.sundaystreetssf.com

TUESDAY, SEPT. 21

Oakland Peace Day

Celebrate an International Day of Peace at this free music festival happening at three different Oakland locations.

5 p.m., free

Preservation Park Bandstand

13th Street at Martin Luther King Jr., Oakl.

6 p.m., free

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

114 Montecito, Oakl.

7 p.m., free

St. Augustine’s Church

400 Alcatraz, Oakl.

www.listenforlife.org

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

David Talbot
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0
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

California politics starts early. The campaigns in this state were underway long before the traditional Labor Day launch of the fall campaign season. Except for Jerry Brown, who only in the past week has started acting like a candidate for governor of the most populous state in the nation.

And that’s not a mistake.

Here’s how I’m seeing things shape up at what is more accurately described as a midpoint in the campaign season:

Jerry Brown’s starting to hit back. The once and maybe future governor has much of the state’s political class mystified; with Meg Whitman blanketing the airwaves, promoting herself and whacking away at him, why has he waited so long to fight back? Actually, it’s a calculated strategy, Jerry’s version of the old Muhammed Ali rope-a-dope. He knew he couldn’t match Whitman blow for blow — and he also suspected that at a certain point, she’d start to punch herself out. It’s been working: after spending more than $100 million, Whitman hasn’t cracked 45 percent in the polls. And some polls now show that the more people view her ads, the less they like her.

So now Jerry Brown appears — a 72-year-old career politician who’s going to look like a fresh face. And all he has to do is knock her back a little and the race is his.

Barbara Boxer’s nailed Carly Fiorina where she’s most vulnerable. Boxer’s got incumbency trouble — that is, everyone’s sick of incumbents. But she has an opponent who has something even worse — a record of sending jobs offshore while collecting $100 million for herself. Boxer hammered that point home in the first and only Senate debate — and I can see that clip appearing in TV ads all fall.

And I hate to say it, but those two campaigns are going to eat up all the statewide campaign oxygen between now and November. Between those four candidates, we’ll see upwards of $120 million in TV spending — and the rest of the campaigns probably won’t even be able to buy much time in major markets.

That could be good for Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. They’re Democrats in a state where Democrats way outnumber Republicans, and Republicans only win when they make a strong case that the Democrat sucks. Whitman can try to do that, and so can Fiorina, but even if they had the money, I don’t see Abel Maldonado or Steve Cooley, the GOP candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general, getting their messages heard in the cacophony that will be the top of the ticket.

So maybe Whitman is not only hurting herself with her excessive spending. Maybe she’s hurting the rest of the party, too. Not that she cares.

Play at work, or more at play?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Play at work, or more at play?

rebeccab@sfbg.com

There’s a long-standing perception in San Francisco that certain development firms are treated more favorably than others thanks to insider politics. And while supporters of Mayor Gavin Newsom say he’s cleaned up the pay-to-play culture, a look at the list of contributors to Newsom’s run for lieutenant governor at the very least raises questions.

For example, according to campaign filings, Newsom received $6,500 from a business called 706 Mission Street Co. LLC, which was formed to construct a condo high-rise at Yerba Buena Center. The building would also be a new permanent home for the city’s Mexican Museum. The 706 Mission project, which has been in the works for several years, is a joint venture between developer Millennium Partners and JMA Ventures, a San Francisco-based real estate investment firm. JMA Ventures contributed $5,000 to Newsom, campaign finance records show, and the firm’s president and CEO, Todd Chapman, also made a generous donation of $1,000. Effectively, Newsom’s campaign received a total of $12,500 from individuals or firms associated with 706 Mission.

The project has been under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency since 2008, when the Redevelopment Commission authorized an exclusive negotiations agreement with the developer for the mixed-use high-rise and museum, to be partially constructed on a parcel owned by Redevelopment and later included plans to integrate the landmark Mercantile Building. The project went dormant in the face of the economic downturn, but it’s now moving forward again, and the environmental review of the proposed 600-foot tower falls under the purview of the city’s Planning Department. On Sept. 1, Newsom mentioned 706 Mission, a “new, world-class facility,” in a press release announcing a new director for the Mexican Museum.

“The Redevelopment Agency and the city are fully committed to the public/private/nonprofit partnership that will eventually bring the Mexican Museum to a new home in the heart of Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco’s premier cultural district,” Redevelopment Agency executive director Fred Blackwell proclaimed.

Another contributor that demonstrated strong financial support for Newsom’s bid is a global technical firm that has a hand in several major infrastructure and development projects throughout San Francisco. AECOM contributed $13,000 to Newsom’s campaign, and a handful of people who work for AECOM chipped in smaller amounts totaling $3,600, according to campaign-finance records. In an April 15 news release for investors, AECOM noted that it had been awarded a $26 million contract for construction management of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Water Improvement Infrastructure Project. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in May, the firm was also awarded a five-year, $147 million contract with the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency for construction management on the Central Subway project. AECOM is also playing a role in a number of major developments currently under review in city planning. It is the prime environmental impact report consultant for the California Pacific Medical Center proposal for a giant new hospital on Van Ness Avenue. It’s also completing a traffic corridor analysis for 19th Avenue on behalf of the developers of Parkmerced, a renovation and in-fill project on track to be one of the largest new residential developments in the city.

 

A $2 MILLION BONUS

The Parkmerced developers have helped Newsom’s campaign along too. Craig Hartman, an internationally renowned architect with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who is a design partner for the project, dropped $1,000 into Newsom’s hat. Two executives associated with Parkmerced each pitched in another $1,000.

A smaller project that has been in the works for years also seems close to home for Newsom. Michael Yarne, of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, is a former director of development of the Martin Building Co., the lead developer on mixed-use residential project located in Central Waterfront at 2235 Third St. The project has commendable features such as a reuse of an existing industrial building, proximity to transit, and 39 below-market-rate units — and the project developer managed to secure an incredible deal with the city.

This past April, the Planning Commission approved an unprecedented in-kind agreement with Martin Building Co. that waived nearly $2 million in development fees, including about $1.2 million for 2235 Third St. and the rest for a second Martin Building Co. project on Townsend Street, in exchange for the developer’s commitment to construct a space for a day-care facility on the Third Street site and lease that portion of the property to a childcare provider for free for 55 years. The provider would have to operate the facility without profit and would be required to have low-income child-care slots, so this bargain would serve to create affordable day care.

Yarne’s close ties to the mayor and the developer — plus a $2,000 campaign contribution to Newsom from the head of the project’s general contractor, a building company called Nibbi Bros. — could raise a few eyebrows in light of this unprecedented deal, especially given the city’s gaping deficit and the question of how else that $2 million might have been put to use. The project was also awarded more than $1.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to excavate lead-contaminated soil from the property and transport it away for off-site disposal. The project, which has already been approved and moved to the Department of Building Inspection phase, also incorporates a City CarShare space. Yarne’s on the board of City CarShare, too.

It’s always possible that there is no connection between Newsom’s campaign contributions, his personal staff, and contributors’ connections to the myriad development projects in the hopper — but that doesn’t stop observers from asking questions. Developers who are anxious about the economic downturn may be motivated do everything in their power to speed a project along, and it’s possible that throwing money at a political campaign is just one tool among many.

Or maybe they just think Newsom would make a great lieutenant governor.

 

PLANNERS COMPLAIN

Nonetheless, the perception that certain developers get special treatment is shared by at least two former planners in the city’s Planning Department — one of whom is facing termination in the wake of a recent investigation surrounding porn email.

Following an internal shake-up at the planning department triggered by the discovery that some staffers shared pornographic e-mails, messages started flying about what was behind the crackdown. “Porn is not the real story,” Lois Scott, a retired planner and former president of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 wrote in an e-mail to the Guardian.

After the porn scandal broke, the hammer came down. Five people were terminated effective this past May, and another 20 or more reportedly faced some form of disciplinary action.

Some have interpreted the move as a signal that Planning Director John Rahaim, a Newsom appointee, won’t stand for inappropriate conduct on his watch. At the same time, others have contacted the Guardian to voice concerns that the firings and internal shakeup were connected to something deeper than dirty emails.

Although speculative theories abound and there is a paucity of official comments on the firings due to privacy laws, one point is abundantly clear. In a city where powerful developers will go to great lengths to secure approval for lucrative projects, there’s a great deal of wariness surrounding city planning. San Francisco is host to leagues of developers, real estate investment groups, prestigious law firms specializing in land use, technical consultants, and politically powerful associations of residential builders, building owners, and building-trade unions — all with a huge financial stake in seeing projects make it past the approval finish line and onto groundbreaking.

When it comes to a major project that will transform a city block in San Francisco, the planning department (which relies on development fees to pay the bills) inevitably encounters pressure from two sides: well-connected development teams with economic interests on the one hand, and neighborhood groups or historic preservationists who aren’t shy about hurling criticism on the other.

So it’s no surprise than anything affecting the planning staff in a major way would not pass quietly.

One of the planners affected by the firings told the Guardian that the porn investigation went on for months. There were one-on-one interviews, and some 70 staff members were called in and questioned, some two or three times. Contents of computer hard drives and city e-mail accounts were analyzed. Later, huge posters went up, displaying questions like, “How Are You Going to Make a Better Planning Department?”

“It was bizarre,” the former planner said.

According to Leigh Kienker — a former planner who recently retired and was not implicated in the computer misuse investigation — the result of all this was to create a sort of chilling effect on the planning staff, especially since she said two of the five individuals who lost their jobs had been more likely to question management and speak up when they didn’t think a project was being handled properly. When it comes to ensuring that projects conform to the planning code, “We need to be able to speak up,” she said. “This is our expertise.”

Jim Miller, who had been with the department for more than 32 years and is regarded by his peers as very outspoken, discussed his own termination in an e-mail to a number of supporters. “I was given a loose-leaf binder indicating the reasons for the firing,” he wrote. “The information contained therein was decidedly very thin. This, plus the fact that others who had a greater role in the ‘wrongdoing’ received job suspension rather than termination, leads me to believe that there is some other reason for the action taken. This reason is heretofore unbeknownst to me.”

Cynthia Servetnick, shop steward for IFPTE Local 21 planner’s chapter and a historic preservation advocate, voiced concerns about how the department dealt with the porn problem in an e-mail to Rahaim. “Frankly, the firing of so many senior Planning Department staff members not only seems like a ‘witch hunt,’ but smacks of age discrimination against a class of union-represented employees for the purpose of shoring-up budget deficits and intimidating less senior employees,” she charged. In response, Rahaim dismissed her comments as baseless accusations.

 

BADINER GETS $82,500

At a Feb. 18 Planning Commission meeting, when the department’s proposed budget came under review, commissioners noted that Rahaim was in the unenviable position of having to lay off four to six staffers in order to balance the budget. Noting that a great deal of effort had gone into attracting fresh talent and hiring younger planners, several commissioners expressed hope that they wouldn’t be the first to go. Rahaim responded that, given the union’s seniority rules, his hands were tied to an extent. In light of that conversation, Servetnick suggested that the porn e-mails presented a convenient solution for a director faced with a thinly stretched budget. All of the five who were fired were 50 or older.

At the same time, others who closely follow city planning rejected the idea of any ulterior motive. Sue Hestor, a land-use attorney who seems to have her finger firmly on the pulse of San Francisco development, told the Guardian that she’d heard plenty of rumors, but wasn’t necessarily buying the hype. Charles Marsteller, a former director of Common Cause and a keen observer of the planning process, said he had little reason to suspect that what had happened was anything more than responding to inappropriate conduct.

Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner, a 28-year veteran of the department who critics say was friendly to high-end developers, was fired in the wake of the porn investigation along with three lower-level staffers — but he appeared to walk away with a better deal than his subordinates.

A Guardian sunshine request revealed that Badiner received a six-month severance package amounting to $82,500, plus benefits he was eligible for that could have amounted to more than $57,000 (but may be significantly less). In exchange, he agreed not to sue the city. None of the other planning staffers who were terminated appear to have received such a payout.

Meanwhile, Badiner may not have been the highest-ranking city employee to be snagged in the porn investigation. An e-mail address of dlmacris[at]aol.com was included on an e-mail provided to the Guardian that contained a rather tame pornographic image.

The planner who sent the e-mail was fired after the porn investigation, and so were three of the recipients. Former Planning Director Dean Macris, who more recently served as a special advisor to Newsom, stopped working for the city around the same time Badiner and the others were terminated. Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker told the Guardian he could not discuss anything related to how or why Macris left city service.

Rahaim said he had no choice in the Badiner severance. “The issue with Larry Badiner was required as part of a MEA labor contract. It requires a payout in any situation where a person is terminated or laid off.” He added that the firings were “strictly because of inappropriate use of city resources and also because of the type of material” that was being viewed. There was “absolutely no other reason.”

And he insisted that no developers get favoritism: “I have no idea who’s contributing to whose campaign.”

At least one response to the rash of firings commended the planning director for taking action. “I applaud your efforts to address hostile working conditions related to gender and sexual preference, which have long existed in the Planning Department,” a retired senior planner wrote to Rahaim shortly after the firings. “There is, perhaps as you have realized, a deep undercurrent of unresolved and unpleasant practices which perhaps finally led to the present complaints.”

Does the planning department shake-up indicate a move away from the bad old days of quid pro quo dealings and hostile working conditions, thanks to a director who’s standing strong against inappropriate conduct — or is it a move to consolidate power in a department led by a mayoral appointee at a time when the development community is particularly hungry to move new projects forward? Given the knock-down, drag-out fights that have unfolded over planning in the city’s history, and the high sums of money that are gushing into project proposals and campaign coffers, it’s no wonder the question is being posed.

“The bottom line is, the public is not being served,” Servetnick said. “Developers shouldn’t be able to come in and say, ‘Just for me!’ If everybody who pays to play gets away with that, we’re going to end up with a really ugly city.”

Blocking the bridge

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Blocking the bridge

sarah@sfbg.com

The Sierra Club and Golden Gate Audubon Society have sued to block the final environmental impact report on the Lennar Corp. redevelopment project, a move that could force reconsideration of a bridge over Yosemite Slough.

The suit against the city, Board of Supervisors, and Redevelopment Agency charges that the final EIR for Lennar’s Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard project was inadequate, in part because it didn’t consider all the impacts of the bridge or look properly at alternatives.

The move comes as no big surprise: these environmental groups vowed to file a suit within 30 days of the city’s August certification of the project EIR. But advocates hope it will lead to a change in the proposal.

Arthur Feinstein, a member of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, said the EIR didn’t comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.

The introduction to the Sierra Club suit notes that “the FEIR failed to identify or underestimated the significance of environmental impacts associated with the project; failed to address the alternative proposed by Arc Ecology, which provides for a bus rapid transit route around Yosemite Slough; and failed to provide adequate responses to comments on the draft EIR.”

Or as Feinstein puts it: “There’s a bridge, and it’s going through a nature area where they say the sound level from the buses will be the equivalent to standing 50 feet from a freeway.

“They say there is no impact and that you can’t have an undisturbed nature experience in an urban area, but you can,” Feinstein continued, pointing to the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, and Crissy Field as examples of places where you can have undisturbed experiences.

Feinstein noted that Candlestick Point State Recreation Area is the only large park on the city’s eastern shoreline, and the only park that people in the Bayview can access easily.

“The city boasts about how much it was improving the Bayview, but this park is the only major open space where you can get away from urban stress — and folks have a lot of stress in the Bayview,” Feinstein said. He added that building the bridge will involve sinking pilings in Yosemite Slough that will disturb wildlife and stir up PCBs and other known contaminants.

“Noise, light and glare all have impacts on wildlife, but the city’s EIR said these are insignificant because these critters are insignificant,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein noted that the city’s final environmental impact report did make a finding of overriding concern that the project will cause air pollution at levels that exceed Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) health standards.

“But [the city] decided that this was a regional problem, so they did not attempt any mitigations for the 25,000 new residents that this 700-acre redevelopment plan is supposed to bring into the Bayview — which already has the city’s highest asthma and cancer rate and the largest number of polluting sources,” Feinstein said. “But they could say that all buses going into the development need to be electrified, or they could limit the number of parking spaces the way they did at Octavia-Market and South of Market.”

Feinstein said the next step in this CEQA lawsuit in a pretrial negotiation session to see if a settlement can be reached. “We’re not looking for a long drawn out fight. We’re ready for one, but we’re also ready to negotiate because that’s how you achieve things.”

Feinstein also noted that the Sierra Club had to go to Los Angeles to hire a traffic consultant to work on its suit because Lennar has contracts with just about every shop in the Bay Area, thanks to its various projects at Hunters Point, Treasure Island, and Mare Island.

“The related problem is that the city is no longer looking at the project with a steely eye,” Feinstein said. “Instead, they have become the developer — except that they are working with Lennar and not reviewing Lennar’s plans with objectivity. By filing this lawsuit, we’re keeping the conversation about this project alive and reminding folks that you don’t have to take everything this mayor and his administration gives you.”

The Sierra Club/Audubon Society suit came four days after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the California State Parks Foundation entered into an agreement with Lennar to help prepare conceptual designs that reportedly will be used as the basis for the actual bridge over the Yosemite Slough.

Some critics interpreted the timing of CSPF’s announcement, which the Chronicle reported under a confusing “Environmentalists to help design span” headline, as an attempt by Lennar’s well-oiled PR machine to undermine the Sierra Club/Audubon Society suit.

They also questioned CSPF’s independence from Lennar, and from the Mayor’s Office, because Guillermo Rodriguez Jr. from the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development sits on CSPF’s board. So does Peter Weiner, a partner at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, which has contracts with Lennar. Representatives from Southern California Edison, Toyota, the Walt Disney Company, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and several other companies that either have contracts with Lennar or have given to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s campaign for lieutenant governor campaign also sit on the park foundation board.

CPSF’s President Elizabeth Goldstein told us that “as park supporters and defenders, we consider ourselves environmentalists.” CSPF originally planned to fight approval of the project’s final EIR when it came before the board in July. But unlike the Sierra Club, CSPF pulled its appeal at the last minute.

Goldstein told the Guardian that the foundation reversed its decision because it had initiated what she characterized as “a fruitful discussion with Lennar.”

“We wanted to play that out,” Goldstein said. “And now we’re glad we did, because the design criteria look quite good and hopefully will be compatible with the project.”

“What we’ve agreed with Lennar about is a set of design criteria to be applied to the bridge, she continued. “These criteria are intended to make sure the bridge fits aesthetically into the park as much as is possible. Lennar asked us, and we agreed, to develop the first set of conceptual plans — obviously in cooperation with them — to make sure that they are, from their first iteration, as sympathetic as possible to the park.”

Goldstein said that some of these design criteria are “quite global.”

“Some are big arcs of things that are very important to us, such as impact from light, glare and noise,” she said, noting that they don’t want to see the proposed bridge lighted at night, à la the Golden Gate Bridge.

“We want the environment at dusk to be as unimpacted as possible,” she said.

Other CSPF concerns are more situation specific.

“We want safe, attractive, easy-to-use signage,” Goldstein said, referring to need to help users and neighbors find their way around and across the bridge. “We also talk about minimizing piers in the water at the slough, and if possible, eliminating them altogether since they impact vehicles and kayaks.”

Goldstein agreed that the foundation’s roots are not in political advocacy. “We were founded as a philanthropic land acquisition partner to the Department of State Parks.” But she noted that the group was involved in blocking a proposed toll road through Orange County and is a leading supporter of Proposition 21, which seeks to raise nearly $500 million a year for state parks by tacking on an $18 vehicle registration fee that would give all vehicles registered in California free access to the majority of state parks.

As Feinstein observed, “The CSPF does great work, but they are not usually advocates for conservation and biodiversity. That is what the club and Audubon Society does.”

Stuart Flashman, attorney for the Sierra Club and the Golden Gate Audubon Society, said that in the long run the lawsuit won’t stop the project from going forward. “But in the short term, if the court finds that the EIR wasn’t adequate and that there are significant impacts from the bridge that could have been avoided, then the city has to go back and redo that part of the EIR, a process that could take two to four months. And if they conclude, yeah, the impacts from the bridge are unavoidable, then they’d have to redo it to go around the slough.”

Flashman says he hasn’t seen the proposal CPSF and Lennar are working on. “But as part of this suit, we are required to sit down with the city and see if we can settle — and we are hopeful we can do that.”

No smart meters in SF

David Talbot
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0
No smart meters in SF

EDITORIAL Smart meters are a dumb idea. That’s what The Utility Reform Network says, noting that the high tech devices are expensive (California utilities, including Pacific Gas and Electric Co., will be charging consumers $5.4 billion to install the meters), don’t save energy or money, and can lead to privacy risks. PG&E bills have soared unexpectedly in places where the meters have been installed in the past year, forcing an investigation by the California Public Utilities Commission, which concluded on Sept. 2 that the meters are okay, but PG&E’s customer service isn’t. Still, TURN and other experts say the report is inconclusive, and state Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) wants legislative hearings before any more meters are installed.

San Francisco hasn’t faced the smart meter problem yet since the utility hasn’t been installing them here — but that will start soon enough, now that the CPUC (never known as a harsh critic of PG&E) has given the green light. TURN is urging customers to boycott the meters, so the San Francisco supervisors should tell PG&E that the city doesn’t want this flawed technology.

Smart meters are supposed to make it easier to save energy. The idea is that the devices will not only track how much electricity a customer is using, but give that customer the ability to monitor usage at different points in the day and cut back during peak periods.

But to take advantage of the gadgets, a customer would have to buy a bunch of expensive gear on the side — communications devices, thermostats, computer chips for energy-intensive appliances, etc. PG&E isn’t going to pay for that stuff.

Meanwhile, the "smart" part of the meter sends information about your energy usage through a wireless signal. Privacy advocates worry about that (as do people concerned with having yet another device in the house emitting low-frequency radiation).

And while PG&E denies that there are any problems with the accuracy of the meters, huge numbers of people in areas where they’ve been installed have reported huge — and otherwise inexplicable — hikes in their monthly bills.

So for most residents and small businesses, smart meters are just going to be a pain in the ass — a questionably accurate, potentially dangerous, and otherwise worthless device that PG&E is making money from by installing.

TURN has advice on its website (turn.org) for people who want to boycott the meters: to tell PG&E to leave the existing meters in place. If you put a sign on your meter saying you don’t want it changed — and if you tell the person coming to replace it that you don’t want a smart meter — you may stave off the new product for a while.

But San Francisco is in the process of creating a community choice aggregation (CCA) system that will put the city for the first time in the business of delivering retail electric power. That ought to give the city some authority over how local meters are going to operate — and at the very least, the city should tell PG&E to back off until CCA is in place and the city can do its own independent study.

The supervisors should ask City Attorney Dennis Herrera to investigate what authority the city has to block PG&E from installing smart meters, and to look at how the new CCA might avoid including the cost of the devices in the rates local customers pay for power. At the very least, the board can endorse the boycott and urge the CPUC to keep smart meters out of the city. Candidates for local office should oppose the smart meters. And if PG&E wants to force the issue, city officials just need to remind the utility that its local monopoly is illegal, that San Francisco has a federal mandate for public power, and that just three months ago, 68 percent of the city’s voters said they wanted to preserve a public power option.

The case for SEIU at Kaiser

David Talbot
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6
The case for SEIU at Kaiser

Editors note: In last week’s issue, we ran an op-ed piece by two hospital workers who are members of Service Employees International Union and want to change their affiliation to the new National Union of Healthcare Workers. SEIU asked for the right to respond, so we’re presenting the arguments of an SEIU worker who opposes the change.

OPINION I’m a licensed vocational nurse (LVN) at Kaiser Permanente Oakland, where I’ve worked for 26 years. As an LVN and a union shop steward, I have two passions: patients and workers.

I do home health visits. My patients are sick and sometimes feel anxious and upset. Those feelings can be overwhelming. When I walk into a patient’s house, that person has my full attention. Little things like that make people feel better and heal more quickly. That’s what’s important.

I also know that healthcare givers can’t provide good care if we don’t have the basic things we need. I worked for another hospital before, but I came to Kaiser because the benefits, wages, and working conditions were better — and the union was better.

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), my union, is the largest at Kaiser and has represented workers here since the 1930s. It’s through our union that we’ve been able to make our jobs some of the best in California at one of the state’s largest employers. Kaiser workers are not just providing quality healthcare throughout the state, we’re also contributing to local our economies and getting our communities through these tough times.

I was one of 121 workers to be elected to the national bargaining team that negotiated our union contract, the largest committee ever in the history of our union. Members filled out surveys to set our priorities and we were able to win 9 percent raises over three years, no change in the cost of our fully-paid family healthcare, and some of the best job protection in the industry. I’m very proud that everyone’s voice was heard and that we had the largest ever rank-and-file member vote to approve our contract. But now all that could be lost.

On the heels of winning the contract, another union — the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) — filed a petition for an election to represent Kaiser workers. Now Kaiser workers will vote on which union they want: SEIU-UHW, the union we won this contact with, or NUHW, which hasn’t bargained a contract for anyone.

People want to know the truth, even if it’s a hard truth. Here’s the truth about NUHW: it was formed by former leaders of our union who were removed from office and have been found in federal court to have misused members’ money. NUHW was ordered by a federal judge to repay $1.57 million in damages to SEIU-UHW members. They then filed a motion to delay payment, saying it would potentially bankrupt the new union. But their motion was denied. Let’s face it — NUHW needs us more than we need them.

What’s going on right now with this union election is a shame. I see some of my coworkers getting afraid and angry — afraid that we could lose the wage increases and healthcare benefits we fought so hard for and angry that NUHW is coming after us like this and creating these distractions. I tell them what I tell my patients: just focus on healing and moving forward.

We have a long history at Kaiser of supporting each other as coworkers, which is why it’s so important that we resolve our differences and keep going. We’ve walked picket lines together, even when it’s to support workers in other hospitals, and have fought to improve the quality of care we deliver to patients. We’ve worked hard to create good jobs in this community while people around us are losing everything. All this has been possible because workers are united in our union SEIU-UHW. *

Earlene Person is a home health licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Permanente Oakland and a member of the national bargaining committee for SEIU-UHW.

 

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, SEPT 9

Feminists for Pubic Education


Attend this meeting to kick off a door-to-door campaign to help defend and extend free public education in San Francisco and the Bay Area. All are welcome to participate in the discussion and planning. Dinner with vegetarian option will be available at 6:15 p.m. for $7.50.

7 p.m., free

Radical Women

New Valencia Hall

625 Larkin, SF

(415) 864-1278

Free community health


Support two free community health programs at this benefit concert featuring Embers, Speed of Darkness, Somnolence, and Crucifixion. One program, the Street Level Health Project, offers medical screenings, a lunch program, mental health support, herbal medicine and nutrition, and other services for urban immigrant communities in the Bay Area. Another program, Casa Besu, aims to bring alternative, holistic treatments to the people of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

8 p.m., $5–$10

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(510) 533-9906

"Nine Years Later"

Hear Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at USF and an expert on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights, gives a talk titled "9/11: Nine Years Later. Where Has This Country Gone?"

6:30 p.m., free

Red Victorian Peace Café

1665 Haight, SF

www.pdamerica.org

Running Dry


National Geographic explorer and author Jonathan Waterman reads from and discusses his new book, Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea Down the Colorado River, about his trip down America’s most iconic whitewater river. The shrinking river irrigates 3.5 million acres of farmland and supports 30 million people on arid lands throughout the western U.S. and northern Mexico.

6 p.m., $10

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston, Berk.

(510) 848-1155

SATURDAY, SEPT 11

9/11 Rally and March


Honor the 104th anniversary of Ghandi’s nonviolent direct action practices by gathering in the Panhandle for speakers and performances promoting peace and an end to torture, occupations, racism, police violence, and other civil rights issues. Following the rally, there will be an 11 a.m. march through the Haight and Golden Gate Park to the Power to the Peaceful Festival.

10 a.m., free

Gather at the Panhandle

Fell at Ashbury, SF

(650) 857-0927

TUESDAY, SEPT 14

Choosing Children

Celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1985 documentary that introduced viewers to the first generation of lesbians and gay men who chose to become parents after coming out, and to the challenges and joys faced by this early generation of parents. This screening and reception includes a discussion by Debra Chasnoff and Kim Klausner, the two Bay Area filmmakers who produced the film.

6:30 p.m., $25

Herbst Theater

401 Van Ness, SF

www.cityboxoffice.com

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.

Desperately seeking squash bees

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Desperately seeking squash bees

UPDATE! In the print version of this article, this reporter inadvertently described Anthidium maculosum as a territorial leafcutter bee. It is in fact a wool carder bee. My humble apologies to the bees and the experts who helped identify them.

Sarah@sfbg.com

GREEN This summer, I hunted squash bees. The hunt began on a sunny mid-July afternoon at the home of Celeste Ets-Hokin, an advocate for native bees who lives in Oakland and has just published a 2011 calendar on the importance of conserving bee habitats.

As Ets-Hokin explains in the forward of her calendar (available from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation), “Most of our fruit, vegetable, and seed crops depend on bees for pollination. For bees, success depends on habitat, habitat, habitat.”

Ets-Hokin has planted her own backyard, on a sunny ridge near Lake Merritt, with lavender, basil, and other bee-attracting plants. Although her yard was abuzz in midsummer with the sound of honey, bumble, carpenter, leafcutter, longhorn, and green metallic sweat bees, there was no sign of squash bees.

That’s because squash bees only visit the blossoms of squash plants and other members of the gourd family, which Ets-Hokin doesn’t grow in her yard.

So we decided to head for the trials garden next to Lake Merritt, which is funded by the University of California and the Alameda County master gardeners program.

Ets-Hokin spent the last 18 months creating a bee-attracting zone in this garden. And now she hoped to find squash bees in the garden’s vegetable patch, where squash and other vegetables are tested for suitability to the local environment.

Clad in just shorts and T-shirt, Ets-Hokin looked rather vulnerable, considering she was about to go bee hunting. But, as she explained, there was no imminent threat of stings: female bees only sting those who threaten their nest, and male bees have no stingers.

“Male squash bees live to drink (nectar) and have sex with female squash bees,” Ets-Hokin joked, as Rollin Coville, a lanky entomologist who has photographed insects for three decades, joined the squash bee hunt.

Dressed in a hat, slacks, and vest and hauling a state-of-the art camera, Coville was hoping to get shots of the elusive male squash bees, which emerge in late summer and can sometimes be found taking naps in the squash blossoms in the afternoon.

Last year Ets-Hokin produced a 2010 native bee calendar highlighting Coville’s kickass images and informative sidebars on how to attract these native pollinators to urban yards.

This year she focused on the importance of bee habitat on farms in face of proposed food safety regulations that could undermine existing federal bee conservation programs. And she hoped to use Coville’s squash bee photographs as her August 2011 pin-up shot.

But before we could escape Ets-Hokin’s yard, Coville quickly withdrew a clear vial from his vest pocket, popped it over a bee on a nearby flower, then corked the vial.

The bee began to buzz furiously.

“I think it’s a Anthidium maculosum,” Coville declared as he uncorked the vial and let what turned out to be a territorial wool carder bee go back to its business of guarding nectar in a nearby plant.

We eventually reached the trial gardens, where Coville showed me how to pry open the fleshy yellow squash flowers that lie half-hidden below the plant’s massive prickly leaves atop budding zucchini that threaten to grow as big as canoes if left unpicked.

The first dozen squash blossoms were vacant, save for a few ants and beetles, and Coville wondered aloud if late rains and a cold snap had decimated bee populations.

But then I found a squash bee sitting inside a flower like a king on a bright yellow throne. And at the next flower, six squash bees were gently napping inside.

As I tried to hold the fleshy flower petals open so Coville could photograph these sleepy males, one petal began to vibrate loudly. I let go and a male bee unwrapped itself from the petal and zoomed away into the undergrowth.

At the end of the afternoon when I thanked Ets-Hokin for inviting me on the bee hunt, she turned to Coville and laughed, “I told you she was easily entertained.”

For information about native bees, visit www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center.

 

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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1
Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The rich are getting screwed in the United States today. And that’s not a statement from Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, or the remnants of George W. Bush’s brain. It’s coming from mainstream, even liberal economists, who have looked at the hard numbers around the battle over the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

See, if you consider anyone who makes more than $250,000 a year "rich," then they’re due to lose the income-tax break they got under Bush. And they can afford to pay higher taxes, and most of them are doing fine, despite the complaints about the cost of private schools these days.

But they’re still getting screwed. Because, as James Surowiecki noted in the Aug. 16 issue of The New Yorker, ordinary, garden-variety rich people haven’t seen a lot of income growth in the past decade. They aren’t gaining much more than the middle class. The money in this country isn’t going to the rich any more. It’s not even going to the very rich, say, the people who make more than $500,000 a year, or even $1 million a year.

No, the extraordinary income growth in this country has been going to the very, very rich, the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent —the 5,600 families who now have more wealth than the bottom 120 million. And, as Surowiecki points out, those very, very, exceedingly filthy rich pay the same tax rates as the people who earn $250,000 a year.

The New York Times ran an interesting report Aug. 29 on the looming problems of crumbling old infrastructure in the United States — dams that are well beyond their designed life, levees that are crumbling, subway switching stations designed and built in the 1920s. Millions of people can’t find jobs and the government can’t afford to pay for the work that desperately needs to be done. The economic policies of the past decade have sucked all the money out of society — and given it to a tiny number of people who live like ancient feudal royalty.

That’s what we’ve achieved in this country of late. I don’t know why this isn’t the biggest — or the only — issue in the fall campaigns.

School board race shouldn’t be personal

David Talbot
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4
School board race shouldn’t be personal

EDITORIAL There are plenty of issues to talk about in the San Francisco School Board race. The new student assignment process marks a dramatic shift in the way parents and kids get to choose schools. The district’s decision to pursue federal Race to the Top money was a mistake. There are too many charter schools, and not enough money for basic programs. The district has made great strides in closing the achievement gap, but there’s more to do. Many school facilities still need upgrades, meaning — potentially — more bond acts. The austerity budget has meant teacher layoffs. Overall, the district is in better shape than it was five years ago, but the goal of quality education for all kids is still a long way off.

This is what candidates and interest groups ought to be talking about. Instead, it seems as if the entire race is about one candidate: Margaret Brodkin.

Brodkin, the former director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth and former head of the Mayor’s Office of Children, Youth, and Families is by all accounts among the most experienced people ever to run for the office. She’s also strong-willed, forceful, and sometimes difficult. That’s what’s made her such a successful advocate. Over the past 30 years, she’s been involved in almost every progressive cause involving children and youth in the city, from the creation of the Children’s Fund to the battle against privatization in the public schools.

You think she’d at least be considered a serious candidate and that elected officials and political groups would give her the respect she deserves as someone who has devoted her life to activism on behalf of children.

But some incumbent board members have been engaged in a full-scale, anti-Brodkin campaign the likes of which we’ve rarely seen, even in the rough and sometimes brutal politics of this city. It’s mostly quiet, backroom stuff — and as far as we can tell, it’s not about issues. But they’ve approached just about everyone in local politics to badmouth Brodkin.

Let us stipulate: there are issues, real issues, progressives can disagree on with Brodkin. We’ve fought with her ourselves over some of the programs she implemented when she worked in the Newsom administration. Brodkin was far too supportive of former school superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who was secretive and imperious, for far too long. She’s also a close ally of board member Jill Wynns, who was wrong on a lot of issues over the past few years.

Brodkin has extensive proposals about education reform that she has discussed over and over; if you don’t like them, then don’t vote for her. If you think her proposals would be bad for the kids in the public schools — and in the end, that’s what this is all about — then work to elect somebody else. That’s how politics works.

But the misleading whisper campaign annoys us, and is often based on inaccurate information. Brodkin, we’ve been told, opposed voting rights for noncitizens back in 2004. Not true — she personally wrote a ballot argument in favor of the law. She told us, for the record, on tape, that she disagrees with Wynns and opposes JROTC in the public schools.

There’s also the line (and it’s somewhat reminiscent of some of things that were said about Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign) that she’s hard to get along with, that she won’t be collegial on the board. At her campaign kickoff, incumbent Hydra Mendoza praised the lack of conflict on the current board and said she wanted to preserve that — the implication being that Brodkin would bring disunity.

But unanimity and lack of conflict isn’t always good for a public board. Too much consensus leads to complacency — and that’s always a big problem, particularly when it comes to oversight.

We’ll issue our endorsements Oct. 6, when we’ve had a chance to talk to all the candidates — and right now we’re not ready to give the nod to Brodkin or anyone else. And we’d be the first to say that she has made mistakes and they ought to be taken into account in any endorsement process.

But we don’t like personal attacks, and we don’t like the politics of personal destruction. It’s not good for the schools, not good for democracy, not good for San Francisco. Argue issues, debate public problems — but this nasty whisper campaign has to stop.

SEIU and the new McCarthyism

David Talbot
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2
SEIU and the new McCarthyism

OPINION More than 43,000 California health care employees are currently involved in the largest union election in private industry since the 1940s, a contentious campaign that pits officials of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) against the National Union of Health Care Workers (NUHW). The outcome of the election may well determine the future of the labor movement for years to come.

The leaders of NUHW (the interim president is Sal Rosselli) are the same organizers who inspired and united us in achieving a historic victory: the five-year Kaiser Permanente contract of 2005-10. Health care workers all over the state depend on the benefits enumerated in that contract, including employment and income seniority, paid retirement, paid family health care, and employee participation in staffing and health care issues. The contract is still considered the national gold standard for hospitals.

A few years ago, our union, part of SEIU, was united and strong. The nurses, lab technicians, secretaries, operators, environmental service personnel, x-ray technologists — we were all proud to work together in a noble enterprise, fostering and saving human life. Today, SEIU is in disarray.

The decline began when Andy Stern took power in Washington. He established absentee rule of California. After he withdrew SEIU from the AFL-CIO (which prohibits union raids of other unions), Stern launched a series of raids on two sister unions, UNITE HERE and the Puerto Rican Teachers’ Union. The San Francisco Labor Council (along with the AFL-CIO) formally denounced the Stern raid on UNITE HERE. The raid cost our members millions of dollars. Stern then moved against our California locals, particularly United Healthcare Workers-West, led by Rosselli. Rosselli was the leading champion of democratic unionism in the state. In defiance of the wishes of our membership, Stern fired Rosselli.

The bitterness and hostility within our union today are a direct result of Stern’s mass purges. One hundred elected members of the executive board were removed by fiat. Hundreds of elected shop stewards were dismissed. Subsequently, 48 other stewards resigned in protest of the autocratic policies of the national office. The standard joke at California Kaiser worksites is, “Got a grievance? Call Washington!” Juan Gonzalez, the widely read columnist for the New York Daily News, called the Stern blitz “a stunning assault on democracy within his own union.”

SEIU represents a new kind of McCarthyism in the labor movement, a trend that threatens the unity of labor as a whole.

SEIU bully tactics to prevent workers from joining NUHW are so widespread, so well-documented, that Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers, sent an open letter to SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, who succeeded Stern after he retired. Huerta complained that “every time workers met to talk about NUHW, SEIU staff surrounded them and began chanting and yelling insults, refusing to let workers talk.”

Even the homes of workers are not off limits. In Fresno, local TV stations (just Google “TV Coverage of SEIU Threats”) documented SEIU pressure tactics during house visits, after workers received their ballots in the mail.

The demise of our once great union has implications far beyond our locals in California. If California’s most successful, democratic labor organizers can be overthrown, If elected shop steward networks (shop stewards are the backbone of union democracy) can be dismantled by fiat, if Washington can establish absentee rule of locals from 3,000 miles away, no union is safe, and American democracy itself is diminished.

Jessica Garcia and Elaine Monney are rank-and-file members of SEIU.

Alerts

David Talbot
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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 1

Outlaws live on


As a follow-up to Kate Bornstein’s 1995 book, Gender Outlaw, Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman edited the new anthology, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. The book gives voice to this generation’s trans and genderqueer forward thinkers as their narratives make their way from the margins to the mainstream. Readers include Serilyn Connelly, Sarah Dopp, Luis Gutierrez-Mock and Amir Rabiyah.

7 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

888 Valencia, SF

www.mtbs.com

FRIDAY, SEPT. 3

Eco reads


Join the Political Ecology reading group, which focuses on issues of geopolitics, energy descent, decolonization, agroecology, and the emerging diagonal economy. The group meets the first and third Fridays of the month and plans to begin with Kevin Carson’s The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto.

6:30 p.m., free

Near Fruitvale Bart Station, Oakl.

Email roadtosantiago@gmail.com for exact address and directions

SATURDAY, SEPT. 4

Catch the buzzzzzzz


Khaled Almaghafi, fourth-generation beekeeper and owner of Queen Sheba Farms, brings a small colony of bees to the North Oakland farmers market as a part of its Food ‘N’ Justice workshop series. Learn the tricks to becoming an urban Bay Area beekeeper.

Noon, free

Arlington Medical Center Parking Lot

5715 Market, Oakl.

(510) 689-3068

"Beyond Darkness and Light"


Attend the opening reception for artists Sonya Genel and Sallie Smith’s new exhibit, which invites you to reflect on the psyche of the 21st century with photos, drawings and paintings that "illuminate the beautifully stained parts of the human condition." There will also be a window installation by Poetry Store Poet, Silvi Alcivar.

7 p.m., free

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market, SF

TUESDAY, SEPT 7

Road warriors

Shot over the course of five years, American Gypsy tells the tale of one Romani family in the United States fighting a civil rights battle to defend Romani history and culture. The documentary also provides viewers with a glimpse into an immigrant world at a crucial turning point for survival.

7:30 p.m., $3–$5 sliding scale

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

www.americangypsy.com

Poking holes in ’em

Hear Rick Rowden, author of The Deadly Ideas of Neoliberalism, discuss the International Monetary Fund (IMF), global economic recession, and how citizens are mobilizing with a rights-based approach for alternative economic policies. Rowden is a senior policy analyst for ActionAid, an international advocacy NGO that works with women’s rights organizations, small farmers, and health and education activists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Noon, free

Global Exchange

2017 Mission, SF

www.priorityafrica.org

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