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Shooting past “sharrows”

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San Francisco’s bicycle advocates have been focused on winning approval for 56 near-term projects outlined in the city’s bike plan, which would increase the number of miles of bike lanes from 45 to 79, and quadruple the number of city streets bearing "sharrow" markings (see "Street fight," 2/4/09).

But bike-related projects farther out on the horizon could significantly raise the bar for a bikeable San Francisco. Here are a six long-range concepts that could make cycling in the city more safe, enjoyable, and accessible to people who might otherwise be driving solo.

BRIDGING THE GAP


Cyclists who commute between San Francisco and the East Bay have asked an obvious question for years: why must I spend money on BART fares or bridge tolls to get across the bay when I know I’m capable of biking there? When construction of the new east span of the Bay Bridge is finished, cyclists will finally get a bike path — but it will only get them from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island. Luckily, the idea of installing a complementary bike path along the west span to San Francisco is being entertained. It’s expensive (estimates place the cost at $200 million) and complicated (a 2001 feasibility study found there would need to be tracks on both sides of the bridge for balance). But in early April, the Bay Area Toll Authority agreed to spend $1.3 million on an 18-month study so the project could be shovel-ready when funding becomes available.

CAR-FREE MARKET STREET


Market Street is a popular thoroughfare for bicyclists even though much of its design creates tight-squeezes and conflicts with automobiles. For years there’s been talk of making it car-free, an idea once advocated by former Mayor Willie Brown. It was studied in 1997, but never received enough support to move forward, in part because area merchants worry their business would be hurt by restricting motorists. But the latest attempt to quell Market Street traffic may get more traction. Sup. Chris Daly, who also sits on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, requested a comprehensive study on restricting Market Street traffic and a draft report is expected by early summer. Andy Thornley, program director at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, notes that the overarching idea is not to make Market Street exclusive to bikes and pedestrians, but to improve it as a whole. "A car-free Market Street may be the route," Thorney says, "but it’s not the reason."

COLOR ME BIKEABLE


Ask Dave Snyder, transportation policy director at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), what constitutes an ideal bike lane, and he’ll say it has to be safe enough for parents to feel comfortable allowing their eight-year-old to ride a bike there. "That’s a very high standard," he says. "But it’s a correct standard." One approach for safeguarding bike lanes, adopted in New York City and elsewhere, is to color them in. Bike activists have been pushing the idea here, but the monkey wrench in the works is a sort of national bible of traffic symbols that lacks a standard for colored bike lanes. If the city rolls with a concept that’s outside the rulebook, the thinking goes, it could be a liability. But bike advocates hope to incorporate colored bike lines into the standard via a pilot program. In coming months, be on the lookout for more colorful city streets.

THINK INSIDE THE BOX


A bike box is a colored bike zone just before an intersection designed to let cyclists get out in front of traffic at a red light so they can be more visible. SF has two low-profile bike boxes, Thornley notes, but plans are on the horizon to install more. When the city of Portland, Ore. installed them, it produced a video called "On the Move with Mr. Smooth" to promote the concept. Hosted by a greasy character in a neon green shirt, the video makes a big deal about how motorists get a great view when they stop behind the bike-box line. "The bike box," Portland’s slogan proclaims. "Get behind it."

A BLUE-GREEN WORLD


Blue for the water, green for the parks and open space, the Blue Greenway is envisioned as a 13-mile corridor along the southeastern waterfront that would connect a string of existing parks from the Giants’ stadium to Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. "We want to connect not only parks along the Blue Greenway, but connect people to the waterfront," explains Corrine Woods, who is working on the project through the Neighborhood Parks Council. The corridor will serve as the city’s southeastern portion of the San Francisco Bay Trail, a massive interconnected trail network planned by the Association of Bay Area Governments that is envisioned as a 400-mile recreational "ring around the Bay."

BACK ON TRACK


For now cyclists aren’t allowed to bring their bikes — not even the folding kind — on Muni trains or buses (although some buses have bike racks outside). But it’s something the Municipal Transportation Agency has on its radar as a possible policy change, according to spokesperson Judson True. "As we move forward and people become more aware of the benefits of public transit, our vehicles become more and more crowded," True notes. This may be a good problem to have, but it means the agency must work out a strategy to accommodate wheelchair-bound passengers, strollers, walkers, bikes, and other essentials that passengers bring on board. Once the bike-plan injunction is lifted, True says, he expects MTA to approve a pilot program for bikes on Muni. In order to discourage more people from driving, he says, "linking sustainable modes of transportation like biking and transit is key."

Saving the southeast

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sarah@sfbg.com

foreclosures0509.jpg
This map of all foreclosures in San Francisco shows a heavy concentration in the southern part of the city, home to many low-income communities of color.

When Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Sophie Maxwell convened a task force in July 2007 to figure out why African Americans are leaving San Francisco and how to reverse this trend, the subprime loan market crisis was about to send a shock wave of home foreclosures sweeping through southeast San Francisco.

Hope SF, the promised rebuild of the city’s public housing projects, is underway at a cost of $95 million. The city’s certificates of preference program, giving housing priority to black residents displaced by redevelopment, has been expanded and extended. But little has been done to address the immediate problem.

Instead political leaders have focused on a plan to subsidize Lennar Corp.’s construction of thousands of new condos in the southeast section of the city — the heart of the San Francisco’s remaining African American community — and have done nothing to promote a plan that could convert hundreds of foreclosed homes into affordable for-sale or rental units there, right here, right now.

African American Out Migration Task Force (AAOMTF) members recall warning that the crisis would likely hit San Francisco’s already dwindling black population extra hard. And Sup. John Avalos, who was running for election in District 11, remembers seeing impacts in the Excelsior District as early as 2007.

"I was telling people in early 2007 that this was a problem in District 11, and even real estate people didn’t believe me," recalled Avalos, who is exploring legislation to hold banks accountable and spoke at an ACORN protest in support of Excelsior homeowner Genaro Paed, a Filipino native who just staved off eviction orders pending the outcome of his lawsuit against Washington Mutual concerning what Paed describes as "a predatory loan" secured in 2006.

Avalos also planned to introduce legislation on May 12 that would expand protection of renters, including those in foreclosed homes who are now being evicted by banks.

This isn’t the first time city leaders have studied the African American exodus or ways to prevent low-income and minority households from being preyed upon or displaced. Indeed, this task force’s initial findings, (released last summer after Lennar spent millions to persuade voters to support building 10,000 condos in the city’s southeast) suggests San Francisco’s entire black community is at risk unless proactive and immediate steps are taken.

According to U.S. Census data, the city’s African American population shrank to 6.6 percent of the city’s total population by 2005 (a 40 percent decline since 1990) and will likely slip to 4.6 percent by 2050, according to the California Department of Finance. And these findings were made before the foreclosure crisis heated up.

In 2008 Maxwell and other elected officials convened a Fair Lending Working Group (FLWG) to figure out how to respond to the wave of foreclosures. By year’s end, there were 667 home foreclosures in San Francisco, almost all in the city’s southeast sector.

These numbers sound small compared to Contra Costa County or Oakland, where thousands of foreclosures occurred. And they aren’t big enough to qualify for the first round of President Barack Obama’s National Stabilization Program grants, which were released earlier this year. Based on a census-driven formula, the grants sent $8 million to Oakland and no money to San Francisco.

But with half the city’s foreclosures in the Bayview, home to most of the city’s remaining African Americans, the fact that little has been done to save these homes — or to follow early recommendations to do so — is a gentrification crisis in the making.

Ed Donaldson, housing counseling director at the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation in the Bayview District, served on the FLWG and remembers suggesting a two-tier track. First, take steps to protect renters in places that have been foreclosed and second, buy as many foreclosed properties as possible with the aim of reselling or leasing them as affordable units. While the FLWG liked the renter protection angle, it did not support the foreclosure acquisition program.

"The idea fell on deaf ears," recalls Donaldson, who was disappointed his foreclosure purchase plan didn’t make it onto FLWG’s recent recommendation list. FLWG members include financial institutions such as Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, and Patelco Credit Union; community-based organizations such as Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, SFHDC, Mission Economic Development Agency; and city agencies. The agency also has received staff support from Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, Treasurer Jose Cisneros and the Office of the Legislative Analyst.

"We’d already seen the spike in foreclosure numbers, so how did these recommendations get pushed out? We need something with teeth," Donaldson said.

SFHDC executive director Regina Davis says she suggested a foreclosure purchase and resale plan as an AAOMTF member and was concerned when she noticed that her recommendation was not included on the list discussed at the April 23 meeting. Billed as a closing-out session, that meeting took place at the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and was attended by Davis, chair Aileen Hernandez, Redevelopment director Fred Blackwell, the Rev. Amos Brown, Barbara Cohen of the African American Action Network, Tinisch Hollins of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and former supervisor and assessor Doris Ward, among others. The AAOMTF is finishing up its work this week.

"I got involved because I believed that in exchange for participation, we would see things done and/or funded. Part of what we want to see are real action items that keep African Americans in San Francisco or bring them back. So we really want this issue to move forward with substance," Davis told the Guardian.

Recognizing that San Francisco is facing massive budget constraints, SFHDC is proposing to borrow $1.5 million from Clearinghouse CDFI, a Los Angeles community development financial agency, to acquire and rehabilitate these foreclosed properties.

Davis’ group would then turn it around and offer residents several options: buy (if the prospective buyer qualifies for the city’s $150,000 downpayment assistance and a $50,000 loan from the California Housing Financing Agency); lease (in which SFHDC sells the home to the buyer but leases the land, making the price affordable), lease-to-own. Or, Davis adds, people could rent the units at affordable rates.

But to make the plan work, SFHDC need the banks to sell the properties AT below market rates. Noting that foreclosed properties are still selling in the Bayview for $400,000, Davis says her nonprofit intends to purchase 100 to 200 homes during a 24-month period at less than $200,000 mark.

Yet Davis remains optimistic about the plan’s chances as SFHDC negotiates with major banks for a 50 percent discount, noting that there is a monthly average of 50 foreclosures in the Bayview-Hunter’s Point, and SFHDC has access to 100 qualified buyers.

Blackwell said the Redevelopment Agency hasn’t developed an initiative or a funding pool to respond to the foreclosures in the city’s southeast sector. But, he said, the agency is looking at ways to apply for National Stabilization Program funds even though "federal guidelines mostly don’t apply well in expensive markets like San Francisco.

"We are engaged in advocacy so San Francisco can take advantage of any federal stabilization funds, but we don’t have an agency-specific proposal," he continued.

"Frankly, I think community-based organizations are the best to do programs like that, especially since there is so much anxiety about the Redevelopment Agency and property acquisition in the southeast," Blackwell added.

He believes that given the city’s current budgetary constraints, the AAOMTF "will likely look for leadership from the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors in cases where members have made recommendations and there is an opportunity to bring in public money."

Blackwell feels the city is still getting its mind around its foreclosure problem. "We’ve been spared the wholesale neighborhood-by-neighborhood devastation that places like Antioch faced," Blackwell said. "So, there wasn’t the same sense of urgency. And there’s a need to look more closely at the data. A lot of the information is based on anecdotes."

Yet the feds seem willing to help if city officials take the initiative. Larry Bush, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s regional office, says San Francisco and Oakland could file a joint foreclosure plan application.

"If they can identify 100 homes, they’d be eligible for $5 million," Bush said, noting one snag that could unravel the plan locally. "Foreclosed properties must be vacant for at least six months. And as you know, in San Francisco, foreclosed homes still sell."

Maxwell says the city could do more to confront predatory lenders and enforce tenant rights, as well as developing a plan to buy foreclosed properties. "But in San Francisco it’s an issue because of relatively high prices," she told us.

Yet the city’s high prices are the very problem pushing out low-income residents. African American home ownership actually increased after 1990, even as out-migration among black renters increased. But now, if the foreclosures stand, that exodus will likely accelerate.

Asked if she supports SFHDC’s current foreclosure plan, Maxwell said, "It makes sense to me. If that could be done, it would be optimal."

Myrna Melgar of the Mayor’s Office of Housing says she’s not sure that a foreclosure resale plan would work in San Francisco for folks who bought a couple of years ago, when house prices hit $700,000, only to see house prices fall to around $400,000.

"San Francisco is a very different universe from Detroit," Melgar said. "Properties don’t sit around empty and vacant. They are bought by speculators who are betting that in two or three years, their values will go up. So if we had money to buy these properties, which we don’t, we’d be in competition with the speculators, who have lots of money with no strings attached, and who drive the prices up."

Another difference, Melgar said, is that San Francisco banks are holding onto 50 percent of their foreclosed properties, whereas Antioch banks are only holding onto 22 percent. "We’d like to keep folks in the homes," Melgar said. "But it’s a policy issue related to the reality that we have such limited funds."

Uphill climb

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steve@sfbg.com

Bicyclists generally try to avoid hills, so one of the most popular bike routes in town is a series of turns called the Wiggle, which snakes along a valley through the Lower Haight. The route — a sort of bridge between east and west — is traveled by a growing number of bicyclists, from hipster kids on colorful fixies to grizzled seniors on comfortable touring bikes.

I ride the Wiggle every day. Coming from the Panhandle, the most harrowing approach is the three blocks I have to travel on busy Oak Street, competing for space with impatient motorists who often seem to forget that they’re wielding deadly weapons. Many times I’ve had cars zip by me within inches, honk (a very startling sound when you’re not wrapped in metal and glass), zoom up right behind me, or flip me off.

But then I turn right onto Scott Street — and the world suddenly changes. My heart rate drops and I breathe deeply. Rain or shine, there are almost as many bikes there as cars. The cyclists smile and nod at one another and even the motorists seem more respectful, sometimes waving us through the stop signs even when it’s their turn. It feels like an informally functional community. It’s how traveling around this city ought to be.

Even though the citywide percentage of vehicle trips taken by bicycle in San Francisco is still in single digits (compared to more than 20 percent in many European cities), and even though a court injunction that’s expected to be lifted this summer has banned any new bike projects in the city for the past three years, bicycling is booming in San Francisco, increasing by almost 50 percent since 2006. I’m never alone these days on my solo commute.

My decision to ride a bike and sell my car wasn’t about joining a movement. I just like to ride my bike, a simple joy that I really began to rediscover about 10 years ago. It’s fun, cheap, and an easy way to get exercise. And it connects me with my surroundings — the people, buildings, and streetscapes of this beautiful city — in a way I didn’t even realize I was missing when I drove.

But as pressing political and planetary realities have welled up around my personal transportation choice, I’ve come to see that I am part of a movement, one that encapsulates just about every major issue progressive San Franciscans care about: public health, environmentalism, energy policy, economics, urban planning, social justice, public safety, sustainability, personal responsibility, and the belief that we can make our communities better places, that we’re not captive to past societal choices.

As a bicyclist and a journalist, I’ve been actively engaged in these struggles for many years. I understand that bicyclists are criticized in many quarters as a vocal minority with a self-righteous sense of superiority and entitlement, and that I’m personally accused of bias for writing empathetically about bicyclists in dozens of bike-related stories.

Well, guess what? I don’t apologize. We are better than motorists, by every important measure. We use less space and fewer resources and create less waste and pollution. Bikes are available to almost every segment of society, and we don’t need to fight wars to power them. They improve the community’s health and happiness. And when we get into accidents, we don’t kill or maim the people we hit.

And you know what else? This really is going to be the Year of the Bicycle, as it’s been dubbed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the city’s largest grassroots civic organization, with more than 10,000 dues-paying members. There are more of us than ever, politicians now listen to us, and San Francisco is on the verge of the most rapid expansion of its bike network that any American city has ever seen.

This is the moment we’ve been moving toward for many years, a turning point that the Guardian has meticulously chronicled and proudly promoted. The bicycle has become a metaphor for progress that is long overdue. So mount up on May 14, Bike to Work Day, if you’d like to be a part of the solution to what’s ailing our city and planet.

I love my bike, and so do most people who see it. San Franciscans appreciate the little things, like someone who rides a silly-looking bike.

It started as a basic used mountain bike, but I styled it out for Burning Man a few years ago, covering it with heavy red acrylic paint that looks like stucco, a big basket covered in fake fur and ringed with electro-luminescent wire, and custom-welded high handlebars topped by a lizard horn.

Maybe you’ve seen me around town — and if so, maybe you’ve seen me blow through stop signs or red lights. Yes, I’m that guy, and I only apologize if I’m stealing a motorist’s right-of-way, which I try to avoid. Rob Anderson, who successfully sued San Francisco to force detailed studies of its Bike Plan (and blogs at district5diary.blogspot.com), regularly calls me and my ilk the "bike fanatics."

I’ve interviewed Anderson by phone a few times and tangled with him online many times. He’s actually a pretty well-informed and well-reasoned guy, except for his near pathological disdain for bicycling, which he considers an inherently dangerous activity that government has no business promoting and is not a serious transportation option.

But San Francisco would be a gridlocked nightmare without bikes. Transportation officials say this is already one of the most traffic-choked cities in the country (second after Houston), a big factor in Muni never reaching its voter-mandated 85 percent on-time performance. During peak hours, most Muni lines reach their holding capacity. Imagine 37,500 additional people (the estimated number of San Franciscans who primarily travel by bike) driving or taking Muni every day.

Conversely, imagine the transportation system if bicycling rates doubled and some of those bulky cars and buses became zippy bikes. Quality of life would improve; the air would be cleaner; we would emit far less greenhouse gases (transportation accounts for about half of the Bay Area’s carbon emissions); housing would get cheaper (building parking increases costs and decreases the number of housing units); pressure would decrease to drill for oil offshore and prop up despotic regimes in oil-rich countries; pedestrians would be safer (about a dozen are killed by cars here every year); and public health would improve (by reducing obesity and respiratory ailments associated with air pollution).

Increase bicycling rates even more, to the levels of Berlin, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, and San Francisco would be utterly transformed, with many streets converted to car-free boulevards as the demand shifts from facilitating speeding cars to creating space for more bicyclists and pedestrians.

Sure, as Anderson points out, many people will never ride a bike. The elderly, those with disabilities, some families with kids, and a few other groups can credibly argue that the bicycle isn’t a realistic daily transportation option. But that’s a small percentage of the population.

For the rest of you: what’s your excuse? Why would you continue to rely on such wasteful and expensive transportation options — a label that applies to both cars and buses — when you could use the most efficient vehicle ever invented?

At the SFBC’s annual Golden Wheels Awards banquet on May 5, SFBC director Leah Shahum described a bike movement at the peak of its power, reach, and influence. "In the last two years, we’ve seen an unprecedented political embrace of bicycling," she said, praising Mayor Gavin Newsom for his championing of the Sunday Streets car-free space and calling the progressive-dominated Board of Supervisors "the most bike-friendly board we’ve ever seen."

In just a few years, the SFBC went from fighting pitched battles with Newsom over closing some Golden Gate Park roads to cars on Saturdays — a two-year fight that ended in a compromise after some serious ill-will on both sides — to Newsom’s championing an even larger Sunday Streets road closure on six days this spring and summer, even fighting through business community opposition to do so.

As with many Newsom initiatives, it’s difficult to discern his motivation, which seems to be a mixture of political posturing and a desire to keep San Francisco on the cutting edge of the green movement. Whatever the case, the will to take street space from automobiles — which will be the crux of the struggles to come — is probably greater now than it has ever been.

Because at the end of the day, Anderson is right: bicyclists do have a radical agenda. We want to take space from cars, both lanes and parking spaces, all over this city. That’s what has to happen to create a safe, complete bicycle system, which is a prerequisite to encouraging more people to cycle. We need to realize that designing the city around automobiles is an increasingly costly and unsustainable model.

"The streets do not have to be solely — or even primarily — for cars anymore," Shahum told an audience that included City Attorney Dennis Herrera, top mayoral aide Mike Farrah, and several members of the Board of Supervisors (including President David Chiu, a regular cyclist and occasional bike commuter), drawing warm applause.

Shahum was certainly correct when she called the politically engaged community of bicyclists "one of the strongest and most successful movements in this city," one she believes is capable of moving an ambitious agenda. "During the next six weeks, we have the opportunity to win a literal doubling of the city’s bike network."

She’s referring to the imminent completion of environmental studies that support the city’s Bike Plan, which will allow the courts to lift the nearly three-year-old injunction against new bike projects in the city. The SFBC has been aggressively organizing and advocating for the immediate approval of all 56 near-term bikeway improvements outlined in the plan, which have been studied and are ready to go, most with grant funding already in the bank.

"I think San Francisco is hungry for a higher use of public space," she said. "Imagine streets moving so calmly and slowly that you’d let your six-year-old ride on them."

That’s the standard advocated by the international car-free movement, which I interacted with last year when I covered the International Carfree Conference in Portland, Ore. These influential advocates believe bikeways should be so safe and insulated from fast-moving traffic that both the young and old feel comfortable riding them.

"Streets belong to us — they are the public spaces of the city — but they don’t feel like they belong to us," said Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, a sponsor of Sunday Streets, which was honored at the Golden Wheel Awards. The streets, he told the crowd, "don’t need to be the objects of fear."

Later, as we spoke, Radulovich said it’s not enough to create narrow bikes lanes on busy streets. One of the great joys of riding a bike with a friend is to be able to talk as you ride, something he said transportation advocates around the world refer to as the "conversational standard."

Politically, there’s a long way to go before San Francisco embraces the conversational standard, the creation of permanent car-free bike boulevards, or traffic law changes that promote bicycling. Anderson and his ilk reacted with outrage last year when the Guardian and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission began discussing adopting Idaho’s bike laws here, in which bicyclists treat stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs (see "Don’t stop: Bike lessons from Idaho," 5/14/08).

Yet until bicycling is taken more seriously as a real transportation option, all this talk about sustainability and green-everything is going to continue falling woefully short of its objectives.

The powerhouse environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council held a gala awards dinner May 9 at the California Academy of Sciences for its first Growing Green Awards, an effort to honor innovators in the growing sustainable food movement.

The award selection panel was chaired by journalist Michael Pollan, whose The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin Press, 2006) and other works have made him a leading voice calling for recognition and reform of a corporate food system that is unsustainable, unhealthy, and harmful to the environment.

That movement has garnered some high-profile support and attention, but has so far failed to effectively counter the influence of agribusiness interests, he told me. "We need an organization like the NRDC in the food area, or we need to get NRDC to embrace our issues."

The awards banquet showed that Pollan and his allies have made progress with the NRDC, which should be a natural ally of advocates for better food and transportation systems, two realms that have the biggest impact on this country’s natural resources.

But when I left the ceremony as hundreds of guests were being seated for dinner, I rode away — on the only bicycle there.

Rewrite the Muni budget

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EDITORIAL Just one day after the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee voted to reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Muni budget, the mayor’s press flak, Nathan Ballard, reminded us of how deeply the Mayor’s Office remains in budget denial.

"We are currently operating under the assumption that the supervisors will approve the MTA’s sensible budget," Ballard told City Editor Steven T. Jones May 8. "If they reject the budget, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it."

That was a foolish assumption. At press time, seven supervisors had signed on as cosponsors to Board President David Chiu’s bill rejecting the Municipal Transportation Agency budget proposal, and Sup. Bevan Dufty, an eighth vote, was among the Budget Committee members favoring rejection. Only seven votes were needed, so the MTA budget was dead by May 7 — and Newsom’s refusal to recognize that was nothing more than a foolish attempt to play chicken with the supervisors. If the MTA fails to produce a new budget by the end of May, the current funding remains in effect — and that means the city’s budget deficit is much worse. The mayor strategy seems to be aimed at blaming the supervisors instead of addressing the problem.

And the problem is serious — the MTA budget is a mess. It seeks to close a $129 million shortfall almost entirely on the backs of the riders through service cuts and fare hikes. Only 20 percent of the new revenue would come from higher downtown parking fees.

That’s not just bad public policy for a transit-first city (the last thing San Francisco wants to do right now is discourage people from taking Muni), it’s bad economics. Every time Muni raises fares, ridership drops. Typically, most of the riders come back eventually. But at a certain point — possibly at the proposed $2 level — further increases in cost will drive people away from the system, and that will end up costing Muni money. The alternative — charging more for parking, particularly downtown — has multiple benefits: most people who drive cars downtown are better off than the Muni riders and can afford to pay more — and if higher parking meter rates discourage driving, that’s an excellent outcome.

The MTA is a creature of Proposition A, a 2007 transportation reform measure that was supposed to insulate Muni from political pressure — and guarantee the transit system more money. Newsom pushed for Prop. A and promised that the measure would guarantee Muni a $26 million additional funding stream that could be used to improve service. (He also promised — in writing — that he wouldn’t use the fine print in Prop. A to try to privatize the taxi medallions). He’s now gone back on both of those vows.

In fact, the budget put forward by Newsom’s MTA appointees, and his $316,000 a year general manager, diverts a huge amount of Muni money to the Police Department, the mayor’s pet 311 call center, and other city departments — far more than $26 million. That money goes for "work orders" — in other words, the cops get to suck money out of the Muni budget for doing what they’re supposed to do anyway. And 311 charges Muni almost $2 every time someone calls to ask about bus service (even though 311 exists to help people find out about city services).

The mayor needs to quit his political games and direct the MTA to draft a new budget, quickly, that hits drivers harder than bus riders and dramatically trims the money used as a back-door subsidy for the cops and Newsom’s call center. And the supervisors should make it clear that they won’t approve any MTA budget until he fixes those problems. *

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

My friends and I were waiting for the bus the other day on Mission and 29th streets, wondering whether it made sense to make our kids walk about a mile to the Mission District branch library or to continue to hang out in front the donut shop and argue about why we weren’t buying donuts that afternoon. So we did what hundreds of other San Franciscans do every day: we called 311 and asked when the next bus was coming. Six minutes, the operator said.

Although we didn’t realize it at the time, we had just cost Muni $1.97.

That’s right — during Muni’s budget hearings last week, it came out that every time you call 311 and ask about the next bus — which is one of the main things people use that service for — it costs the broke and beleaguered transit system almost two bucks. That’s more than the fare you pay when you finally board. (You can call 511 and get an automated response much more cheaply, but it’s voice-activated software and can be frustrating.)

When Gavin Newsom set up his 311 system, he never told us that a fair amount of its funding would come from diverting resources away from the city departments the call center is supposed to serve. He sold it as one of his government-as-public-service programs, a way to make the city more businesslike by treating its customers — that’s us, the residents and taxpayers — better.

I’m fine with that, and I’ve never had a problem with the 311 idea. It can be intimidating for people to get through to city agencies and figure out whom to call about what, and a central dispatch makes sense. The problem is, at a time when the city’s really, really broke, I’m not sure the 311 center is more important than, say, nurses at San Francisco General Hospital or community-based mental health treatment.

Ah, but there’s a secret here: Newsom doesn’t have to fund 311 at the level of its real cost because he simply steals money from other departments.

Now that I know Muni is getting hit with a special "work order" charge (because Newsom never figured out how to pay for his pet project and is draining money from bus service to fund it), I’m done. I’m never calling 311 to ask for bus information again.

And I have to admit, I’ll feeling a little cheated. *

How to fix public transit

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OPINION As San Franciscans deal with the shock of ever-worsening budget cuts, it’s time we look to fundamental structural changes in the way government does business. That’s a scary thought because, as Naomi Klein warns, free market ideologues use shocks to accomplish a very damaging type of structural change that cuts public service, increases privatization, and strengthens class division. Those of us who support collective responsibility and a strong public sector had better work together to propose our own structural change.

In transportation, to reduce driving — which accounts for 47 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in this city — we must increase public transit ridership dramatically. Yet the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is cutting its budget by 16 percent. The solution is simple, but not easy: car transportation will have to cost more, in terms of money and time. Transit, walking, and bicycling will have to be easier, faster, and safer. We can use the funds from increases in driving costs to fund improvements to other forms of transportation.

The alternative is an abandonment of the great equalizer that is public transit — and a kind of privatization that provides the automobile as an option for the middle class but at the cost of miserable transportation for the 30 percent of San Francisco households who don’t have cars.

For this to work, public transit must be not just a little bit better, it must be a great deal better. It must remain affordable for families and serve the whole city efficiently, at all hours of the day. Residents should need cars so rarely that transit costs, plus occasional car-sharing and car rentals, are cheaper alternatives than car ownership.

With a higher gas tax and tolls on freeways (measures a recent San Francisco Planning and Urban Research analysis shows to be among the most cost-effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), we can make public transit work better. SFMTA should implement its proposed rapid network on the routes that carry 80 percent of Muni’s passengers, speeding up the vehicles by at least 20 percent. That will cost car drivers some time: mixed traffic lanes will have to be converted to bus lanes. Turns will have to be restricted and parking will have to be removed.

The city also must make bicycling safe and easy. Our bikeways need to be safe for 8-year olds, who need systems that forgive mistakes and allow for slow and easy riding, and seniors, who are not physically able to ride fast and cannot afford to make emergency stops that may cause a fall. That means we need effective 18 mph traffic-calmed zones and a system of car-free bike paths, including one down Market Street.

Transportation is a regional issue that San Francisco cannot solve on its own. We must do a better job of matching our regional development patterns to our needs to promote walking, bicycling, and transit.

To make all this work, we must stop sprawl immediately and concentrate growth in cities and existing suburbs. More density in cities means more people to support transit (through fares and a higher tax base) and more people to support local shops so that walking to your grocery store is an option for more people.

Dave Snyder is transportation policy director at SPUR.

Get a dog

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

The "Lonely Guy" responses are in:

I read the letter from Lonely Guy/Nice Guy and my thought is that he sounds kind of resentful and also like he wants to "get" a woman, which isn’t the same as wanting to meet women! Maybe they can tell. — Reader A

I wondered about that too. Not really liking women yet feeling compelled to seek them out (and resenting them for it) is a common pattern for straight men (and women with men; I’m not letting anyone off the hook here), but I don’t think that’s what’s going on with LG. I was reminded, though, of the way my husband used to wonder why he always had a girlfriend and at least another female or two waiting hopefully on the sidelines in case the current one got hit by a bus. There were cooler, smoother guys, he’d point out, and guys who looked more like George Clooney, so why him? After enough different women told him why — because he genuinely likes women — he finally believed us. Lonely Guy doesn’t seem like he dislikes women, and he does say he’s genuinely interested in what they have to say. My bet’s on not so comfortable with women but likes them fine. Next?

My GF and I were discussing our previous experiences dating. She sets some key criteria for the relationship she wants, and when she meets someone who meets them, she sticks with it. Of course, a deal-breaker could pop up, but she is not poised to run. My M.O. was always to bail at the slightest uncertainty. But when some stuff came up with us, she wouldn’t let me. As we’ve worked through it, we have built trust and grown closer. I know she’ll still be there tomorrow, and she knows I’ll be there too. I’m grateful that she wouldn’t let us quit. — Reader B

Actually a great point about dating in general, but not helpful to a guy who has somehow managed to get dumped by every woman he’s seen except the one who was for some reason an immensely inappropriate choice. Or do you think a serial dumpee can learn to "not let" dumping happen, as your girlfriend did with you?

My suspicion is your letter-writers lack a large network of friends, male or female. I’ve observed that people who can make friends have the easiest times getting dates. Even "boring" people can stop being boring if they develop interests they can share. When I was single, most of my dates were referrals from my social network. There is an old adage, "To have a friend, you have to be one." That sadly, must be the character flaw. — Reader C

Mmmkay. I think you’re right that having friends helps, on a practical level in that friends have friends, and probably on some sort of meta-level as well (Who saw the recent articles on how having friends, even if you don’t see them much, makes you live longer?). I was not precisely calling for people to pinpoint LG’s "character flaw" though, sheesh. Spot the flaw, win valuable prizes!

This guy spent 10 years in an unhappy relationship. I don’t think he knows what companionship really means. He also treats dating like a chore. He dates so he can … stop dating? If you are lonely, get a dog. — Reader D

Yes, LG, stop treating meeting women as the equivalent of cleaning out your vegetable drawer. Reader D is right. Once D added "get a dog" to Reader C’s suggestion about cultivating "interesting interests," though, my mind strayed to my favorite piece of dating advice ever, culled from a Mademoiselle article I read in college: "Walk an interesting dog." I have met many dogs since them, and often wondered which of them qualified as interesting enough.

I’ve never had any problem meeting women. Unlike LG, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I’m a nice guy, because people never tell me that. Is it true then, that women go for jerks? I don’t think so. People like me, and I’m not a jerk to women any more than I am to anyone else. I’m not attracted to doormats. What I do think is that people are attracted to confidence and are generally more interested in people who are interesting. You don’t have to be an asshole to be interesting, but maybe he has become such a good listener that the interesting things about him never even come across.

If he insists on using online dating, he should 1) try Chemistry.com instead of Match.com (look up Helen Fisher’s books), and 2) never write a profile describing himself as "nice." He should talk about hobbies or interests (if he doesn’t have any, he should get some, or at least get a dog), and 3) rent The Tao of Steve. — Reader E

Haha! OK, SG, get a life, or get a dog, and write a niceness-free profile. Reader E may be a jerk, but he gave the best answer.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Mirant’s last gasp?

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY A new multipronged effort to shut down San Francisco’s Mirant Potrero Power Plant is raising hopes that the end could be in sight for the controversial fossil-fuel-fired facility.

An ordinance proposed by Sup. Sophie Maxwell suggests that the entire facility — including the primary unit 3 and the smaller, diesel-fired units 4, 5, and 6 — could be shut off without having to create any new fossil fuel generation within city limits. The legislation would direct the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to figure out how to bridge the in-city electric generation gap using energy efficiency, renewable power, and other alternatives.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed against Mirant by City Attorney Dennis Herrera targets Mirant’s failure to perform seismic upgrades. The effort wouldn’t close the plant directly, but could make it more burdensome for Mirant to do business here. Mirant did not return calls for comment.

"Mirant has been given a free pass for a while, and the city doesn’t want to give it to them any more," Deputy City Attorney Theresa Mueller told the Guardian. "Part of the reason they’ve gotten away with not doing it is because it was expected to close."

City efforts to replace the Mirant plant’s power with combustion turbines that San Francisco already owns were derailed last year after Mayor Gavin Newsom withdrew his support for the plan, instead backing an alternative pushed by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. that would have retrofitted the Mirant plant, a proposal that consultants said didn’t pencil out and that failed to win Board of Supervisors’ approval (see "Power possibilities," 11/5/08).

Despite various city efforts to shutter the plant going back nearly a decade, Mirant Potrero still runs an average of 20 hours per day, according to figures released by the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO). In 2007, the plant released 235 tons of harmful pollutants into the air, and 336,300 tons of carbon dioxide.

For now, Cal-ISO requires Mirant to continue running to guarantee that the lights would stay on in the city even if major transmission lines fail. But with the installation of the Trans Bay Cable — a high-voltage power cord that will send 400 MW of electricity under the bay from Pittsburgh in 2010 — Mirant’s largest unit will be unnecessary.

"We assume that the Trans Bay Cable will be in service sometime in mid 2010. We can then drop Potrero [unit 3]" from the reliability contract, says Cal-ISO spokesman Gregg Fishman. The dirtier, diesel-powered units 4, 5, and 6 would still be required, he says.

Not everyone accepts this as the final word on the matter. Maxwell’s legislation calls for the SFPUC "to take all feasible steps to close the entire Potrero power plant as soon as possible." That ordinance, expected to go before the Land Use Committee on May 11, would direct the SFPUC to update a plan for the city’s energy mix, called the Electricity Resource Plan, to reflect a goal of zero reliance on in-city fossil-fuel generation.

The original plan, issued in 2002, was also designed to eliminate the Potrero plant. This time around, key assumptions have changed. Last year, as Newsom and some members of the Board of Supervisors battled over the Mirant-related projects, PG&E sponsored a study indicating that the city might not need new local power generation.

Maxwell’s new proposal, citing information from the PG&E assessment, now suggests that after the installation of the Trans Bay Cable and other transmission upgrades, the electricity gap for in-city generation will be much smaller than previously assumed. This gap, which Joshua Arce from the Brightline Defense Project likes to refer to as the "magic number," has apparently shrunk to 33 MW in 2012, as opposed to 150 MW. But Arce said, "We want the magic number to be zero."

Barbara Hale, assistant manager for power at the SFPUC, confirmed that the city agency was preparing to update the plan and noted that it would likely contract with a Colorado-based firm, Rocky Mountain Institute, to do it. "We are hoping we can meet San Francisco’s electricity needs in a way that does not involve fossil fuel generation in San Francisco," Hale told the Guardian.

Encouraged by the recent activity, environmental justice groups are organizing for what they hope will be the last push to shut down the Potrero plant. Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Boosters and an activist on power plant issues, is optimistic. "There really is an end in sight to that power plant," he says.

Some eyebrows have been raised over the implications of the Trans Bay Cable, which by most accounts will be plugged into a fossil fuel-powered facility in Pittsburgh. "We really are going to be highlighting that San Francisco needs to take responsibility … so that we don’t have clean air on the backs of poor people and people of color in the East Bay," says Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice.

Nor is everyone feeling optimistic that the closure of the plant is near. Joe Boss, a member of the city’s Power Plant Task Force for about nine years, says he still doesn’t expect Cal-ISO to budge, and believes the city will have to live with the Potrero plant for years to come.

Fishman, from Cal-ISO, said that as things stand, units 4,5, and 6 will "almost certainly" still be required. Almost. "Between now and when the Trans Bay Cable is in service, we can conduct … studies on transmission projects that are officially presented to us," he added. "Based on the hard data that comes from those studies, we may reevaluate the need for local generation."

TICed off

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news@sfbg.com

San Francisco tenants who are supposed to be protected by city and state laws are now facing eviction as a result of real estate speculators working hand-in-hand with banks in a scheme that has been implicitly endorsed by federal regulators and the courts.

Kaushik Dattani, whose company owns multiple properties throughout San Francisco, won a summary judgment to use the Ellis Act to evict four families from their rent-controlled apartment. Judge Charlotte Woolard’s April 21 ruling, denying the low-income Mission District families a jury trial, could leave the 12 longtime residents — seniors, disabled, single mothers, and children — homeless within a couple of weeks.

In August 2007, court records show Dattani secured an 18-month, interest-only $1.3 million loan from Circle Bank of Marin to buy the Victorian building at 19th and Lexington streets. The loan included an agreement that he would pull the units from the rental market using the Ellis Act, renovate the building, and sell the five Victorian units as tenants-in-common (TICs).

Traditionally banks haven’t offered loans to individual TIC owners, but Circle Bank of Marin was one of the first banks to start offering such "fractional" loans in 2005, a practice that created a strong market for TICs, loan officer Mark Skolnick (who says he’s an independent contractor and not a bank employee) told the Guardian.

In making the loan to Dattani, court documents show Skolnick predicted a 42 percent profit, which would require all five TIC units to be sold for $3.3 million. But according to Tenderloin Housing Clinic attorney Steve Collier, Dattani has not yet paid off the balloon payment — due April 1 — putting the building at risk of getting handed over to the bank, emptied of residents.

Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, said the lending scheme is contrary to the federal Community Reinvestment Act, which encourages banks to meet the credit needs of the low-income communities. "It’s within the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s power to say these kinds of loans that result in the displacement of low and moderate income tenants are not helping to meet the community’s credit needs," he said, noting that the FDIC has refused to get involved.

Others argue the importance of creating home ownership opportunities in a city where about two-thirds of residents rent.

"Here we have what looks like a condo, feels like a condo, but it’s a TIC. It’s a way of creating affordable housing," Skolnick said. "Some people lose their home, some people gain a home. The TIC platform is proving to be a very affordable option for this different subset of people."

But for the subset of people being displaced using the Ellis Act — a state law intended to allow existing landlords to get out of the rental business, not to encourage real estate speculation — the affect can be devastating in a city where little new rental or affordable housing is being built.

"They just come in out of nowhere and they see this place, buy it and kick everyone out. There’s no soul there," said Luise Vorsatz, who lived in the house for 30 years before being evicted.

This is not Dattani’s first Ellis Act eviction (when the Guardian contacted Dattani for comment, he hung up on us). In 2000, he hired infamous antitenant lawyers Wiegel & Fried to evict senior Alma Augueles from her flower shop in the Mission. In 2007, he evicted a group of tenants living above Revolution Café on 22nd and Bartlett streets. That building has sat empty for over a year, something that could also happen with his new property given the slumping real estate market.

Under the Ellis Act, if the unit go back on the rental market within five years, the evicted tenants have first priority at their old rent level, but that’s up to the tenants to enforce. "It’s possible the landlord won’t be able to sell and will end up renting it at higher rents," Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, told us.

"They don’t look at the fact that we have pride of tenancy—that we have lived here all these years," said 23-year resident Ronny Ruddrich, who raised her children here and walks to her job as a Noe Valley shoe store manager for the past 22 years. "He drives up in his Mercedes and shows no respect whatsoever."

Shop local, City Hall!

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news@sfbg.com

On Dec. 3, 2008, just before noon, Mayor Gavin Newsom arrived at a press conference in Noe Valley to remind city residents why it’s important to shop locally. The mayor climbed out of his shiny new hybrid SUV, walked into the Ark Toy Company, showed charts and graphs, and talked about how money spent in town helps the local economy. Joined by Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Newsom urged holiday shoppers to look first in San Francisco before buying something on the Internet or in some suburban mall.

The mayor’s shop-local press conference was a clear sign that the debate over the role of small business in the San Francisco economy is over. Everyone from the mayor’s business advisors to the Chamber of Commerce to small business advocates and progressive economists now agrees that small local businesses provide the vast majority of the jobs, keep their money in town, and generate more tax dollars, more wealth, and more prosperity for this city than the big out-of-town chains.

It was a picture-perfect scene, until KPIX-TV reporter Hank Plante asked the mayor an embarrassing question: Why, he wanted to know, did the Mayor’s Office buy Newsom’s new car in Colma?

Newsom said he didn’t have a clue.

Actually, the reason was pretty simple: the dealership in Colma submitted the lowest bid. But San Francisco lost out on the sales tax, a local Chevy dealer that was going out of business lost a local sale, San Francisco workers lost a commission — and in the end, the city almost certainly lost more on the deal than it saved with the Colma discount.

That’s the untold story behind the mayor’s promotion. San Francisco, as a buyer of goods and services worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, does a terrible job at shopping local. Indeed, for years small business advocates have been trying to get city officials to make it easier for local merchants to get city contracts — and they’ve made very little progress.

"I’ve worked so hard on this, year after year, and nothing ever happens," Scott Hauge, a small business activist and organizer, told us. "After a while, I just threw in the towel."

Hauge is devoting his energy these days to statewide issues. But on the local level, there’s a growing sense that the city needs to do more to help small local businesses get their share of the massive public spending pie.

"The Small Business Commission has made it clear that this will be a priority over the next year," Regina Dick-Endrizzi, the commission’s acting director, told us.

Nobody knows exactly what percentage of city contracts for goods and services go to local businesses. Hauge said the Mayor’s Office did a limited survey about a year ago, but the data wasn’t very good. And while Newsom signed an executive order in 2005 directing departments to look for ways to patronize local businesses, there’s not much to show for it.

"I think probably less than 10 percent [of city spending] goes to local businesses," Hauge said.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, a former small business commissioner, agrees. "I think it’s accurate to say that at least 70 to 90 percent of all city contracts go to out-of-town businesses," he told us.

As Dick-Endrizzi pointed out, city purchasing has strict rules — and for good reason. "In most cases, you have to put out a request for proposals and take the lowest bid," she said. "If you didn’t have that, you’d have a big problem with favoritism."

But when the lowest bid is the only criterion, San Francisco businesses are at a distinct disadvantage.

"Say a city agency wants to buy five hammers," said Steven Cornell, owner of Brownie’s Hardware. "I have the hammers for $6, but somebody in Nowhere, Miss., can sell them for $5.99.

"Well, the shop in Mississippi doesn’t have to pay San Francisco’s minimum wage, doesn’t have to pay for sick days, doesn’t have to pay for health care … We’ve asked businesses to contribute to all these good social policies, then those businesses get penalized because someone else can sell something cheaper."

Cornell — who says he agrees that local businesses should pay well and give their workers benefits — is frustrated that when it comes to purchasing, the city doesn’t give anything back. "We lost S&C Ford, we lost Ellis Brooks Chevrolet," he said. "Those were all union jobs, with good benefits. And how many cars did the city buy from them?"

When Cornell was on the Small Business Commission, he remembered some small locally owned cabinet-making shops came to complain about a $4 million city contract for woodwork. "They told us that they lost the contract to a Canadian firm," he said. "The costs of operating in San Francisco were higher than in Canada, so they couldn’t compete."

"We do not as a city reflect the fact that we ask employers to do good things for their workers," Chiu added. "When we spend perhaps $1 billion a year in city contracts, those employers don’t have a level playing field."

Sure, on the surface and in the short term, the city gets a better deal when it awards contracts based entirely on price. But San Francisco has, as a matter of public policy, already decided there are good reasons to give minority-owned contractors some advantage in bidding, and that public contractors should pay prevailing union wages and offer benefits to domestic partners. Local enterprises get a modest advantage in some bids, but nowhere near enough to make up for the cost difference of operating in San Francisco.

And as Newsom himself has made clear, spending money locally has a long-term economic benefit that almost certainly outweighs the price differential in most bids. "When Newsom bought his car in Colma, the city lost the sales taxes, and lost the multiplier effect of the money being spent in town," Cornell noted.

In fact, a 2007 study by Civic Economics, sponsored by the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance, showed that if city residents shifted just 10 percent of their purchasing from national chains to locally-owned businesses, the city would gain 1,300 new jobs and $200 million in economic activity every year.

Imagine the activity — the positive benefits to the local economy — that would come with the city shifting, say, 25 percent of its spending to local businesses.

Obviously the city can’t buy everything in town. "Nobody in San Francisco makes Muni trains," Cornell noted. But a lot of what city departments buy, from hammers and paper to cars and trucks, is available from local suppliers — or could be. "If the city made it known it was looking to buy something locally, some entrepreneur would come along and figure out a way to supply it," Cornell said.

So how could this work on a policy level? It’s not that complicated. The city controller, or the Human Rights Commission, which oversees contracting policy, could devise a formula showing how much the cost of complying with city laws like the minimum wage, health care, and sick days (laws that most of us, and many small businesses, fully support) drives up the cost of doing business in San Francisco. Then give local merchants an equivalent advantage in the bidding process.

In other words, if the hammers at Brownie’s Hardware cost 25 cents more than the hammers in Nowhere, Miss., because Cornell pays for his workers’ health insurance, he should only have to come within 25 cents of the cut-rate suppliers’ price to get the city’s business. And if the taxpayers have to fork over a few cents more to buy local hammers, the money will come back, and more, from the demonstrated benefits of shopping locally.

Chiu thinks that’s a good idea, and he’s already taken the first steps to forcing the city to shop local. Chiu introduced legislation in April requiring the city to set aside a portion of all contracts for locally-wned businesses and to increase the financial advantage local firms get in bidding.

And at Chiu’s request, the HRC will appear before the supervisors Land Use Committee May 11 to present the latest data on how much city spending goes to local businesses. "I’ve been asking for this for two years," Chiu said.

"It is unwise for our city not to take $1 of public money and give it to a local business that will pass that dollar onto its local employee, who will then spend it at another local business," he added. "The multiplier effect of this is that money spent locally is better for the economy, and for the taxpayers."

Our 2009 Small Business Awards

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>>More on SFBG.com
Why can’t City Hall shop local?

EMPLOYEE-OWNED BUSINESS AWARD

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Photo by Pat Mazzera

CHURCH STREET FLOWERS

"It was really all about trust," says Stephanie Foster of Church Street Flowers, when asked about the benefits and perils of transferring ownership of the delightful bouquet boutique — and perennial Guardian Best of the Bay winner — near the Castro to the employees. Foster, along with Rachel Shinfeld and Brianna Foehr, took over in December 2008 from previous owners Michael Ritz and Thomas Teel, who’d run the shop for a decade. "The three of us had worked here for a while and we knew our stuff, so Michael and Tom knew they could rely on us to preserve the legacy. And the outpouring of support from our neighbors and regular customers has been overwhelming."

The ownership change of the cozy shop, bursting with vibrant blooms and friendly energy, went off without a hitch. "We were part of the lucky few who received a small business loan before the economic collapse," Shinfeld says. "But our business plan was smart, and the bank saw that we knew what we were doing." And, even in the current climate, business is thriving. "Our arrangements aren’t your standard cookie-cutter stuff," Foster says. "People nowadays want personalized, reasonably priced, green-minded, and locally sourced. We fit into all that — most of our flowers are from the downtown flower market and we keep an eye out for organic. Plus we strive to create a real connection with our customers, so we can give them exactly what they want."

"Sure, there have been some adjustments," Shinfeld adds. "There’s a lot of paperwork — and the first thing we needed to tackle was a Web site redesign. But our experience working here helped us through, and I think we’re just beginning to blossom in our new roles." (Marke B.)

CHURCH STREET FLOWERS

212 Church, SF

(415) 553-7762

www.churchstreetflowers.com

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GOLDEN SURVIVOR AWARD

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Photo by Charles Russo

GREEN APPLE BOOKS

What is the special ingredient that transforms a business from just another store into a place that makes people feel inspired and connected? After 42 years as a San Francisco independent bookseller, Green Apple Books and Music seems to have found it. Located on Clement Street in a building that predates the 1906 quake, it’s a "big, sprawling, dusty and funky new and used bookstore," as co-owner Pete Mulvihill describes it, creating an atmosphere for interactions that might seem impossible in a big-box store. Several weeks ago, for instance, a customer approached the store clerks, presented a CD, and requested that they play it. He also asked them to clear out the philosophy room. "I want it to myself for just a minute," he explained. The staff complied, the music started, and the man whisked his girlfriend into the philosophy room and proposed to her.

"To me, that’s an honor that somebody loves the place so much that they would propose to their girlfriend here," says Mulvihill, one of three owners and an employee for more than 15 years. A founding member of the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance, he has been at the forefront of a push to identify and promote the city’s small, independent businesses. "Locally-owned businesses recirculate more money in the local economy than national chains," the SFLOMA Web site points out.

"Frankly, we’re invested in the community," Mulvihill explains. "[We] love San Francisco, and we don’t want to go anywhere." (Rebecca Bowe)

GREEN APPLE BOOKS

506 Clement, SF

(415) 387-2272

www.greenapplebooks.com

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CHAIN ALTERNATIVE AWARD

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Photo by Charles Russo

HUT LANDON

Hut Landon is responsible the past few years for helping direct millions of dollars into small business in San Francisco and beyond, and millions more into the local economy.

He does it through his energetic and creative leadership of two key organizations that promote the interests of locally-owned small business. Landon has been the executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), which promotes the interests of 200 independent bookstores in the region. He is also executive director of the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance (SFLOMA).

Under Landon’s stewardship, the two groups commissioned a pioneering 2007 study that quantified the value of locally-owned businesses in the city. Their stunning finding: if consumers redirected l0 percent of their retail purchases from chains to locally-owned merchants, the result would generate about $200 million for the economy, l,295 jobs, and $72 million new income for workers.

Landon’s timing could not have been better. As the economy tanked, local merchants and neighborhood business organizations used the l0 percent consumer shift as a mantra. The study also pointed out that the local economy could get another big boost if the city would shop locally with the tens of millions it now spends outside the city for goods and services.

Landon likes to use the example of two brothers who live together. One works on Potrero Hill and eats lunch at one of the many locally-owned restaurants. The other works at Stonestown shopping center and eats at a chain restaurant because that’s all there is out there. The Potrero Hill money, he points out, stays in the community. The chain store money is sent back to headquarters. (Bruce Brugmann)

HUT LANDON

Northern California Independent Booksellers Association

1007 General Kennedy, SF

(415) 561-7686

www.nciba.com

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SMALL BUSINESS ADVOCATE

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Photo by Abi Kelly

REGINA DICK-ENDRIZZI

Small business owners often feel as if they don’t have many advocates at City Hall. But they do have Regina Dick-Endrizzi.

Dick-Endrizzi, acting director of the Small Business Commission, has been moving rapidly on ways to help small businesses feel more comfortable dealing with the city — and to help them thrive in a tough economic environment. She helped establish the Small Business Assistance Center, which guides local merchants and prospective entrepreneurs through the thicket of city regulations. "It’s a tremendous asset," she told us. "When people walk through the door, we can take the time to help them develop a roadmap to doing business here." And she’s a driving force behind the Shop Local campaign, which will launch this month with bus shelter and bus-side ads designed to encourage San Franciscans to keep their money in town (co-sponsored by the Guardian).

Known in political circles as a former aide to Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, Dick-Endrizzi has a solid background in business. She moved to San Francisco in 1986 to open the Haight Street Buffalo Exchange store, and worked with that company for 13 years. "We bought our inventory from local people, and I had to have a close relationship with local small businesses," she said. "I have an intimate understanding of what it takes to run a business."

After several years in Mirkarimi’s office, she learned of the opening at the Small Business Commission, and plans to stay there for a while. "I truly believe in what this department offers to small business," she said. "There’s such a tremendous need." (Tim Redmond)

REGINA DICK-ENDRIZZI OFFICE OF SMALL BUSINESS

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, SF

(415) 554-6134

www.sfgov.org

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GOOD NEIGHBOR AWARD

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URBAN SOLUTIONS

Urban Solutions has its roots in the South of Market Foundation, an economic development corporation formed in 1992 in response to what SoMa merchants, residents, and community-based organizations felt was a lack of accountability in their neighborhood’s development.

A decade later, the organization changed its name and Urban Solutions was born. Two years after that, the burgeoning nonprofit opened a second office, this time in the Western Addition, becoming an important source of service in both neighborhoods.

Urban Solution’s executive director Jenny McNulty says she is currently excited about her organization’s Green Business initiative, which helps educate small business on how to conserve resources and reduce their carbon footprints — and save money in the process.

McNulty is also amped about Urban Solution’s effort — undertaken with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency — to revitalize Sixth Street’s commercial corridor.

"We’re expanding our Green Business Initiative program, which offers free consulting to help small businesses go green by implementing cost-saving practices to increase the sustainability of their business operations," McNulty said.

Urban Solutions’ Sixth Street revitalization effort includes beautifying the area and helping businesses, in conjunction with Redevelopment Agency grants, by improving their facades, installing new awnings, repainting buildings, and replacing windows, storefronts, and entrance ways.

"Our focus is low-income businesses," McNulty said. (Sarah Phelan)

URBAN SOLUTIONS

1083 Mission, SF

(415) 553-4433

www.urbansolutionssf.org

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GOOD NEIGHBOR AWARD

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Photo by Abi Kelly

JENS-PETER JUNGCLAUSSEN

Jens-Peter Jungclaussen had a dream: Buy a gutted, camouflage-painted school bus on eBay, convert it to biodiesel, and put it to use as a mobile classroom by day and a party on wheels by night, a rollicking omnibus of education, culture, and sustainability. With a few flicks of his wrist, Jungclaussen, a former German windsurfing pro and biology and PE teacher, transforms the bus to suit the need at hand — pulling down a movie screen from the roof; unpacking a buffet table, wet bar, or set of turntables from beneath the seats; or simply switching on the "party lights." Dubbed das Frachtgut ("the good freight"), the bus has hosted dinner parties on Twin Peaks, ecology classes in Muir Woods, sunrise raves on undisclosed beaches, and screenings of The Big Lebowski (complete with bowling and White Russians). It also serves as a mobile billboard for its various local, eco-friendly sponsors and can be rented for field trips and corporate events.

The ever-enthusiastic and tireless Jungclaussen recently turned his attentions to youth education, this year offering for the first time a "mobile summer camp." Teaming up with fellow teachers Michael Murnane, Gretchen Nelson, Justin Ancheta, and Leah Greenberg, he’ll present three, 11-day sessions on wheels that will introduce young people to a variety of Bay Area natural, artistic, and historical treasures. But don’t worry, the parties will still keep rolling. As Jungclaussen promises of the bus, "What you want it to be, it will become." (Marke B.)

JENS-PETER JUNGCLAUSSEN

(415) 424-1058

www.teacherbus.com

————

ARTHUR JACKSON DIVERSITY IN SMALL BUSINESS AWARD

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IRENE HERNANDEZ-FEIKS

It’s easy to assume that the purpose of Chillin’, the brainchild of Mexico City native Irene Hernandez-Feiks, is simply to have a good time. But the multimedia parties Hernandez-Feiks has been throwing for 11 years are much more than entertainment. Their actual purpose is to stimulate the economy and support one of the most difficult small businesses to sustain: the business of art.

A former designer herself, Hernandez-Feiks started out organizing weekly happy hours at 111 Minna where she would feature up to five independent Bay Area designers. Her philosophy? Charge the designers nothing for the opportunity and take no commission. The formula worked so well that Chillin’ eventually grew from weeknight happy hours to Saturday night events, complete with DJs. Now Chillin’ is a full-fledged happening — indeed, the June 13 anniversary show at Mezzanine features 180 photographers and artists, 40 filmmakers, 80 fashion designers, and 12 DJs.

But watching Chillin’ grow — and seeing participating artists transform themselves from local to international names — isn’t enough for Hernandez-Feiks. She also devotes much of her time to charity work, including involvement with Gen Art, the Mexican Consulate Cultural Affairs division, the United Nations and Natural World Museum, and the Art Seed Apprenticeship Program benefiting Bayview- Hunters Point youth.

"Because of Chillin’, I have relationships with so many artists," she says. "I want to use those connections to help everybody out." (Molly Freedenberg)

IRENE HERNANDEZ-FEIKS

Chillin Productions

(415) 285-1998

www.chillinproductions.com

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

The first time the Guardian made an issue of the role small businesses play in the local economy, official San Francisco freaked out.

It was 1985, and only a handful of people were talking about sustainable local economies, about the connection between environmentalism and community-based economics, about how malls and chains stores were ruining America, and how spending money locally would create more jobs, with less waste of energy, than shopping at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.

The Guardian hired MIT economist David Birch to produce a study on job generation in San Francisco. His conclusion: small, locally-owned, independent businesses generated the vast majority of jobs in San Francisco. That directly contradicted the fundamental thesis driving city planning at the time; the planners and the mayor (Dianne Feinstein) argued that high-rise office development was the city’s prime source of new jobs.

The day the study came out, the city planning director (Dean Macris) called in his senior staff and directed them to work all weekend poring over our study and trying to figure out how to discredit it. Feinstein ignored us. The supervisors continued to allow high-rises to sprout, damaging small business and the local economy. The Chamber of Commerce was so disdainful of small business that a group of Fisherman’s Wharf merchants quit in disgust.

Today that battle is over. Done. The argument isn’t even an argument anymore. Everyone, from Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Chamber on down, agrees that locally-owned businesses are the lifeblood of the San Francisco economy. The mayor goes around urging people to "shop local."

But as we suggest in this special issue on San Francisco small business, the city itself isn’t doing such a great job at that. In fact, the public sector in general has been trained for so long to do business with the lowest bidder that the role a major institution like the city and county of San Francisco can play in boosting the local economy has gotten lost.

A 2007 study sponsored by the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance shows that if local residents shifted just 10 percent of their purchases from big chains to local businesses, the city’s economy would pick up $200 million and 1,300 new jobs a year. Imagine if City Hall, BART, state agencies, the school district — every public sector agency in this city — did the same. *

Making sunshine work

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EDITORIAL The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and the Ethics Commission are talking to each other, which is some small progress on one of the most annoying lingering issues in San Francisco. But the joint meeting last week, while positive in tone, didn’t solve the basic problem.

Under the city’s Sunshine Ordinance, the task force investigates complaints about city agencies improperly withholding records or meeting in secret. If the task force members find that there’s been a violation — and that the matter is serious enough to merit enforcement action against the city officials involved — the file is forwarded to Ethics, which can charge elected and appointed officials with misconduct.

But that never happens.

Fourteen times the task force has asked Ethics for action, and 14 times those cases have been dismissed — with little serious investigation. In fact, at the April 24 meeting, John St. Croix, the executive director of Ethics, admitted that his staff doesn’t always interview the complainants in these cases. Instead, Ethics asks the respondent for his or her side, and relies heavily on the advice of the city attorney.

That’s a problem in itself, because sometimes City Attorney Dennis Herrera will advise a department to keep something secret when the task force — which has its own lawyer, also from the City Attorney’s Office — disagrees. And in some cases it’s very clear that city officials have willfully ignored, defied, or sought to circumvent the open-government law.

Mayor Newsom, for example, refuses to release his full appointments calendar, which would show the public whom he’s meeting with — a key way for San Franciscans to understand who is influencing, and seeking to influence, city policy. The New York Times just published a detailed investigative report on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s ties to Wall Street financiers, basing the story in significant part on a review of Geithner’s appointment calendars. The New York City Federal Reserve Bank — a secretive institution if ever there was one — released the calendars of Geithner’s appointments when he was bank president. Newsom can certainly do the same, and the law requires him to. But he simply ignores that mandate.

The district attorney also has the authority to enforce the law, but has never filed a single sunshine violation case.

The San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance is supposed to be the best and most comprehensive law in the state ensuring public access to government activities. But it’s rendered almost meaningless when city officials can defy it, routinely, and suffer no consequences.

The current enforcement system is simply not working. The supervisors should hold hearings on this with the goal of placing a charter amendment on the ballot giving the task force the independent authority to order documents released and adopting a more effective way to sanction officials who disregard the law. The task force should also have the right to take cases directly to the Ethics commissioners and prosecute them in public before the full commission. It’s the biggest open government issue in the city right now. Which supe wants to take it on? *

CJC just criminalizes the poor

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OPINION Two SF police officers stood; another was in the car at the curb, door ajar, lights flashing onto the sidewalk. It was 3:00 p.m. and the lights, the three police officers, and the squad car were all focused on one small man huddled next to a shopping cart and a torn Hefty bag, shining steel handcuffs glittering off his deep brown wrists. The man said nothing as they arrested him. His "crime": sitting, standing, sleeping while houseless in San Francisco.

It’s illegal to be houseless in the United States. In fact, arguably it’s illegal to be poor in a nation that has somehow equated urban messiness with the presence of youth, adults, and elders sitting, standing, and convening in public and cleanliness with emptiness and the lack of people, color, and things. Since the new $2.7 million Community Justice Center (CJC) — a.k.a. the poverty court — opened in San Francisco, police have been out in droves drumming up customers.

There are so many wrong things about the CJC, beginning with criminalizing people in poverty just for being poor. As a poverty scholar and formerly houseless child and young adult who was incarcerated for the sole act of living without a home, I can say for a fact: it didn’t matter how many times you arrested me or my Boricua houseless mama — it didn’t take us out of homelessness. In fact, it made our situation more compounded, more complicated, more intractable.

The city is grappling with a $350 million budget deficit — it has been cutting back and closing vital emergency services for houseless people, like the Tenderloin Resource Center (TARC) and Caduceus, for example, which does truly revolutionary work with houseless folks who struggle with a psychological disability.

But I think one of the most terrifying aspects of the CJC is the institutionalization of a new form of criminalized service provision. This stems from the idea that the delivery of services, advocacy, mental health, physical health, and housing are somehow more urgently needed, deserved, or valid if they are triggered by arrest and adjudication.

At the hour of 3:00 p.m., near the corner of Hyde and Larkin streets, the system was triggered by Richie, a 56-year-old who used to hold down a construction job until he was laid off. Arresting him didn’t get Richie a job. The CJC didn’t get Richie a job. But, the folks there would argue, they referred him to job training and a temporary shelter bed. And guess what? Other organizations that didn’t arrest Richie also referred him to job training and a temporary shelter bed.

My mother and I didn’t get affordable housing, mental health services, or access to free child-care for my infant son because I was arrested.

Acts of revolutionary legal advocacy, art, support networks, and political awareness, like the ones I learned through the Suitcase Clinic, POOR Magazine, WRAP, the Coalition on Homelessness, and People Organized to Win Employment Rights, were what took me out of the sorrow and desperation and depth of struggle of poverty.

Criminalization, arrest, and adjudication of people in poverty really accomplishes only one thing: it brings the prison industrial complex to a neighborhood near you. *

Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia is the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America and the cofounder of POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork.

What do (people) want?

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:
Have you heard of a study that analyzed biometric feedback from self-identified male bisexuals, and the notable finding was that the overwhelming majority of these men were in fact homosexual, not bisexual? The conclusion of the study was that "true" male bisexuality is extremely rare. (For what it’s worth, I consider myself a "true" male bisexual, but what do I know?)

I also heard about another study from at least 10 years ago that tracked the sexual fantasies of self-identified lesbians, and the surprising result was that some 50 percent of these women actually fantasized about men while doing it with their female partners.

Have you heard of these, and would you care to comment?
Love,

Actually Here!

Dear Here:

I have, of course, and they’re all fascinating, partly for the science (which is generally super-simple and not easily misinterpreted) and partly for the reactions in the various communities whenever one of these studies is reported, which are frankly pretty funny.

The "there’s no such thing as male bisexuality" studies have received the most press, and the biggest, most offended reactions, but it’s not like the researchers at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto set out to disprove the existence of an entire sexual orientation! All they did was hook up some volunteers to a plethysmograph and show them porn. I think the first researchers were probably as surprised as anyone when the self-identified bi men failed to respond in a recognizably "bi" manner. About three-quarters of the bi men read as completely gay according to their penises (do penises lie?), while the rest were indistinguishable from the self-identified straight guys. There was no recognizable "bi" pattern of arousal, and the subjects seemed overwhelmingly to fall on one or the other end of the Kinsey scale:

Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger… the study’s lead author.

So obviously, you think you exist but you’re wrong, Bi Guy!

Okay, no. What do I really think? I think, for one thing , it’s all funny since in my little bubble of not only San Francisco-ness but San Francisco sex educator-ness, fake bi guys who are actually straight but want hot bi chicks to think they’re cool way outnumber bi guys who are actually gay but closeted. Also, I do think you exist. Clearly truly bi men are rarer even than we thought, but I’m fairly certain that you are not a figment of your own or my imagination, and I think sexuality is a mite more complicated than penile plethysmography.

Another study, described here in a ScienceDaily article from 2003, and distinguished by including only people who identified as gay or straight, turned up more bisexual women than expected, but replicated earlier results where gay and straight (but not bi) men responded consistent with their self-identification: In contrast, both homosexual and heterosexual women showed a bisexual pattern of psychological as well as genital arousal. That is, heterosexual women were just as sexually aroused by watching female stimuli as by watching male stimuli.

The extraordinary article on female desire that ran in The New York Times Magazine (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire) introduced recent research by Meredith Chivers, who’s been following up on the research above with the added fillip of throwing some ape porn in the mix and requiring volunteers to report their own perceptions of their arousal levels, which proved wildly inaccurate: During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.

Good to know!

As for the studies (self-reported behavior, no telemetry) that show a high percentage of self-described lesbians fantasizing about men while having lesbisex, eh. People fantasize about all kinds of things, particularly things they feel uncomfortable about. Are those women fake lesbians? The furthest I can go with that is to say that we’ve seen that women are much (so much!) more likely than men to be bisexual by attraction. I’m assuming that some of the women studied are physically attracted to both, but emotionally more attached to women ("Whom do you fall in love with?" is a hugely important but oft-neglected measure of sexual orientation) and some are into women but enjoy fantasies of committing unnatural acts with men. That some must be really not that into chicks but have chosen for whatever reason to live as lesbians is undeniable but just not that important. They wouldn’t be the first people to partner with someone not of their preferred gender, or the last, and their existence does not cast doubt on anyone else’s authenticity. Can anyone do that?

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Historic proportions

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news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY "110 The Embarcadero" is the stately address of a building that doesn’t exist yet. But the battle that continues to be waged over this proposed development, along with skirmishes that are brewing over other proposed buildings nearby, speaks volumes about a complicated tug-of-war that is emerging over a prominent slice of the city’s northern waterfront.

Preservationists are concerned about saving a union hall on Steuart Street that housed the International Longshoremen’s Association during the strike of 1934, which would be razed to build 110 The Embarcadero. That’s one of a number of historic properties critics say could face the wrecking ball as new building plans are drafted. Other proposals, among them 8 Washington and 555 Washington, have neighborhood activists anxious about long skyscraper shadows that could be cast on public parks, the development pressure that would result from allowing skyscrapers to exceed height limits, and views of the bay that would be enhanced from inside luxury high rises but blocked to others.

On the other side of the coin, building-trades union members increasingly desperate for work are fervently advocating for new construction projects that would open the spigot on jobs. And the Port of San Francisco hopes development money will help cover its huge infrastructure backlog.

Meanwhile a report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission noted that the waterfront stretch from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge is one of the most vulnerable to sea-level rise. As plans for this part of the Embarcadero are hashed out in public hearings and architects’ sketches, a new reality must be factored into the mix: some of that land could soon be underwater.

MISSING HISTORY


110 The Embarcadero initially won praise for its goal of attaining the highest certification level for nationwide green-building standards. Sponsored by Hines Interests, it was a shining example of ecodesign that even featured living vines climbing the sides. Even though it would shoot 40 percent above the allowable height limit of 84 feet, the San Francisco Planning Commission gave it a green light.

Enthusiasm waned, however, when historic preservationists pointed out that the building slated for demolition — 113 Steuart St. — was an ILA labor hall during the famous maritime strike of 1934, which erupted into violence after two union members were gunned down by police and led to a four-day general strike that paralyzed the city. "Harry Bridges rose to fame in this building," says architectural historian Bradley Weidmeier, referring to the famous labor leader. "Labor historians from around the country are going to be blocking this."

Hines hired a leading historic architecture firm, Page & Turnbull, to conduct a historic assessment of that building as part of the planning process. Yet the initial report neglected to mention anything about the building being at the center of a profound moment in San Francisco’s labor history.

Former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, an opponent of the project, says the gaps in information weren’t hard to miss. "The fact that it was ground zero for bloody Thursday, that it was ground zero for the general strike … that people were shot in front of there, that their bodies lay inside. You want to know how we found that out? We got it online," Peskin said.

Page & Turnbull later submitted an addendum, including historic photos depicting people crowding into the two-story building to pay respects to the slain union members. The firm acknowledged its historic significance this time, but asserted that the now-empty building had undergone too many retrofits to comply with historic landmark requirements.

This, too, was challenged by project opponents. "You can look at pictures of dead people laying there on the sidewalk with that building in the background, and look at it today, and godammit, it’s pretty much the same building," Peskin says.

The Board of Supervisors in mid-March approved an appeal of the project and instructed city planners to prepare an environmental impact report. Ralph Schoenman, a preservation advocate who says he met with board members about the project, told us that "members of the board were plainly shocked by finding out that the historic report was so flawed and untrue."

That feeling may have lingered for some at the April 21 bard meeting when Supervisors voted 7-4 to reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s nomination of Ruth Todd, a Page & Turnbull principal, to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.

WHOSE WATERFRONT?


Though the project has been stalled, the issues it stirred are gaining momentum. The picture of what this stretch of the Embarcadero could look like is shaping up to be quite different from developers’ gauzy artistic renderings. Sue Hestor, a land-use lawyer, is a driving force behind a community-led meeting scheduled for June 24 at the headquarters of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 34 (the successor to ILA) to initiate a new approach to development along the western edge of the Embarcadero.

"Threatened demolition of the 1934 Waterfront Strike headquarters at 113 Steuart has pulled us together," Hestor wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail. "The community will proactively start defining changes we want. No more waiting for a developer proposal, then meekly responding. The community gets to define how the city should look … along the northeast waterfront. When you start at the Embarcadero it is possible to weave in so many areas, so many neighborhoods, so much of our political and immigrant and labor history."

ILWU members are joining with preservationists in the effort to preserve 113 Steuart. "We are at a historic moment when working people are under unprecedented attack," a team of six Local 34 leaders wrote in a recent statement opposing the demolition. "That living history is a prologue to our struggles of the future."

Not all labor unions agree. At a picket staged by San Francisco’s Building and Construction Trades Council outside a Democratic Party luncheon April 21, protesters carried a few flew signs reading "How can we feed our kids with history?" The signs referenced the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, but the same question might be asked of 110 The Embarcadero, which was favored by building-trade workers.

Neighborhood groups are also worried because the construction of the two proposed 84-foot condominium towers at 8 Washington could cause the adjacent Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club to lose half its facility. "Six hundred to 700 kids come every summer to learn to swim and to play tennis," Club director Lee Radner says. "To us, it’s just a matter of the developer not considering the moral issues of the neighborhood club that has given so much to the community." Friends of Golden Gateway (FOGG), which formed to preserve the club in the face of development, has hired Hestor as its attorney.

Because the development would be partially built on a surface parking lot controlled by the Port Commission, a parcel held to be in the public trust under state law, developers proposed a land-swap to get around provisions prohibiting residential uses in those parcels. Renee Dunn, a spokesperson for the Port Commission, noted that the Port’s annual revenues total $65 million, while the amount that would be needed for repairs and maintenance of its century-old infrastructure is almost $2 billion. In general, "Public-private developments provide the dollars needed to make improvements," she told us.

In the wake of concerns about 8 Washington, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu sent a letter to the Port Commission requesting an update to the waterfront plan for that area. "Concerns are currently being raised regarding the proposed development … and the future development of seawall lots along the northern waterfront, and I share many of these concerns," Chiu wrote. In response, the Port agreed to conduct a six-to-eight month focus study for those seawall lots.

Meanwhile, a quietly growing problem may mean that plans for this stretch of the Embarcadero will get more complicated. A report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicts a 16-inch rise in the level of the San Francisco Bay by 2050, and a 55-inch rise by 2100, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Along San Francisco’s waterfront, the most vulnerable area will be from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge, the report found. "Sea-level rise has been linear, and it’s continuing, and we expect that based on what we know about climate change, it will accelerate," notes Joe LaClair of BCDC. In the event of storm surges, he adds, "we will have to find a way to protect the financial district from inundation."

As local governments begin to get up to speed on mitigating the effects of climate change, new questions — beyond developers’ plans vs. neighborhood input — will have to come into play. One that BCDC plans to tackle in coming months, LaClair notes, is: "What does resilient shoreline development look like?" It’s a good one to start asking now.

Going nuclear

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news@sfbg.com

April Fool’s Day is known as a day for practical jokes designed to embarrass the gullible.

But Assembly Member Tom Ammiano’s legislative aide Quentin Mecke says the April 1 letter that Ammiano and fellow Assembly Members Fiona Ma and state Sen. Leland Yee sent Mayor Gavin Newsom urging him not to support a proposal to bury a radiologically-contaminated dump beneath a concrete cap on the Hunters Point Shipyard was dead serious.

In their letter, Ammiano, Ma, and Lee expressed concern over that fact that federal officials don’t want to pay to haul toxic and radioactive dirt off the site before it’s used for parkland. They noted that an "estimated 1.5 million tons of toxics and radioactive material still remain" on the site.

A 1999 ordinance passed by San Francisco voters as Proposition P "recognized that the U.S. Navy had for decades negligently polluted the seismically-active shipyard, and that the city should not accept early transfer of the shipyard to San Francisco’s jurisdiction, unless and until it is cleaned up to the highest standards," the legislators wrote. "Given the information we have, a full cleanup needs to happen," Mecke told us.

But Newsom’s response so far suggests he may be willing to accept the Navy’s proposal.

WAR WASTE


From the 1940s to 1974, according to the Navy’s 2004 historical radiological assessment, the Navy dumped industrial, domestic, and solid waste, including sandblast waste, on a portion of the site known as Parcel E. Among the materials that may be underground: decontamination waste from ships returning from Operation Crossroads — in which atomic tests in the South Pacific went awry, showering Navy vessels with a tidal wave of radioactive material.

"We have serious questions about the city accepting what is essentially a hazardous and radioactive waste landfill adjacent to a state park along the bay, in a high liquefaction zone with rising sea levels," the letter reads. "We understand that the Navy is pushing for a comparatively low-cost engineering solution which the Navy believes will contain toxins and radioactive waste in this very unstable geology. We hope that you and your staff aggressively oppose this option."

Keith Forman, the Navy’s base realignment and closure environmental coordinator for the shipyard, told the Guardian that the Navy produced a report that did a thorough analysis of the site.

The Pentagon estimates that excavating the dump would cost $332 million, last four years, and cause plenty of nasty smells. Simply leaving the toxic stew in place and putting a cap on it would cost $82 million.

Espanola Jackson, who has lived in Bayview Hunters Point for half a century, says the community has put up with bad smells for decades thanks to the nearby sewage treatment plant. "So what’s four more years?" Jackson told the Guardian.

Judging from his April 21 reply to the three legislators, who represent San Francisco in Sacramento, Newsom is committed only to a technically acceptable cleanup — which is not the same thing as pushing to completely dig up and haul away the foul material in the dump.

He noted that during his administration federal funding for shipyard clean-up "increased dramatically, with almost a half-billion dollars secured in the last six years." Newsom also told Ammiamo, Ma, and Yee that the city won’t accept the Parcel E landfill until both the state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the federal Environmental Protection Agency "agree that it will be safe for its intended use."

The intended use for Parcel E-2 is parks and open space, said Michael Cohen, Newsom’s right-hand man in the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The Navy won’t issue its final recommendations until next summer. "That’s when regulatory agencies decide what the clean up should be, whether that’s a dig and haul, a cap, or a mix of the two, " Cohen explained.

TRUCKS OR TRAINS?


Part of the Navy’s concern is the expense of trucking the toxic waste from San Francisco to a secure landfill elsewhere — someplace designed to contain this sort of material (and someplace less likely to have earthquakes that could shatter a cap and let the nasty muck escape).

David Gavrich and Eric Smith say the Navy is looking at the wrong solution. Gavrich, founder of the shipyard-based Waste Solutions Group and the San Francisco Bay Railroad, which transports waste and recyclables, and Eric Smith, founder of the biodiesel-converting company Green Depot, who shares space with Gavrich and a herd of goats that help keep the railyard surrounding their Cargo Way office weed-free, say the military solution is long-haul diesel trucks. But, he observes, the waste could be moved at far less cost (and less environmental impact) if it went by train.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a nonprofit that specializes in tracking military base reuse and cleanup operations, would also like to see the landfill removed, even though he’s not sure about the trucks vs. train options.

"We don’t have confidence about having a dump on San Francisco Bay," Bloom said. "I’m concerned about the relationship between budgetary dollars and remediation of the site. I’m concerned that the community’s voice, which is saying they’d like to see the landfill removed, is not being heard."

Mark Ripperda of EPA’s Region 9 told us that community acceptance is important, but a remedy must also be evaluated using nine specific criteria.

"A remedy must first meet the threshold criteria," Ripperda said. "If it passes the threshold test, then it is evaluated against the primary balancing criteria and finally the modifying criteria are applied."

Noting that he has not received any communication from either the Assembly Members or the Mayor’s Office concerning the Parcel E-2 cleanup, Ripperda said that "the evaluation of alternatives considered rail, barge, and truck transport, with rail being the most favorable transportation mode for the complete excavation alternative. However, the waste would still be transported and disposed into a landfill somewhere else and the alternatives must be evaluated under all nine criteria."

Ripperda said it’s feasible to remove the worst stuff — the "hot spots" — and cap the rest. "A cap will eliminate pathways for exposure and can be designed to withstand seismic events," he told us. "The landfill has been in place for decades and the groundwater data shows little leaching of contaminants."

Meanwhile Newsom has tried to redirect the problem to Ammiano, Ma, and Yee, saying he seeks their "active support in directing even more state and federal funds" toward cleaning up the shipyard. He made clear he wants to move the redevelopment project forward — now.

Sen. Mark Leno is carrying legislation that includes a state land swap vital to the city’s plans to allow Lennar Corp. to build housing and commercial space on the site.

But while Cohen claims the aim of the land trade is to "build another Crissy Field," some environmentalists worry it will bifurcate the southeast sector’s only major open space. They also suspect that was the reason Leno didn’t sign Ammiano’s April 1 letter.

Leno says that omission occurred because Sacramento-based lobbyist Bob Jiroux, who Leno claims drafted the letter, never asked Leno to sign. (Jiroux refused to comment.)

Claiming he would have signed Ammiano’s letter given the chance, Leno described Jiroux as a "good Democrat" who used to work for Sen. John Burton, but now works for Lang, Hansen, O’Malley, and Miller, a Republican-leaning lobbying firm in Sacramento whose clients include Energy Solutions, a Utah-based low-level nuclear waste disposal facility that stands to profit if San Francisco excavates Parcel E-2.

Ammiano dismisses the ensuing furor over Energy Solutions as a "tempest in a teapot.

"I signed that letter to Newsom because of the truth that it contains," Ammiano said. "Sure, there’s crazy stuff going on. But within the insanity, there’s a progressive message: the community wants radiological contaminants removed from the shipyard."

Arnold’s big hoax

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The choice facing California voters May 19 is, to put it mildly, unpleasant. The budget deal hammered out by the governor and legislative leaders — which these six ballot measures will confirm and implement — at least kept the state solvent and prevented a financial catastrophe. But the solution is just terrible, and will lock the state into a budgetary nightmare for years to come.

State Sen. Mark Leno, who supports the deal, makes no attempt to soft-peddle what went on here. It was, he told us, the result of "extortion." Because California has an arcane and counterproductive rule mandating that any state budget and any tax increases must be approved by two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature, and because Republicans control just enough votes to block any budget, and because those Republicans have all signed a written promise never to raise taxes under any circumstances, and because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t get the GOP to go along with his compromises and is unwilling to accept Democratic proposals that might escape the onerous supermajority, budget stalemate in tough times is almost guaranteed. And in this case, because the state was running out of cash and hundreds of thousands of people were about to be put out of work as state-funded projects shut down, the Democrats were forced to accept a compromise none of them like.

A small number of Republicans insisted on vast changes in the way California does business — and because the Democrats saw no other options, the GOP faction got much of what it wanted. The result: the Democratic Party leadership is campaigning for a series of measures that reflect, to a significant extent, a Republican view of how the state should be run.

The opposition to the package comes from the far right (which is upset because the budget deal includes some new taxes, albeit regressive ones) and, increasingly, progressives, who argue that the measures will make it harder for the state to meet the needs of a growing (and aging) population.

We’ve listened to both sides, researched the measures in depth, and concluded that the best choice for Californians is to reject Propositions 1A through 1F. The proposal may address (most of) this year’s budget woes and keep the state running for a while, but it will create a fiscal straightjacket on the order of Proposition 13 that will damage California and undermine any progressive policy hopes for many, many years into the future. If the voters accept this deal today, they’ll come to regret it.

Proposition 1A doesn’t quite reach the Republican holy grail — a cap on annual government spending — but it goes a long way in that direction. The measure would require the state to make annual contributions to a budget reserve fund until the reserve reaches 12.5 percent of general fund revenue. The state would have to set aside reserve money every year, even in very bad years. If next year’s budget deficit is as bad as this one, Prop. 1A would make it worse. It restricts the use of "unanticipated revenues" — meaning the state can’t spend money it might have in very good years. There’s a really complicated formula for when the state can dip into the reserve, and how it can be used, but the California Budget Project, the respected policy watchdog group, points out that the measure amounts to a cap in spending, one that won’t keep pace with California’s needs.

"Prop. 1A would not address California’s existing structural shortfall — the gap between revenues and expenditures — that exists in all but the best budget years," CBP notes. "By basing the new cap on a level of revenues that is insufficient to pay for the current level of programs and services, Prop. 1A would limit the state’s ability to restore reductions made during the current downturn out of existing revenues."

The guidelines for future spending don’t take into account the increased demand for public services California will face in the next few years. The population will increase by 29.4 percent over the 2000 level by 2020, state officials project, but the number of people 65 and older will increase by 75 percent. That will put a huge new demand on state services — and if Prop. 1A passes, the budget won’t be able to expand to meet those needs.

The budget compromise included some temporary tax increases. The sales tax is slated to go up by one cent on the dollar, the vehicle license fee will rise slightly, and there’s an across-the-board increase in income taxes. Sales taxes are the most regressive way to raise revenue, and the income tax hikes hit the rich and the middle class evenly — hardly a fair or progressive plan.

But that money is needed to close the horrendous budget gap, and the propositions are designed to make it hard for progressives to say no. If Prop. 1A and Prop. 1B go down, the taxes expire after two years. If those measures pass, the taxes continue until 2012.

Prop. 1B is part of a deal that the governor cut with the California Teachers Association, the largest union of educators in the state. It shifts some more money to the public schools to make up for what was cut this year and last. It’s a complicated formula, but in effect it probably does nothing more than what Prop. 98 — the state’s mandate to fund education — already requires. The problem is that the governor and the school districts disagree on what Prop. 98 says, and without 1B, it’s unlikely that money will be forthcoming. The money California’s public schools get under 1B is still woefully inadequate; and again, this does nothing to address the structural problems.

Prop. 1C allows the state to borrow $5 billion from future lottery revenues to help balance the current budget. Of course, that money won’t be available in future years — unless, as 1C suggests, the lottery can find ways to sell more tickets. The idea here: increase lottery revenue through better marketing, thus taking more money from poor people (the lottery is an overwhelmingly regressive source of income).

Prop 1D’s title, "Protects children’s services funding," is a complete lie. Instead it redirects money earmarked for early childhood programs into the general fund, essentially de-funding some of the most effective and inexpensive programs California offers. Prop. 1E is a similar deal — it temporarily suspends the program that funds mental health services with a tax on the very rich, and puts that money into the general fund instead.

Prop. F is just stupid — it prevents lawmakers and the governor from receiving pay increases when there’s a budget deficit. That’s not going to change anything in Sacramento.

We’re acutely aware of the risks inherent in voting down this intricately orchestrated budget compromise. In effect, the Legislature, which has been paralyzed by the two-thirds rule, will have to go back and try again. The governor, who is ineffective at best and a severe roadblock at worst, will be little help. And the anti-tax forces will claim that the voters have vindicated their position.

But let’s look at reality. The tax increases will be in effect for the next two years anyway. The state’s budget position has worsened in the past month, so the Legislature will have to figure out how to deal with an $8 billion additional shortfall no matter what happens.

And in the fall of 2010, state voters will almost certainly have a chance to repeal the two-thirds budget rule — and have a good chance to elect a Democratic governor.

California needs major, structural budget reform. If we thought this were just a temporary painful deal that would postpone the worst of the state’s problems until Schwarzenegger and the GOP obstructionists were gone, we’d be tempted to support the package. But these measures lock the state into an unacceptable budget situation forever.

Vote no on 1A–1F.

Pitting poor against poor

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OPINION In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), to fund the expansion of community-based mental health services. MHSA is funded through a 1 percent tax on the portion of a taxpayer’s income in excess of $1 million. It was a form of uniquely appropriate progressive taxation, making the rich pay for all the ways they test our sanity, made especially acute today in the wake of foreclosures and job losses.

Today, Gov. Schwarzenegger is leading a bipartisan assault on Prop. 63, which funds an array of needed services in California and San Francisco. By placing Proposition 1E on the May ballot, the governor is asking voters to divert MHSA money to pay for the budget deficit. This maneuver ignores the fact that California is a safer, saner place because of the act — 200,000 people are now enrolled in mental health services who were not in 2004.

The proposition pits the poor against the poor, making mental health consumers pay the price for the budget deadlock in Sacramento. Mental health services are designed to improve the lives of communities by minimizing the potential for homelessness and hospitalization. Prop. 1E, pitched as a two-year measure, leaves effective programs in the lurch, threatening resources in every neighborhood.

MHSA funds programs for youth and families affected by street and gang violence, queer youth showing early signs of mental health issues, and residents in supportive housing. One of its key accomplishments has been the expansion of resources designed to reach consumers in culturally appropriate ways, with an open process, allowing communities to design solutions to their own problems.

"After Prop. 63 was passed, people with untreated mental health needs saw a glimmer of hope," remarked James Keyes, who serves as a member of the San Francisco Mental Health Board. "In San Francisco alone, we were able to do workforce training, prevention, and housing retention among people with mental health concerns. These innovative programs might not be with us if Prop. 1E passes."

For whatever short-term savings Prop. 1E might provide, the long-term consequences are disastrous. The costs of untreated mental illnesses affect our public health system. Those who never get care, or who lose care, will likely find their jobs, housing, and relationships in peril, and will rely on the remaining (and much more expensive) threads of the social safety net.

Vote No on 1E and send a message to the state government that long-term budget solutions start with Prop. 63’s logic — progressive taxation on those with the most ability to pay. Letting the governor and the legislature cut essential survival services to balance the budget sets a horrible precedent. If voters let them get away with it, they will surely target poor people every time the budget is deadlocked. *

James Tracy works with Community Housing Partnership.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Gray Davis was a pretty poor governor. He ran as a moderate who could manage the state, but utterly failed to deal with the energy crisis of 2000-01, leaving rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills as his legacy. He cost the state billions. He presided over a legislative budget stalemate. He was a captive of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. He gave the Democratic Party a bad name.

And for all that, nothing he did was close to what his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Republicans in Sacramento are doing today.

Under Gov. Davis, California reduced the size of public school classes, mandating that K-4 teachers have no more than 20 students. That has made a huge difference in the classrooms, and the results show it. But it’s going to be almost impossible for most school districts to stick to that target now, because the schools are getting huge budget cuts.

So are all the other state services, and aid to counties, which means more layoffs and cuts at the local level. And still, the state is $8 billion more in the hole.

Democrats in the Legislature have tried everything they could think of. They negotiated with the Republicans, who have a veto over the budget because of the crazy two-thirds rule. They came up with a plan that fit what Schwarzenegger had been asking for, and he still refused to accept it. And now the Democratic leadership is forced to try to sell a series of state propositions that nobody likes, that will put California in worst financial straights, and that will have as bad a long-term impact on the state as Proposition 13.

Propositions 1A-1F are a terrible deal, the result of GOP blackmail and extortion — and they won’t even solve the problem. This governor is going to leave the state in the worse shape it’s been since the Great Depression. Almost makes you long for the days of Gray Davis.

In 1967, at the height of the antiwar movement, when American cities were in political chaos, a young tenant organizer named John Ross ran for San Francisco supervisor as a radical out of the Mission advocating rent control and an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, among other things. But one of his opponents discovered that Ross was a convicted felon who served two years and six months in federal prison for refusing the draft, so they took his name off the ballot.

Now, 42 years later, Ross — the writer, poet, unrepentant radical, and longtime Guardian correspondent, may be getting some recognition from the city. Sup. John Avalos is going to introduce a resolution honoring Ross for his extensive literary and political contributions to San Francisco. The May 12 ceremony, at 3:30 in the Board of Supervisors chambers, will be followed by "poems under the dome" — a poetry reading at City Hall at 5:30. If you want to help out (or donate money — please) contact Diamond Dave Whitaker at 240-0286 or Avalos’ office at 554-6975. *

Slow down the solar project

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EDITORIAL The concept is so good it’s hard to imagine why anyone would criticize it: the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to cover the Sunset Reservoir with solar panels, creating the largest municipal solar generating project in the country. The money would come from existing SFPUC revenue — no new taxpayer dollars. The Sierra Club loves the idea, and Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing it.

We agree that the reservoir is a perfect place for a solar project, and that the city ought to be pursuing this.

But the structure of the deal makes us uncomfortable — and the financing shows a serious flaw in how federal money for renewable energy is allocated.

Under the terms of the proposal, a private company, Recurrent Energy, would finance and build the plant at a cost of perhaps $40 million. The facility would have the capacity to generate 5 MW of electricity, enough to power 2,500 houses. The city, in turn, would agree to buy that power for the next 25 years, at about 23.5 cents per kilowatt hour — far more than the current market rate for electricity but less than what other cities have agreed to pay for long-term solar contracts.

The city would have an option to buy the plant from Recurrent after seven years for $33 million.

The good news is that this would be a public-power project — the city would own the electricity and could use it to power public buildings and eventually, once the community choice aggregation (CCA) system is running, could sell it as retail power to residents and businesses.

But Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos have asked the obvious question: Why is a private company even involved? Why can’t the city build the solar generating station itself? The CPUC’s answer: It’s cheaper to let Recurrent do the work — because the private outfit will get a $12 million tax break from the federal government.

That’s a serious problem — why is the Obama administration giving tax breaks for private projects that aren’t available to cities? "What we should be looking at is why San Francisco, with all its clout in Washington, can’t get that same sort of subsidy for a public project," Campos told us.

Or as Mirkarimi put it: "This only makes sense to me if there’s some guarantee that the city will actually buy the plant in seven years. Otherwise we’re going to look back at this in year 15 and realize it’s not such a good deal."

The city’s energy future is very much up in the air right now — CCA is on the cusp of viability, there’s still an active public-power movement, and it’s very hard to say what the city’s needs will be (or what the price of solar energy will be) 10 years from now, much less 25. So we’re very nervous about signing a contract of that length with a private company.

Yes, the Recurrent deal offers solar now — and that’s important. But the supervisors shouldn’t rush this through. At the very least, they should pass a resolution asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to seek to direct the same subsidies that private companies can get to public solar projects — and to delay a final vote on this until there’s a better analysis of why a private company should be given a long-term contract for what ought to be a public project. *

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

I was over at the San Francisco Public Defender’s office the other day, headed for a press roundtable, and I’d forgotten what room the event was in so I wound up at the reception desk on the second floor. When I arrived, a man was standing at the counter, highly agitated, trying to explain that something was wrong with his case, and that nobody was listening and he was getting the runaround — the kind of scene you see every day at the bottom level of the legal system, where people who don’t have money scramble constantly to figure out which end is up.

And on the other side of the counter was a young guy who was calmly collecting the information, analyzing the problem, and explaining exactly what the client needed to do. He sent him a few doors down to another service then said, with a smile: "But don’t worry, if they can’t help you, just come right back here and we’ll get you taken care of." He was the model of what a good public employee ought to be — professional, friendly, polite, smart, and (particularly important in this office) sympathetic.

And as I stepped up to ask him where the press event was, I realized I knew his name. He still looks just like he did when his picture ran on the front page of the Guardian on Sept 3, 2003, the day he was released from prison after serving 13 years for a crime he didn’t commit.

John Tennison works for the guy who devoted years to winning his freedom, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and as far as I can tell, he’s a perfect fit for the job. He survived 13 years of hell with no visible bitterness. And he’s a reminder, for all those who like to forget, that everyone in prison is not a violent thug — or even guilty.

Coincidentally, if there is such a thing, I had just been working on a story about a move to criminalize cell phones in California prisons. The wardens have gone beyond drugs and weapons; phones are the new contraband. I posted an item on the politics blog about it and got the typical responses: Why should prisoners have access to cell phones? Aren’t they supposed to be punished? Give ’em bread and water and that’s it.

I get that cell phones can be a safety issue if they’re used by gangs and violent criminals to conduct business. But I also get that prisoners (or more truthfully, their families) have to pay exorbitant rates to make collect calls on the pay phones in prisons, and that there is often a wait, and that calls can only be made at certain times.

I’m not going to make cell phones for prisoners the biggest crusade of my life, but you know, a sizable number of the 170,000 California inmates did nothing other than buy and sell drugs that ought to be legal anyway; a fair number did nothing at all and were wrongly convicted; and most of the rest will get out at some point — and the more contact they have with their families (and potential employers), the better and safer we all are.

Something to think about. *

Do the right thing, Dianne

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OPINION At the end of World War II, approximately 36 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Today that number has shrunk to about 12 percent, lagging behind the world’s other industrial democracies. But now, with a Democratic president in office, we have a realistic chance of enacting the most significant piece of labor legislation in decades, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the right of workers to organize into a union.

The opposition, of course, is well organized and well funded. Opponents will spend more than $200 million to defeat the bill in the Senate. They will argue that EFCA is just a special interest bill that helps big labor. But the truth is that the legislation should be part of the long-term economic recovery plan and is key to rebuilding the middle class.

In 1980, average CEO pay was 42 times that of the average blue-collar worker. By 2006, CEO pay had grown to 364 times the average blue collar worker’s pay. A survey of median weekly earnings in 2007 revealed that union workers make 30 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, and are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than other workers.

The key EFCA reform, and the one that has generated the most controversy, is called “card-check.” Under EFCA, if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds that a majority of employees have signed written authorization forms designating the union as their collective bargaining representative, the union is certified.

Opponents of card-check often argue, erroneously, that EFCA will deprive workers of their right to a so-called secret ballot. In fact, EFCA preserves both options, but it places the choice in the hands of workers, not employers. Moreover, the history of these “secret ballot” elections shows that they are often anything but democratic. Too often employers use their power over unorganized employees to intimidate them into voting against the union. Such documented employer tactics have included mandatory attendance at antiunion meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and harassing or even firing workers engaged in organizing activity.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has an 87 percent lifetime voting record from the AFL-CIO and has co-sponsored EFCA in the past. But now, with EFCA finally within reach, she has announced that she is looking for a “less divisive” option.

Say it isn’t so, Senator.

For many years progressive activists have had concerns about Feinstein, even going as far as to seek her censure at a state Democratic convention two years ago. In 2007, the party leadership reminded the activists that although she may stray occasionally, Feinstein is really a good Democrat who shares our basic values and commitments. There was no censure.

But workers’ rights is no side-issue in our Democratic Party. Economic justice is the issue. This is a moment of truth for Feinstein — and all of us who are her constituents have an obligation to help her get to the right answer.

On April 28 at 7 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, the SF Labor Council, Pride at Work, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club are sponsoring a community briefing on our campaign to urge Feinstein to support working people. Join us. *

Robert Haaland is the co-chair, SF Pride at Work. Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

 

Don’t drill here

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY When U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar looked out at a sea of faces during a San Francisco public hearing April 16, a band of activists dressed as polar bears, sea turtles, and other marine creatures stood out from the rest. Their message, also articulated by a host of federal and state-elected officials, was unequivocally clear: no new oil and gas drilling off the California coast.

Waving a thick document in the air, Salazar explained that he’d inherited a five-year plan from the Bush administration to award new leases for oil and gas drilling in the federally controlled outer continental shelf, which comprises some 1.7 billion underwater acres off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska.

Rather than move the policy as planned, Salazar extended public comment for six months, met with stakeholders in each region, and placed greater emphasis on developing offshore renewable energy. The San Francisco public hearing was the last in a series of four that Salazar attended.

"One of the significant issues that is so important to President Obama is that we move forward with a new energy frontier," Salazar said. He advocated embracing offshore wind and other renewable alternatives as part of a "comprehensive energy plan going forward." Yet Salazar also indicated that future plans for the nation’s energy mix were "not to the exclusion of oil and gas," and mentioned that opportunities for "clean coal" technology should also be considered.

Under the five-year plan, three new leases are proposed off California’s coast — two in the south, and one in the Point Arena Basin, an underwater swath near Fort Bragg. Elected officials unanimously opposed any new offshore petroleum development. "Our state clearly is saying to you today, no," declared Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Instead of putting our California coast and economy in jeopardy, we need to look at … green technology which will bring us new jobs."

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi sounded a similar note, saying the billions that would be invested in offshore oil could be put toward advancing clean energy. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) highlighted the risk of oil spills around the Point Arena Basin. "It could be turned from a wellspring of life into a death plume," she said. "This shimmering band of coast must be protected."

While nearly every testimony blasted new offshore oil development, the conversation brightened when Salazar asked for comments on renewable energy. According to estimates by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, offshore wind in shallow areas could provide some 20 percent of the electricity needs of coastal states nationwide. Wave energy, while still under study, might one day generate enough electricity to power some 197 million homes per year, according to Department of the Interior estimates.

Most of the oil that could be extracted from the outer continental shelf would come from the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, with some 10 billion barrels potentially available off the Pacific coast. Joe Sporano of the Western States Petroleum Association said offshore drilling could create jobs and limit dependence on foreign oil. Yet Boxer pointed out that, based on Energy Information Administration figures, drilling for oil across all areas would yield just 1 percent of the nation’s total oil consumption by 2030 — and it’s not believed to make a real difference in gas prices.

Richard Charter, government relations consultant with Defenders of Wildlife, seemed confident that California’s coast would be protected. "You have a new interior secretary for an administration that received California electoral votes … in a state that is pretty much single-minded in its position in terms of saving the coast," he said.

Charter’s optimism was helped by a recent federal appeals court ruling against the previous administration’s plan to award new offshore-drilling leases in the Arctic.

So now, "whatever Secretary Salazar does will have his own stamp on it," Charter said. "In each of these hearings, it’s become apparent that the Obama administration may be coming around to a new approach."

Public comment for the offshore leasing plan ends in late September. Salazar told reporters that he expects a decision by the end of the year.

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