City Hall

SF local artist’s purpose within reach

Andrew Lam
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“I wanted to teach people, tell them how to do it. I always dream about taking back the city through art.” Reynaldo Cayetano Jr. is showing me his photographic prints in a Lower Haight coffee shop. He’s explaining to me how a guy who grew up in San Francisco came to be on the brink of his third art show in San Francisco (Purpose: Beyond Reach, coming up on Sat/20 at Rancho Parnassus).

Is it weird that this trajectory needs explaining? Common sense says that growing up in a world-class art city would give you a leg up on an career amidst darkrooms and gallery openings. But that’s not the case in cities, really. Local kids get the boot for all kinds of reasons in today’s 21st century – especially creative types who aren’t ready to divest their days to the rat race necessary to stay and live in our great urban spaces.

Maybe to look for real, SF-grown artists you have to see beyond the standard downtown gallery scene. Cayetano’s art shows take place at non-traditional venues – the most recent of which was Bayanihan Community Center on Sixth Street, in the neighborhood that Cayetano grew up. The 23 year old populates the shows half with friends he grew up with and half simpatico souls he meets around the city (full disclosure: my boyfriend falls into this category for the upcoming Sat/20 show). 

Cayetano (Rey to friends) says he’s always been “a spectator of art.” He began sketching as a teen, copying his older brothers who liked to draw. “But soon I was getting better than they were,” he tells me, smiling over coffee and a pastry at the round table we’re sitting at with fellow Inks of Truth artist, photographer Chris Beale (whose shots illustrate this article). 

We’re passing around the portfolio of the two men, who met in a City College photojournalism class and bonded over being the only ones working with film in a digital world (“making it, like, twice as hard on ourselves,” they tell me, clearly relishing the challenge). Cayetano’s folder of prints shows street scenes from his recent trip to the Phillipines — a journey he’s made only twice since his father, mother, two brother, and he moved to California in 1993. 

Real talk: Reynaldo Cayetano and a new friend downtown. Photo by Chris Beale

I turn the page and there is a black and white closeup of his uncle’s knotted hands, then photos from his life in SF: friends, protesters at immigration rallies, corners and streets he’s walked for years. Beale, a long time SF resident originally hailing from Baltimore, has crisply developed shots of Rey in his own book, a dissenter giving the finger to City Hall’s golden cupola, an image of the two’s friend – and emcee who’ll be playing his new album at Saturday’s event – Patience the Virtuous, gazing into the MUNI bus yards. 

Rey started curating his group shows — which display the work of a loosely bound collective called Inks of Truth — to fight ignorance in the SF community. Ignorance of pedestrians, that is. Spurred by a good friend’s death on the Alemany and San Jose S-curve (the young woman for whose 21st birthday present the camera he shoots with was intended), he brought together creative acquaintances for an event that “was supposed to be an art show, but leaned towards awareness.”

Photos from that show and Rey’s second depict a crowd of young people enjoying themselves amidst the physical evidence of their collective creativity, at one point clearing the floor for some b-boys to get in on the show and tell. It’s hardly the scene you see at many wine and cheese receptions that mark the debut of an artist’s work at other places around the city.

The events’ orchestration were big moves for a guy that has trouble seeing himself as a professional artist. “As soon as I call myself that, it comes with… I don’t want to say baggage, but it implies a lot of knowledge,” Rey tells me. “At first I thought that I shouldn’t have a show because I’m not a photographer, but then I thought no – that’s why I should do it.” When I ask him whether he sees a lot of the peers he grew up with in the Sixth Street neighborhood getting in on the SF art scene, he’s hesitant to make sweeping statements. “I feel like it’s lagging, but it’s not to the point where it’s hopeless.”

Perhaps this lag is what gives Cayetano the motivation for his inclusive shows. Saturday’s will feature works by sixteen artists in a variety of mediums. Cayetano is hungry to give others the adrenaline rush and fufillment that comes from finally, seeing one’s work on the wall. 

But it’s not always easy. In the midst of his own worry over producing events without professional guidance, Rey’s dealing with the varying levels of commitment of artists showing their beloved creative mindsprings for the first time. But overall, the process is one he seems to take inspiration in. “It’s great to give them that kind of anxiety, it’s a good stress. If you’re not stressing in the process, it’s not explosive,” he reasons.

In addition to bringing a taste of artistic involvement to the talented around him, the upcoming Purpose: Beyond Reach show at the Sixth Street cafe has another, even more salient community connection. It’s a food drive for Martin de Porres House of Hospitality, a place that Beale says is the soup kitchen of choice for many of the homeless people he’s spoken with. 

Cayetano elected Martin de Porres as the beneficee for its relatively small capacity. After speaking with representatives from larger shelters like Glide, he discovered “even if you raise a lot of cans, for a big shelter it will be gone within a meal.” Art show attendees are expected to load down their backpacks for entrance: those over the age of 21 are expected to donate at least five cans of food. 

For Cayetano, it was important that his third show reflect the entirety of the community where he was raised.  “It’s a testament of growing up on Sixth Street. The people out on the street now are the same ones that were there when I was growing up.” All the better to reflect the real community of San Francisco — if not that, then what are we painting for?


“Purpose: Beyond Reach”

Sat/20 4-10:30 p.m., free with can donation (21 and up, five to seven; 20 and younger three to five) 

Rancho Parnassus

132 Sixth St., SF

(415) 503-0700

www.wix.com/purposebeyondreach/inksoftruth

 

D10 nail biting continues, but Cohen remains in lead

Mary Magee
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10

When the city’s Department of Elections ran its second preliminary round of ranked choice voting scores Nov. 9, neither of the leading D10 contenders was in attendance. Malia Cohen, who was sick last week, was still under the weather, according to her campaign manager Megan Hamilton. And Tony Kelly was at home “reading the Bible and eating chocolate,” as he jokingly told the Guardian earlier that afternoon. All of which was hardly surprising since the stress of the unrevolved races in D10 (and D2) is beginning to fray the nerves of even the most hardened elections veterans.

But Marlene Tran, who ended up in third place after yesterday’s RCV count, was waiting outside the Elections office, which is located in the basement of City Hall. And she openly talked about the stress of waiting for the ranked choice results, the failure of English-speaking media to cover issues that concern non-English speaking residents, the unexpected attacks she endured on Chinese radio, and her hope that all the D10 candidates will work together to make the district and its various communities and neighborhoods a better place to live, regardless of who wins.

“I’ve been trying to take care of all my mail and petting my cat, who is extremely demanding,” Tran told the Guardian, when asked how she was dealing with a waiting game that has had campaign managers and members of the media descending daily on the Elections Department at 4 p.m. to get updated results.

Finally, Elections Department director John Arntz emerged and sat on a table outside the Department of Elections office as he gave his daily update.

“We did a big push over the weekend to get 95 percent of the cards processed,” Arntz said, noting that 10,000-11,000 vote-by-mails remain to be counted citywide. He also noted that of the 1,275 provisional ballots from D10, 1,044 have been accepted, and another 231 have been challenged.

“We’ll have a tally sheet tomorrow with reasons why the provisionals were challenged,” Arntz added, observing that one reason provisionals get challenged is when it turns out that folks who voted provisionally aren’t actually registered to vote in San Francisco.

“I think it will be next week until we get to all the provisional ballots,” Arntz continued.“But it’s not like I am trying to prolong anything. I’m guesstimating that all the vote-by-mail ballots will be counted by Friday. So, we may do another ranked choice count on Friday.”

Arntz clarified that the 75 ballots that were found floating in the Palace of Fine Arts pond in the Marina district originated from a polling station in D11—and therefore will not impact the as yet unresolved supervisoral races in D10 and D2, where Janet Reilly leads Mark Farrell in raw first choice votes, but has been slipping into second place when the ranked choice votes are calculated.

“The bag is sealed, but the ballots are damp,” Arntz said of the missing D11 ballots.

After Arntz was done with his daily dose of explaining, the ever outspoken Sharen Hewitt, executive director of the C.L.A.E.R. project, warned of the importance of  counting every provisional vote.
‘If anyone touches my granddaughter vote, they’ll be a tsunami,” Hewitt warned, referring to the fact that her 18-year-old granddaughter Tiara voted provisionally this year.  “And it seems that a disproportionate numbers of challenged provisionals seem to be coming from Bayview Hunters Point.”

Afterwards, as the running dogs of the media rushed off to file stories, Tran lingered long enough to tell the Guardian how she was attacked on afternoon programs on Chinese radio after she announced that Tony Kelly was her second choice in the race (with her first choice being herself, natch.)

“I was called a traitor, I was told I was too old to run, that I can hardly walk around, that I didn’t do anything for the community in 20 years,” Tran recalled. “It was very humiliating.”

But she believes the attacks may have backfired.
“The radio programs in the evening addressed the question of whether Tran deserved to be a traitor—and everyone was very supportive of me,” Tran said. “And everybody who heard about these attacks was very angry, so maybe they worked harder to support me.”

Tran says she didn’t hire a political consultant to manage her campaign, but still found herself ahead of most of the other 21 candidates in this hotly contested race.

“I did a lot of stuff with volunteers, and for the first few months I did everything myself, including the design and layout of my fliers,” Tran confided, showing me a tri-lingual flier which includes translations from Chinese media outlets Sing Tao, which called her the “Guardian Angel of Immigrants.”

Tran, who was born in Hong Kong, and came to the United States when she was 19, says she is grateful that she got to live and work in such a beautiful city, and that many first-time voters got invigorated and decided to participate in the election because she was running.

“Whoever gets elected, I’ll support that person, because this is about D10 and San Francisco,” Tran said. ‘but many voters are now wondering if ranked choice is the best thing, because of the endless wait.”

She also ruminated on what she describes as the “chasm of a communication problem between the ethnic and Western press” and how that worked for and against her in past elections.
“When I ran for DCCC in 1998, I felt like a grain of sand in the Sahara,” Tran said, recalling how folks were surprised when she won that race. “And this time, my results are pretty healthy in the D10 race, and people are also surprised.”

Many of the absentee ballots that have been counted in recent days originated in Viz Valley, giving Tran a boost that takes her to second-place once ranked choices get reassigned, and helps Cohen vault over Lynette Sweet and into first place. But as they say, it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings, so stay tuned…

Prison for killer cop

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Prison for killer cop

rebeccab@sfbg.com

On Nov. 5, former BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to two years in state prison for fatally shooting Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American rider, on the Fruitvale train platform on New Year’s Day 2009.

Mehserle, who is white, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July in an incident that has become charged with racial undertones. He received credit for 292 days served in jail so far, which will considerably reduce his time in prison. It was the lightest prison sentence he could have received for the crime.

Grant supporters gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland to express anger and sorrow upon hearing news of the sentence. “I’m not shocked,” said Cat Brooks, who helped organize an afternoon rally for the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant. “But I’m disgusted and distraught. It seems like the justice system didn’t work.”

After the rally came to a close and night fell, protesters spilled into the streets and marched toward the Fruitvale BART Station, the scene of the crime. But after a dozen car windows were smashed along the way, police officers in riot gear corralled the group into a residential neighborhood. Police then placed 152 protesters under mass arrest, mostly on charges of unlawful assembly. Roughly two-thirds of those arrested were Oakland residents, according to the Oakland Police Department, while others were from Berkeley, San Francisco, Hayward, and other local cities.

 

COMMUNITY RESPONDS

A stage outside Oakland City Hall was transformed into a venue for personal expression in the wake of the sentencing. Community members lined up to air their frustrations and resolve to keep fighting. They piled flowers onto a shrine that had been created with a picture of Grant’s face. Some painted pictures, while others gave spoken word or hip-hop performances. Several told stories of loved ones who’d died in police shootings.

Cephus Johnson, Grant’s uncle, was at the Los Angeles courtroom where Mehserle was sentenced, but shared some thoughts with the Guardian beforehand. Asked what he’d thought when the verdict had been announced, Johnson said, “My first thought was that we’re witnessing the criminal justice system failing to work as it should have worked.” If the sentence fell short of the 14-year maximum, he said, “it will be another slap in the face, signifying that black and brown men are worthless.”

East Bay labor organizer Charles Dubois was among those attending the Nov. 5 rally. “Every black parent, every brown parent, lives with this nightmare of their children being killed by some cops because they thought they had a gun,” Dubois said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s been happening since I was a kid. It’s been happening then and it’s happening now, and it’s going to keep happening until we do something.”

California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) also weighed in during a phone call with the Guardian. “This verdict is outrageous,” he said. “It’s Dan White all over again.”

 

JUDGE DROPS GUN ENHANCEMENT

Judge Robert Perry sided with arguments presented by Mehserle’s defense attorney, Michael Rains, when he levied a reduced punishment. Mehserle could have served up to 14 years prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while wielding a gun, but Perry tossed out the firearm enhancement.

“No reasonable trier of fact could have concluded that Mehserle intentionally fired his gun,” the judge was quoted in media reports as saying. But that appears to be what the jury found, as the prosecution argued in a presentencing memorandum.

“The evidence was presented regarding the use of the gun, and in discussing the use of the gun in the jury room, somehow or another the jury decided he had used the gun illegally,” criminal defense attorney and National Lawyers Guild observer Walter Riley told the Guardian. “One has to believe the jury expected him to have exposure to a greater amount of jail time because of that.”

Perry said he believed Mehserle suffered a “muscle memory accident” that led him to draw and fire his service weapon instead of his Taser, a cornerstone of the defense’s case.

Rains wrote to the court prior to sentencing that jurors should never have been allowed to apply the firearm enhancement to an involuntary manslaughter conviction “because in this case, there is no logical way to square a verdict of involuntary manslaughter and a finding that Mehserle intended to use his gun.”

Prosecutor David Stein of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office countered that the jury’s conviction showed they believed Mehserle intended to shoot, but not to kill, Grant. Yet Perry agreed with the defense, conceding he had mistakenly permitted the jury to enhance Mehserle’s sentence.

Riley said he sympathized with frustrations over the gun enhancement getting dismissed. “The use of guns is too prevalent in circumstances where law enforcement comes in contact with young black people,” he said. “Our society — our civil society, our judicial authority, and our communities — have to hold government and law enforcement officers to a higher level of accountability in their interactions with citizens. When people with guns shoot an inordinate number of people of one group, it’s worth tremendous scrutiny.”

 

ANOTHER NIGHT IN JAIL

Twice before, activists took to the streets in furious protest over this case. In January 2009, things escalated to the point where cars were set ablaze. In July 2010, a street rally gave way to rioting and looting. So on Nov. 5, many downtown Oakland storeowners boarded up and closed business early in anticipation of a third wave of vandalism.

Yet the turnout was smaller than the previous events. And while there were reports of smashed car windshields and other instances of vandalism along the circuitous path of the march, there was far less property destruction.

The community affair outside Oakland City Hall ended around 6 p.m., when the permit expired. Soon after, activists spilled into the intersection of 14th and Broadway streets, then began advancing down 14th Street chanting “No Justice! No Peace!” and “The whole system is guilty!” The march turned right onto Madison Street, then left onto 10th Street.

A police helicopter with a spotlight kept pace overhead while it progressed, and when protesters reached Laney College, police officers in riot gear blocked them in. So protesters cut through a park and wandered in a pack until they reached the intersection of East 18th Street and Sixth Avenue in a residential neighborhood. Once again, police surrounded the protesters. This time, the crowd was trapped.

Rachel Jackson, an activist who was barricaded in, began sounding off. “We were going to Fruitvale,” she explained. “We wanted to go to the scene of the crime. All night the police have been trying to suppress our free speech.” When a nearby TV news reporter asked her about windows that had been busted along the march, she was incensed. “We will not equate glass with Oscar Grant’s life!” she responded. “If we have to come out ourselves and board up windows, we’ll do that. But what we are concerned with right now is murder.”

Reporters were allowed to exit the confined area, but if anyone else had been inclined to leave peacefully, they were unable to. Police issued a call on a megaphone telling activists, “You are all under arrest. Do not resist arrest.” By the time the mass arrest was underway, public information officer Jeff Thomason told a group of reporters that there were more police officers on the scene than protesters.

“When the rocks were being thrown, it was declared an unlawful assembly,” Thomason explained. He said a dispersal order had been issued simultaneously. Yet it would have been impossible for the trapped crowd to comply with such an order.

Meanwhile, a resident of the Oakland neighborhood who had come outside when the commotion began told the Guardian that she sympathized with the protesters. “The only thing I don’t condone is the vandalism,” said Dyshia Harvey, who surveyed the scene from behind a fence with her six-year-old son.

Harvey had been anticipating word of Mehserle’s sentencing. “I was upset. I was frustrated, angry, and hurt” by the outcome, she said. But she wasn’t surprised. “I already knew we weren’t going to get no justice,” she said. “For taking a life, 14 years isn’t enough. It makes you feel like there’s no justice in the justice system.”

 

NOT OVER YET

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has not stated whether her office will appeal Perry’s ruling. Rains told reporters in L.A. that he would appeal Mehserle’s involuntary manslaughter conviction.

Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice released a statement indicating that a federal investigation is in the works. “The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California have been closely monitoring the local prosecution of this case,” a USDOJ prepared statement notes. “Now that the state prosecution has concluded and consistent with department policy, we will thoroughly review the prosecution and its underlying investigation to determine whether further action is appropriate.”

BART settled a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Grant’s daughter in January that is likely to total $5.1 million, according to civil rights attorney John Burris’ website. Two other lawsuits, one on behalf of Grant’s mother and one on behalf of five other men on the Fruitvale station platform that night, have been consolidated into a single trial that will begin in May 2011, Burris told the Guardian.

Meanwhile, Grant’s death marked just one of three police shootings that occurred Jan. 1, 2009 — the other two cases also sparked allegations of civil-rights violations, since both victims were African American men. Adolph Grimes, 22, was fatally shot 14 times, including 12 times in the back, by a group of New Orleans police officers, who erroneously believed he was a suspect who’d fled the scene of a shooting.

The same night, Robert Tolan, 23 — the son of a Major League Baseball player — was shot and seriously injured outside his home in an upscale Houston suburb by a police officer who mistakenly believed Tolan had stolen the vehicle he was driving. Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton, the white officer who shot him, was ultimately acquitted.

 

CREATIVE OUTLET

Not everyone in Oakland reacted to Mehserle’s sentence by charging through the streets. The Oscar Grant Foundation, which facilitated live art performances at Frank Ogawa Plaza Nov. 5, is calling for youth groups, Bay Area schools, and adults to participate in an art and poetry showcase inspired by Grant. Information can be found online at IamOscarGrant.org. The foundation is advertising a $1,000 grand prize. Three artists from the Trust Your Struggle Collective didn’t wait to join a contest, however, and spent the afternoon of Nov. 5 adorning plywood covering the Youth Radio building windows at 17th Street and Telegraph Avenue, a few blocks from Frank Ogawa Plaza.

The mural displayed a prominent image of Grant holding his daughter, Tatiana, who was four years old when Grant was killed. The pair are flanked by the names and figures of more than 20 people killed by police.

“We asked the youth inside what they wanted to see,” Miguel Perez, an artist with the Trust Your Struggle Collective, told the Guardian as he looked over the mural. “They said they wanted to see the names of people killed by police nationwide, not just in the Bay Area. The list is so huge, it’s hard to pick out specific names.”

Perez said Trust Your Struggle is a group of artists and educators with social-justice backgrounds who create art as activism. “Being a person of color, I’ve had racist stuff said to me by the police,” Perez said. “It seems like it’s slowly been changing for the past hundreds of years, but it’s still not enough — enough being fairness.” *

The next mayor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The next mayor

tredmond@sfbg.com

By the time a beaming Mayor Gavin Newsom took the stage at Tres Agaves, the chic SoMa restaurant, on election night, enough results were in to leave no doubt: the top two places on the California ballot would go to the Democrats. Jerry Brown would defeat Meg Whitman in the most expensive gubernatorial race in American history — and Newsom, who once challenged Brown in the primary and dismissed the office of lieutenant governor, would be Brown’s No. 2.

It might not be a powerful job, but Newsom wasn’t taking it lightly anymore. “We can’t afford to continue to play in the margins,” he proclaimed proudly, advancing a vague but ambitious agenda. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with California that can’t be fixed with what’s right with California.”

But around the city, as results trickled in for the local races, the talk wasn’t about Newsom’s role in the Brown administration, or the change the Democrats might bring to Sacramento. It was about the profound change that could take place in his hometown as he vacates the office of mayor a year early — and opens the door for the progressives who control the Board of Supervisors to appoint a chief executive who agrees with, and is willing to work with, the majority of the district-elected board.

At a time when the Republican takeover of Congress threatens to create gridlock in Washington, there’s a real chance that San Francisco’s government — often paralyzed by friction between Newsom and the board — could take on an entirely new direction. It’s possible that the progressives, long denied the top spot at City Hall, could put a mayor in office who shares their agenda.

This could be a turning point in San Francisco, a chance to put the interests of the neighborhoods, the working class, small businesses, the environmental movement, and economic justice ahead of the demands of downtown and the rich. All the pieces are in place — except one.

To make a progressive vision happen, the fractious (and in some cases, overly ambitious) elected leaders of the progressive movement will have to recognize, just for a little while, that it’s not about any individual. It’s not about David Chiu, or Ross Mirkarimi, or Chris Daly, or John Avalos, or Eric Mar, or David Campos, or Jane Kim, or Aaron Peskin. It’s not about any one person’s career or personal power.

It’s about a progressive movement and the issues and causes that movement represents. And if the folks with the egos and personal gripes and career designs can’t set them aside and do what’s best for the movement as a whole, then the opportunity of a generation will be wasted.

Folks: this is a hard thing for politicians to recognize. But right now it’s not about you. It’s about all of us.

It’s an odd time in San Francisco, fraught with political hazards. And it’s so confusing that no one — not the elected officials, not the pundits, not the lobbyists, not the insiders — has any clear idea who will occupy Room 200 in January.

Here’s the basic scenario, as described by past opinions of the city attorney’s office:

Under the state Constitution, Newsom will take office as lieutenant governor Jan. 3, 2011. The City Charter provides that a vacancy in the Mayor’s Office is filled by the president of the Board of Supervisors until the board can choose someone to fill the job until the end of the term — in this case, for 11 more months.

So if all goes according to the rules (and Newsom doesn’t try to play some legal game and delay his swearing-in), David Chiu will become acting mayor on Jan.3. He’ll also retain his job as board president.

On Jan. 4, the current members of the Board of Supervisors will hold a regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting — and the election of a new mayor will be on the agenda. If six of the current supervisors can agree on a name (and sitting supervisors can’t vote for themselves) then that person will immediately take office and finish Newsom’s term.

If nobody gets six votes — that is, if the board is gridlocked — Chiu remains in both offices until the next regular meeting of the board — a week later, when the newly elected supervisors are sworn in.

The new board will then elect a board president — who will also instantly become acting mayor — and then go about trying to find someone who can get six votes to take the top job. If that doesn’t work — that is, if the new board is also gridlocked — then the new board president remains acting mayor until January 2012.

There are at least three basic approaches being bandied about. Some people, including Newsom and some of the more conservative members of the board, want to see a “caretaker” mayor, someone with no personal ambition for the job, fill out Newsom’s term, allowing the voters to choose the next mayor in November, 2011. That has problems. As Campos told us, “The city has serious budget and policy issues and it’s unlikely a caretaker could handle them effectively.” In other words, a short-termer will have no real power and will just punt hard decisions for another year.

Then there’s the concept of putting in a sacrificial progressive — someone who will push through the tax increases and service cuts necessary to close a $400 million budget gap, approve a series of bills that stalled under Newsom, take the hits from the San Francisco Chronicle, and step out of the way to let someone else run in November.

The downside of that approach? It’s almost impossible for a true progressive to raise the money needed to beat a downtown candidate in a citywide mayor’s race. And it seems foolish to give up the opportunity to someone in the mayor’s office who can run for reelection as an incumbent.

Which is, of course, the third — and most intriguing — scenario.

The press, the pundits, and the mayor have for the past few months been pushing former Sup. Peskin as the foil, trying to spin the situation to suggest that the current chair of the local Democratic Party is angling for a job he wouldn’t win in a normal election. But right now, Peskin is no more a front-runner than anyone else. And although he’s made no secret in the past of wanting the job, he’s been talking of late more about the need for a progressive than about his own ambitions.

“If the board chose [state Assemblymember] Tom Ammiano, I would be thrilled to play a role, however small, in that administration,” Peskin told us.

In fact, Peskin said, the supervisors need to stop thinking about personalities and start looking at the larger picture. “If we as a movement can’t pull this off, then shame on us.”

Or as Sup. Campos put it: “We have to come together here and do what’s right for the progressive movement.”

Two years ago, the San Francisco left was — to the extent that it’s possible — a united electoral movement. In June, an undisputed left slate won a majority on the Democratic County Central Committee. In November 2008, Districts 1, 3, 5, and 11 saw consensus left candidates running against downtown-backed opponents — and won. In D9, three progressives ran a remarkably civil campaign with little or no intramural attacks.

The results were impressive. As labor activist Gabriel Haaland put it, “we ran the table.”

But that unity fell apart quickly, as a faction led by Daly sought to ensure that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi couldn’t get elected board president. Instead that job went to Chiu — the least experienced of the supervisors elected in that class, and a politician who is, by his own account, the most centrist member of the liberal majority.

This fall, the campaign to replace Daly in D6 turned nasty as both Debra Walker and Jane Kim openly attacked each other. Walker sent out anti-Kim mailers, and Kim’s supporters charged that Walker was part of a political machine — a damaging (if silly) allegation that created a completely unnecessary rift on the left.

And let’s face it: those fights were all about personality and ego, not issues or progressive strategy. Mirkarimi and Daly have never had any substantive policy disagreements, and neither did Walker and Kim.

In the wake of that, progressives need to come together if they want to take advantage of the opportunity to change the direction of the city. It’s not going to be easy.

“We’re good at losing,” Daly said. “I’m afraid we’re doing everything we can to blow it.”

The cold political calculus is that none of the current board members can count on six votes, and neither can Peskin or any of the other commonly mentioned candidates. The only person who would almost certainly get six votes today is Ammiano — and so far, he’s not interested.

“I know you never say never in politics, but I’m happy here in Sacramento. Eighty-six percent of the voters sent me back for another term, and I think that says something,” he told us.

It’s hardly surprising that someone like Ammiano, who has a secure job he likes and soaring approval ratings, would demur on taking on what by any account will be a short-term nightmare. The city is still effectively broke, and next year’s budget shortfall is projected at roughly $400 million. There’s no easy way to raise revenue, and after four years of brutal cuts, there’s not much left to pare. The next mayor will be delivering bad news to the voters, making unpleasant and unpopular decisions, infuriating powerful interest groups of one sort or another — and then, should he or she want the job any longer, asking for a vote of confidence in November.

Yet he power of incumbency in San Francisco is significant. The past two mayors, Newsom and Willie Brown, were reelected easily, despite some serious problems. And an incumbent has the ability to raise money that most progressives won’t have on their own.

Chiu thus far is being cautious. He told us his main concern right now is ensuring that the process for choosing the next mayor is open, honest, and legally sound. He won’t even say if he’s officially interested in the job (although board observers say he’s already making the rounds and counting potential votes).

And no matter what happens, he will be acting mayor for at least a day, which gives him an advantage over anyone else in the contest.

But some of the board progressives are unhappy about how Chiu negotiated the last two budget deals with Newsom and don’t see him as a strong leader on the left.

Ross Mirkarimi is the longest-serving progressive (other than Daly, who isn’t remotely a candidate), and he’s made no secret of his political ambitions. Then there’s Campos, an effective and even-tempered supervisor who has friendly relationships with the board’s left flank and with centrists like Bevan Dufty. But even if Dufty (who I suspect would love to be part of electing the first openly gay mayor of San Francisco) does support Campos, he’d still need every other progressive supervisor. Campos also would need Chiu’s vote to go over the top. Which means Chiu — who needs progressive support for whatever his political future holds — would have to set aside his own designs on the job to put a progressive in office.

In other words, some people who want to be mayor are going to have to give that up and support the strongest progressive. “If there’s someone other than me who can get six votes, then I’m going to support that person,” Campos noted.

Then there are the outsiders. City Attorney Dennis Herrera has already announced he plans to run in the fall. If the board’s looking for a respected candidate who can appeal to moderates as well as progressives, his name will come up. So will state Sen. Mark Leno, who has the political gravitas and experience and would be formidable in a re-election campaign in November. Leno doesn’t always side with the left on local races; he supported Supervisor-elect Scott Wiener, and losing D6 candidate Theresa Sparks. But he has always sought to remain on good terms with progressives.

All that assumes that the current board will make the choice — and even that is a matter of strategic and political dispute. If the lame duck supervisors choose a mayor — particularly a strong progressive — you can count on the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsom, and the downtown establishment to call it a “power grab” and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the winner.

“But choosing a mayor is the legal responsibility of this board and they ought to do their jobs,” Peskin said.

The exact makeup of the next board was still unclear at press time. Jane Kim is the likely winner in D6 and has always been a progressive on the School Board. She’s also close to Chiu, who strongly supported her. If Malia Cohen or Lynette Sweet wins D10, it’s unlikely either of them will vote for a progressive mayor.

Newsom also might try to screw things up with a last-minute power play. He could, for example, simply refuse to take the oath of office as lieutenant governor until after the new board is seated.

Chiu’s allies say it makes sense for the progressives to choose a mayor who’s not identified so closely with the left wing of the board, who can appeal to the more moderate voters. That’s a powerful argument, and Herrera and Leno can also make the case. The progressive agenda — and the city — would be far better off with a more moderate mayor who is willing to work with the board than it has been with the arrogant, recalcitrant, and distant Newsom. And if the progressives got 75 percent of what they wanted from the mayor (as opposed to about 10 percent under Newsom), that would be cause to celebrate.

But to accept that as a political approach requires a gigantic assumption. It requires San Franciscans to give up on the idea that this is still, at heart, a progressive city, that the majority of the people who live here still believe in economic and social justice. It means giving up the dream that San Francisco can be a very different place, a city that’s not afraid to defy national trends and conventional wisdom, a place where socioeconomic diversity is a primary goal and the residents are more important than the big companies that try to make money off them. It means accepting that even here, in San Francisco, politics have to be driven by an ever-more conservative “center.”

It may be that a progressive can’t line up six votes, that a more moderate candidate winds up in the Mayor’s Office. But a lot of us aren’t ready yet to give up hope.

Additional reporting by Noah Arroyo.

Newsom endorses Wilson, who endorses “the machine”

Sasha Cuttler
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Newsom endorses Wilson, who endorses “the machine”

As Mayor Gavin Newsom prepares to leave San Francisco for the Lieutenant Governor’s Office in Sacramento, he has burned enough bridges here that he’s not going to have much of a role in picking his successor. But he made a play today during the Giants World Series celebration at City Hall that just may resonate with local voters and elected officials alike.

“This town is going to need another mayor soon, and I have just three words: fear the beard,” Newsom said as he wrapped up his speech to a crowd of several hundred thousand fans, giving his cheeky endorsement to the Giants’ star closing pitcher, Brian Wilson.

But during his own speech, Wilson respectfully declined the opportunity. “I don’t think I’m up to that job, but I know someone who is: Where’s the machine?” Wilson told the crowd, appearing to give the nod to the next speaker, Giants star pitcher Tim Lincecum, who didn’t take himself out of the running.

“All I can say is thank you and go San Francisco!” Lincecum said.

So, what do you say, San Francisco? Are we ready for Mayor Lincecum?

Is this a joke? Maybe not, after all, while being interviewed before the festivities began, a jubilant Newsom said, “The politicians need to step out of the way and that’s when you can restore a sense of pride to the city.” And in your case, Mister Mayor, we at the Guardian couldn’t agree more. Have a great trip to Sacramento!

UPDATE: A friend has now clued me in to the possibility that Wilson wasn’t actually endorsing Lincecum, but his BDSM neighbor. Huh? Yeah, I’m not sure either, but check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ckloLGOgVo

 

Locals for hire

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Locals for hire

sarah@sfbg.com

It’s no secret that San Francisco’s construction industry is going through hard times, a situation that translates into lost opportunities for working class San Franciscans. But that bad situation is being made worse by contractors on local projects hiring workers from outside the city.

Recent studies reveal that under the city’s First Source program, which requires contractors to make “good faith efforts” to reach the goal of hiring 50 percent of their workers from within the city, San Francisco has failed to meet its goals on publicly funded projects.

Sup. John Avalos has introduced legislation that seeks to address this shortfall by requiring contractors to meet the city’s hiring goals or face fines. But some union leaders whose members don’t live in San Francisco are grumbling that the proposal is not workable.

Local unemployed workers are expressing support for the Avalos legislation, as they step up efforts to get UC San Francisco to commit to local hiring plans at its $1.5 billon Mission Bay hospital construction site, which lies a Muni T-Third ride away from some of the city’s most economically distressed neighborhoods.

And now everyone is anxiously wondering where Mayor Gavin Newsom will land on the legislation and on UCSF’s hiring goals in what may be his last weeks as chief executive of San Francisco.

As of press time, Newsom was running neck-to-neck with Abel Maldonaldo in the lieutenant governor’s race, leaving voters uncertain whether Newsom will be mayor in January or second-in-command statewide — a promotion that would land him a seat on the UC Board of Regents but shift his primary allegiance from the City and County of San Francisco to the entire state of California.

When Avalos stood outside City Hall last month and announced his proposal to mandate local hiring on publicly-funded construction projects, he was joined by Sups. Sophie Maxwell and David Campos, Board President David Chiu, community advocates, construction contractors, neighborhood leaders, and union members.

“My legislation will ensure that San Franciscans have a guaranteed shot to work on the city’s public works projects and that the local dollars invested in public infrastructure will be recycled back into San Francisco’s economy and local communities,” Avalos said.

Avalos’ legislation came in the wake of two reports confirming that local construction workers were having a hard time getting work. A report that Chinese Affirmative Action and Brightline Defense released in August estimated that only 24 percent of workers on publicly funded sites are local residents.

And a report released by L. Luster and Associates in mid-October, at the behest of the Redevelopment Agency and Office of Economic and Workforce Development, found that only 20 percent of workers hired at 29 publicly funded construction projects in the past year were local residents.

Avalos’ legislation would mandate assessment of liquidated damages against contractors and subcontractors who fail to meet minimum local hiring requirements and establish monitoring, enforcement, and administrative procedures in support of this policy. It would phase in these requirements over three years, starting at 30 percent the first year.

Avalos noted that his legislation was developed through a series of meetings with city agencies, the Mayor’s Office, labor and building trade unions, the environmental community, neighborhood advocates, contractors, local hiring advocates, and unemployed workers. And he vowed to keep the roundtable approach.

Patrick Mulligan, financial secretary of Carpenters Local 22, told the Guardian that his union, whose members are specific to San Francisco, generally supports local hiring. “But there are some general concerns with the legislation,” said Mulligan, who has lived his whole life in San Francisco and got his first job through a local hiring program. “We have standing contractual agreements with contractors, so whatever legislation gets passed, it will have to be meshed with the existing situation. If these were boom times, people might see it differently. But it’s hard times at the union hall.”

Mulligan also lamented the lack of process for the community to vet whether UC has a local hiring plan at construction projects that impact their neighborhood. “But contractors want the best workforce they can get. And in lean times, they can afford to be more selective and don’t necessarily want to include training time on the job,” he said. “But we feel that it’s inappropriate for contractors to bring their entire crew from outside of town.”

Michael Theriault, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, told the Guardian that Avalos’ legislation was unworkable because construction workers cannot afford housing in San Francisco and too few qualified workers live in the city.

“We take workers from San Francisco into our apprenticeship program constantly, but they get to a certain point in their careers and find that the city builds well on the low-end and the high-end, but doesn’t build workforce housing. So they end up in Antioch, Vallejo, Fairfield, and Modesto, and commute back in,” Theriault said. “That problem has not been addressed by the city, and it’s at the root of why local hiring programs aren’t working.”

Newsom spokesperson Tony Winnicker said the mayor “supports stronger local hire requirements” even as he expressed concerns with Avalos’ proposal. “We’ll continue to work with the supervisors, the building trade unions and the community on legislation that achieves both realistic and legally enforceable local job guarantees for city projects,” he said.

Winnicker noted that the city already supports local hiring through CityBuild and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “But we believe we can do better,” he added.

Avalos, whose legislation is scheduled for a Nov. 8 hearing of the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee, said he sees his proposal as a starting point. “We’ll see where it ends up,” Avalos told the Guardian. “We could pass legislation that wants 50 percent local hiring next year, and it would probably get vetoed and it wouldn’t be realistic. So we have to phase it in and make sure we are creating a system that is going to push the trades to be more inclusive of local residents.”

Meanwhile, unemployed workers — some in unions, others not — continue to protest the lack of a local hire plan at UCSF’s $1.5 billion Mission Bay hospital project, which is funded through debt financing, philanthropic gifts, and university reserves.

“We want to make sure folks get trained and everything that’s necessary, so there is no dispute,” Aboriginal Blacks United member Alex Prince said at an Oct. 27 protest at the Mission Bay site. The protest came one month after Newsom wrote to UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann noting that the hospital was breaking ground “just as continuing high unemployment rates were devastating the city’s most distressed communities,including neighborhoods impacted by the Mission Bay expansion.”

“There are estimates that up to 40 percent of the members of our local construction trade unions are currently out-of-work,” Newsom wrote. “It would be helpful if you could share the commitments that UCSF has made on the issue of local hiring, particularly around employing residents of San Francisco’s most distressed communities in southeast San Francisco, and the results of those efforts to date.” Winnicker said UCSF has not yet responded.

Barbara French, UCSF’s vice chancellor for university relations, told the Guardian that UCSF is working to evaluate hiring needs for phase of the project, talking to the unions, and intends to make its findings public in December.

“We have had a voluntary local hiring policy since 1993,” French said, confirming that in the past 17 years, the university has reached a 12 percent local hire rate on average. “Sometimes it was 7 percent, sometimes it was 24 percent … Our [goal] is to reach a number that is beyond what we reached before but which is realistic.”

Recently French told community-based organizations that UCSF hadn’t signed a contract with the contractor at its Mission Bay hospital project, didn’t have the permits yet, and that the recent community celebrations didn’t mark the start of active construction at the site.

French said general hiring at Mission Bay will begin in December. “We don’t get any city funds at this site, so our commitment is voluntary. But we feel very strongly that we have to reach out,” she said.

Avalos acknowledged that UC is not under San Francisco’s jurisdiction and can’t be compelled to do more local hiring. “But we know that they are doing a critical amount of building and investing taxpayer dollars, and that this land use impacts the surrounding community. So it makes sense that we have local hire legislation and access to serious end-use jobs at the hospital.”

Giants win the World Series! Again!

Andrew Lam
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What’s better than watching the Giants win the World Series? How about watching them win the World Series for the second time?

Not too many people can lay claim to the distinction, but somewhere betwixt sneaking into an at-capacity Polk Street pub and watching the fireworks on Valencia explode with gigantic glory last night, I ran into Elliott Isenberg, who was all of nine years old when the New York Giants took home the World Series trophy in 1954.

“There was a lot of celebration in my house,” Isenberg — who is a therapist during the day when not causing trouble in the streets — told me the next morning, after the euphoria of last night’s win (and the Anchor Steam coursing through my veins) had sufficiently dissipated to allow journalistic endeavor. Back in ’54, they were getting crazy with it. “My grandfather danced on the table and they gave me a glass of wine. I had only had wine before at Passover. I didn’t go downtown — I heard there were huge celebrations in Manhattan, in the Bronx, but I was a nine year old boy!”

Well he certainly made it to the show last night. When I stumbled into him, Isenberg was wearing a neon pink and yellow windbreaker below his shock of grey hair, a garment that had granted him a sort of inadvertent celebrity earlier that night when he walked down from his home of 32 years on 24th Street and San Jose to partake of the late night street celebrations sweeping the Mission. He was eager to tell me the story of his night.

After watching their team trounce the Texas Rangers 3-1, beard-clad festivators were filling the streets from Polk to Castro to City Hall — but the parties in the Mission were the big ones. Undeterred by the throngs of champagne-popping Giants fans, flat bed trucks full of waving people were chugging resolutely down the middle of Valencia between 16th and 17th Streets. SF – like you didn’t know this already – loves a good street party.

And then they started burning the mattress. Which is awesome. Isenberg took the opportunity to show the crowd what he’s got, which sounds like a nice vertical. “I did, I actually jumped over it. I got a little bit singed though.” He says people were approaching him the rest of the evening to congratulate him on the leap. My guess is they got an earful about the grandfather on the table, the wine, the wonder, as well.

“For a few hours, it was the people’s territory, no cops,” Isenberg recalls. But the cheerful anarchy amidst the taquerias and bike lanes wasn’t to last forever. He reports that at some point after midnight, cops linked arms to form a phalanx and advanced on the revelers. “I ducked into a recessed window — most people were smart enough to move, but those that were too drunk or had an attitude got hit by the police officers’ clubs. Not a murderous hit, just to get them going.” He says after the phalanx cleared the crowd around the boudoir bonfire, a fire truck arrived to douse the flames and the crowd never regained its full insanity levels.

Still, Isenberg was in high spirits on his walk home, high fiving like a madman. After all, it’s not so often that his baseball team wins the World Series. And after living in the Mission as long as he has, he’s not easily rattled by rowdy crowds. Even if this one was special. When asked if he’d ever seen anything like the celebratory mayhem that had ensued, he said “it was a little more wild than I’ve seen before. It was one level up from Halloween.”

 

Sorting out the Kim and Walker claims

Sasha Cuttler
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2

As the District 6 supervisorial race winds down, we at the Guardian have been inundated by calls and messages by Debra Walker supporters saying how nasty Jane Kim supporters are being, and by Kim supporters complaining that Walker’s people are being mean. And while we’d be the last ones to say that we told you so, everyone should remember that politics is nasty business, particularly when two progressive candidates are targeting the same voters.

It’s not worth trying to sort out the street-level accusations, but it’s worth pointing out some dubious claims in the mailers both sides have sent in recent days, punches and counter-punches that began last week with a mailer by Walker’s camp claiming Kim moved into the district to run for office. Kim’s people dispute that she moved into D6 simply to run, and they note that progressive politicians such as Chris Daly and and Matt Gonzalez were also recent transplants when they decided to run for supervisor.

Yet it’s probably going too far to label this “last-minute lies being spread,” as the latest Kim mailer contends. Another Walker mailer says that Kim is under investigation by the Ethics Commission for illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure mailer funded partially by Willie Brown, which Kim’s camp calls another lie.

It was a story first reported by the Guardian, then picked up by the Bay Citizen, which quoted Ethics head John St. Croix as saying the situation appeared to violate campaign finance law and “warrant an investigation.” Ethics can’t confirm when it is doing investigations, so it might be going to far to say Kim is under investigation, although the incident does appear to involve improper behavior that is probably fair game for criticism.

The mailer also included a Walker campaign accusation that Kim “took off on an all-expenses-paid trip to Vegas – and charged it to the School District” while it was laying off teachers and wrestling with a $40 million deficit. That also has a kernel of truth to it, even that it sounds worse than it was and is probably being blown out of proportion.

The Kim campaign says the trip to speak at a national education conference was paid for jointly between the conference organizers and the school district, which covered about $600 worth of hotel and meal expenses. Again, the accusation has some nasty implications, but it’s probably not an unreasonable accusation during the heat of an election season.

The hit on Walker that the Kim campaign sent out in response also seems to fudge the truth just a bit, but in this case it was in exaggerating Kim’s experience not in criticizing Walker (except for the line that Walker was “Appointed by City Hall insiders” to her spot on the Building Inspection Commission, rather than “Elected by the people,” as Kim was to the school board).

But three of the five claims that Kim makes seem to apply more to Superintendent Carlos Garcia and his administrative staff than to the part-time school board members: “Experience Administering A Budget of $400+ Million,” “Experience Overseeing Over 1,000 Employees,” and “Experience Bargaining With Labor Unions.”

Yet by tonight, all these claims and counter-claims, and all the street-level mudslinging that has been going on, will hopefully fade into memories of a heated political campaign. Hopefully. But if this inter-progressive-movement fight ends up handing this seat over to downtown-backed candidate Theresa Sparks, then the nastiness could be just beginning, because both campaigns will have some explaining to do.

Steve Moss: The big duck goes on and on and on

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Steve Moss: The big duck goes on and on and on

And so you will remember, from my earlier blog (STEVE MOSS: THE BIG DUCK) that I asked Steve Moss some questions in the critical District 10 race. He answered but ducked the questions, so I put forth the relevant follow up questions. No answer at all. But the blog comments provide some interesting back and forth with Moss supporters and others in the district.  (Yes, I don’t like anonymous comments and I always sign my comments as Bruce and B3.)

Moss told us in the Guardian endorsement interview that he fully supports more sunshine and accountability in non profits. So let’s take him at his word on this one and raise again the questions he has been ducking. PG&E has invested millions of dollars over the past 10 years into Moss, his non profit (and by extension his for profit firm and the Potrero View, which he now owns and uses for his personal and political agenda.)

More, Moss’s non profit collected $1,290,000 in the past three years from the California Public Utilities Commission for energy efficiency projects, according to SF Power’s annual revenues in its 2008 to 20l0 report on its website. Loretta Lynch, former president of the CPUC, explained to us that this money for energy efficiency programs are funded by ratepayers, not utilities, and that PG&E decides each year whether Moss/SF Power gets any of this money and how much. Lynch lives on Potrero Hill.

The report also disclosed that SF Power got $150,000 from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commisson in 2008 and $125,000 in 2009.) Both the CPUC and SF PUC are widely recognized PG&E- friendly bastions. Moss got hundreds of thousands more in previous years since he incorporated his non profit in 2001.  And, according to a statement in the report, Moss is still hustling money from the big polluters in District 10 (from PG&E, Mirant and its power plant and the mayor’s office et al).

This district has been brutalized for decades by PG&E, for starters with the belatedly shuttered Hunters Point power plant and with the still fuming Potrero Hill power plant, and with the concentration of gas pipelines under the district. If elected, Moss would be the first supervisor in memory who would be a direct financial captive of PG&E.

It is only fair to the residents and businesses in his district that Moss explain before election day some basic questions: how much money in total and by year has PG&E invested in him and his non profit and profit businesses? Why has he been secretive about it?
Will he keep hustling PG&E and Mirant for more money if elected? Will he cut his ties to PG&E and the non profit/profit firms and when? How can his constituents trust him considering PG&E’s investments in him?

Other critical questions concern the $250,000 or so investment that the downtown/Chamber/PG&E/real estate/landlord/BOMA gang has made in Moss and his campaign with the full expectation of getting good returns with friendly votes that would most likely be inimical to the interests of his district. Given the huge, unprecedented money gushing into his campaign from commercial landlords, developers, PG&E, and the Chamber gang, how can district residents and businesses trust him on the critical issues of public power, closing down the Potrero power plant, tenant rights, land use, Lennar and other big developments, affordable housing, and protecting the neighborhoods and small businesses?

The critical pre-election question: If Moss can’t answer these key questions fully and forthrightly, and he keeps the Big Duck going, how can he be trusted as a district supervisor?

Full disclosure: I look out from my office window at 135 Mississippi St. at the Potrero Hill power plant, pumping out poisons every minute of every day, courtesy of PG&E and Mirant, and the PUC/City Hall.

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

news@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, OCT. 29

Bert for BART

BART board candidate Bert Hill, who is endorsed by a broad array of progressive organizations in his bid to unseat Republican incumbent James Fang, will be campaigning and meeting commuters along with several of his campaign’s supporters.

4:30–7 p.m., free

Balboa Park BART Station

401 Geneva Ave., SF

www.bert4bart.org

FRIDAY, OCT. 29

Halloween Critical Mass

Find a costume, hop on your bicycle, and join the monthly Critical Mass bike ride, Halloween edition. This rolling street party is always a fun way to flip the normal transportation paradigm, but it’s even more festive when composed of zombies, naughty nurses, and sexy cops.

6 p.m., free

Justin Herman Plaza

Market and Embarcadero

www.sfcriticalmass.org

Zombie Flash Mob

Guardian sources have warned that a mob of zombies, possibly dressed in prom attire, will rampage through the streets of the Mission. They are said to be protesting being marginalized and are showing their solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Eventually, our sources say, they will converge at El Rio, 3158 Mission St., for a zombie prom featuring live music by Elle Niño and others, with a cover charge of $3 for the undead and $7 for the living.

8 p.m., free

Corner of 16th and Mission, SF

elleninosf@gmail.com

SUNDAY, OCT. 31

(SF) Rally to Restore Sanity

If you can’t make it to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the Rally to Restore Sanity and the March to Keep Fear Alive, the send-up of political events by Comedy Central satirists Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, you can still take part in SF’s local version. The event include guest speakers, comedy, poetry, and dancing.

9 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Civic Center Plaza

Larkin and Grove, SF

www.sfsanityrally.com

MONDAY, NOV. 1

Urban Water Rates

Panelists from the industry will seek to answer whether water pricing at the urban water agency level can work as a water conservation tool, whether rate increases jeopardize revenue, and how to serve low-income and low-use customers. RSVP at info@whollyh2o.org.

1 p.m.–3 p.m., free

Jellyfish Gallery

1286 Folsom, SF

www.whollyh20.org

TUESDAY, NOV. 2

Election Day

This election features pivotal races for the governor of California, U.S. Senate, and San Francisco Board of Supervisors, as well as important local and state propositions, so don’t forget to vote. Use this week’s cover as a cheat sheet or view our complete endorsements. Also visit the Guardian’s Politics blog on Election Day for a rundown on the evening parties and follow our live election coverage there that night.

7 a.m. to 8 p.m., free

SF City Hall basement

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF

www.sfgov.org/elections

 

 

Don’t believe everything the government tells you

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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So this is weird. I was poking around on the National Pipeline Safety Mapping System website today, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration, looking for information relating to the San Bruno pipeline explosion. When I ran a search for gas pipeline operators in San Francisco, two different names cropped up: The first is a gas technician who works for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and the second, also listed as a PG&E contact, is local environmental justice advocate Francisco Da Costa. Wait, what?

Da Costa is a well-known figure at city hall who frequently speaks up during public comment at Board of Supervisors meetings. He’s the director of a Bayview organization called Environmental Justice Advocacy, and he blogs about local political issues on his website. When he speaks of PG&E, he tends to use phrases like “diabolical.” Da Costa wears several hats, but PG&E gas pipeline operator certainly isn’t one of them. Not only is he incorrectly identified as such in this federal search engine, complete with his email address and phone number, his name is tagged with the phrase “San Bruno Natural Gas Line” — virtually the only subject a member of the public would be on that website to collect information about.

Da Costa told me this headache started when he submitted an information request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that is conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the San Bruno gas-pipeline rupture. Somehow, in the course of processing his public-records request, it appears that the government wound up incorrectly listing him as a gas operator with PG&E. He’s notified them of the error, but as of this afternoon, it hadn’t been corrected.

Ironically, Da Costa’s request for information on the San Bruno pipeline prompted other info-seekers to contact him. “Ever since I initiated a FOIA request, fire chiefs have emailed me saying to provide them with the maps of the pipelines and so on and so forth,” he said. “I’ve received about 15 or 20 emails from fire chiefs all over California. I had to tell them, I’m not a gas operator.”

When we phoned the National Pipeline Mapping System to ask how Da Costa wound up being a listed as a PG&E pipeline operator, a spokesperson said she would check into it and call us back.

Alerts

David Talbot
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news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 20

 

Oakland candidates forum

The Alameda County Democratic Lawyers Club hosts at forum featuring the candidates for Oakland mayor and Alameda County Superior Court judge. With the Oakland mayor’s race between well-funded favorite Don Perata and progressive challengers Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan heating up as it comes into the home stretch, this could be a fun one.

5–7 p.m., $25 for members, $30 for nonmembers

Everett & Jones BBQ Restaurant

126 Broadway, Oakl.

510-836-7563

demlawyers.org/events

THURSDAY, OCT. 21

 

Save the Dolphins

Earth Island Institute presents “From Flipper to The Cove to Blood Dolphin$: A Conversation with Ric O’Barry,” a plea to save dolphins for being slaughtered in Taiji, Japan. O’Barry, star of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove and the Animal Planet TV miniseries Blood Dolphin$, will update his campaign with information and video footage from his recent trip to Japan.

7 p.m., $5–$20 sliding scale

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston Way, Berk.

510-859-9100

www.eii.org/events/dolphin

FRIDAY, OCT. 23

 

Ports blocked for Oscar Grant

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 has called for a shutdown of Bay Area ports to call for justice in the case of Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform on New Year’s Day 2009. “Bay Area ports will shut down that day to stand with the black community and others against the scourge of police brutality,” said Jack Heyman, an executive board member for the union. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 5.

All day, free

Ports through the Bay Area

www.ilwu10.org

jackheyman@comcast.net

SUNDAY, OCT. 24

 

Sunday Streets

The final Sunday Streets car-free event of the season will for the first time travel through the streets of the Tenderloin and Civic Center area. Bicyclists, pedestrians, and skaters travel a route that passes City Hall, Boedekker Park, Tenderloin Recreation Center, and the Tenderloin National Forest in Cohen Alley, off Ellis near Leavenworth, featuring live performances, the Funkytown Roller Disco, and free bike rental and repair stations. This event also coincides with the second annual Tricycle Music Festival, with live music from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the steps of the Main Library.

10 a.m.–3 p.m., free

Civic Center/Tenderloin

sundaystreets@gmail.com

415-344-0489. ext. 2

www.sundaystreetssf.com

MONDAY, OCT. 25

 

Earth-a-llujah Revival

Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping Choir returns to San Francisco as part of their Earth-a-llujah, Earth-a-llujah Revival Tour, bringing the environmentalist and anti-consumerist gospel to the Mission District. Fresh off of a run for the mayor of New York City and successful campaign to get Chase Manhattan Bank to disinvest in mountaintop removal coal mining, Rev. Billy (a.k.a. performance artist Billy Talen, who got his start here in SF) and his flock will fill you with the Holy Spirit and exorcise you of your credit cards. Hallelujah!

7 p.m., $12

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.revbilly.com/events/cali-tour

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/133698

Avalos initiates LOCAL SF

Mary Magee
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Avalos initiates LOCAL SF

Sups. John Avalos, Sophie Maxwell, David Campos and Board President David Chiu, plus community advocates, construction contractors, neighborhood leaders and union members rallied outside City Hall today to announce the launch of LOCAL SF, a campaign for local opportunities and hiring for San Francisco residents. 

And this afternoon, Avalos introduces the first measure of this campaign–legislation mandating local hiring on publicly funded construction projects.

Avalos’ local hiring legislation is a major departure from the city’s current First Source Program. In place for the past decade,First Source only requires contractors on publicly subsidized projects to show “good faith” efforts to meet a local hiring goal of 50 percent. 

By contrast, Avalos’ proposed legislation will require contractors to meet local hiring goals that will be phased in over the next few years.

“My legislation will ensure that San Franciscans have a guaranteed shot to work on the City’s public works projects and that the local dollars invested in public infrastructure be recycled back into San Francisco’s economy and local communities,” Avalos said in a press release,

Avalos’ introduction of this mandated local hiring legislation comes on the heels of a report from the the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development that shows only a 20 percent local hire rate in 29 publicly-funded projects, despite the 50 percent local hiring goal and good faith efforts of the city’s First Source program.

Avalos says his local hiring legislation was developed over a series of stakeholders meetings with representatives from city agencies, the Mayor’s Office, labor and building trades, the environmental community, neighborhood advocates, contractors, local hiring advocates and unemployed workers, And he vows to keep this roundtable approach going, as his legislation moves forward.

“Over the next few weeks, I intend to keep a dialogue going with all of these stakeholders to strengthen the legislation as it moves through the legislative process,” Avalos said.
  
His legislation is scheduled to be heard in the Board’s Land Use and EconomicDevelopment Committee in November. And it comes not a moment too soon: with unemployment rates remaining high and major construction projects in the pipeline, it’s critical that city leaders ensure that any related work really benefits the local community.

Maxwell disappoints by endorsing Sweet

Mary Magee
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10
Maxwell disappoints by endorsing Sweet

To be honest, I wasn’t surprised that termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell endorsed D10 candidate Lynette Sweet yesterday. Just disappointed. And it’s not just because Sweet refused to come into the Guardian this fall for an endorsement interview (a stance that suggests that Sweet would be depressingly inaccessible to reporters that haven’t drunk her Kool-Aid—a stance that, unfortunately, reminds me of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s attitude towards the media).

I’d been hearing rumors that Maxwell was going to endorse Sweet since February, when Sweet, who’d already racked up Mayor Gavin Newsom’s D10 blessing at that point, showed up alongside Maxwell at the city’s kickoff event for Black history month.

Then there was the fact that during an interview in February for the Guardian’s kickoff article about the D10 race, Sweet spouted phrases that sounded eerily similar to Maxwell’s words.
“D10 is a pretty diverse district, but there is only one common thread: the need for economic development,” Sweet told me.

But a few days earlier when I interviewed Maxwell about a third, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to recall her , Maxwell talked of common threads:

 “I’m waiting for people to have a better understanding of what this community is, what the common thread running through it is, and how to use rank choice voting,” Maxwell said, by way of explaining why she wasn’t willing to endorse anyone that early in the race.

Now, it’s understandable that Maxwell would be looking for a candidate to carry on her legacy. But it she was looking for a moderate black female candidate  then why not endorse Malia Cohen, who isn’t hampered by all of Sweet’s dirty laundry—and has raised the most money in the race, so far?

Could it be that Cohen wouldn’t be down for the kind of dirty deal making that was par for the course back in the days when Willie Brown was still mayor and Sweet was the swing vote that crowned Lennar as master developer at the shipyard/Candlestick Point?

Rumor has it that Maxwell is upset at all the corporate money that’s flooding into this race in support of Steve Moss—and that she asked the other candidates to hold a press conference in which they decry this practice. Rumor also has it that Sweet signaled her willingness to join Tony Kelly, Dewitt Lacy, Chris Jackson and Eric Smith–to name a few–in making such a statement. But it hasn’t happened, yet. And the corporate money keeps rolling in for Moss.

Meanwhile, with three weeks until the election, D10 forums are beginning to sound like a parody of a “Lost” episode featuring a 22-member cast that all claim to represent the city’s polluted and economically depressed southeast sector:

“One of us is a BART director, one of us worked at City Hall, one of us is a community advocate, one of us is a City College Board member, one of us is a civil rights attorney, one of us is an affordable housing development director, one of us is a bio-diesel advocate, one of us is a public safety advocate, one of us was raised in the Bayview, one of us served on the Navy’s Restoration Advisory Board,” and so on.

I’m not saying this is wrong. Hell, I love all this diversity of choices. but I am concerned that, come election night, the progressive vote will get split into a million pieces, while deep-pocketed conservative forces like the Chamber of Commerce and Golden Gate Restaurant line up behind one candidate in an attempt to crush candidates that would stand up to their powerful influence at City Hall and truly represent the D10 community

Yes, there is ranked choice voting, and it’s unlikely that one candidate will win a majority of the vote in the first round. But it’s critical at this venture that progressives develop a winning strategy. D10 candidate Ed Donaldson told me recently that if a candidate who doesn’t represent the community’s concerns gets elected, then the community would respond just as they did around Maxwell—and organize a recall.

But wouldn’t it be better if the community can come together behind three truly progressive candidates and help them win the November election?

One of the key challenges in this race will be to win votes in Visitacion Valley, as well as in the Bayview and/or Potrero Hill.

In his latest column in the Chron, former mayor and Sweet supporter Willie Brown alluded to the importance of this in a city with ranked-choice voting:”It’s not getting much attention, but someone has finally figured out how to get the Asian vote out,” Brown observed.”You do it by mail. You get ballots and ballot books into every household, then have the whole family sit down together. The kids help with the translation, everyone talks things over and everyone votes.”

Meanwhile, D10 candidate Tony Kelly told me that Marlene Tran, who is tri-lingual (English, Cantonese, Vietnamese) and has a good handle on community issues in Viz Valley, has confirmed that Kelly is her second-ranked choice (presuming that she votes for herself in first place. of course).

Not a bad strategy–and one that other progressives need to consider, given ranked choice voting–and the brutal reality that they are going to be massively outspent in the next three weeks.

 

 

 

 


 

 

City bid to bring vendors into Dolores Parks causes an uproar

Sasha Cuttler
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12
City bid to bring vendors into Dolores Parks causes an uproar

Officials with the SF Recreation and Parks Department are attempting to quell the mounting frustrations of some Mission District merchants and residents who feel that the city shouldn’t allow private companies to operate in a public park, as the department is seeking to do. Even those who don’t necessarily have a problem with inviting more commerce into Dolores Park say the process should have been more open and transparent.

“I like pushcarts,” said Rachel Herbert, owner of Dolores Park Café. “I think they add flavor to San Francisco.” But Herbert is also allowing opponents of the department’s request for proposals (RFP) to set up shop in her store and gather signatures for a petition to “stop the commercialization of Dolores Park.” Herbert, who lives in the neighborhood, said she is helping the effort because “It’s about the process and Rec and Park not really thinking things through and doing whatever they want.”

Mike McConnell, the man behind the petition, holds a similar viewpoint. “I don’t feel that it was adequate outreach before this.” They’re not alone. McConnell currently has petitions in three stores – including his own store, Fayes Video – each with around 100 signatures, along with 700 online petition signatures.

While the controversy is recent, the RFP for the permits was issued in September last year. The proposal stated: “Before entering into permit agreement for the operation of a pushcart in any neighborhood park, the Department will conduct a community outreach process to determine the appropriateness of such a use in the park.”

It’s unclear how much outreach there was beyond a request for applicants posted in the July 31 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. However, according to Mission Local, department spokesman Elton Pon sent them an email stating that the department mailed out “an announcement of the opportunity to more than 1,000 potential applicants.”

Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the SF Office of Small Business, said much of the demand for the permits has come from small time vendors. “Part of this has been an organic growing up of the vendors themselves,” Dick-Endrizzi said. “The mobile food folks have been coming and working and urging us to open up more space.”

Dick-Endrizzi helped vet the applicants in the panel that included members of department and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development. “I can attest as being part of the committee that they were very careful in making their decision,” she said.

However one recipient of the permits, Oakland-based Blue Bottle Coffee, has received criticisms that it isn’t local enough – city policies encourage contracting with San Francisco small businesses. Blue Bottle is also backed by venture capital firm Kohlberg Ventures.

Its founder recently issued a public letter explaining his position: “I had assumed that since there were published articles in The Chronicle, the Examiner, and the SF Weekly in November of 2009, and January 2010, that the community around Dolores Park was well informed. So it pained me to hear that many of our (hopefully) future neighbors were upset that more outreach had not been done.”

This isn’t the first time a vendor has been allowed to operate in city parks. Nor are they the first merchant with questionable local status. Last August RPD commission voted 6-1 to replace long-time Stow Lake vendor with an out of state suitor. The Chronicle reported “the corporation, which has owned and operated the 1940s-era boathouse for 67 years, couldn’t compete with New Mexico-based Ortega Family Enterprises, which pledged to complete $233,000 worth of improvements to the well-worn building and buy a brand-new fleet of boats.”

Dolores has become a haven for unlicensed vendors selling items such as beer, hot dogs, ice cream, and even pot-laced brownies and truffles. What will become of them? “You pay thousands and thousands for your trailer and for permits and this guy comes around with his little cart and is selling coffee for 50 cents less, what are you going to do? You’re going to call the fucking cops and say get this scumbag out of here,” said local impresario Chicken John.

Dolores Park has traditionally been regarded with a kind of laissez faire attitude by many San Francisco residents. On a warm day it’s not uncommon to see hundreds of chic to cheap layabouts basking on its hills, beer and bowl in hand, without worry in mind. And many-a-cop has seen them too, but rarely do they intervene – and all was well. Maybe that’s another reason why there has been such uproar over the proposed introduction of pushcarts into the park.

Since the uproar, both Blue Bottle Coffee and the other potential vendor nonprofit Cocina have been put in limbo. La Cocina’s executive director, Caleb Zigas, told Mission Local that “he had expected to roll into the park this week and is disappointed by the delay. In the past four months he’s poured $28,000 in grant money into La Cocina’s food trailer, which is now sitting in storage.”

But how long will the pushcarts (they’re actually trailers powered by generators) gather dust in a garage? “For most types of appeals there is a 15-day window after the permit was issued,” said Cynthia Goldstein, executive director of the SF Board of Appeals. However it isn’t a concrete rule. “On rare instances the board will extend the window when there is evidence that the city did something wrong.” In addition, according to Goldstein, there is usually a 15-20 day window between when an appeal is filled and when it is reviewed by the Board. In short, the dilemma may not be quashed by the meeting this evening that the department is holding on the controversy.

The extension would bode well for any NIMBYs since Cocina’s and Blue Bottle’s permits were granted on April 15, 2010 and Sept 2, 2010, respectively.

RecPark was expecting a 12 percent cut on the pushcart profits and hoped to net around $70,000 annually. The pushcarts are just one of the many revenue generating ideas that are currently floating around. RecPark – under its new department head, Phil Ginsburg, who was previously chief of staff to Mayor Gavin Newsom – recently created a partnerships and revenue generating division with the purpose of capitalizing on many of the cities assets.

At the Jan 21, 2010 Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, pushcarts were discussed as a way to ostensibly keep city employees from getting laid off. Other ideas that were tossed out included hosting a production of Peter Pan, renting out parking places for car shares, and an adopt-a-park program; an adopt-a-gardener program was even suggested. The city was broke and was searching for a way to close huge General Fund deficits.

The idea of pushcarts was discussed again at the Feb 18 meeting. Nick Kinsey from the property division of RecPark, told the commission, “We received 18 responses to the RFP and we actually brought six of them in for interviews. As part of the interviews we met with the respondents, we evaluated their qualifications, evaluated their operation plans – in terms of where they wanted to be in each of the parks, in each of the proposed parks, how that would interact with residents and other park users use of the park space and if there would be any conflict there.”

Kinsey continued, “We’re also accepting application on a rolling basis right now. So if anyone is watching and interested in submitting an application for pushcarts, we are accepting pushcarts. Some of our location are maxed out we wouldn’t accept anyone else. But we have plenty of other park spaces where we think this is an appropriate use.”

The meeting of the issue is today (Thurs/7) at 4 p.m. in City Hall Room 416

 

Dollars or sense?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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28
Dollars or sense?

rebeccab@sfbg.com

It’s no secret that San Francisco is a particularly costly place to live. It consistently ranks in the top 10 most expensive cities nationwide, and it isn’t uncommon to see people renting out their walk-in closets as makeshift bedrooms to make ends meet.

There’s ample evidence that the city’s market-rate housing is out of reach for many families, middle-class workers, and low-income populations, particularly during the recession. Yet the shortage of affordable housing is a problem that is going largely unaddressed at City Hall.

The city’s General Plan estimates that a full 61 percent of new housing would have to be affordable to satisfy the housing needs of city residents, but even the most demanding development standards fall far short, producing only about half that amount. And while most new affordable housing is built for low-income people, a sizable portion is intended for first-time homebuyers with salaries at the highest threshold of affordability. In recent years, about one-third of new “affordable housing” was built to sell to people with “moderate” incomes.

So as big plans are mapped out for new residential developments composed of mostly market-rate units, what’s the strategy for addressing the underlying affordability gap? And will it ever be enough to keep from further turning San Francisco into a city of rich people while its workers are forced to live elsewhere?

This map, which appears in San Francisco’s Five-Year Consolidated Plan, charts concentrations of low- and moderate-income households in the city using HUD 2000 income data. Under federal guidelines, people with low and moderate income could be eligible for affordable housing.

A San Francisco Unified School District proposal to create new housing for San Francisco teachers underscores just how mismatched housing prices are to income. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) estimates that San Francisco renters paying market rate in 2010 would have to earn $56,240 to afford rent a one-bedroom apartment, $70,400 for a two-bedroom unit, and $94,000 for a three-bedroom unit, assuming they spend no more than about one-third of their income on housing.

A starting teacher’s salary in San Francisco is $50,000, so early-career educators may feel the squeeze. A survey of teachers conducted for the proposal found that 81 percent of respondents were renters, most living with unrelated roommates. More than half had plans to relocate in five years to a city where they could afford to be homeowners.

Housing was a hot-button issue at the Sept. 16 Planning Commission hearing on the environmental impact review for a hospital and housing complex that California Pacific Medical Center wants to build near Van Ness Avenue.

“The CPMC EIR fails miserably to analyze the income of the CPMC work force, and where it’s supposed to be housed,” affordable housing advocate Calvin Welch told the Guardian. “It’s a profoundly important question. If they are [providing] jobs that produce incomes that are insufficient to pay for average market-rate housing in San Francisco, who’s responsibility is it going to be to build housing for that workforce?”

 

WHO CAN AFFORD IT?

San Francisco has a reputation as a diverse, politically engaged hub that supports emerging artists, independent thinkers, and advocates for youth, workers’ rights, healthy ecosystems, protections for the most vulnerable segments of society, and hundreds of other causes. Without economic diversity — which is only possible when housing is available to people with a range of incomes — it might be a different place.

NLIHC estimates that 65 percent of San Francisco households are renters, and a significant number are what the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH) calls “cost-burdened,” shelling out more than a third of their incomes on rent. To get by, tenants have been known to cram roommates in like sardines, or cling tenaciously to a rent-controlled unit.

In a thick report outlining affordable housing goals for 2010–14, MOH and two other city agencies clearly articulate the housing challenges facing low-income renters. For one thing, the report says rents are going up despite the economic recession and declining home prices. And most people’s salaries don’t stretch far enough to cover those high prices. Even though there are 16 billionaires and some fabulously wealthy CEOs residing in San Francisco, the majority of people work in more mundane occupations like waiting tables, retail, office work, nonprofit jobs, teaching, health care, or public service.

The MOH report notes that despite the city’s relatively high median income, there’s a widening gap between top earners and people on the lower end of the spectrum, so few households actually wind up in that middle zone. “In fact, over a quarter of San Francisco’s population earns under 50 percent of [area median income],” the report states. For individuals in 2010, this translates to one in four people earning $34,800 or less. Compounding that problem are recent unemployment figures indicating that nearly one in 10 is jobless.

About one half of San Francisco’s population is considered low- or moderate-income, the housing report notes, using the standards used to formulate affordable housing prices. MOH uses a tiered income matrix, calculated using federal guidelines, to determine who could qualify for housing below the market rate. If you make $20,900 or less, you’re counted as “extremely low income.” You’re “very low income” if you make between $21,000 and $34,800, “low income” if you earn between $35,496 and $55,700, and if you make between $56,376 and $83,500, you count as “moderate income.” Even these figures are skewed higher because they include data from wealthy Marin County. As a point of comparison, U.S. Census data estimates that the median income for American workers was $29,530 over the last several years.

Most of the new affordable housing constructed in San Francisco is aimed toward people in the lowest ranges, but in recent years one-third was built for those with moderate incomes, which could gentrify some parts of the city. “Supervisorial Districts 3, 6 and 10 had rates of more than 40 percent extremely low and low-income,” the MOH report notes. “These three districts make up the entire eastern part of the city.”

A Guardian analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational and wage estimates for 2009 suggests that about 71 percent of people who work in San Francisco (many commute from less expensive places) earned less than that highest “moderate” salary limit of $83,500. It suggests that the vast majority of the workforce could not afford market-rate housing unless they sought it in pairs or groups.

“A big issue is the inability of San Francisco’s employment market to produce jobs that pay people enough to afford housing,” Welch says. “There’s a mismatch between market-rate income and market-rate housing costs. We’re housing somebody else’s workforce.”

Another stab at assessing the affordable housing need gazes into the future. The Housing Element of the San Francisco General Plan includes an estimate for the city’s future housing needs for the better part of the decade. The city should build 31,200 new housing units to meet its need, the General Plan says, and “at least 39 percent of these new units must be affordable to very low and low-income households. Another 22 percent should be affordable to households with moderate incomes.”

What this adds up to is a full 61 percent of new residential development in San Francisco ought to be dedicated to some form of affordable housing. The calculation reveals a lot about the condition San Francisco is in, but it might as well be chalked up as a hollow academic exercise. Indeed, the report deems this goal “unrealistic.” The reality of the market and chronic government deficits ensures that there will not even be an attempt to meet it.

 

IF YOU BUILD IT

The trouble with affordable housing is that developers won’t build it unless there is a financial incentive. “The only way it works is not in the marketplace,” Welch said. “There’s no such thing as affordable land, affordable sheetrock, affordable architects, or affordable engineers. The profound condition … is that the market cannot produce affordable housing.” As long as developers can make higher profits building market-rate, they will.

That’s why government steps in to subsidize or mandate new affordable housing construction or preserve existing stock. Under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, if developers decide not to build the required 15 percent of affordable units, they must pay an in-lieu fee that gets funneled into an affordable housing fund.

In a good year, MOH Executive Director Douglas Shoemaker told the Guardian, the city receives $10 to $15 million from these fees, which is used in partnership with developers to build affordable projects. That system hasn’t worked so well lately. Last year funds for affordable housing were depleted instead of bolstered. Developers who paid their fees in anticipation of building new projects requested refunds after their projects were stalled, Shoemaker told the Guardian, so MOH gave back up to $12 million to developers instead of using that money to build new affordable housing.

This year, Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced what he called an “economic stimulus” program that allowed developers to defer payment of in-lieu fees. This guarantees that it will be a long, long time before new affordable housing can be built using those funds. So as it stands, the inclusionary housing law isn’t so effective at producing new affordable housing.

Projects done in conjunction with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, meanwhile, do include higher portions of affordable housing. With all of the planned Redevelopment projects combined — Treasure Island, the Hunter’s Point shipyard, and others — the city can expect to see perhaps 7,000 new affordable housing units in coming years, a portion of which will be condos meant for people in the “moderate” income range. It may well be better than other cities have offered, but it doesn’t begin to address the true need for more than 19,000 units outlined in the General Plan.

Shoemaker noted that San Francisco is a cut above the rest when it comes to affordable-housing requirements. “I just don’t think you could find a city that has more aggressive goals,” he said, noting that in major redevelopment areas, “We’re getting like 30 percent of homes to be affordable on some level.” Yet Shoemaker acknowledged, “the need is intense,” and “there’s more people we would like to serve.”

Olson Lee, deputy executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, also described San Francisco as taking a very aggressive stance on affordable housing. Redevelopment devotes 50 percent of its tax-increment financing to affordable housing, where the state requires just 20 percent, Lee said. And some Redevelopment project areas include twice as much affordable housing as is required by state law, he added. “The city has done a tremendous amount of affordable housing,” he said. However, “the fact of the matter is, there’s a greater demand for affordable housing than the number of units.”

From 2005 to 2009, there were 3,607 new affordable housing units constructed, mostly for people at the lowest end of the pay scale, MOH reports. But in that same time frame, 3,465 rental units were converted to condominiums. One could argue that the city essentially broke even with its affordable housing stock in a decade where housing prices almost doubled. As San Francisco housing prices skyrocketed, the city’s 170,000 rent-controlled units served as the saving grace for the majority who couldn’t afford market-rate, and condo conversions continue to threaten the erosion of that very significant housing stock.

Debra Walker, a candidate for District 6 and a tenant representative on the Building Inspection Commission, told the Guardian that she believes a new financing system is needed for affordable housing. “The argument for development is that we get affordable housing money out of it,” she said, but “the inclusionary doesn’t get us enough housing. We cannot include affordable in those high-rises, because they’re so expensive to build.”

She has talked up the idea of a real estate transfer tax that would create a dedicated fund that could then be used in partnerships with affordable-housing developers. Shoemaker, for his part, noted that having a dedicated revenue stream for affordable housing would be very helpful. A committee comprised of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, Welch, developer Oz Erickson, and Shoemaker was formed earlier this year and actually arrived at a deal, but Newsom ultimately rejected it. Other creative solutions, Walker says, might include reusing shuttered commercial properties or building cheaper by design using different building materials. “It’s about looking at what it is we need,” she said, “and realizing people are in a pinch.”

The greatest complicating factor of the current system, in which the city relies on market-rate development to get new affordable housing, is that even though there a some 40,000 new residential units in the pipeline, developers can’t secure financing to start building them. For now, in the down economy, they only exist on paper.

“They’ll never get built,” Welch predicts, and as long as Newsom continues to extend entitlements for those planned projects in hopes that the market will get a jump, “it’s freezing September 2008 conditions, evidently forever,” limiting opportunities to build something more reasonable.

“They’re zombies,” Welch added. “Who the fuck is going to pay $2 million for a new condo when they can buy a $4 million building for $1 million in foreclosure?” But if the need for affordable housing began to be addressed, he said, something might start to happen. “If you converted half the pipeline units to rental,” he theorized, “they might get built.”

Stage listings

David Talbot
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0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Hamlet Alcatraz Island; 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. By donation. Opens Sat/2, call for time. Runs Sat-Sun, times vary. Through Nov 21. As part of an artistic residency, We Players presents an island-wide interactive performance of the Shakespeare play.

Kiss of Blood Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-35. Opens Thurs/30, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Thrillpeddlers presents its signature Halloween show, with three one-act Grand Guignol terror plays.

The Shining: Live The Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-77891, www.darkroomsf.com. $7-10. Opens Fr/1, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. The Dark Room becomes the Overlook Hotel in this stage production of the horror classic.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Phoenix Theatre, Stage 2, 414 Mason; 433-1235, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $20-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 23. A one-woman musical starring Karen Hirst, with book and music by Anne Doherty.

Aida War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, 864-1330, www.sfopera.com. $25-320. Wed/29, 7:30pm; Sat/2, 8pm; Oct 6, 7:30pm. San Francisco Opera presents Verdi’s classic, a co-production with English National Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. Call for reservations. Mon-Thurs, 10 and 11:45am. Through Oct 10. YouthAware Educational Theatre presents a multimedia play by James Still, directed by Sara Staley.

Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents a show by Brian Christopher Williams.

The Brothers Size Magic Theatre, Bldg D, Fort Mason Center; 441-8822, www.magictheatre.org. $20-60. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 17. Magic Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play, directed by Octavio Solis.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Actors Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ sultry, sweltering tale of a Mississippi family, directed by Keith Phillips.

*Etiquette Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $8-10. Thurs-Sat, noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm; Sun, noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm. Through Sun/3. Rotozaza presents a participatory performance piece for two people.

*Faux Real Climate Theater at TJT, 470 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/9, 10pm). Through Oct 9. A drag queen stripped bare? Not on your life. But in baring some soul and some truth (“two lies” per), Fauxnique (aka Monique Jenkinson; aka a woman as a man as a woman&ldots;) does some productive and fascinating (re)working of this sly semi-confessional form. In a show that begins by asking, via David Bowie, “whatchya gonna say to the real me?”, Fauxnique undresses drag by singing (very ably) as often as syncing and otherwise playing knowingly with the “reveals” inherent in the drag tradition, taking audiences back with her to high school in Denver in the 1980s for a herstory lesson like few others. Questions about identity and art mingle with hip, hilarious, wonderfully “haute,” and seriously hardworking solo cabaret (assisted by transgresser-dresser and prop boy Kegan Marling). Originally unveiled in 2009, and fresh from a London debut, Faux Real returns for an extended but still too-brief run courtesy of the mighty little Climate Theater, currently ensconced in the Jewish Theatre’s luxurious little space. (Avila)

Futurestyle ’79 Off-Market Theater, Studio 250, 965 Mission; (8008) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Wed, 8pm. Through Oct 27. A fully improvised episodic comedy played against the backdrop of SF in 1979.

IPH… Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, 647-2822, www.brava.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm (also Mon/4, 8pm). Through Oct 16. Brava Theatre and African-American Shakespeare Company present the US premiere of an adaptation of Iphigenia at Aulis.

Jerry Springer the Opera Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; www.jerrysf.com. $20-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 16. Ray of Light Theatre presents the West Coast premiere of the operatic farce by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas.

KML Holds the Mayo Zeum Theater, 221 4th St; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7 and 10pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Sun/3. Killing My Lobster presents its fall comedy show, directed by co-founder Paul Charney.

Last Days of Judas Iscariot Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough; (510) 207-5774, www.CustomMade.org. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 30. Custom Made Theatre presents Stephen Adly Guirgis’ meditation on the meaning of forgiveness.

Olive Kitteridge Z Space at Theater Artaud, 450 Florida; (800) 838-3006, www.zspace.org. $20-40. Wed-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Oct 10. Page-to-stage company Word for Word takes on two chapters’ worth of Elizabeth Strout’s celebrated 2008 novel, comprised of a loosely connected set of stories surrounding the title character (played with cunning subtlety by Patricia Silver) and her immediate circle in a coastal town in Maine. In “Tulips,” we find the thorny but shrewd Olive, a former math teacher, and her patient husband Henry (Paul Finocchiaro), the town’s longtime pharmacist, transitioning not so smoothly into their retirement years. Olive—itchy, cantankerous and vaguely at a loss despite her sharp wit—resents her grown son’s (Patrick Alparone) happily distant life in New York and battles with the neighbors until her husband’s stroke leaves her at sea, unexpectedly vulnerable and open to the kindness of neighbors and strangers alike (played by an ensemble that includes Jeri Lynn Cohen, Nancy Shelby, and Michelle Belaver). In “River,” Olive, now a widow, begins a gradual, unlikely and bumpy romance with a recently widowed former academic (Warren David Keith). Director Joel Mullennix grabs hold of colorful details along the way—like the summer influx of rollerbladers and bicyclists—to further enliven the verbatim staging of these stories, but the effort can feel a little forced at times, as if betraying a sense that these well-acted, gently poetical and thoughtful stories and their complex protagonist do not always make for the most stimulating drama. (Avila)

A Picasso Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111, www.apicassoonstage.com. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 9. Expression Productions presents Jeffery Hatcher’s drama about the authenticity of three Picasso paintings.

Pinocchio Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Third Floor, Room 300; 346-5550, www.ypt.org. $7-10. Sat-Sun, 1 and 3:30pm. Through Oct 10. Young Performers Theatre presents a new production of Carlo Collodi’s puppet tale.

*The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 6. The fifth extension of Dan Hoyle’s acclaimed show, directed by Charlie Varon.

*Scapin American Conservatory Theatre, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-90. Tues-Sun, times vary. Through Oct 23. Bill Irwin, the innovative former Pickle Family clown and neo-vaudevillian turned Broadway star, makes a San Francisco return at the helm—and in the title role—of American Conservatory Theater’s production of Moliere’s classic farce. It’s an excuse for some arch meta-theatrical high jinx as well as expert clowning, a love fest really, with many fine moments amid a general font of fun whose heady purity seems like it should fall under some FDA regulation or other—clearly, somebody has paid someone to look the other way, and for once the corruption is unreservedly welcome. Joining the fun is Irwin’s old comrade-in-arms and, here, sacks, Geoff Hoyle, as miserly and dyspeptic daddy Geronte. Other ACT regulars and veterans flesh out a winning cast, among them the ever versatile and inimitable Gregory Wallace as Octave, a flouncing Steven Anthony Jones as put-out patriarch Argante, René Augesen as boisterously unlikely “virgin” Zerbinette, and a wonderfully adept and scene-stealing Jud Williford in the role of Scapin sidekick Sylvestre. As for Irwin, his comedic sensibility shows itself scrupulously apt and timeless at once, and his sure, lithesome performance intoxicating and age-defying. As a director, moreover, he gives as generously to each of his fellow performers as he does to his adoring, lovingly tousled audience. (Avila)

The Secretaries Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 255-7846, www.crowdedfire.org. $15-25 (pay what you can previews). Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 9. Crowded Fire revives the 1994 black comedy by New York’s Five Lesbian Brothers, a gleefully inappropriate bit of feminist satire that feels like the love child of John Waters and Valerie Solanas. Set in the front offices of the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon (delightfully rendered in Nick A. Olivero’s scenic design with New Yorker-like illustrations of the surrounding environs), the story follows narrator Patty (Elissa Beth Stebbins) as she recounts her initiation into a snappy coven of office ladies who not-so-secretly fell (rather than fall for) the town’s lumberjacks as if they were so much old growth forest. The mayhem and humor amuse, but probably seemed a lot fresher 16 years ago, making the simple plot seem thinly stretched. Nevertheless, the play’s details are nicely taken care of in artistic director Marissa Wolf’s fluid staging, featuring lots of play with fluids and a robust ensemble. In addition to Stebbins’s well-wrought and raunchy innocent, Leticia Duarte rocks her power-suit commandingly as no-nonsense supervisor and pack/pact-leader Susan; Eleanor Mason Reinholdt proves scarily endearing as the deceptively mincing, food-obsessed Peaches; Khamara Pettus has Norma Desmond eyes as Susan’s jealous onetime favorite Ashley; and Marilee Talkington approaches comic perfection in lovingly crafted twin roles: the boundingly predatory butch Dawn; and Patty’s hetero love interest and sexual-harassment-workshop–graduate, Buzz. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Angels in America, Part One Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 16. Pear Avenue Theatre kicks off its fall “Americana” program with the Tony Kushner play.

Bleacher Bums Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona, El Cerrito; (510) 524-9132, www.ccct.org. $18. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/3. A sports comedy conceived by Joe Mantegna, directed by Joel Roster.

La Cage Aux Folles San Mateo Performing Arts Center, 600 N. Delaware; (650) 579-5565, www.broadwaybythebay.org. $20-48. Dates and times vary. Through Sun/3. Broadway By the Bay presents the gay musical based on the play of the same title.

*Compulsion Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-85. Dates and times vary. Through Oct 31. Director Oscar Eustis of New York’s Public Theater marks a Bay Area return with an imaginatively layered staging of Rinne Groff’s stimulating new play. Compulsion locates the momentous yet dauntingly complex cultural-political outcomes of the Holocaust in the career of a provocative Jewish American character, Sid Silver, driven by real horror, sometimes-specious paranoia, and unbounded ego in his battle for control over the staging of Anne Frank’s Diary. A commandingly intense and fascinatingly nuanced Mandy Patinkin plays the brash, litigious Silver, based on real-life writer Meyer Levin, a best-selling author who obsessively pursued rights to stage his own version of Anne Frank’s story. The forces competing for ownership of, and identification with, Anne Frank and her hugely influential diary extend far beyond her father Otto, Silver, or the diary’s publishers at Doubleday (represented here by a smooth Matte Osian in a variety of parts; and a vital Hannah Cabell, who doubles as Silver’s increasingly alarmed and alienated French wife). But the power of Groff’s play lies in grounding the deeply convoluted and compromised history of that text and, by extension, the memory and meanings of the Holocaust itself, in a small set of forceful characters—augmented by astute use of marionettes (designed by Matt Acheson) and the words of Anne Frank herself (partially projected in Jeff Sugg’s impressive video design). The productive dramatic tension doesn’t let up, even after the seeming grace of the last-line, which relieves Silver of worldly burdens but leaves us brooding on their shifting meanings and ends. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Nov 21. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

In the Red and Brown Water Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Tues, 8pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm, Sun, 7pm (also Sat/2, 2pm). Through Oct 10. Marin Theatre Company presents the West Coast premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play.

In the Wound John Hinkel Park, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (no one turned away). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sun/3. Shotgun Players’ annual free performance in Berkeley’s John Hinkel Park is this year an impressively staged large-cast reworking of the Illiad from playwright-director Jon Tracy. In the Wound is actually the first of two new and related works from Tracy collectively known as the Salt Plays (the second of which, Of the Earth will open at Shotgun’s Ashby stage in December). Its distinctly contemporary slant on the Trojan War includes re-imagining the epic’s Greek commanders as figures we’ve come to know and loath here in the belly of a beast once know by the quaint-sounding phrase, “military-industrial complex.” Hence, Odysseus (Daniel Bruno) as a devoted family man in a business suit with a briefcase full of bloody contradictions emanating from his 9-to-5 as a “social architect” for the empire; or Agamemnon (an irresistibly Patton-esque Michael Torres) as the ridiculously macho, creatively foul-mouthed redneck American four-star commander-clown ordering others into battle. While the alternately humorous and overly meaningful American inflections can feel too obvious and dramatically limiting, they’re delivered with panache, amid the not unmoving spectacle of the production’s energetic, drum-driven choreography and cleverly integrated mise-en-scène. (Avila)

*Loveland The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-50. Fri, 7pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 13. Ann Randolph’s acclaimed one-woman comic show about grief returns for its sixth sold-out extension.

MilkMilkLemonade La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/2. Impact Theatre presents Joshua Conkel’s off off Broadway play about a lonely gay man trapped in a chicken farm.

She Loves Me Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (825) 943-7469, www.CenterREP.org. $36-45. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2:30 and 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Oct 10. Center REPertory company presents a musical choreographed and directed by Robert Barry fleming.

Trouble in Mind Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Sun/3. It’s old enough be considered a period piece, but at no time does Aurora Theatre’s production of Alice Childress’ 1955 comic drama Trouble in Mind feel dated. Set backstage on Broadway, Trouble depicts the rehearsals of a play entitled Chaos in Belleville—an anti-lynching melodrama penned by a white author. The often hilariously manic director, Al Manners (Tim Kniffin) alternately patronizes, bullies, and flatters the predominantly black cast into portraying the basest plantation stereotypes—right down to the names “Petunia” and “Ruby”—all the while touting the work as an important statement about race relations. But the real lessons in race relations and breaking through the color barriers occur as the rehearsals progress and the cast, middle-aged “character actress” Wiletta Mayer (Margo Hall) in particular, begin to question the veracity of the script and the directorial instincts of Manners. Trouble’s exceptional cast keeps the dialogue crackling and the pace urgent, save for a heart-breakingly deliberate reminiscence powerfully delivered by Rhonnie Washington. As for the timeliness of a piece which highlights among other things the dearth of strong theatrical roles for African-Americans, it’s interesting to note that actors Elizabeth Carter, Jon Joseph Gentry, Margo Hall, and Rhonnie Washington are all making their Aurora Theatre debut with this particular play. (Nicole Gluckstern)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

 

“Best of the Fringe Encore Performances” EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.sffringe.org. Fri/1-Sat/2, 7 and 8:30pm; $20. Four highlights from this year’s SF Fringe Festival get repeat performances.

“Blue Room Comedy” Club 93, 93 9th St; 264-5489. Free. Tues/5, 10pm. A weekly series that takes comedy to new lows.

“Body and Sound Arts Festival Concert” Kunst-Stoff Arts, 929 Market; www.dancemonks.com. Fri/1, 7pm; $15-30. An interdisciplinary arts festival dedicated to improvisation.

“Clown Cabaret at the Climate” The Jewish Theater, 470 Florida; 704-3260, www.climatetheater.com. Mon/4, 7 and 9pm; $10-15. Rising star clowns and seasoned pro clowns perform.

“The Ethel Merman Experience” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; 241-0205, www.dragatmartunis.com. Sun/3, 7pm; $5. Rock gets the brassy Merman treatment.

“Free Night of Theatre” Union Square; www.tixbayarea.com. Wed/29, 10-am-4pm and 6pm; free. A sixth anniversary kick-off performance celebration in which free theater tickets are distributed.

“Funny Girlz” Brava Theater, 2781 24th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/29, 8pm; $25. Kung Pao Kosher Comedy presents a smorgasboard of female comedians.

Insides Out!/Indecision Collision Stage Werx, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, wwwbrownpapertickets.com. Thurs-Fri, 8pm (Insides Out!); Sat, 8pm (Indecision Collision); $12-20. A pair of solo performances by Katie O’Brien.

“ODC/Dance: Architecture of Light” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St; www.odctheater.org. Thurs/30-Sat/2, 8pm; $20-500. ODC celebrates the opening of its new building with performances.

“Qcomedy Showcase” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia; www.Qcomedy.com. Mon/4, 8pm; $5-16. Karen Ripley, Zoe Dunning, Pippi Lovestocking, and others perform.

Lizz Roman and Dancers Danzhaus, 1275 Connecticut; 970-0222, wwwlizzromandancers.com. Thurs/30-Sat/2 (also Oct 7-9), 8pm; $20. A new performance by the local company, with lighting by Jenny B.

“The Romane Event” Make Out room, 3225 22nd; 647-2888, www.pacoromane.com.Wed/29, 7:30pm; $7. Paco Romane hosts Tim Lee, Harmon Leon, and others.

“Rotunda Dance Series” San Francisco City Hall; www.dancersgroup.org. Fri/1, noon; free. Performances by Joanna Haigood/ZACCHO Dance Theatre.

Smuin Ballet Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon; (415) 978-2787, www.smuinballet.org. Fri/1 (through Oct 9), 8pm; call for prices. The company kicks off a new season with two premieres by Trey McIntyre.

“Swan Lake: Ballet for the People By the People” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm; $10-15. ArtFace Performance Group presents an unconventional take on a classic.

“Trine” The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.975howard.com. Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm; $10-20. RAW presents work by Paco Gomes and Dancers and Damage Control Dance Theater.

BAY AREA

Bay Area Playback Theatre Belrose Theatre, 1415 5th Ave, San Rafael; 499-8528, www.BayAreaPlayback.com. Sat/2, 7:30pm; $18. Stories told by audience members are turned into imrpov theater by a troupe.

“The Funniest Bubble Show on Earth” The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Sun/3, 11am (through Nov 21); $8-11. The Amazing Bubble Man (aka Louis Pearl) returns with his show.

Mark Morris Dance Group Zellerbach Hall, UC campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. Thurs/20-Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 3pm; $34-72. The acclimaed dance company returns with a triple-bill of premieres.

Redevelopment throws Arc Ecology under the bus

Mary Magee
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3

No one was really surprised when the Redevelopment Commission voted 4-0 not to renew Arc Ecology’s contract to provide environmental information services regarding remediation plans at Hunters Point Shipyard and award it to Circle Point.

Sad and disgusted, yes. But surprised, no. That’s because everyone expected that Commissioners Leroy King, Darshan Singh, Rick Swig and Francee Covington, who are all appointees of Mayor Gavin Newsom, would throw Arc under the bus as payback for Arc’s decision to comment on the EIR for Lennar’s Candlestick Point/shipyard redevelopment plan and oppose the giving away of state parklands so Lennar could build luxury condos.

“The message was that we shouldn’t have commented ” Arc’s executive director Saul Bloom told the Guardian after the Commission vote went down. “But this you’re-either-on-our-side-or-out-of-a- contract attitude is completely bogus. It’s tactics that Republicans use against Democrats.”

And with the exception of Al Norman (who had the bad manners to burst out laughing when Arc got voted out) and Circle Point staffers, who obviously wanted the contract, those who attended the Commission’s September 21 meeting agreed that the outcome symbolized everything that’s wrong with Redevelopment’s current model of governance, in which political appointees, not elected officials, make decisions that majorly impact the city’s land use.

Thor Kaslofsky, Redevelopment’s shipyard project manager, kicked off the Commission’s contract discussions by explaining why Redevelopment Agency staff were recommending that the Commission award the contract to Arc Ecology.
As Kaslofsky explained, Circle Point received 0.2 points more than Arc from the Agency’s scoring panel, “making it difficult for the panel to determine who is the most qualified.”

Kaslofsky noted that there had been “concerns about Arc Ecology’s multiple roles in the community.”
This was a reference to the fact that, besides, providing independent assessments on the Navy’s clean-up plans, Arc produced “Alternatives For Study,” a report that studied alternatives to a plan that Lennar and the city refused to change–a public-private stubbornness that most recently resulted in a lawsuit from the Sierra Club and the Golden Gate Audubon Society.

“But the panel voted for Arc as the most qualified firm,” Kaslofsky concluded, noting that there were “concerns about Circle Point’s ability to ramp up”—a reference to the fact that though Circle Point has offices in Sacramento and downtown San Francisco, it doesn’t have a presence in the Bayview and little-to-no experience of the military base clean-up process.

Bloom then talked about how Arc has been active in the Bayview for decades.

“We’ve been in the Bayview for 25 years,” Bloom told the Commission. “We’ve read every environmental document that’s been produced. And our office is on Third Street,”
Bloom noted that after Arc scored the highest for Redevelopment’s environmental services contract in 2009, the Agency withdrew its request for proposals (RFP) leaving the community without Arc’s services—and without the services of the Navy’s community-based Restoration Advisory Board—at a time when the Navy was pushing clean-up plans that favor capping the shipyard’s heavily polluted Parcel E-2, rather than digging and hauling out the contamination.

As Bloom noted, the Agency’s contract RFP switcheroo, “caused significant costs to the community because we were unable to provide services at the same time the Navy’s RAB was closed down.”

After Bloom spoke, a stream of Bayview advocates testified in support of Arc.

“Arc is more knowledgeable about clean-up issues than most government regulators,” said Scott Madison, a member of the shipyard’s citizen advisory committee.
“The community asked for—and you granted—an independent contractor, a watch dog, not a lap dog,” Madison continued. “Circle Point may be technically qualified, but they are strangers to the Bayview. The Commission should have the courage to hire a watchdog, even at the risk of a nip at the heels.”

Michael Lynes, conservation director with the Golden Gate Audubon Society, which recently joined the Sierra Club in suing to block the city’s EIR on Lennar’s Candlestick/ shipyard plans, told the Commission that he found “the value provided by Arc to be absolutely essential.”

D10 candidate Eric Smith, a member of the Navy’s now defunct RAB, praised Arc for, “being fantastic in sharing the information.”
“There is no other organization that has their history, has done the work they’ve done, and has the relationship with the community,” Smith said, “With the loss of the RAB, Arc was the only place to go.”

Jackie Phillips of ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment) noted that how a lot of organizations come to the Bayview, but unlike Arc, few stay the course.
“I’ve gone to their workshops,” Phillips said. “They sat us down, they’ve taken us on tours, they’ve taken us to the toxic sites, they have shown us what these changes will mean.”

Phillips also expounded on the difficulty of winning the trust of the Bayview community.
“In the Bayview, we don’t know who to trust, because there have been a lot of broken promises,” Phillips said. “Arc did not try to hide things from us. They have a relationship with the community.”

Next up was Claude Eberhart, who said ordinarily he’d be happy to see Circle Point get the contract, because he likes their staff.
“But by rights, I can’t recommend that,” Eberhart said. “The issue is trust.”
Noting that he has worked with Arc since 1987 when he and Bloom fought plans to homeport the USS Missouri at the shipyard, Eberhart said that in terms of getting “clear, concise and correct information,” Arc is “one environmental organization we can rely on.”

Eberhart also noted that last year, when there was pressure to take a large chunk out of the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area so that the city/Lennar could build luxury condos on state parklands, “Arc stepped forward and provided the information we needed to achieve a community consensus and have the Sierra Club come up with the final deal that allowed for an exchange [of state parklands].”

John Eller, an organizer with ACCE, which co-signed the community benefits agreement that the Labor Council negotiated with Lennar to secure living wages and higher levels of affordable housing, noted that Commission President Rick Swig had spoken earlier in the meeting about how Cohen, Newsom’s former economic advisor, was a consensus builder.

“And that’s exactly what Arc has done over the years,” Eller said.

Kate Kelley, director of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, praised Arc’s integrity.
“The information it provided was balanced, responsive and certainly technically competent,” she said.

“This is not a baseball game,” Kelley continued, referring to Circle Point’s understandable claim that it rightfully won the contract based on the Agency’s scoring process. “This is about relationships and trust—and I trust Arc Ecology to do the right thing.”

Al Norman, who heads the Bayview Merchants Association, was the sole dissenter among Bayview residents who spoke at the meeting.
Norman claimed that Arc’s critique of the city’s EIR was somehow “a conflict of interest.”

But instead of providing evidence to support his claims, Norman launched into a personal attack.
“[Bloom] went against this agency and the community, concerning his alternative plan, when we already had a plan in place,” Norman said. “I think Circle Point deserves a chance.”

The son of the late Jesse Mason, who worked for Arc until he died this summer, spoke in support of Arc and Bloom.
“My father believed in Arc, he trusted Arc,” Mason said.

And Christine Johnson, secretary of the shipyard’s Citizen Advisory Committee, spoke of the pressing need in the Bayview for independent review of technical environmental documents.
“We feel it’s imperative to get immediate advice and expert opinion and to properly assimilate information,” Johnson said, referring to the Navy’s shipyard clean-up plans.
‘We’ve been without that advice for nearly a year.”

Terry Ander, whose organization is a member of the Southeast Jobs Coalition, which includes Brightline, Inner City Youth, Visitacion Valley Community Development Coalition and Young Community Developers, spoke highly of Arc.
“Arc Ecology deserves this contract,” Anders said, noting that the Bayview community has been part of “enough neglect and B.S. to last for ten life times.”

And D10 candidate Kristine Enea, a former member of the Navy’s RaB, urged the Commission to “support Arc and focus on the community’s need for information.”

Bayview community advocate Espanola Jackson stressed the need for accurate information from a trusted source, as opposed to politically comfortable lip service.
“We need the correct information and not the lies and the politics that have been played upon my community,” Jackson said.

After 17 folks spoke in favor of Arc, many of them registering surprise that there was talk of taking the contract away from a small Bayview-based non-profit, Bloom sought to correct any misinformation that had been spread about his organization.
Noting that Arc’s Alternative for Studies “was an attempt to do some problem solving,” Bloom observed how, “Instead, we got painted as an opponent to a bridge. We are a strong supporter of the development and we have put 300 people to work in the Bayview.”

But all this support and clarification was not enough to save Arc from being thrown under the bus.

Commissioners Leroy King, Francee Covington and Darshan Singh joined Commission President Rick Swig in calling for Arc’s ouster. And along the way, they variously accused Bloom of disloyalty, dishonesty and expectations of winning the contract. (The latter accusation was a tad ironic given that there are currently no term limits for Redevelopment commissioners, as evidenced by King who has sat on the commission for decades and has just been renominated by Mayor Gavin Newsom to serve yet another term.)

“I’m opposed to giving the contract to Arc,” Commissioner King said. “Each time, [Bloom] spoke opposed to Redevelopment,” King continued, without proffering any details to support his claims, but giving a disturbing insight into how he thinks organizations that contract with Redevelopment for $282,000 a year (the amount Circle Point will be paid for four years for the environmental services contract) should position themselves on all Agency-related issues.

“[Lennar’s] Kofi Bonner called me and said. ‘Will you chance your vote? We need him’” King said, acknowledging that he didn’t want to award the contract to Arc, when it first applied, four years ago.  “But every time [Bloom] was opposed to basic things to fill that shipyard. He talks against Lennar.”

Commissioner Covington confused the audience by pulling out a copy of the city’s response to comments on its EIR for Lennar’s redevelopment plans, even though the Redevelopment contract in question concerns assessing the environmental issues related to the Navy’s shipyard clean-up plans.

Covington then pointed to, but did not identify, letters that she claimed were from individuals who alleged their names were falsely included in a letter supporting Arc’s EIR comments.

Covington then told the audience that the Agency’s 50 percent small business enterprise standard in contract awards “ is a goal but does not apply to non-profits”.

And Commission President Swig, a hotel and tourism industry consultant, sought to frame Arc, which is respected as an independent non-profit, as an ungrateful consultant.
“As a consultant myself, I don’t agree with all my customers, but I don’t bite the hand that feeds me,” Swig said.

And then the Commission voted 4-0 to reject Arc—and award the contract to Circle Point.

Outside the meeting, a black mood reigned.
“It was political payback,” Scott Madison said. “I think the Commission made a bad choice.”

Mike McGowan. Arc’s senior scientist, noted that public support was 17-3 in favor of Arc.
“But I guess only four votes counted,” he observed. “It seemed that Redevelopment’s staff was in favor of Arc, as was the community except for a few voices, but the Commission kept harping on incidental issues. The truth is that there are no holes in our qualifications.”

McGowan noted that the environmental services contract relates primarily to Navy clean-up.
“Arc never got in the way of the development,” McGowan said. “What it did was participate more fully in the EIR process, and, as I understand, Lennar incorporated some of Arc’s suggestions into their design. But by Arc not having its contract for the last 18 months, a lot of misinformation floated to the top.”

McGowan noted that the spirit of the Agency’s policy on small business enterprises is to foster the development of small firms that are disadvantaged and local.
“And Arc definitely is smaller, less advantaged and based in the Bayview, but it seemed like a lot of personal animosity came up,” he said.

Bloom acknowledged that the loss of this contract is a serious economic blow for Arc.
“They screwed a local small non-profit in the face of a multi-million dollar organization that swathed itself in a couple of small Bayview businesses,” Bloom continued, referring to Circle Point’s inclusion of three local SBEs as sub-contractors in its contract proposal.

Others, speaking off the record for fear of political reprisal, told the Guardian that the Commission’s treatment of Arc—and its refusal to listen to community members and community-based organizations that represent many thousands of local residents—calls into question the need for Redevelopment to exist in its present configuration, if the Commission believes its priority is to fire contractors that disagree with its plans in other arenas.

“The Board can eliminate the Redevelopment Agency and/or change its governance,” a Bayview resident said. “The Bayview is the last frontier of the eastern side of San Francisco. It’s a historically neglected neighborhood that many folks in City Hall now see as the next potential gold mine.”

Lembi’s legacy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Lembi’s legacy

steve@sfb.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ednorsement interviews: Bus drivers on Prop. G

Zelda Bronstein
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Ednorsement interviews: Bus drivers on Prop. G

Advocates for Muni drivers came to the Guardian this week to make the case for voters to reject Proposition G, which would remove their pay guarantees from the city charter, and to argue that the union has been unfairly demonized by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sup. Sean Elsbernd and other city officials in an effort to deflect blame for problems with the troubled transit system.


The group included top Transport Workers Union Local 250A officials Irwin Lum and Rafael Cabrera, Bob Planthold with Senior Action Network, and Frank Lara with More Public Transit Coalition (which was spearheaded by the ANSWER Coalition). “Muni is broken and needs drastic change. It needs to be changed from the top to the bottom,” Lum began.


Yet he said targeting Muni drivers, most of whom are people of color doing a difficult job in one of the country’s most complex systems, doesn’t solve a problem that goes far beyond work rules and salaries. The problem lies with lack of resources and the political will to pursue them, they said, which is why the union supported proposals to reform the Municipal Transportation Authority governing structure and pursue significant revenue options, which were discussed but ultimately abandoned by the Board of Supervisors earlier this year.


“Too many people at City Hall are looking to cover their political rear ends,”said Planthold, who advocates for the rights of those with disabilities and has studied transit systems around the country.


Newsom has repeatedly singled out TWU as the one public employee union that didn’t agree to givebacks to help close the city’s budget deficit, and even some progressives have told the Guardian that the union hasn’t done itself any favors with its intransigent stance. But Lum said union leaders were prepared try to sell their members on a deal that included forgoing raises and accepting unpaid furlough days but that Newsom was too quick to leak news of the deal to the media for political reasons, causing TWU members to dig in and reject the deal before that education process could begin.


While the city and MTA may save $10 million through the measure, they said that was small change compared to the system’s real needs, which they estimated to be around $125 million, much of which could be brought in by creating transit assessment districts to charge big employers whose workers rely on Muni.


Click below to read the complete interview.


 

TWU by endorsements2010

 

Endorsement interviews: Theresa Sparks

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Endorsement interviews: Theresa Sparks

Theresa Sparks says her first priority is jobs and public safety. She wants to more agressively pursue clean technology, with tax breaks if necessary. She wants more development in the district (but “smart development.”) She argues that the city should do an “incubator,” to really focus on new technologies.


She’s also not a big fan of taxes — she supports the real-estate transfer tax, but not the hotel tax (“next year could be a great convention year,” she said, arguing that higher taxes would put that at risk.) She didn’t like Sup. David Chiu’s business tax reforms beause, she said, she thought it would replace private-sector jobs with public-sector jobs. And she said she thinks there’s more at City Hall to cut, particularly in the nonprofits that get city contracts.


She says she supports full staffing for the Police Department, wants to repair the “broken disciplinary” system — and supports sit-lie.  You can listen to our entire interview here:


 


Sparks by endorsements2010

Steve Moss responds

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Editor’s note: On Sept. 10, we posted a story called “Steve Moss, carpetbagger,” explaining how a leading candidate for District 10 had had filed his intent to run for office while he still lived in another district. Moss sent us a response, which we’re posting below (and our response to him follows that).


 There are many things you could say about me.  You could say that you hope
someone else wins the race for Supervisor in District 10.  You could say that
you don’t like my politics.  You could say you think that if I were Supervisor,
the city would fall into the ocean (although that seems a bit extreme).
But to suggest that I’m not really in the district, as your reporter did in a
story on 9/10 – what’s up with that?


 If you really wonder whether I live in District 10, you could send a reporter
over to my house on Potrero Hill.  You’ll see a home lived in by a family (and a
very large mutt), my family…not a Potemkin village.  Or come by my office at the
Potrero View.  Or talk to the folks at Farley’s or Goat Hill Pizza or The Good
Life Grocery.  I’m not saying that I’m known to everyone, but I’m hardly a
stranger.


 Three years ago, after living in the district for years, I moved to Mission
Dolores so we could walk our daughter to her new school (Alvarado).  When she
switched schools, and I decided to run for Supervisor, we moved back.  That was
last winter.


 That’s not a secret.  There’s no secret life, no secret pied a’ terre, no
secret, period.   I completed all the paper work the city and state asks of a
candidate, using my office address for mailing purposes and my home address on
the appropriate forms.  I’m a resident of District 10.  My daughter was born in
District 10.  I work in District 10.  I have history in District 10.
If you want to say that you don’t like what I think about development in the
district, schools, or post-modern theater – by all means, let’s have that
debate.  But surely, even in San Francisco, we can find a way to disagree with
one another politically without resorting to something like this.


 P.S.  Regarding Form 501 referenced in your article, see the official FPPC
instructions on page 38 in this link, which states that using a
business address is fine.


 Tim Redmond responds:


 For the record, we never stated that Moss is “not really in the district.” He says he lives in D-10 now, and we have no reason to doubt him. What we said was that he didn’t live in the district when he launched his campaign by filing his statement of intent to run for supervisor. We reported that he had moved out of the district, and apparently — according to an email from his wife — moved back specifically to enter this race. I quote the July 8, 2009 email Debbie Findling, Moss’s wife, sent to friends:


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


 Here’s the key: “We’re hedging our bets in case he doesn’t win we’d be moving back to Dolores Park after the elections.” And, from his comment above: “When … I decided to run for supervisor, we moved back.”


 That sounds like someone moving into a district just to run for office.


 Now, Moss is singing a slightly different tune today. When I asked him if he intended to stay past the election, he said:


 “We love our home on 18th and vermont street, and very much hope to stay here (its a rental). If I don’t win I’m thinking of launching a southside newspaper, to serve the neighborhoods of district 10.”


 Good for him; we need more neighborhood newspapers.


 Still, our point remains: Moss wasn’t living in the district when he started his campaign for D-10 supervisor.


 It’s not illegal to move into a district to run for supervisor. You just have to live there 30 days prior to filing. But I still think it’s wrong. The law ought to mandate at least a year’s residency prior to filing an intent to run. And since Moss’s residency in D-10 seems based at least in part on his desire for a job at City Hall, that’s something the voters ought to know.  

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