Housing

Dick Meister: Black Porters Led the Way

Maria Poblet
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Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.


February is Black History Month, a good time to honor the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the most important yet too often overlooked leaders in the long struggle for racial equality.

The union, the first to be founded by African Americans, was involved deeply in political as well as economic activity. It joined with the NAACP to serve as the major political vehicle of African Americans from the late 1930s through the 1950s.

Together, the two organizations led the drives in those years against racial discrimination in employment, housing, education and other areas, and in doing so, laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The need for a porters’ union was painfully obvious. Porters commonly worked 12 or more hours a day on the Pullman Company’s sleeping car coaches for less than $100 a month. And out of that, they had to pay for their meals, uniforms, even the polish they used to shine passengers’ shoes. They got no fringe benefits, although they could ride the trains for half-fare on their days off – providing they were among the very few with the time and money to do so. And providing they didn’t ride a Pullman coach.

In order to meet their basic living expenses, porters had to draw on the equally meager earnings of their wives, who were almost invariably employed as domestics.
 
It was a marginal and humiliating experience for porters. They were rightly proud of their work, a pride that showed in their smiling, dignified bearing. But porters knew that no matter how well they performed, they would never be promoted to higher-paying conductors’ jobs. Those jobs were reserved for white men.

Porters knew most of all that their white passengers and white employers controlled everything. It was they alone who decided what the porters must do and what they’d get for doing it.

When a passenger pulled the bell cord, porters were to answer swiftly and cheerfully. Just do what the passengers asked – or demanded. Shine their shoes, fetch them drinks, make their beds, empty their cuspidors. And more. No questions, no complaints, no protests. No rights. Nothing better epitomized the vast distance between black and white in American society.

Hundreds of porters who challenged the status quo by daring to engage in union activity or other concerted action were fired. But finally, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt granted workers, black and white, the legal right to unionize. And finally, in 1937, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters won a union contract from Pullman.

The contract was signed exactly 12 years after union president and founder A. Philip Randolph had called the union’s first organizing meeting in New York City. It was a long arduous struggle, but it brought the porters out of poverty. It won them pay at least equal to that of unionized workers in many other fields , a standard workweek, and full range of fringe benefits. Most important, porters won the right to continue to bargain collectively with Pullman on those and other vital matters.

Union President Randolph and Vice President C.L. Dellums, who succeeded Randolph in 1968, led the drive that pressured President Roosevelt into several important actions against discrimination, including the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Commission in housing as well as employment. FDR agreed to set up the commission – a model for several state commissions – and take other anti-discrimination steps only after Randolph and Dellums threatened to lead a march on Washington by more than 100,000 black workers  and others who were demanding federal action against discrimination.

Dellums and Randolph struggled as hard against discrimination inside the labor movement, particularly against the practice of unions setting up segregated locals, one for white members, one for black members.

Randolph, elected in 1957 as the AFL-CIO’s first African-American vice president, long was known as the civil rights conscience of the labor movement, often prodding federation President George Meany and other conservative AFL-CIO leaders to take stands against racial discrimination.

The sleeping car coaches that once were the height of travel luxury have long since disappeared, and there are very few sleeping car porters in this era of less-than-luxurious train travel. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is gone, too. But before the union disappeared, it had reached goals as important as any ever sought by an American union – or by any other organization anywhere.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Early indicators

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Early indicators

Land use politics and the way development decisions are made at City Hall fed San Francisco’s ascendant progressive movement over the last decade. So in the wake of a still-unfolding political realignment, an early key vote is making some preservationists and developer foes nervous.

At the center of that concern is Sup. Jane Kim, who broke with her progressive colleagues Jan. 25 to be the swing vote in the board’s 6-5 approval of attorney Richard Johns to the historian’s seat on the Historic Preservation Commission. Progressives and preservationists opposed the nomination on the grounds that Johns isn’t a historian and that he has close ties to former Mayor Willie Brown, a friend of developers whose longtime chief of staff was Johns’ wife, Eleanor.

And they’re suspicious of Brown’s support – both overt and stealthy – for Kim’s supervisorial campaign (see “Willie Brown and the accusations of machine politics in D6,” 10/16/10, Guardian Politics blog).

Kim didn’t explain her vote at the full board meeting, and her comments at the Rules Committee (which she chairs) and to the Guardian that Johns “was qualified” and she could “see no reason not to support his nomination” irked many of her progressive supporters who consider development the big issue.

Feeding concerns about the potential blunting of historic preservation and other tools used to scrutinize development projects was the Jan. 25 announcement by Sup. Scott Wiener that he is calling for hearings into whether the commission is improperly hindering development and other policy priorities.

“The Historic Preservation Commission — and I supported the creation of the Historic Preservation Commission — has become an increasingly powerful commission reaching into a lot of different areas of policy in the city,” Wiener said during the discussion of Johns’ nomination, citing housing, parks, and libraries as areas the commission has affected. “It’s important to have a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints on this commission, and if we’re going to have a committee made up exclusively of advocates for historic preservation, only advocates, that is a problem.”

Former board President Aaron Peskin, who led the effort to create the commission through the voter-approved Proposition J in 2008, disputes the allegation that the commission has become too powerful, as well as the claim that Johns is qualified to serve in the historian’s seat, one of six seats on the commission that now requires professional qualifications.

“The facts do not support Sup. Wiener’s allegations,” Peskin told us, noting that the Board of Supervisors and the mayor retain the authority to decide what is and isn’t historically significant. Yet Wiener said that even commission- and staff-level actions affect other city goals. “The conducting of a survey does have legal impact,” Wiener told us.

But Peskin said San Francisco has very few protected buildings compared with other major U.S. cities, something voters sought to change through Prop. J, and Peskin said he was disappointed that Kim didn’t support the law’s dictates. “This is the second time in 2011 when the slim alleged progressive majority has not stayed together,” he said, referring also to the election of David Chiu as board president.

Peskin and others who fight land-use battles say they don’t yet want to jump to the conclusion that developers might have an easier time with this board. “It’s my profound hope is that this is a learning experience,” Peskin said of Kim’s vote.

Veteran land use attorney Sue Hestor noted that neither Kim nor Wiener has a record on land use issues by which to judge them and she didn’t want to make a big deal of their Jan. 25 actions. Yet she said that development is a huge issue in the Tenderloin, SoMa, and Rincon Hill areas that Kim represents, so there are major tests of her progressive values coming soon.

“In District 6, it’s the defining issue because it’s the most explosive district in terms of growth,” Hestor said. “Land use is about who gets to live in the city.”

 

WHOSE CITY?

While most of the discussion about the Johns nomination focused on his qualifications as a historian — indeed, that was the basis of most of the opposition to his nomination, by both activists and progressive supervisors — there was some telling subtext focused on Hestor’s point that land use is the most fundamental progressive issue.

At the Jan. 20 Rules Committee meeting, Kim even asked Johns about his “vision for affordable housing as it related to preservation.” But the answer she received wasn’t terribly reassuring to those who see the lack of affordable housing for low-income city residents as a serious problem that the city is failing to address (see “Dollars or sense?” 9/29/10).

“San Francisco is made up of lots of different groups of people with lots of different backgrounds,” Johns said at the hearing, noting that it is important to “preserve the culture and the past that have brought us to where we are. But part of that past is the ability to grow.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Johns expanded on the point, sounding a more pro-growth point-of-view than many of his colleagues on the commission are likely to share. “Development and preservation can go hand-in-hand,” Johns said. “Maybe it’s the development that allows what might be a slowly deteriorating building to be fixed up properly.”

As an example, he cited his 20 years of work on preserving the Old Mint Building — his main claim to expertise as a historian — which was ultimately accomplished as part of the development project that included office and commercial development and the Mint Plaza public space.

“People of all income levels have a right to live in San Francisco,” Johns said, adding, “The real need some people would say is the need for middle class housing.” When we noted that it’s often the low-income residents who are ousted when old buildings get modernized, he said, “You have to think about the desirability of people to live in crummy housing.”

Chiu and Kim both downplayed the importance of the Johns vote. “People are trying to read too much into this,” Chiu said, explaining that he opposed the nomination because he simply felt Johns didn’t meet the criteria as a historian. “What was relevant is what city law says.”

Kim told us that it wasn’t until the full board meeting that she learned how her progressive colleagues felt about the matter, and that she didn’t want to change how she voted in committee. “It was not important enough for me to change my vote based on my verbal commitments,” Kim said later.

Yet on the evening of the vote, Kim told the Guardian that she felt “pressure” to support Johns, although she wouldn’t say from whom. “I was put in a bad position on this issue,” she said. Many progressives have speculated that pressure came from Brown, which Kim denies. “We didn’t talk about this, not once,” she said.

But in his Jan. 30 column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown crowed about the victory by “my friend Richard Johns” and called Chiu’s opposition to him “a mistake that could haunt him for some time,” saying Chiu has set up Sups. Malia Cohen and Kim “to be the swing votes on every issue where moderates and progressives split.”

Rebecca Bowe contributed to this report.

Don’t nobody give a damn: day 3

Mary Magee
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Unemployed construction workers protested outside UC Mission Bay’s Hospital building for the third day straight—but by early afternoon seemed to have got some clarification from UC officials over upcoming job opportunties at the site.


At issue is the tension between UCSF’s stated desire to be a good neighbor and put local residents to work, and the reality that while unemployment remains high throughout the construction industry, the communities immediately neighboring UC’s Mission Bay campus have been hard hit.


.“I want them to set up a system where we have a referral mechanism that includes CityBuild, and for UC to discontinue using DPR’s subcontractor Cambridge and other consultants,” James Richards, President of Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU), said shortly before he met with UC officials. “Because if you don’t have a community-based organization helping UC make good on its commitment to be a good neighbor, then you are going to see stuff like UC’s voluntary local hire system. The idea that you can have a voluntary system without someone like ABU, which organizes folks from the community, is why this system is going to fail. And it’s why we only see token folks on the site. Because if you don’t work with the community, you won’t get the community to work. Really it’s an easy proposition: you have unemployed union workers at the gate. So put them to work.”

Just then Dwayne Jones, who worked in the Mayor’s Office when Gavin Newsom occupied Room 200, stopped by to chat with Richards and the ABU crew. 
Jones, who is now with Platinum Advisors, told the Guardian that he works as consultant for DPR Construction, UC’s prime contractor at Mission Bay. Fortune recently ranked DPR number 22 in its list of Top 100 companies to work for in the U. S.


Jones noted that his work with DPR had nothing to do with ABU’s local hire protest. “I’m only involved because I have worked with all these folks in the past and know all the players,” Jones said. “So, I’m helping these folks. At the end of the day, DPR’s concerns and mine are the same: I want to facilitate a process that maximizes opportunities for local folks.”

“These are all great people,” Jones continued. “I’ve worked for them for 15 years.”

Asked what the city can do to get the state-owned UC to hire more folks from economically disadvantaged communities on a project that isn’t financed by city funds, Jones said, “I agree that there is little leverage that the city has, given the constraints of the contract, so people need to be creative.”

Jones said he was not aware that Dr.Arelious Walker and the San Francisco Workforce Collaborative has issued a flier stating that they were gathering lists of names to be submitted to UC for jobs, amove that angered ABU members since they have been protesting for jobs at the site for over a year


“I was not aware of this group but there are a multitude of organizations trying to do good work,” Jones said. “And frankly this [multitude] was one of the things that led to the end of the lead agency methodology, because it caused so much division in the community. I hope we build a really strong coalition in the community that leverages its strengths.”

Jones gave UCSF credit for trying to move the local hire process forward
“I’m glad that they accepted the initial recommendation to do whatever they can to mirror the city’s local hire legislation,” he said. “Because although it’s voluntary, if it’s part of your culture and you embrace it, it’ll get done. And these are the people who have been out here for a year.”

Last December, the Board approved local hire legislation for city-funded projects. Mayor Gavin Newsom did not sign the legislation, which met stiff opposition from the building trades, and it’s fallen to Mayor Ed Lee to mplement this new law, which does not apply to state agencies,but had led to a parallel dialogue with UC.


“Much like any policy, implementation is the biggest challenge,” Jones observed. And until we do some inventory of which organizations, contractors, individuals and groups can do each piece of the work, it’s going to be a struggle. What I’m praying for is that local hire legislation allows us to get a bigger table. What I’m interested in doing is creating a pipeline of qualified workers, so that whenever something like this happens, I don’t have to hear the excuse that folks aren’t ready to work.”

Then Richards took off for a meeting with UC Vice Chancellor Barbara French that lasted two hours during which time rumors started circulated that Mayor Ed Lee had called French to try and help move the conversation along, as ABU members continued their protest and shared stories with reporters of how they came to be standing on a picket line in Mission Bay.

One worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he was frustrated by UCSF’s plea for workers to remain patient because jobs are coming soon. “We’ve been out here for one and a half years, so since before they did their demolition, and they have been playing games with us,” he said. “ Folks with ABU were promised jobs. But then they didn’t get anything. That’s what UC does. They try to pacify you and tell you stories, then the money gets taken out of the community, and another year goes by. So, if anybody says, why aren’t you more patient, the answer is that the whole area has been built with only a handful of people from our community. Especially now, when no one has jobs, and everybody wants to work here. We are not going into other communities and trying to steal their jobs. We just want to work here. But we could be protesting every day, until this whole stuff has been built. It’s a city within a city. Just look around you. We was patient. And all this stuff has been built and we got no jobs.”

Michelle Carrington, 58, a flagger and an operating engineer from the Bayview, said Dwayne Jones helped her graduate from Young Community Developers. “He got me in tears, he dropped me in the mud at 5 in the morning and made me do push ups, but I fought and kept on and graduated at the top of my class out of three women and 15 men,” she said. “But now we got people going behind the gate, folks who used to work for Dwayne Jones, like Dr. Arelious Walker, who are trying to say that they are the ones who have got the sign-up list for jobs here. But you ain’t been here marching, or down at City Hall fighting for local hire. And I saw Rodney Hampton Jr. on the number 54 bus, and I let him have it. I said, what’s this I heard about you and Walker? And he said he went to UCSF and tried to get a bid but was told ABU had it. So the only way to get in was for him and Marcellus Prentice to go to God’s house.  But Walker’s not out here. Meanwhile, we see folks coming from Hayward, Sacramento and Vallejo and working on this yard. Why is it such a hard decision to try and put us to work? It’s easy. Just take 5 or 10 of us, put us to work, and we will go away. Work smarter, not harder.

Laborer Sharon Brewer, who was born and raised in the Bayview and has been out of work for two years. She helped her granddaughter, Akira Armstrong, hold a protest sign and talked about losing her apartment because she lost her job.
“I had to move back in with my daughter because nobody lets you live for free,” she said. “I used to work for UCSF as a patient coordinator for physical therapy but I got laid off. Now I have to dummy down my resume to try and get a job making $8 an hour selling coffee and donuts .”

Jesse Holford said he had reached the fourth level of his apprenticeship as a Carpenter.
‘There are eight levels between an apprentice and a journeyman,” he said.

Jason Young and Alonzo McClanahan said they were unemployed laborers from  Bayview Hunters Point resident. Robert English, a carpenter journeyman from the Bayview, had been out of work 6 months. Tina Howards, a carpenter’s apprentice from the Bayview with four kids,  had been out of work for a year. And Keith Williams, a carpenter from the Bayview, had been out of work for nine months.


Fred Green, who has lived in the Bayview for 50 years and has five kids, said protesters were trying to remain as peaceful as possible.


“But an empty belly makes you do strange things,” Green said. “If there’s enough work for everybody, why should we be stuck at home while someone comes into my community and takes food out of my kids’ mouths. I got five kids and they all go hungry.”

Bayview resident Carlos Rodriguez has three kids and has been out of work for two years.
“They called me to work before Christmas but never hired me, “ he said.


Bayview resident Truenetta Webb has two kids and has been out of work for four months.
‘Some guys called me and took my information, but there’s been no work,” she said.

Troy Moor, who has lived in the Bayview for 47 years and has two kids, worked in January on Lennar’s shipyard development for 17 days.


“Two weeks ago, UC said they were going to hire four folks on ABU’s list, but they didn’t,” he said. “We don’t want it to get ugly out here. All we want to do is feed our families.”

Moor said he believes Mayor Ed Lee will ensure local hire is implemented on city-funded projects. “Ed don’t want no problem, we know him personally, we used to work for him when he was at DPW (the city’s Department of Public Works),” he said. “He’s a decent guy, as long as you keep the pressure on him.”

Moor speculated that if ABU blocked both gates to the UC Mission Bay hospital project, it would cost UC thousands of dollars.“Here at the front gates, we are visible, but we figure that if by next week, nothing is happening, we’ll start making them lose money,” he said.

Ed Albert, a retired painter and a Bayview resident for 57 years, said he was protesting for folks in his community.
“I grew up in the Bayview, I’m a servant of the Bayview,” he said. “I went from paperboy to contractor. I was a painter for Redevelopment and the San Francisco Housing Authority. But I don’t want a job. Who’d hire a 67-year-old guy with one eye? But I want to see my people get a job.”

James Amerson, a laborer with Local 261, said he worked on the Transbay Terminal in July, then got transferred to Pier 17.
“But when that was over, they didn’t bring me back to the Transbay, so I’ve been out of work since the end of December,” Amerson said. “They sent me to the Transbay as a flagger, and I rode by the other day, and saw they had an apprentice operator doing flagging.”


“When we are not working, we always come back to James [Richards]’s church at Double Rock,” he continued. “We meet at 9 a.m., Monday through Thursday. James is sick with diabetes. But he ain’t asking for anything. He’s here for the people, coming out here, buying food every day. We feed everybody. Yesterday he was feeding the police officers.”

Finally, Richards emerged from his meeting with UC officials. After he crossed 16th Street slowly, Richards was encouraged take a swig of orange juice from the back of ABU’s flatbed truck before giving folks an update.


“When DPR needs someone for a job, they’re gonna call Dwayne Jones, and then Dwayne will let us know,” Richards finally said. “There’s enough work for everybody. There’s hundreds of jobs, but I don’t know if they are in every trade. So, I feel good. But not so good that I can say that ten carpenters will be hired tomorrow. There’s not enough need for that, right now. But the work that’s there, when they call, you’re going to know it. Laborers, there are going to be no others going first. You guys are going first. So, I suppose next week, more laborers should be going, then more carpenters.”

Asked if ABU was going to continue its protest, Richards ‘said he thought folks needed to regroup.


“I think we got enough to not have to come out here tomorrow again. So, we’ll come back to church on Monday and let everyone know what happened. Then we’ll make a decision about what we are going to do. If the majority says, fuck this man, make ‘em hire 10 or 20 more folks, then that’s what we’ll do. But for now, we gotta regroup.”

Reached by phone, as ABU members prepared to pack up for the day, Cindy Lima, executive director of UC Mission Bay Hospitals Project, said she felt UC’s meeting with Richards was positive


“We clarified some misunderstandings and made some progress,” Lima said. “Our goal is still to create jobs for San Francisco residents and make this project happen. So, we are continuing to try and match people who need to go to work with available job opportunities. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people in this city who are out of work and a lot of groups with different intentions in mind and we get tangled in that process. So, maybe we need to have more dialogue about when jobs will become available. And we have made a commitment to talk more.”










Appetite: Germanic adventures

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Germanic adventures

Though I have more than a few food obsessions, there’s something about authentic food and wine from the Germanic countries that comforts me on a profound level. Maybe it’s my German Miller (or Mueller) family heritage on my Dad’s side or the satisfying straightforwardness of dishes like dumplings or sauerkraut. Either way, there’s not enough food around from that region as far as I’m concerned. So it is with great delight I witness the opening of two unique restaurants.

Here’s two early “sneak-peeks” on North German Gaumenkitzel, debuting this week in Berkeley, and Leopold’s, an Austrian restaurant just opened Friday in Russian Hill (see additional photos of both spaces in my next issue of The Perfect Spot, coming out Feb. 1).  

LEOPOLD’S – With the words Treffen (meet), Trinken (drink), Essen (eat) painted under the name, Leopold’s offers something with no parallel in our city: an Austrian restaurant. It opened quietly this past Friday night in a cheery, bright space on Polk Street housing animal heads, Austrian art, pine wood tables and booths. Here, the relaxed warmth of a neighborhood beer haus (with a number of beers on tap and by the bottle, including Kostritzer Black Lager and St. Bernardus) meets dirndl-clad waitresses, all the while maintaining a refinement that doesn’t cross the line into kitschy.

Brothers Albert and Klaus Rainer, from my favorite Austrian city, Salzberg, run the place with effusive charm. Though they must be working out new-opening kinks, my initial meal was seamless and delicious. Hungarian Goulash (borders of Hungary and Austria changed so often that regional dishes meld) is tender beef in a paprika-rich sauce with buttery, addictive spaetzle and a green salad brightened by lemon zest. Wiener schnitzel is exemplary: prepared traditionally, lightly breaded, pounded flat with a squeeze of lemon, contrasted perfectly with Lingonberry sauce and a warm escarole potato salad. These entrees are quite filling at a mere $12.75 each, while the highest-priced menu item is Choucroute Garni Platter at $17.75.

As in my travels through Austria, Switzerland and Germany, salads are ultra-fresh. Roasted beet salad ($6.75) rests on a light horseradish creme fraiche in a bed of mache and endive, accented by walnuts and radishes. Additional appealing starters include duck crepinettes, vegetable strudel and house-smoked salmon on potato cakes. An off-menu starter of dense German breads made an impression topped with beets on a creamy liptauer cheese spread (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liptauer) or Black Forest ham with fresh-shaved horseradish. Wines are affordable at $20-34 a bottle, with plenty of glasses and carafes available. I delight seeing mostly wines from Austria, Switzerland and Hungary, with an additional few from Slovenia, California and Oregon. Save room for a slice of apfelstrudel (apple strudel – $5.75) in warm vanilla cream sauce.

This heartwarming haven is one I’m already plotting my return to.

2400 Polk Street (at Union)
415-474-2000
Sunday-Thursday, 5:30-10pm, until midnight Fri-Sat.

GAUMENKITZEL, meaning ‘delight for the taste buds’, opens later this week (if all goes as planned) in an open, sunny space on San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley. Owner Anja Voth brings restaurant and patisserie experience from Hamburg and Berlin. Her husband Kai Flache constructed and designed the restaurant with his local firm. They operate as a gracious, complimentary team.  

A rustic wood ceiling, huge windows and skylight illuminate the yellows, whites, reds and oranges of the clean, modern room. A spare collection of German china and ceramic dolls line the shelves, adding a homey touch. While the main portion of the room is eat-in, one can order take-out or baked goods. A section to the left of the entrance offers stools and countertops for a quick meal.

A pastry chef bakes fresh breads and pastries in-house, including a delicate Linzer torte with red currant jam. Anja operates as chef with assistance from a chef who worked 15 years at Oakland’s now-defunct Citron. I stopped in for a preview lunch, savoring baked goods, beet salad, an addictive caramel custard, and beef roulade with braised red cabbage and creamy mashed potatoes. The beef roulade is Anja’s mother’s recipe, rolled up with pickles and onions, while red cabbage is equal parts apple with a tart, spiced kick.

A breakfast menu lasts all morning with items like German porridge, house-baked rolls, cold cuts, müsli. There’s afternoon tea (2-4:30pm), while lunch and supper entrees cover the gamut from salmon with rhubarb compote to wild mushrooms with spaetzle. They also make their own seasonal jams, like a pleasantly tart/bitter Meyer lemon marmalade I sampled. Menu prices had not yet been finalized on the menus I previewed, but it will be affordable, mid-range.

The joy here is dishes with a predominantly North German focus, a rarity as local offerings are typically of the South German kind. Influences from Anja and Kai’s port city hometown of Hamburg are showcased, like curry (poached fish with curry sauce) and fresh fish (from Monterey Fish Market). Expect authentic German, reliant on local and seasonal ingredients, prepared with care from a couple involved in every aspect of the place.

2121 San Pablo Ave, Berk.
Daily 6am-6:30pm
www.gaumenkitzel.net

–Subscribe to Virgina’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot

Uncertain developments

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Uncertain developments

sarah@sfbg.com

Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies and enterprise zones has San Francisco officials confused about which local projects will be affected.

Currently, the state allows municipalities to redevelop specified areas by borrowing against estimated future property taxes. Brown says he doesn’t want to interfere with any redevelopment bonds or commitments that have been contractually entered into — but the plan would redirect billions from development projects to schools, public safety, and other local programs.

“Redevelopment takes money from schools, cities, and counties,” Brown said at a Jan. 10 budget proposal press conference. “We want to take that money and leave it at the local level for the purposes it was historically intended. That’s police or fire or local activities, county, or schools.”

Brown says his proposal will save the state’s general fund $2.7 billion over the next 18 months. And he wants to help cities and counties raise taxes to replace that money.

But local officials say it remains to be seen what Brown’s plan means for existing obligations, and details won’t emerge until the governor releases a draft budget in March.

“I don’t think we’ll really know until we see what the legislation says,” said Redevelopment general counsel Jim Morales. “Clearly if you have a binding contract, that’s enforceable in court. The Legislature couldn’t pass a law that interferes with that.”

Redevelopment already has contracts related to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Mission Bay. “The fact that we have an agreement is helpful. But a redevelopment plan of itself is not an agreement,” Morales said. “It goes to the question of what is the obligation, who gets it, and what tools do they have to fulfill those obligations.”

Morales said he believes the passage of Proposition 22 in November — which blocked the state from taking local redevelopment funds — lies at the heart of Brown’s proposal.

“The way Prop. 22 was drafted doesn’t give the state Legislature much room to use these funds except to eliminate redevelopment agencies,” he said. “It’s a legal as well as a political strategy to amend by another ballot measure or somehow modify Prop. 22.”

Brown’s bombshell landed just as city officials announced that a settlement had been reached with the Sierra Club and Golden Gate Audubon Society over charges that the city’s environmental impact report for Lennar Corp.’s massive development proposal for Candlestick Point and the former Naval Shipyard was inadequate.

The agreement includes criteria for the design and construction of a bridge across Yosemite Slough to lessen environmental impacts and provide habitat improvements.

“A settlement that provides great benefits to people and wildlife is not one that is often achievable. We’re extraordinarily pleased to have done so in this case,” said Arthur Feinstein, chair of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter in a Jan. 8 press release.

“The agreement creates benefits for the community and the open space, habitats, and wildlife throughout the project area,” said Mark Welther, executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society. “The lagoon and other improvements will create an area whose beauty and ecological significance will rival Crissy Field.”

Lennar’s Kofi Bonner said the settlement helps clear the way for fundraising efforts. “It means we have one less lawsuit to deal with,” Bonner told the Guardian at the Jan. 11 swearing-in for interim Mayor Ed Lee.

Still on the table is a suit that Bayview-based Green Action and Power (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) brought against the city’s EIR for Lennar’s project.

Bonner said POWER’s lawsuit is about issues that the developer does not control. “POWER’s suit is about toxins removal and how the Navy is handling the issue,” he said.

POWER counters that it’s premature for the city to certify the EIR for the Lennar project. “The problem is that we are asking the city to approve future uses at the shipyard when we don’t know the result of the Navy’s clean-up process,” said Jaron Browne, a spokesperson for POWER.

Browne said that there’s nothing in POWER’s lawsuit to prevent Lennar from moving forward at Candlestick Point or with rebuilding the Alice Griffith public housing project.

The cruelest cuts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The cruelest cuts

By Hannah Deveraux

OPINION Sitting alone in my apartment off Turk and Mason streets in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, I try not to let myself slip back into depression or anxiety over my finances. My apartment is small, an adjective that makes it sound bigger than it really is. Still, it’s mine. I am able to pay rent through my Supplemental Security Income (SSI) check, and when my disability claim was first approved, I was relieved.

It had been a nearly two-year uphill battle with the Social Security Administration, and even after my benefits were approved, I still spent an additional three months living out of various shelters while I waited on several housing lists. But then the call came from my social worker at the shelter that I had been placed in a hotel in the Tenderloin, and I was excited to be out of shelters once and for all.

I am not someone who is easily given over to making hyperbolic statements, so I cannot say that I was ever happy to have to be living off SSI. Nevertheless, I was happy to have a roof over my head rather than a rain-soaked cardboard box, and I was thankful to have Medi-Cal. After all, San Francisco is just about the only place where transgender woman like myself can get affordable or free healthcare and be treated with dignity from our providers.

Little did I realize that being treated with dignity by our government was no longer in the cards.

It began when many of my friends, also on SSI or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), started complaining about reductions to their checks. Our benefits were cut — but the Social Security Administration wasn’t telling us what had happened. Some checks were cut by as little as $20, some $60, and others as much as $150.

My check was unaffected for a few months, and then the cuts started to hit me as well. I have now seen six separate reductions to my monthly check, which was $964, and is now only $845. Because of the cuts, I no longer have enough to meet all of my basic needs each month. Many days, dinner is a loaf of warmed up garlic bread because it’s all I can afford.

But things got much worse. The government did the most inhumane thing imaginable: it took away vision and dental benefits from our Medi-Cal. Suddenly, three epiphanies about politics dawned on me: the first that the poor are sound bites for politicians; it always looks good for politicians to get their picture in the local newspaper with their arm around a smiling 60-something homeless guy. Second, the poor will always be the first minority group to have their funding for social service programs, essential food services, and low-cost or free medical care targeted in a bad economy.

The last thing I realized is that politicians don’t care if the poor die — as long as they die silently and the politicians don’t get blamed for it.

These days I wonder if I’ll even be able to keep my housing, and I often have anxiety attacks where my heart races and I cry to myself, just out of sheer stress and worry.

The fact is, I shouldn’t have to live this way. I have to wonder how amounts so small in proportion to California’s $25 billion deficit are even going to come close to making a difference.

It’s unconscionable that the first thought of our government would be to steal from those who are already disabled and poor and barely getting by, those who really don’t know how to advocate for themselves, and who have few allies to begin with. *

Hannah Deveraux has a roof over her head — for now.

SF’s new political era

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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31
SF’s new political era

news@sfbg.com

You can argue about what the word “progressive” means, and you can argue about the process and the politics that put Ed Lee in the Mayor’s Office. And you can talk forever about which group or faction has how much of a majority on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but you have to admit: this city has just undergone a significant political realignment.

Some of that was inevitable. The last members of the class of 2000, the supervisors who were elected in a rebellion against the sleaze, corruption, and runaway development policies of the Willie Brown administration, have left office. Gavin Newsom, the mayor who was often at war with the board and who encouraged a spirit of rancor and partisanship, is finally off to Sacramento. For the first time since 1978, the supervisors will be working with a mayor they chose themselves.

For much of the past 15 years, progressive politics was as much about stopping bad things — preventing Brown and then Newsom from wrecking the city — as it was about promoting good things. But the “politics of anti,” as San Francisco State political scientist Rich DeLeon describes is, wasn’t a central theme in the November elections, and this generation of supervisors comes into office with a different agenda.

Besides, one of the clear divisions on the board the past seven years was the Newsom allies against the progressives — something that dissipated instantly when Lee took over.

But the realignment goes deeper.

Until recently, the progressives on the board had a working majority — a caucus, so to speak — and they tended to vote together much of the time. The lines on the board were drawn almost entirely by what Newsom disparagingly calls ideology but could more accurately be described as a shared set of political values, a shared urban agenda.

There are still six supervisors who call themselves progressives, but the idea that they’ll stick together was shattered in the battle over a new mayor — and the notion that there’s anything like a progressive caucus died with Board President David Chiu’s election (his majority came in part from the conservative side, with three progressives opposing him) and with Chiu’s new committee assignments, which for the first time in a decade put control of key assignments in the hands of the fiscal conservatives.

 

A PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY?

The progressive bloc on the board was never monolithic. There were always disagreements and fractures. And, thanks to the Brown Act, the progressives don’t actually meet outside of the formal board sessions. But it was fair and accurate to say that, most of the time, the six members of the board majority functioned almost as a political party, working together on issues and counting on each other for key votes. There was, for example, a dispute two years ago over the board presidency — but in the end, Chiu was elected with exactly six votes, all from the progressive majority that came together in the end.

That all started to fall apart the minute the board was faced with the prospect of choosing a new mayor. For one thing, the progressives couldn’t agree on a strategy — should they look for someone who would seek reelection in November, or try to find an acceptable interim mayor? The rules that barred supervisors from voting for themselves made it more tricky; six votes were not enough to elect any of the existing members. And, not surprisingly, some of the progressives had mayoral ambitions themselves.

When state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano — who would have had six votes easily — took himself out of the running, there was no other obvious progressive candidate. And with no other obvious candidate, and little opportunity for open discussion, the progressives couldn’t come to an agreement.

But by the Jan. 4 board meeting, five of the six had coalesced around Sheriff Mike Hennessey. Chiu, however, was supporting Ed Lee, someone he had known and worked with in the Asian community and whom he considered a progressive candidate. And once it became clear that Lee was headed toward victory, Sup. Eric Mar announced that he, too, would be in Lee’s camp.

A few days later, when the new board convened to choose a president, the progressive solidarity was gone. Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, and Ross Mirkarimi, now the solid left wing of the board, voted for Avalos. Chiu won with the support of Mar, Sup. Jane Kim, and the moderate-to-conservative flank.

Now the Budget Committee — long controlled by a progressive chair and a progressive majority — will be led by Carmen Chu, who is among the most fiscally conservative board members. The Land Use and Development Committee will be chaired by Mar, but two of the three members are from the moderate side. Same goes for Rules, where Sup. Sean Elsbernd, for years the most conservative board member, will work with ideological ally Sup. Mark Farrell on confirming mayoral appointments, redrawing supervisorial districts, and promoting or blocking charter amendments as Kim, the chair, does her best to contain the damage.

You can argue that having independent-minded supervisors who don’t vote as a caucus is a good thing. You can also argue that a fractured left will never win against a united downtown. And both arguments have merit.

But you can’t argue any more that the board has the same sort of progressive majority it’s had for the past 10 years. That’s over. It’s a new — and different — political era.

What happens now? Will the progressives hold enough votes to have an influence on the city budget (and ensure that the deficit solutions include new revenue and not just cuts)? What legislative priorities will the supervisors be pushing in the next year? How will the votes shake out on difficult new proposals (and ongoing issues like community choice aggregation)?

Mayor Lee has pledged to work with the board and will show up for monthly questions. How will he respond to the sorts of progressive legislation — like tenant protections, transit-first policies, immigrant rights measures, and stronger affordable housing standards — that Newsom routinely vetoed?

How will this all play out in a year when the city will also be electing a new mayor?

 

IDENTITY POLITICS?

When Sups. Chiu, Mar, and Kim broke with their three progressive colleagues to support Chiu for board president — just as Chiu and Mar helped clear the path for Ed Lee to become mayor days earlier — it seemed to many political observers that identity had trumped ideology on the board. There’s some truth to that observation, but it’s too simple an explanation. There’s also the fact that Chiu strongly supported Kim, who is a personal friend and former roommate, in her election, so it’s no surprise she went with him for board president.

And the phrase itself is so laden with baggage and problems that it’s hard to talk about. It has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups. “Rather than organizing solely around belief systems, programmatic manifestoes, or party affiliation, identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context,” says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an ongoing research project by the students and faculty at Stanford University.

Although the notion of identity politics took hold during the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s — when liberation and organizing movements among women and various ethic and other identity groups fed a larger liberal democratic surge that targeted war, economic inequity, social injustice, and other issues — it’s also a political approach that has divided the populace.

“One of the central charges against identity politics by liberals, among others, has been its alleged reliance on notions of sameness to justify political mobilization,” says the Stanford Encyclopedia. “Looking for people who are like you rather than who share your political values as allies runs the risk of sidelining critical political analysis of complex social locations and ghettoizing members of social groups as the only persons capable of making or understanding claims to justice.”

Mar explains that the reality of identity politics and whether it’s a factor in the current politics at City Hall is far more complex.

“With me, David Chiu, and Jane Kim as a block of three progressive Asians — and I still define David Chiu as a progressive though I think some are questioning that — we all come out of what I would call a pro-housing justice, transit-first, and environmental sustainability [mindset],” Mar told us. “But I think because of our ethnic background and experiences, we may have different perspectives at times than other progressives.”

For example, Mar said, many working class families of color need to drive a car so they’ll differ from progressives who want to limit parking spaces to discourage driving. He also has reservations about the proposed congestion pricing fee and how it might affect low-income drivers.\

“I think often when progressive people of color come into office — Jane Kim might be one of the best examples — that sometimes there’s an assumption that her issues are going to be the same as a white progressive or a Latino progressive,” he said. “But I think kind of the different identities that we all have mean that we’re more complex.”

Campos, a Latino immigrant who is openly gay, noted that “as a progressive person of color, I have at times felt that the progressive movement didn’t recognize the importance of identity politics and what it means for me to have another person of color in power.”

But, he added, “I don’t think identity politics alone should guide what happens. A progressive agenda isn’t just about race but class, sexual orientation, and other things. It’s not enough to say that identity politics justifies everything.”

University of San Francisco political science professor Corey Cook told the Guardian that identity has always been a strong factor in San Francisco politics, even if it was overshadowed by the political realignment around progressive ideology that occurred in 2000, mostly as a reaction to an economic agenda based on rapid development and political cronyism.

“I’m not sure that identity wasn’t relevant, but it was swamped by ideology,” Cook told the Guardian. Now, he said, another political realignment seems to be occurring, one that downplays ideology compared to the position it has held for the last 10 years. “I’m not sure that ideology is dead. But the dynamics have definitely changed.”

Cook sees what may be a more important change reflected in Chiu’s decision to put the political moderates in control of key board committees. But he said that shift was probably inevitable given the difficulties of unifying the diverse progressive constituencies.

“It’s hard to hold a progressive coalition together, and it’s amazing that it has lasted this long,” he said.

There’s another kind of identity politics at play as well — that of native San Franciscans, who often express resentment at progressive newcomers talking about what kind of city this is, versus those who see San Francisco as a city of immigrants and ideas, a place being shaped by a wider constituency than the old-timers like to acknowledge.

“I’m honored to join Sups. Elsbernd and Cohen in representing the neighborhoods they grew up in,” Sup. Mark Farrell said during his opening remarks after being sworn in Jan. 8., sobbing when he thanked his parents for their support.

As he continued, he fed the criticism of the notion of ideology-based politics that has been a popular trope with Gavin Newsom and other fiscal conservatives in recent years, telling the crowd he wanted “to turn City Hall into a place based on issues and ideas, not ideology.”

Cohen also placed more importance on her birthright than on her political philosophy, telling stories about entering board chambers through the back door at age 16 when she was part of a youth program created by then-Mayor Frank Jordan, and with former Mayor Dianne Feinstein coming to speak at Cohen’s third-grade class. “I am a San Francisco native, and that is a responsibility I take seriously,” said Cohen, who graduated from the Emerge Program, which grooms women for political office,

“We will have another woman as president of the Board of Supervisors, and we will have a woman as mayor of San Francisco,” she added. And as the sole African American on the board, she also pledged, “I will be working to add more members of the African American community to the elected family of San Francisco.”

But what issues she plans to focus on and what values she’ll represent were unclear in her comments — as they were throughout her campaign, despite the efforts of journalists and activists to discern her political philosophy. In her public comments, her only stated goal was to build bridges between the community and City Hall and let decisions be guided by the people “not political ideologies.”

Oftentimes in recent San Francisco history, identity and ideology have worked in concert, as they did with former Sup. Harvey Milk, who broke barriers as the first openly gay elected official, but who also championed a broad progressive agenda that included tenants rights, protecting civil liberties, and creating more parks and public spaces.

Sup. Scott Wiener, shortly after being sworn into office, acknowledged the legacy of his district, which was once represented by Milk and fellow gay progressive leader Harry Britt, telling the crowd: “I’m keenly aware of the leadership that has come through this district and I have huge shoes to fill.”

Yet Wiener, a moderate, comes from a different ideological camp than Milk and Britt and he echoed the board’s new mantra of collaboration and compromise. “I will always try to find common ground. There is always common ground,” he said.

 

GETTING THINGS DONE?

Chiu is making a clear effort to break with the past, and has been critical of some progressive leaders. “I think it’s important that we do not have a small group of progressive leaders who are dictating to the rest of the progressive community what is progressive,” he said.

While he didn’t single out former Sup. Chris Daly by name, he does seem to be trying to repudiate Daly’s leadership style. “I think that while the progressive left and the progressive community leaders have had very significant accomplishments over the past 10 years, I do think that there are many times when our oppositional tactics have set us back.”

When Chiu was reelected board president, he told the crowd that “none of us were voted into office to take positions. We were voted into office to get things done.”

Some progressives were not at all happy with that comment. “I thought that was a terrible thing to say,” Avalos told the Guardian, arguing the positions that elected officials take shape the legislation that follows. As an example, he cited the positions that progressive members of Congress took in favor of the public option during the health care reform debate.

Talking about getting things done is “a sanctimonious talking point that fits well with what the Chronicle and big papers want to hear,” Avalos said. He said the Chronicle and other downtown interests are more interested in preserving the status quo and blocking progressive reforms. “It’s what they want to see not get done.”

Campos even challenged the comment publicly during the Jan. 11 board meeting when he said, “It’s important to get things done, but I don’t think getting things done is enough. We have to ask ourselves: what is it that we’re getting done? How is it that we’re getting things done? And for whom is it that we’re doing what we’re doing? Is it for the people, or the downtown corporate interests? I hope it’s not getting things done behind closed doors.”

Chiu said that, for him, getting things done is about expanding the progressive movement and consolidating its recent gains. “I think we all share a political goal. As progressives, we all share a political goal of getting things done and growing mainstream support for our shared progressive principles so that they really become the values of our entire city.”

To do that, he said, progressives are going to need to be more conciliatory and cooperative than they’ve been in the past. “I think it’s easy to slip into a more oppositional way of discussing progressive values, but I’m really pushing to move beyond that.”

The biggest single issue this spring will be the budget — and it’s hard to know exactly where the board president will draw his lines. “I have spoken to Mayor Lee about the need for open, transparent, and community-based budget processes and he’s open to that,” Chiu told us — and that alone would be a huge change. But the key progressive priority for the spring will be finding ways to avoid brutal budget cuts — and that means looking for new revenue.

When asked whether new general revenue will be a part of the budget solution, instead of Newsom’s Republican-style cuts-only approaches, Chiu was cautious. “I am open to considering revenues as part of the overall set of solutions to close the budget deficit,” he said. “I am willing to be one elected here that will try to make that argument.” But with his political clout and connections right now, he can do a lot more than be one person making an argument.

Chiu has always been open to new revenue solutions and even led the way in challenging the cuts-only approach to both the city budget and MTA budget two years in a row, only to back down in the end and cut a deal with Newsom. When asked whether things will be better this year given his closer relationship to Lee, Chiu replied, “I think things are going to be different in the coming months.”

During the board’s Jan. 7 deliberation on Lee, Sup. Eric Mar also said that based on his communications with Lee, Mar believed that the Mayor’s Office is open to supporting new revenue measures. He echoed the point later to us.

In addition to supporting the open, inclusive budget process, Mar called for “a humane budget that protects the safety net and services to the most vulnerable people in San Francisco is kind of the critical, top priority.

“I think it’s going to be difficult working with the different forces in the budget process,” he added. “That’s why I wish it could have been a progressive who was chairing the budget process.”

Mar said progressive activism on the budget process is needed now more than ever. “The Budget Justice Coalition from last year I think has to be reenergized so that so many groups are not competing for their own piece of the pie, but that it’s more of a for-all, share-the-pain budget with as many people communicating from outside as possible, putting the pressure on the mayor and the board to make sure that the critical safety net’s protected.”

 

CUTS WILL BE CENTER STAGE

But major cuts — and the issue of city employees pay and benefits — will also be center stage.

At the board’s Jan. 11 meeting, before the supervisors voted unanimously to nominate Lee as interim mayor, Sup. Elsbernd signaled that city workers’ retirement and health benefits will once again be at the center of the fight to balance the budget.

Elsbernd noted that in past years he was accused of exaggerating the negative impacts that city employees’ benefits have on the city’s budget. “But rather than being inflated, they were deflated,” Elsbernd said, noting that benefits will soon consume 18.14 percent of payroll and will account for 26 percent in three years.

“Does the budget deficit include this amount?” he asked.

And at the after-party that followed Lee’s swearing-in, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who caused a furor last fall when he launched the ill-considered Measure B, which sought to reform workers’ benefits packages, told us he is not one to give up lightly.

“We learned a lot from that,” Adachi said. “This is still the huge elephant in City Hall. The city’s pension liability just went up another 1 percent, which is another $30 million”

Chu agreed that worker benefits would be a central part of the budget-balancing debate. “Any conversation about the long-term future of San Francisco’s budget has to look at the reality of where the bulk of our spending is,” she said.

Avalos noted that he plans to talk to labor and community based organizations about ways to increase city revenue. “I’m going to work behind the scene on the budget to make sure the communities are well-spoken for,” Avalos said, later adding, “But it’s hard, given that we need a two-thirds majority to pass stuff on the ballot.”

Last year, Avalos helped put two measures on the ballot to increase revenue: Prop. J, which sought to close loopholes in the city’s current hotel tax and asked visitors to pay a slightly higher hotel tax (about $3 a night) for three years, and Prop. N, the real property transfer tax that slightly increased the tax charged by the city on the sale of property worth more than $5 million.

Prop. N should raise $45 million, Avalos said. “I’ve always had my sights set on raising revenue, but making cuts is inevitable.”

 

THE IDEOLOGY ARGUMENT

Newsom and his allies loved to use “ideology” as a term of disparagement, a way to paint progressives as crazies driven by some sort of Commie-plot secret agenda. But there’s nothing wrong with ideology; Newsom’s fiscal conservative stance and his vow not to raise taxes were ideologies, too. The moderate positions some of the more centrist board members take stem from a basic ideology. Wiener, for example, told us that he thinks that in tough economic times, local government should do less but do it better. That’s a clear, consistent ideology.

For much of the past decade, the defining characteristic of the progressives on the board has been a loosely shared urban ideology supported by tenants, immigrant-rights groups, queer and labor activists, environmentalists, preservationists, supporters of public power and sunshine and foes of big corporate consolidation and economic power. Diversity and inclusiveness was part of that ideology, but it went beyond any one political interest or identity group.

It was often about fighting — against corruption and big-business hegemony and for economic and social equality. The progressive agenda started from the position that city government under Brown and Newsom had been going in the wrong direction and that substantive change was necessary. And sometimes, up against powerful mayors and their well-heeled backers, being polite and accommodating and seeking common ground didn’t work.

As outgoing Sup. Daly put it at his final meeting: “I’ve seen go-along to get along. If you want to do more than that, if you think there’s a fundamental problem with the way things are in this world, then go-along to get along doesn’t do it.” When Chiu announced that the new progressive politics is one of pragmatism, he was making a break from that ideology. He was signaling a different kind of politics. He has urged us to be optimistic about the new year — but we still don’t know what the new agenda will look like, how it will be defined, or at what point Chiu and his allies will say they’ve compromised and reached out enough and are ready to take a strong, even oppositional, stand. We do know the outcome will affect the lives of a lot of San Franciscans. And when the budget decisions start rolling down the pike, the political lines will be drawn fairly clearly. Because reaching across the aisle and working together sounds great in theory — but in practice, there is nothing even resembling a consensus on the board about how the city’s most serious problems should be resolved. And there are some ugly battles ahead.

They have issues: Members of the new Board speak

Mary Magee
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Board President David Chiu touched off a broad political discussion in recent weeks with his statement that officials were elected “not to take positions, but to get things done.” Delivered just before his reelection as Board President with the solid backing of the board’s moderate faction, Chiu’s comment has been viewed in light of City Hall’s shifting political dynamic, a subject the Guardian explores in a Jan. 19 cover story. Politics aside, Chiu’s statement also begs the question: Just what do members of the board hope to get done, and how do they propose to accomplish the items on their agenda?
Last week, Guardian reporters tracked down every member of the board to find out. We asked, what are your top priorities? And how do you plan to achieve them? Some spoke with us for 25 minutes, and others spoke for just 5 minutes, but the result offers some insight into what’s on their radar. Not surprisingly, getting the budget right was mentioned by virtually everyone as a top priority, but there are sharp differences in opinion in terms of how to do that. Several supervisors, particularly those in the moderate wing, mentioned ballooning pension and healthcare costs. Aiding small business also emerged as a priority shared by multiple board members.

Sup. Eric Mar
District 1

Issues:
*Budget
*Assisting small businesses
*Programs and services for seniors
*Food Security
*Issues surrounding Golden Gate Park

Elected in 2008 to represent D1, Sup. Eric Mar has been named chair of the powerful Land Use & Economic Development Committee and vice chair of the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee.

Asked to name his top priorities, Mar said, “A humane budget that protects the safety net and services to the must vulnerable people in San Francisco is kind of the critical, top priority.”

It’s bound to be difficult, he added. “That’s why I wish it could have been a progressive that was chairing the budget process. Now, we have to work with Carmen Chu to ensure that it’s a fair, transparent process.”

A second issue hovering near the top of Mar’s agenda is lending a helping hand to the small businesses of the Richmond District. “There’s a lot of anxiety about the economic climate for small business. We’re trying to work closely with some of the merchant associations and come up with ideas on how the city government can be more supportive,” he said. Mar also spoke about the need to respond to the threat of big box stores, such as PetCo, that could move in and harm neighborhood merchants. “I’m worried about too many of the big box stores trying to come in with an urban strategy and saying that they’re different — but they sure have an unfair advantage,” he noted.

Programs and services for the senior population ranked high on his list. Mar noted that he’d been working with senior groups on how to respond to a budget analyst’s report showing a ballooning need for housing – especially affordable housing – for seniors. “It’s moving from the Baby Boom generation to the Senior Boomers, and I think the population, if I’m not mistaken, by 2020 it’s going up 50 percent,” he said. “It’s a huge booming population that I don’t think we’re ready to address.”

Addressing food security issues through the Food Security Task Force also ranked high on Mar’s list, and he noted that he’s been working with a coalition that includes UCSF and the Department of Public Health to study the problem. “We’ve had a number of strategy meetings already, but we’re trying to launch different efforts to create healthier food access in many of our lowest income neighborhoods,” Mar said.

Finally, Mar talked about issues relating to the park. “I do represent the district that has Golden Gate Park, so I’m often busy with efforts to preserve the park, prevent privatization, and ensure enjoyment for the many residents not just in the Richmond but throughout the city that enjoy the park.” Although it’s not technically in his district, Mar noted that he is very supportive of HANC Recycling Center – and plans to advocate on their behalf to Mayor Lee.

Sup. Mark Farrell
District 2
Issues:
*Pension reform
*Long-term economic plan for city
*Job creation
*Quality-of-life issues

Elected to replace termed-out D2 Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, Farrell has been named vice-chair of the Government Audits & Oversight Committee and a member of the Rules Committee. A native of D2, Farrell told the Guardian he believes his roots in the city and background as a venture capitalist would be an asset to the city’s legislative body. “I know at the last board, Carmen [Chu] was the only one who had any finance background,” he said. “To have someone come from the private sector with a business / finance background, I really do believe … adds to the dialogue and the discussion here at City Hall.”

Along those lines, Farrell said one of his top priorities is the budget. “I’m not on the budget and finance committee this time around, but given my background, I am going to play a role in that,” he said.

So what’s his plan for closing the budget deficit? In response, he alluded to slashing services. “In the past, there have been views that we as a city don’t provide enough services and we need to raise revenues to provide more, or the perspective that we first need to live within our means and then provide more services. Everyone’s going to disagree, but I’m in the latter camp,” he said. “I do believe we need to make some tough choices right now – whether it be head count, or whether it be looking at …pension reform. I do believe pension reform needs to be part of the dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s unsustainable.”

He also said he wanted to be part of “trying to create and focus on a framework for a long-term financial plan here in San Francisco.”

Secondly, Farrell discussed wanting to put together a “jobs bill.”

“Jobs is a big deal,” he said. “It’s something I want to focus on. There are only so many levers we can pull as a city. I think the biotech tax credits have spurred a lot of business down in Mission Bay.”

Next on Farrell’s agenda was quality-of-life issues, but rather than talk about enforcing San Francisco’s sit/lie ordinance – supported by political forces who organized under the banner of maintaining ‘quality-of-life’ – Farrell revealed that he is incensed about parking meter fines. “It is so strikingly unjust when you are 1 minute late to your parking meter and you have a $65 parking fine,” he said.

Farrell also mentioned development projects that would surely require time and attention. “CPMC is going to be a major dominant issue,” he said. He also mentioned Doyle Drive, and transitional age youth housing projects proposed in D2 – but as far as the housing project planned for the King Edward II Inn, which has generated some controversy among neighborhood groups, he didn’t take a strong position either way, saying he wanted to listen to all the stakeholders first.

Board President David Chiu
District 3
Issues:
*Budget
*Preserving neighborhood character
*Immigrant rights
*Preserving economic diversity
*Transit

Elected for a second two-year term as President of the Board, D3 Sup. David Chiu is rumored to be running in the mayor’s race, after he turned down former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s offer to appoint him as District Attorney. That offer was made after Kamala Harris won the state Attorney General’s race this fall. And when Chiu turned it down, former Mayor Gavin Newsom shocked just about everybody by appointing San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon, who is not opposed to the death penalty and was a longtime Republican before he recently registered as a Democrat, instead.

A temporary member of the Board’s Budget acommittee, Chiu is also a permanent member of the Board’s Government Audits & Oversight Committee.

Asked about his top priorities, Chiu spoke first and foremost about  “ensuring that we have a budget that works for all San Franciscans, particularly the most vulnerable.” He also said he wanted to see a different kind of budget process: “It is my hope that we do not engage in the typical, Kabuki-style budget process of years past under the last couple of mayors, where the mayor keeps under wraps for many months exactly what the thinking is on the budget, gives us something on June 1 for which we have only a couple of weeks to analyze, and then engage in the tired back-and-forth of debates in the past.” Chiu also spoke about tackling “looming pension and health care costs.”

Another priority, he said, was “Ensuring that our neighborhoods continue to remain the distinctive urban villages that they are, and protecting neighborhood character,” a goal that relates to “development, … historic preservation, [and] what we do around vacant commercial corridors.”

*Immigrant rights also made his top-five list. “I was very sad that last November we didn’t prevail in allowing all parents to have a right and a voice in school board elections,” he said, referencing ballot measure Proposition D which appeared on the November 2010 ballot. “I think we are going to reengage in discussion around Sanctuary City, another topic I have discussed twice already with Mayor Lee.”

Another issue for Chiu was  “ensuring again that hopefully San Francisco continues to remain an economically diverse city, and not just a city for the very wealthy.” He spoke about reforming city contracts: “In particular, dealing with the fact that in many areas, 70 to 80 percent of city contracts are awarded to non-San Francisco businesses. … I think there is more significant reform that needs to happen in our city contracting process.” Another economic-diversity measure, he said, was tax policy, “particularly around ensuring that our business tax is incenting the type of economic growth that we want.”

Finally, Chiu spoke about “Creating a transit-first city. This is not just about making sure MUNI is more reliable and has stable funding, but ensuring that we’re taking steps to reach a 2020 goal of 20 percent cycling in the city. Earlier this week I called for our transit agencies to look at pedestrian safety, because we are spending close to $300 million a year to deal with pedestrian deaths and injuries.”

Sup. Carmen Chu
District 4
*Budget
*Core Services
*Jobs
*Economy

Chiu has just named Sup. Carmen Chu as chair of the powerful Board and Finance Committee. And Chu, who worked as a budget analyst for Newsom’s administration, says the budget, core services, employment and the economy are her top priorities.

“My hope is that this year the budget is going to be a very collaborative and open process,” Chu said.

Chu believes workers benefits will be a central part of the budget-balancing debate.
“Any conversation about the long-term future of San Francisco’s budget has to look at the reality of where the bulk of our spending is,” she said.

Chu noted that the budget debate will have to take the state budget into account.
“At the end of the day, we need to take into account the context of the state budget, in terms of new cuts and taxes, because anything we do will be on top of the state level.

“We need to ask who do these measures really impact,” she added, noting that there were attempts to put revenue measures on the ballot last year.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi
District 5
* Local Hire / First Source / Reentry programs
* Budget / generating revenue
* Infrastructure improvements
*Reversing MTA service cuts

With only two years left to serve on the Board, D5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has been named chair of the Board’s Public Safety Committee and vice-chair of the Budget and Finance Committee.

“One of my top priorities is building on and strengthening the work that I’ve already done and that Avalos is doing on mandatory local hire and First Source programs,” Mirkarimi said. He also spoke about “strengthening reentry programs for those coming out of the criminal justice system, because we still have an enormously high recidivism rate.”

The budget also ranked high on Mirkarimi’s list, and he stressed the need for “doing surgical operations on our budget to make sure that services for the vulnerable are retained, and looking for other ways to generate revenue beyond the debate of what’s going on the ballot.

“For instance, I helped lead the charge for the America’s Cup, and while the pay-off from that won’t be realized for years, the deal still needs to be massaged. What we have now is an embryonic deal that still needs to be watched.”

Mirkarimi mentioned safeguarding the city against privatization, saying one of his priorities was “retooling our budget priorities to stop the escalating practice of privatizing city services.”

 He spoke about “ongoing work citywide to make mixed-use commercial and residential infrastructure improvements, which coincide with bicycle and pedestrian improvements.”

Finally, Mirkarimi said he wanted to focus on transportation issues. “As Chair of the Transportation Authority, if I even continue to be chair, to take the lead on signature transit projects and work with the M.T.A. to reverse service cuts.”

Sup. Jane Kim
District 6
Issues:
*Jobs
*Economic Development
*Small Business
*Pedestrian Safety
*Legislation to control bedbug infestations

Elected to replace termed-out D6 Sup. Chris Daly, Kim has been named chair of the Rules Committee and a member of the Budget & Finance committee.

Kim believes that she will prove her progressive values through her work and she’s trying to take the current debate about her allegiances on the Board in her stride.

“The one thing I learned from serving on the School Board was to be really patient,” Kim told me, when our conversation turned to the issue of “progressive values.”

“I didn’t want to be President of the School Board for the first few years, because I loved pushing the envelope,” Kim added, noting that as Board President David Chiu is in the often-unenviable position of chief negotiator between the Board and the Mayor.

But with Ed Lee’s appointment as interim mayor, Kim is excited about the coming year.
“There are a lot of new opportunities, a different set of players, and it’s going to be very interesting to learn how to traverse this particular scene.”

Kim is kicking off her first term on the Board with two pieces of legislation. The first seeks to address bedbug infestations. “Particularly around enforcement, including private landlords,” Kim said, noting that there have also been bedbug problems in Housing Authority properties.

Her second immediate goal is to look at pedestrian safety, a big deal in D6, which is traversed by freeways with off-ramps leading into residential zones.
“Pedestrian safety is a unifying issue for my district, particularly for all the seniors,” Kim said, citing traffic calming, speed limit enforcement and increased pedestrian traffic, as possible approaches.

Beyond those immediate goals, Kim plans to focus on jobs, economic development and small businesses in the coming year. “What can we do to create jobs and help small businesses? That is my focus, not from a tax reduction point of view, but how can we consolidate the permitting and fees process, because small businesses are a source of local jobs.”

Kim plans to help the Mayor’s Office implement Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, which interim Mayor Ed Lee supports, unlike his predecessor Mayor Gavin Newsom.

“Everyone has always liked the idea of local hire, but without any teeth, it can’t be enforced,” Kim observed. “It’s heartbreaking that young people graduate out of San Francisco Unified School District and there’s been not much more than retail jobs available.”

She noted that jobs, land use and the budget are the three overarching items on this year’s agenda. “I’m a big believer in revenue generation, but government has to come half-way by being able to articulate how it will benefit people and being able to show that it’s more than just altruistic. I think we have to figure out that balance in promoting new measures. That’s why it’s important to be strong on neighborhood and community issues, so that folks feel like government is listening and helping them. I don’t think it’s a huge ask to be responsive to that.”

Kim said she hoped the new mayor would put out a new revenue measure, enforce local hire, and implement Sup. David Campos’ legislation to ensure due process for immigrant youth.

“I think Ed can take a lot of the goodwill and unanimous support,” Kim said. “We’ve never had a mayor without an election, campaigns, and a track record. Usually mayors come in with a group of dissenters. But he is in a very unique position to do three things that are very challenging to do. I hope raising revenues is one of those three. As a big supporter of local hire, I think it helps having a mayor that is committed to implement it. And I’m hoping that Ed will implement due process for youth. For me, it’s a no brainer and Ed’s background as a former attorney  for Asian Law Caucus is a good match. Many members of my family came to the U.S. as undocumented youth, so this is very personal. Kids get picked up for no reason and misidentified. People confuse Campos and Avalos, so imagine what happens to immigrant youth.”

Sup. Sean Elsbernd
District 7
Issues:
*Parkmerced
*Enforcing Prop G
*Pension & healthcare costs
*CalTrain

With two years left to serve on the Board, D7 Sup. Sean Elsbernd has been named vice-chair of the Rules Committee and a member of the City Operations & Neighborhood Services Committee. He was congratulated by Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak immediately after the Board voted 11-0 to nominated former City Administrator Ed Lee as interim mayor, and during Lee’s swearing-in, former Mayor Willie Brown praised Elsbernd for nominating Lee for the job.

And at the Board’s Jan. 11 meeting before the supervisors voted for Lee, Elsbernd signaled that city workers’ retirement and health benefits will be at the center of the fight to balance the budget in the coming year.

Elsbernd noted that in past years, he was accused of exaggerating the negative impacts that city employees’ benefits have on the city’s budget. “But rather than being inflated, they were deflated,” Elsbernd said, noting that benefits will soon consume 18.14 percent of payroll and will account for 26 percent in three years. “Does the budget deficit include this amount?” he asked.

And at the afterparty that followed Lee’s swearing in, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who caused a furor last fall when he launched Measure B, which sought to reform workers’ benefits packages, told the Guardian he is not one to give up lightly. “We learned a lot from that,” Adachi said. “This is still the huge elephant in City Hall. The city’s pension liability just went up another 1 percent, which is another $30 million.”

As for priorities, Elsbernd broke it down into district, city, and regional issues. In D7, “Hands-down, without question the biggest issue … is Parkmerced,” he said, starting with understanding and managing the environmental approval process. If it gets approved, he said his top concerns was that “the tenant issue. And the overriding concern of if they sell, which I think we all think is going to happen in the near-term – do those guarantees go along with the land?”

Also related to Parkmerced was planning for the traffic conditions that the development could potentially create, which Elsbernd dubbed a “huge 19th Avenue issue.”

Citywide, Elsbernd’s top priorities included enforcing Proposition G – the voter-approved measure that requires MUNI drivers to engage in collective bargaining – and tackling pension and healthcare costs. He spoke about “making sure that MTA budget that comes to us this summer is responsive” to Prop G.

As for pension and healthcare, Elsbernd said, “I’ve already spent a good deal of time with labor talking about it, and will continue to do that.” But he declined to give further details. Asked if a revenue-generating measure could be part of the solution to that problem, Elsbernd said, “I’m not saying no to anything right now.”

On a regional level, Elsbernd’s priority was to help CalTrain deal with its crippling financial problem. He’s served on that board for the last four years. “The financial situation at CalTrain – it is without question the forgotten stepchild of Bay Area transit, and the budget is going to be hugely challenging,” he said. “I think they’ll survive, but I think they’re going to see massive reductions in services.”

Sup. Scott Wiener
District 8
Issues:
*Transportation
*Reasonable regulation of nightlife & entertainment industry
*Pension reform

Elected in November 2010 to replace termed-out D8 Sup. Bevan, Wiener has been named a temporary member of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee and a permanent member of the Land Use and Economic Development Committee.

“Transportation is a top priority,” Wiener said. ‘That includes working with the M.T.A. to get more cabs on the street, and making sure that the M.T.A. collectively bargains effectively with its new powers, under Prop. G.”

“I’m also going to be focusing on public safety, including work around graffiti enforcement, though I’m not prepared to go public yet about what I’ll be thinking,” he said.

“Regulating nightlife and entertainment is another top priority,” Wiener continued. “I want to make sure that what we do is very thoughtful in terms of understanding the economic impacts, in terms of jobs and tax  revenues, that this segment has. With some of the unfortunate incidents that have happened, it’s really important before we jump to conclusions that we figure out what happened and why. Was it something the club did inappropriately, or was it just a fluke? That way, we can avoid making drastic changes across the board. I think we have been very reactive to some nightclub issues. I want us to be more thoughtful in taking all the factors into consideration.”

“Even if we put a revenue measure on the June or November ballot, we’d need a two-thirds majority, so realistically, it’s hard to envision successfully securing significant revenue measure before November 2012,” Wiener added. “And once you adopt a revenue measure, it takes time to implement it and revenue to come in, so it’s hard to see where we’ll get revenue that will impact the 2012 fiscal year. In the short term, for fiscal year 2011/2012, the horse is out of the barn”

“As for pension stuff, I’m going to be very engaged in that process and hopefully we will move to further rein in pension and retirement healthcare costs.”

Sup. David Campos
District 9
Issues:
*Good government
*Community policing
*Protecting immigrant youth
*Workers’ rights and healthcare

Elected in 2008, D9 Sup. David Campos has been named chair of the Board’s Government Audit & Oversight Committee and a member of the Public Safety Committee. And, ever since he declared that the progressive majority on the Board no longer exists, in the wake of the Board’s 11-0 vote for Mayor Ed Lee, Campos has found his words being used by the mainstream media as alleged evidence that the entire progressive movement is dead in San Francisco.

“They are trying to twist my words and make me into the bogey man,” Campos said, noting that his words were not a statement of defeat but a wake-up call.

“The progressive movement is very much alive,” Campos said. “The key here is that if you speak your truth, they’ll go after you, even if you do it in a respectful way. I didn’t lose my temper or go after anybody, but they are trying to make me into the next Chris Daly.”

Campos said his overarching goal this year is to keep advancing a good government agenda.

“This means not just making sure that good public policy is being pursued, but also that we do so with as much openness and transparency as possible,” he said.

As a member of the Board’s Public Safety Committee, Campos says he will focus on making sure that we have “as much community policing as possible.

He plans to focus on improving public transportation, noting that a lot of folks in his district use public transit.

And he’d like to see interim mayor Ed Lee implement the due process legislation that Campos sponsored and the former Board passed with a veto-proof majority in 2009, but Mayor Gavin Newsom refused to implement. Campos’ legislation sought to ensure that immigrant youth get their day in court before being referred to the federal immigration authorities for possible deportation, and Newsom’s refusal to implement it, left hundreds of youth at risk of being deported, without first having the opportunity to establish their innocence in a juvenile court.
‘We met with Mayor Lee today,” Campos told the Guardian Jan. 18. “And we asked him to move this forward as quickly as possible. He committed to do that and said he wants to get more informed, but I’m confident he will move this forward.”

Campos also said he’ll be focusing on issues around workers’ rights and health care.
“I want to make sure we keep making progress on those fronts,” Campos said.

“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Campos continued, circling back to the beating the press gave him for his “progressive” remarks.“But I got to keep moving, doing my work, calling it as a I see it, doing what’s right, and doing it in a respectful way. The truth is that if you talk about the progressive movement and what we have achieved, which includes universal healthcare and local hire in the last few years, you are likely to become a target.”

Sup. Malia Cohen
District 10
Issues:
*Public safety
*Jobs
*Preserving open space
*Creating Community Benefit Districts
*Ending illegal dumping
Elected to replace termed-out D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell, Cohen has been named chair of the City & School District committee, vice chair of the Land Use and Economic Development Committee and vice chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Cohen says her top priorities are public safety, jobs, open space, which she campaigned on, as well as creating community benefits districts and putting an end to illegal dumping.

“I feel good about the votes I cast for Ed Lee as interim mayor and David Chiu as Board President. We need to partner on the implementation of local hire, and those alliances can help folks in my district, including Visitation Valley.”

“I was touched by Sup. David Campos words about the progressive majority on the Board,” she added. “I thought they were thoughtful.”

Much like Kim, Cohen believes her legislative actions will show where her values lie.
“I’d like to see a community benefits district on San Bruno and Third Street because those are two separate corridors that could use help,” Cohen said. 

She pointed to legislation that former D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell introduced in November 2010, authorizing the Department of Public Works to expend a $350,000 grant from the Solid Waste Disposal Clean-Up Site trust fund to clean up 25 chronic illegal dumping sites.
“All the sites are on public property and are located in the southeast part of the city, in my district,” Cohen said, noting that the city receives over 16,000 reports of illegal dumping a year and spends over $2 million in cleaning them up.

Sup. John Avalos
District 11
*Implementing Local Hire
*Improving MUNI / Balboa Park BART
*Affordable housing
*Improving city and neighborhood services

Sup. John Avalos, who chaired the Budget committee last year and has just been named Chair of the Board’s City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee, said his top priorities were implementing local hire, improving Muni and Balboa Park BART station, building affordable housing at Balboa, and improving city and neighborhood services.

“And despite not being budget chair, I’ll make sure we have the best budget we can,” Avalos added, noting that he plans to talk to labor and community based organizations about ways to increase city revenues. “But it’s hard, given that we need a two-thirds majority to pass stuff on the ballot,” he said.

Last year, Avalos helped put two measures on the ballot to increase revenues. Prop. J sought to close loopholes in the city’s current hotel tax, and asked visitors to pay a slightly higher hotel tax (about $3 a night) for three years. Prop. N, the real property transfer tax, h slightly increased the tax charged by the city on the sale of property worth more than $5 million.

Prop. J secured only 45.5 percent of the vote, thereby failing to win the necessary two-thirds majority. But it fared better than Prop. K, the competing hotel tax that Newsom put on the ballot at the behest of large hotel corporations and that only won 38.5 percent of the vote. Prop. K also sought to close loopholes in the hotel tax, but didn’t include a tax increase, meaning it would have contributed millions less than Prop. J.

But Prop. N did pass. “And that should raise $45 million,” Avalos said. “So, I’ve always had my sights set on raising revenue, but making cuts is inevitable.”

The problem with parking tickets

Zelda Bronstein
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The problem with parking tickets

Naturally, C.W. Nevius is outraged that the poor drivers in San Francisco are going to get hit with more parking tickets since the Municipal Transportation Agency has a budget shortfall. We’re going to hear the usual whining form the cars-have-rights-too crowd; why is everybody always picking on the owners of internal combustion vehicles? I mean, they pollute the air and are destroying the planet, but paying for the right to drive in a city is such a horrible oppresive burden. 


But here’s the thing: In this case, I don’t thing Nevius and the gang are entirely wrong.


Parking tickets were never meant to be primarily a revenue source. If you ask any rational urban planner or transporation expert, they’ll tell you that parking meter rates should be designed to encourage turnover of spaces and fines should be used to discourage illegal parking. In a perfect urban setting, the parking fines would be adequate to keep everyone following the rules, and there would be no revenue from tickets at all.


You start depending on illegal behavior as a source of revenue and you get into trouble fast. You get to the point where the city wants you to break the law so there will be enough money to pay for Muni service. Which makes no sense.


The system is also utterly unfair. Some people will never get parking tickets in San Francisco — because they have garages where they live (and garages seriously jack up the cost of housing) and garages where they work (and subsidized parking is an untaxed benefit for the few that harms society as a whole) and large parking lots where they shop (which encourages people to use big chain stores instead of neighborhood merchants.) Those people who never get tickets do just as much damage to the environment — and pay nothing for it.


In the end, parking fines are a somewhat regressive source of revenue. The very rich either don’t pay them or don’t care (in which case the deterrent is missing). Companies that do a lot of deliveries in congested parts of the city just factor the tickets into the cost of doing business — which means the drivers have no reason not to double-park. The average person who is five minutes late to pick the kids at child care (and is getting a $1 a minute penalty for being late; that’s standard in this city) and in desperation sticks the damn car in a yellow zone for just a couple of seconds and gets caught — that person is paying the cost of everyone else’s bad behavior.


But there’s no question that cars have serious negative impacts on the city, and San Franciscans shouldn’t be subsidizing their use. In fact, car users should be subsidizing Muni, big time. It just ought to be fair.


So for once, I’m with Nevius: Let’s use parking fines to discourage illegal parking, free up spaces and stop the damn double-parkers, who screw up everything, particularly Muni service (ever watch a trolley coach try to pull around a double-parked delivery truck downtown?). But when it comes to MTA revenue, we should try to go for a single, annual, progressive car tax. And it should be based on the value of the car.


You own and operate a $50,000 car in San Francisco? Costs you $500 a year in city taxes. Your car’s a 15-year-old beater worth $5,000? Pay $50. Yes, some people will cheat and pretend to live in Berkeley (although once we make this work, every other Bay Area city’s going to join us). Some people always cheat. If they get caught, their car gets towed and impounded. Most people will pay the tax.


Oh, and the neighborhood parking stickers need to be fixed. It costs, what, $300 a month to rent a garage these days — and for $70 A YEAR, you get the equivalent of a city-owned parking space on the street, all yours, all the time. That should be at least doubled. Then in exchange we can cut back on the street sweeping in neighborhoods.


I’ve always suspected that the city’s street-cleaning program was largely a post-Prop.13 way of raising revenue by taxing the people who are well enough off to own a car but not rich enought to have a garage. Sure, the city needs to clean Mission Street three times a week, but where I work, in Potrero Hill, the streets would be fine with a monthly sweeping. Save the city some money, too.


Owning a car in the city should be expensive. But the taxes ought to be fair. That’s all I’m saying.


 


 


 

Faces of debt

Andrew Lam
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Faces of debt

caitlin@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED In this weeks’ issue, Rebecca Bowe examines rising tuition and its effect on this generation of Californian students. Here, we profile three scholars that are dealing with very real repercussions from their student debt load.

 

BEN GLEASON, 31

Mills College, teaching credential

Oberlin College, American literature major

Total debt: $25,000

Ben Gleason remembers the day that he applied for his $10,000 student loan from Citibank to finance his teaching credential tuition. “I got it done online within a half hour. I didn’t have to talk to anybody or write an essay — easy money with severe consequences.” The consequences of such a serious financial decision — sans the aid of any counseling from either his school or bank? Gleason’s eventual decision to leave classroom teaching.

It’s not an uncommon story for this generation of teaching school graduates, in a state where teaching salaries are hardly keeping pace with rising tuition. Gleason started working as an ESL teacher in Richmond’s underfunded West Contra Costa Unified School District right after graduating from Mills College. His student loans were overwhelming — a problem that was exacerbated when he took a trip to Guatemala to work and improve his ability to communicate with his Spanish-speaking pupils. To remain afloat financially, Gleason applied for a forbearance on his loans and was surprised to return home after two years to a loan that had gone up by 25 percent due to interest. “I was really, really screwed,” he recalls.

Gleason didn’t feel like there was any way he could go back to his teaching salary, so to support his new wife (the two met in Guatemala) and daughter, he decided to start his own business with the help of an old boss — a private firm that helps reeducate state government workers on sustainability issues.

That means one less qualified teacher for low-income Californian children. And Gleason still has 15 to 20 years left of debt payments. “I wish that there was a more systemic way to solve this problem,” says the former public educator.

 

ANNE MOSTAD-JENSEN, 28

Santa Clara University, law degree

College of St. Catherine St. Paul, library sciences

Concordia University St. Paul, international studies and history major

Total debt (estimated at graduation): $120,000

Anne Mostad-Jensen and her twin sister grew up in a small Minnesota town. They attended the same college, Concordia St. Paul, where they both majored in history and international studies. After that, they went on to College of St. Catherine (also in St. Paul) to get their master’s degrees in library science. But then their paths diverged. Her sister traveled to Denmark in pursuit of her Danish citizenship — their father is Danish — and was able to complete her master’s in a country where the government pays for most of its citizens’ educations. Mostad-Jensen remained in Minnesota, to continue on in the American university system.

What kind of difference has the move made in these women’s lives? Try $65,000 of student debt. That’s because Mostad-Jensen’s sister, even after completing her master’s and attending one of the Icelandic languages programs she’s currently applying for, will only owe roughly $55,000 worth of loans — all from her time at American schools. Mostad-Jensen, who is now attending law school at Santa Clara University, will owe $120,000 by the time she graduates. “I’ve never had any consumer debt, but I’ve always told myself not to pass up educational opportunities just because I didn’t have the cash on hand,” she says.

Mostad-Jensen wants to work at the intersection of international copyright and technology law, possibly in a law library, a specialty career that benefits from degrees in multiple areas of study. She counts herself lucky that homeownership and a family aren’t her immediate goals. “Having a family — I just don’t understand how people do it with debt these days.” Her Midwestern community values come to the fore when she talks about the U.S. government’s inability to provide Americans with affordable education. “Isn’t the government an extension of the community? Europeans, the lack of stress they have by not having to pay out of pocket for health care and education — I mean they can actually live their lives.”

 

RAMON QUINTERO, 32

UC Berkeley, geography major

Total debt: $25,000

Ramon Quintero is a UC Berkeley student activist, but he wasn’t always radicalized around debt issues. “I didn’t come to Berkeley because of its activist reputation. I became an activist because of my situation,” he says. Quintero could no longer pay for his student housing and wound up living in his 1979 Toyota truck with camper shell on the streets of Berkeley, sending his baby daughter home to live with her grandmother.

Quintero came to Berkeley via Southern California, where his family landed after immigrating from Sinaloa, Mexico, when he was 11. He attended community college to get his core credits before coming to Berkeley, where rapidly rising tuition fees are putting a strain on the student community. Although he is a legal resident, Quintero was especially concerned about the effect that the rising cost of education was having on undocumented students.

And, of course, on his leaky camper shell roof. He sprang into action, driving a truck that he calls Santa Rita, to all nine UC campuses, encouraging fellow students to paint art on it that spoke to their concerns for the future of public education. Quintero was arrested twice for his roles in campus protests and he and Santa Rita were profiled in The New York Times and several California newspapers. Suddenly, the university found space for him in student housing.

“I saw the hypocrisy in the system,” says Quintero, who has fulfilled all his UC coursework for graduation but has convinced a professor to hold credit for one of his courses for another semester so he could go on a research fellowship to Madrid. The fellowship, he says, is crucial for his application to grad schools — another step toward fulfilling life goals he doesn’t think would be possible if he has to begin assuming the burden of his student debt. 

 

The agenda for Mayor Lee

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The agenda for Mayor Lee

EDITORIAL San Francisco has its first Chinese American mayor, and that’s a major, historic milestone. Let’s remember: Chinese immigrants were among the most abused and marginalized communities in the early days of San Francisco. In 1870, the city passed a series of laws limiting the rights of Chinese people to work and live in large parts of the city. Chinese workers built much of the Transcontinental Railroad — at slave wages and in desperately unsafe conditions that led to a large number of deaths. The United States didn’t even repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act (an anti-immigration law) until 1943, and for years, Chinatown was one of the poorest and most neglected city neighborhoods.

So there’s good reason for Asians to celebrate that the last door in San Francisco political power is now open. And Mayor Ed Lee comes from a civil rights background; he got his start in politics working as a poverty lawyer and tenant organizer.

Unfortunately, his path to Room 200 was badly marred by some ugly backroom dealing involving Willie Brown, the most corrupt mayor in modern San Francisco history. Even Lee’s supporters agree the process was a mess and that it undermines Lee’s credibility. So it’s important for Mayor Lee to immediately establish that he’s independent of Brown and his cronies, that his administration will not just be a Gavin Newsom rerun, and that progressives can and should support him.

He has a tough job ahead. We urge him to make a clean break with the past and set the city in a new direction. Here are a few ways to get started.

• Clear out the Newsom operatives and bring some new people with progressive credentials into the senior ranks. Newsom’s chief of staff, Steve Kawa, has been a shadow mayor for the past year while Newsom was on the campaign trail, and is the architect of much of what the outgoing administration has done to sow political division and cripple city government. Lee needs his own chief advisor.

• Show up for question time and work with the district-elected supervisors. Newsom was openly dismissive of the board and refused to take the supervisors seriously as partners in city government. Lee should appear once a month to answer questions from the board in public, should meet regularly with all the supervisors and appoint a liaison that the board can work with and trust. He needs to make his administration as transparent and open as possible and ensure that everyone at City Hall follows the letter and spirit of the Sunshine Ordinance.

• Make it clear that the next city budget includes substantial new revenue. Newsom offered nothing but Republican politics when it came to city finance; his only solutions to the massive structural deficit involved service cuts.

The deficit will be even worse than projected this year, since Gov. Jerry Brown wants to transfer much of the state’s responsibility for public safety and public health back to local government — and there won’t be enough state money attached to handle the new burden. Lee needs to publicly call on Brown and the Legislature to give cities more ability to raise taxes on the local levee. Then he should start planning for a June ballot package that will raise as much as $250 million in new revenue for the city.

A substantially higher vehicle license fee on expensive cars, a congestion management fee, a significant annual transit impact fee on downtown offices, a restructured business tax, and a progressive tax on income of more than $50,000 a year would more than eliminate the structural deficit.

There are plenty of other revenue ideas out there; not all can or would pass on a single ballot. But Lee needs to make it clear that revenue will be part of the solution — and that he will use all the political capital he can muster to convince the voters to go along.

•<\!s> Get serious about community choice aggregation. Newsom loved to talk about his environmental agenda, but when it came to challenging the hegemony of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and its dirty power portfolio, he ran for cover. His hand-picked Public Utilities Commission director, Ed Harrington, has been an obstacle to implementing the city’s CCA plan. Lee needs to get rid of Harrington or direct him to cooperate with the supervisors and get San Francisco on the path to clean public power.

•<\!s> Establish a real affordable housing program. The city plans to build housing for as many as 60,000 new residents in the southeast neighborhoods — but only a fraction of them will be affordable. This city is already well on its way to becoming a high-end bedroom community for Silicon Valley; only a clear policy that limits new market-rate condos until there’s a plan for adequate affordable housing will turn things around.

•<\!s> Support Sanctuary City and quit helping federal immigration authorities break up families. Newsom was just awful on this issue; Lee needs to work with Sup. David Campos to implement more humane laws.

•<\!s> End the demonization of homeless people and public employees. Newsom came to power attacking the homeless (with Care Not Cash) and went out attacking the homeless (with the sit-lie law). Lee ought to tell the Police Department not to aggressively enforce the ordinance.

•<\!s> Take on the sacred cows of the Police and Fire departments. The biggest salary and pension problems in the city are in the two public safety departments. The Fire Department budget has been bloated for years. If everyone else is taking cuts, so should the highest-paid cops and the overstaffed fire stations.

Some of Lee’s supporters insist he’s a solid progressive and that we shouldn’t hold the details of his selection — or the fact that he was chosen by people who are openly hostile to the progressive agenda — against him. We’re open to that — but the progressive community will judge him on his record. And he has to start right away.

EDITORIAL: The Agenda for Mayor Lee

Maria Poblet
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6

San Francisco has its first Chinese American mayor, and that’s a major, historic milestone. Let’s remember: Chinese immigrants were among the most abused and marginalized communities in the early days of San Francisco. In 1870, the city passed a series of laws limiting the rights of Chinese people to work and live in large parts of the city. Chinese workers built much of the Transcontinental Railroad — at slave wages and in desperately unsafe conditions that led to a large number of deaths. The United States didn’t even repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act (an anti-immigration law) until 1943, and for years, Chinatown was one of the poorest and most neglected city neighborhoods.

So there’s good reason for Asians to celebrate that the last door in San Francisco political power is now open. And Mayor Ed Lee comes from a civil rights background; he got his start in politics working as a poverty lawyer and tenant organizer.

Unfortunately, his path to Room 200 was badly marred by some ugly backroom dealing involving Willie Brown, the most corrupt mayor in modern San Francisco history. Even Lee’s supporters agree the process was a mess and that it undermines Lee’s credibility. So it’s important for Mayor Lee to immediately establish that he’s independent of Brown and his cronies, that his administration will not just be a Gavin Newsom rerun, and that progressives can and should support him.

He has a tough job ahead. We urge him to make a clean break with the past and set the city in a new direction. Here are a few ways to get started.

• Clear out the Newsom operatives and bring some new people with progressive credentials into the senior ranks. Newsom’s chief of staff, Steve Kawa, has been a shadow mayor for the past year while Newsom was on the campaign trail, and is the architect of much of what the outgoing administration has done to sow political division and cripple city government. Lee needs his own chief advisor.

• Show up for question time and work with the district-elected supervisors. Newsom was openly dismissive of the board and refused to take the supervisors seriously as partners in city government. Lee should appear once a month to answer questions from the board in public, should meet regularly with all the supervisors and appoint a liaison that the board can work with and trust. He needs to make his administration as transparent and open as possible and ensure that everyone at City Hall follows the letter and spirit of the Sunshine Ordinance.

• Make it clear that the next city budget includes substantial new revenue. Newsom offered nothing but Republican politics when it came to city finance; his only solutions to the massive structural deficit involved service cuts.

The deficit will be even worse than projected this year, since Gov. Jerry Brown wants to transfer much of the state’s responsibility for public safety and public health back to local government — and there won’t be enough state money attached to handle the new burden. Lee needs to publicly call on Brown and the Legislature to give cities more ability to raise taxes on the local levee. Then he should start planning for a June ballot package that will raise as much as $250 million in new revenue for the city.

A substantially higher vehicle license fee on expensive cars, a congestion management fee, a significant annual transit impact fee on downtown offices, a restructured business tax, and a progressive tax on income of more than $50,000 a year would more than eliminate the structural deficit.

There are plenty of other revenue ideas out there; not all can or would pass on a single ballot. But Lee needs to make it clear that revenue will be part of the solution — and that he will use all the political capital he can muster to convince the voters to go along.

• Get serious about community choice aggregation. Newsom loved to talk about his environmental agenda, but when it came to challenging the hegemony of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and its dirty power portfolio, he ran for cover. His hand-picked Public Utilities Commission director, Ed Harrington, has been an obstacle to implementing the city’s CCA plan. Lee needs to get rid of Harrington or direct him to cooperate with the supervisors and get San Francisco on the path to clean public power.

• Establish a real affordable housing program. The city plans to build housing for as many as 60,000 new residents in the southeast neighborhoods — but only a fraction of them will be affordable. This city is already well on its way to becoming a high-end bedroom community for Silicon Valley; only a clear policy that limits new market-rate condos until there’s a plan for adequate affordable housing will turn things around.

• Support Sanctuary City and quit helping federal immigration authorities break up families. Newsom was just awful on this issue; Lee needs to work with Sup. David Campos to implement more humane laws.

• End the demonization of homeless people and public employees. Newsom came to power attacking the homeless (with Care Not Cash) and went out attacking the homeless (with the sit-lie law). Lee ought to tell the Police Department not to aggressively enforce the ordinance.

• Take on the sacred cows of the Police and Fire departments. The biggest salary and pension problems in the city are in the two public safety departments. The Fire Department budget has been bloated for years. If everyone else is taking cuts, so should the highest-paid cops and the overstaffed fire stations.

Some of Lee’s supporters insist he’s a solid progressive and that we shouldn’t hold the details of his selection — or the fact that he was chosen by people who are openly hostile to the progressive agenda — against him. We’re open to that — but the progressive community will judge him on his record. And he has to start right away.

What progressive means

Zelda Bronstein
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85
What progressive means

Willie Brown says that choosing a person of color for a leadership position should be a “progressive” value. David Chiu says Ed Lee is a progressive. Several supervisors, and other political observers, say the six-vote progressive majority on the board is gone.

And nobody really talks about what that word means.

Progressive is a term with an excellent political vintage, but it’s changed (as has the political context) since the 1920s. (Progressives these days aren’t into prohibition.) So I’m going to take a few minutes to try to sort this out.

I used to tell John Burton that a progressive was a liberal who didn’t like real estate developers, but that was in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party in town was funded by Walter Shorenstein and other developers, who were happy to be part of the party of Dianne Feinstein, happy to be liberals on some social issues (Shorenstein insisted that the Chamber of Commerce hire and promote more women) and happy to promote liberal candidates like John and his brother Phil for national office – as long as they didn’t mess with the gargantuan money machine that was highrise office development in San Francisco.
Arguing that Shorenstein’s economic agenda was driving up housing prices, destroying low-income neighborhoods and displacing tenants was a waste of time; the liberals like Burton (who also represented real estate developers as a private attorney) weren’t interested.

But these days it’s not all about real estate; it’s about the fact that the level of economic inequality in the United States has risen to levels unseen since the late 1920s, and the impacts are all around us. And it’s about (Democratic) politicians in San Francisco blaming Sacramento, and (Democratic) politicians in Sacramento blaming Washington, and the Democratic Party in the United States abandoning economic equality as a guiding principle.

So I sat down on a Saturday night when the kids went to be (yeah, this is my social life) and made a list of what I think represent the core values of a modern American progressive. It’s a short list, and I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left off, but it seems like a place to start.

For all the people who are going to blast me in the comments, let me say very clearly: This isn’t a litmus-test list (we’ve endorsed plenty of people who don’t agree with everything on it). It’s not a purity test, it’s not a dogma, it’s not the rules of entry into any political party … it’s just a definition. My personal definition.

Because words don’t mean anything if they don’t mean anything, and progressive has become so much of a part of the San Francisco political dialogue that it’s starting to mean nothing.
For the record: When I use the word “progressive,” I’m talking about people who believe:

1. That civil rights and civil liberties need to be protected for everyone, even the most unpopular people in the world. We’re for same-sex marriage, of course, and for Sanctuary City and protections for immigrants who may not have documentation. We’re also in favor of basic rights for prisoners, we’re against the death penalty, and we think that even suspected terrorists should have the right to due process of law.

2. That essential public services – water, electricity, health care, broadband – should be controlled by the public and not by private corporations. That means public power and single-payer government run health insurance.

3. That the most central problem facing the city, the state and the nation today is the dramatic upward shift of wealth and income and the resulting economic inequality. We believe that government at every level – including local government, right here in San Francisco – should do everything possible to reduce that inequality; that means taxing high incomes, redistributing wealth and using that money for public services (education, for example) that tend to help people achieve a stable middle-class lifestyle. We believe that San Francisco is a rich city, with a lot of rich people, and that if the state and federal government won’t try to tax them to pay for local services, the city should.

4. That private money has no place in elections or public policy. We support a total ban on private campaign contributions, for both politicians and ballot measures, and support public financing for all elections.

5. That the right to private property needs to be tempered by the needs of society. That means you can’t just put up a highrise building anywhere you want in San Francisco, of course, but it also means that the rights of tenants to have stable places for themselves and their families to live is more important than the rights of landlords to maximize return on their property. That’s why we support strict environmental protections, even when they hurt private interests, and why be believe in rent control, including rent control on vacant property, and eviction protections and restrictions on condo conversions. We think community matters more than wealth and that poor people have a place in San Francisco too — and if the wealthier classes have to have less so that the city can have socio-economic diversity, that’s a small price to pay. We believe that public space belongs to the public, and shouldn’t be handed over to private interests; we believe that everyone, including homeless people, has the right to use public space.

6. That there are almost no circumstances where the government should do anything in secret.

7. That progressive elected officials should use their resources and political capital to help elect other progressives – and should recognize that sometimes the movement is more important that their own personal ambitions.

I could add a lot more, but I think those six factors are at the heart of what I mean when I talk about progressives. We support a lot of other things; I put the right of workers to unionize under Number 3, since unions (along with public schools and subsidized higher education) are one of the major forces behind a stable middle class and a more equal society. We think racism and homophobia are never acceptable, and we support affirmative action, but that goes under Number 1.

This is not a socialist manifesto; I never mentioned worker control of the means of production. Progressives don’t oppose private enterprise; they just think that some things essential for the good of society don’t belong in the private sector, and that the private sector should be regulated for the good of all of us. We trust and support small businesses much more than big corporations – and we think their interests are not the same.

I don’t know if Ed Lee fits my definition of a progressive. We won’t know until we see his budget plans, and learn whether he thinks the city should follow Gavin Newsom’s approach of avoiding tax increases and simply cutting services again. We won’t know until he decides what the tell the new police chief about enforcing the sit-lie law. We won’t know until we see whether he keeps Newsom’s staff in place or brings in some senior people with progressive values. We know that the people who pushed him to take the job aren’t progressives by any definition, but you never know. I agree that having an Asian mayor in San Francisco is a very big deal, an historic moment — and when Lee takes office, I will be waiting, and hoping, to be surprised.

Chinese community out in force for Lee

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Chinese community out in force for Lee

Well, Rose Pak promised a big demonstration and she’s got one: City Hall is mobbed with Ed Lee supporters pushing the supervisors to vote for the city’s first Asian mayor. Lee is still out of town, so he can’t answer questions, although he’s talked to several supervisors by phone. One said he seemed a little overwhelmed by all of this; he wasn’t even sure he wanted the job until Pak and Willie Brown talked him into it.


The revelations that the vote for Lee was a backroom deal orchestrated by Pak and Willie Brown (and from years of Brown watching, I can you this was a classic Brown move) will put Lee supporters like David Chiu and Eric Mar in a tough situation. Aaron Peskin, former supervisor, wasn’t mincing words when I talked to him jost before the meeting started:


“This is no so much about left and right, it’s about democracy and how power is transitioned,” he said. “This is disgusting, not because Ed Lee is or isn’t left or right or a progressive or a liberal. This is about the politics of power, and conservatives and moderates should be just as revolted as anyone.”


Meanwhile, my old friend Rev. Norman Fong, a leading Chinatown progressive, says he supports Ed Lee, as do a lot of progressives in the Asian communtity. I get that, and he’s a decent guy with a good history as a civil rights and housing lawyer, and he might even be a decent mayor. But this process stinks. There’s no other way to put it.

Hennessey, Lee and change

Zelda Bronstein
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8
Hennessey, Lee and change

I’m not surprised that Randy Shaw is defending Ed Lee and arguing that either Lee or Mike Hennessey would be fine as interim mayor:


Ed Lee is not Gavin Newsom. Lee has dedicated his life to public service, spent years as a poverty lawyer, and has proved an outstanding administrator over the past two decades.


Shaw worked with Lee way back in the 1980s, when they were both young, underpaid lawyers doing housing work for some of the poorest San Franciscans. Both of them were doing crucial work that nobody else would handle; both of them were making San Francisco a better place. While I sometimes disagree with Shaw (and he seems to be all about attacking the Guardian these days) we have been close allies over the years on almost all the issues that matter. And I’m not going to attack Ed Lee or suggest that he’s forgotten his roots in immigrant rights and poverty law.


Here’s what I will say: If Ed Lee is interim mayor, you can expect very little change in Room 200. There’s a reason that Newsom wants Lee in office, and it’s not that he was a great progressive lawyer once. Newsom (and Sean Elsbernd, who nominated Lee) don’t want to see the mayor’s staff infrastructure — the people really running the city — dismantled. They don’t want any real changes in how business is done — and how the budget is addressed — from the way things worked the past seven years.


Lee hasn’t survived (and thrived) under so many different mayors by rocking the boat. He would be a cautious administrator who, I suspect, would avoid anything controversial (like tax increases on the wealthy or big cuts in the bloated Fire Department). Ed Lee is not Gavin Newsom — but his staff will be Gavin Newsom’s staff and, through the inertia that is San Francisco bureaucracy, not much will change in the next 11 months.


That’s what the conservatives on the board want, and I understand that. I don’t think Hennessey would make dramatic changes, either — the whole idea of a caretaker mayor is that the person who fills out Newsom’s term won’t try to put his own stamp on city government. (And let’s remember, Hennessey sided with Newsom on privatizing jail health services) But I think Hennessey would bring some new blood into the office and would be more likely to consider an approach to the budget that differs significantly from what Newsom has offered.


Everyone agrees that Lee is a smart, competent manager; that’s why he won unanimous approval as the City Administrator, an office that doesn’t involve major policy initiatives. So if you think things are basically okay in San Francisco, and you don’t want any major policy shifts out of the Mayor’s Office until after the next election, Ed Lee will do a fine job for you. That’s not demonizing him; that’s just explaining the reality here.


Me, I don’t think things are okay in this city at all. I’m looking for dramatic, profound, radical change in the next mayor. I’m not going to get it from either of these interim candidates, but after talking to Hennessey, I think if the supervisors pushed for a better, more progressive budget, he’d go along. I’m not so sure about Lee. And the fact that Newsom and every member of the conservative wing of the board wants Lee over Hennessey says something to me. These people aren’t fools; they don’t want any surprises. That’s why they’re making this move.


I’ve been wrong before. Hope I’m wrong this time. Maybe Mayor Ed Lee will support $250 million worth of new revenue measures, like a city income tax and a business tax overhaul that makes the biggest companies pay more. But if that was part of his agenda, I suspect Elsbernd and Newsom would have a clue — and then he wouldn’t be their choice.


 


 

Chris Daly’s Final Say

Mary Magee
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Chris Daly’s Final Say

As part of my effort to compile a list of most roastable moments of Sup. Chris Daly‘s decade-long career at City Hall, I asked the termed-out D6 supervisor if he would sit down for an exit interview. And shortly before Christmas, when there was still hope the Board would select a progressive interim mayor, and Daly had not yet vowed to politically haunt Board President David Chiu with shouts of, “It’s on like Donkey Kong” , we arranged to meet me at the Buck Tavern on Market Street, which Daly, who now holds the liquor license, is threatening to rename “Daly’s Dive.”

As it happens, the lion’s share of our conversation ended up taking place by cell, since Daly got stuck in late afternoon commuter traffic, as he drove to San Francisco from Fairfield, where his wife and children have lived since April 2009, making him a fitting symbol of the East-Bay-and-beyond migration pattern of couples who live in San Francisco, until they have more than one kid.

Except not all couples with two small kids get to move into one of two foreclosed properties that the in-laws bought with $545,000 cash in spring 2009. At the time, Daly’s critics accused him making such a mess of governing the city that he had decided against raising his own family here. Daly predictably disagreed. “There are few people who think about the future of San Francisco and the health of the city more than me,” Daly told reporters, explaining that his wife wanted family support raising their children, so she had moved to the same cul-de-sac as her parents, as Daly continued to live in a condo in San Francisco with roommates and to see his family on weekends.

Anyways, on the dark and stormy night that I interviewed Daly in mid-December, he acknowledged that he was going to be in for one helluva roast at the Independent on Jan. 5. in the worst possible sense of the tradition.
“Will there be controversial subjects, things that on the face of it, are not very nice? Yes,” Daly said.

And then he claimed he had agreed to this ordeal, because, under the roast’s traditional format , he would get to go last—and thus would get to have the last word.
“Why would I want to end my City Hall career like this? Because I get to go last, and can really say what’s on my mind,” Daly said. “Unless the D.J. wants to say something as he’s spinning.”

Daly’s comment suggests that folks who attend his roast at the Independent will witness a historically vicious verbal drubbing on all sides, since no one has ever accused Daly of holding back from saying what was on his mind. Even if it has led to seemingly counterproductive “We are shocked, SHOCKED!” responses. Like the time Sup. Michela Alioto Pier introduced an ultimately doomed etiquette ordinance, after Daly swore at a constituent during a City Hall meeting, in 2004.

Daly said at the time that he comes from a background as a housing-rights organizer on the streets of Philadelphia and San Francisco, where confrontation was an effective political tool. But he also claimed that he had learned an important lesson.
“In the future it’s going to be better for me personally and politically to focus my energy positively on the people I care about instead of negatively on the people I think are doing them harm,” Daly reportedly said.

Fast forward six years, and Daly is unrepentant about his record of fighting for low-income people, while openly defying City Hall’s unwritten rules of etiquette.
“Etiquette always seemed a little silly, something for the ‘other’ San Francisco, for the prim and the proper and that’s not what I am concerned about,” Daly said. “I’m aware of the turn-the-other-check philosophy, and, if I were religious, I’d be out of the Old Testament. I’d be, if someone pokes you in the eye, I’d poke back.”

Daly says he stopped caring about etiquette towards the end of his first year in office. “When those in power use that power to put down those who are less advantaged, when I see that, I respond quickly and with as much force as I can to prevent them from doing that kind of thing again,” he said. “ If you want to attack homeless people for political advantage, I’m going to attack you right back. That’s not ‘proper,’ but I think it’s just.”

Daly says he also soon realized tthat the truth wasn’t the driver.
“I already knew that money, power and significant forces would be pushing back against me but then I discovered that the actual truth wasn’t what played out there in the world of spin. It’s like when the Examiner’s Josh Sabatini asked me how I want to be remembered, and I said, “Not as the caricature the Examiner created of me.”

Daly, who moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on homeless and affordable housing issues, was at the heart of the movement around Ammiano’s 1999 write-in campaign for mayor, and part of the progressive sweep onto the Board, in 2000.

“For me, it’s never been about being a ‘good’ vote. I breathe leftist progressive politics,” Daly said. “Where I can make more of a mark is in terms of setting the stage for those votes and holding the line in districts that are not progressive. I’m very proud of my attempts to hold the line on issues, but the work doesn’t make any friends.”

Daly noted that after he made comments about Newsom’s alleged cocaine use during the 2007 Mayor’s race, downtown interests threw everything they had left at him.
‘They got a lot of hits in, but no total blows,” he opines. “Last time I checked, I saved the city $150 million on the Americas Cup deal that they were going to ram rod through.”

And so, as he prepares to begin life as a bar owner, don’t expect Daly to pass up opportunities to launch verbal attacks, if he believes they are warranted, political consequences be damned.

“People want to have the power without any of the negativity they associate with all the shit we have to deal with to build this power,” Daly added. “So, it’s all, Daly and [former Board President Aaron] Peskin took control of the Democratic Party at midnight. Well, how did you want us to take over? “

Daly claims if you take away “negatives” attributed to him, you take away his wins. “People call me a lot of things, but I’m not a loser, I win a lot” Daly added, noting that Democrats being nice to Republicans has led to losses in D.C., not gains. “So, yes, I’ve got a lot of negatives, and they’ve clearly been made into a target, but if I can take the hits, and help people I care about, I’m happy to do it. That’s what I’ve done for ten years.”

Daly says he’s become “pretty desensitized to criticism,” even as he admits to being a sensitive person, deep inside. “I don’t think I’d have quite the visceral response to poverty and oppression, if I wasn’t sensitive,” he said. “I care deeply about people’s struggles. That’s why I’m here, but I also have a pretty solid critique of capitalism and I know how to follow the money, so when I get criticized by some downtown mouthpiece, I know what time it is.”

Daly says he started the Daly Blog several years ago, to push back against what he felt was unfair treatment in the media. And he says he endorsed outgoing mayor Newsom for Lt. Governor, despite their long and antagonistic history, so progressives could have a shot at installing a mayor in Room 200.

“My money now is on the selection of the mayor going to the new Board, and Avalos getting it in the 13th round of voting,” Daly said.

Daly made that prediction three weeks before the progressives on the Board seem poised to hand the keys to R.200 to City Administrator Ed Lee—thereby eliciting Daly’s ballistic “Donkey Kong” outburst.

With the outgoing Board set to meet Friday to make a selection, here’s another Daly roastable moment, this time from Peskin, related to the fall-out that ensued after Daly made two appointments to the SFPUC, while serving as acting mayor for one day, while then Mayor Willie Brown was out of the country, on a trip to Tibet.

“When Mayor Willie Brown left office, Charlotte Schultz had an unveiling ceremony of Brown’s picture. Newsom, who by then was mayor, was presiding. And Charlotte had a beautiful easel with a golden drape over it. When she pulled back the curtain there was a picture of Daly, who was listed as “41st and a half” mayor presiding from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on October 22,” Peskin recalled, noting that under Daly’s picture there was another curtain that contained Brown’s actual portrait.”

And while Daly’s controversial statements and outbursts always make headlines, there is no denying that he helped make the progressive agenda, including establishing mandatory paid sick days, universal healthcare, and forcing developers to contribute in affordable housing or services for poor, an integral part of city policy.
 “The Chronicle used him as the poster child to try and dissuade anyone from supporting a progressive agenda,” former Sup. Jake McGoldrick observed. “He was used to smear any of our good ideas. And Chris never seemed to understand that some of us needed to be a little more sensitive, since we needed to get re-elected and didn’t represent districts that were as progressive as his. Personal attacks make the whole situation smell bad.”

Sup. John Avalos, who served as Daly’s legislative aide until he was elected as D11 supervisor, acknowledged that a lot of folks have accused Daly of doing irreparable harm to the progressive movement and being a gift to Newsom and the moderates at City Hall.
“People try and make hay out of it,” he said. “But his antics have probably hurt him more than anyone,” Avalos added, noting that he ran in 2008 as Daly’s former legislative aide.
‘And it didn’t hurt me, and I made no bones about where I came from.”

And then there’s the fact Daly defeated the Chamber ’s Rob Black in the 2006 election. “We don’t do enough to have better relationships between ourselves,” Avalos added , reflecting on the divided progressive movement. “It’s more than just one person.”
 
Peskin for his part acknowledges that Daly will be missed on the Board.
 “He sucked the oxygen out of the room and made it all super lefty and caustic, and it certainly did not allow a better conversation to evolve,” Peskin said. “But it’s still going to be a pretty profound loss.”

Jerry Brown wants to eliminate Redevelopment

Mary Magee
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10
Jerry Brown wants to eliminate Redevelopment

Calitics reveals today that newly sworn-in Gov. Jerry Brown told the Sacramento Bee that he’s proposing to eliminate local redevelopment agencies as part of a set of austerity measures that he is proposing in a purported effort to shock folks into approving new revenues

Brown’s shocking proposal got me calling tenants rights activist Calvin Welch and Arc Ecology executive director Saul Bloom, who both have strong and well- informed views on what’s up with local redevelopment agencies and how they could be improved. And interestingly neither Bloom nor Welch was in favor of eliminating redevelopment.

Welch, who hadn’t yet had time to read the article when I called him, actually laughed when I outlined Brown’s basic idea, which admittedly is big on shock value and thin on explanations, at least at this point.
‘That would be very interesting, but the devil’s in the details.” Welch observed, noting that voters just approved Prop. 22 in Nov. 2010 to prevent the state from taking city redevelopment money to balance the budget in Sacramento. (Unfortunately, Prop. 22’s passage still doesn’t protect San Francisco from having its budget raided by the state, since it’s defined as both a city and a county.)

“That’s an astounding idea,” Welch added, trying to wrap his mind around Brown’s out-of-the-blue proposal. “Because in San Francisco, there are redevelopment areas, including Bayview Hunters Point, Mission Bay and the Transbay Terminal, that have already been authorized for another 25-30 years.”

“Perhaps the language would be ‘no new redevelopment’ but I don’t know how you would do that,” Welch added, noting that Brown has not only been governor before, but was also mayor of Oakland. (During his term as mayor, Brown was credited with starting the revitalization of Oakland but was also accused of being more interested in downtown redevelopment and economic growth than political ideology.)

Welch noted that San Francisco was fortunate in being able to reshape its Redevelopment financing arrangements in 1990 under then mayor Art Agnos.

“It was probably the most progressive and long standing reform of Art Agnos’ administration—and no one understands it,” Welch said. As Welch tells it, when Agnos came into office, he inherited a city that had been bankrupted by a decade of mayor Dianne Feinstein’s business-friendly policies, much like how San Francisco has been milked in the past decade by Newsom’s business-friendly policies.

“Redevelopment doesn’t pay its way in the post Prop. 13 world,” Welch stated. “Under Mayor Gavin Newsom, we’ve had the most market rate housing produced and the biggest deficits in what was a real estate collapse, as part of the collapse of the economic markets. And under Mayor Feinstein’s 10-year rule, we saw massive amounts of commercial office space built that never paid its way, leaving Agnos with a $103 million deficit.”

Welch notes that Agnos also inherited a huge homeless crisis (something Welch says Feinstein was in denial over) and that Agnos sought to reform Redevelopment in large part as a way to address the city’s growing lack of affordable housing. “Art basically said, let’s take a look at tax increment financing,” Welch said, referring to a tax financing arrangement, under which a municipality can a) do an assessed value of an area before redevelopment takes place, b) estimate what that same area’s local taxes would be after redevelopment, and c) borrow money against the incremental difference between a) and b).

“Art said, ‘I want to do that and I want to use the hundreds of millions of dollars available through redevelopment for affordable housing,’” Welch recalled. He noted that Agnos succeeded in his mission by shifting the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s mission from ‘urban renewal’ (which had negative connotations following the displacement of African American and other low-income communities from the Fillmore in the 1960s) to ‘community development,’ making Redevelopment subject to the same budgetary process as other departments, and insisting that 20 percent of tax increment financing dollars be devoted to affordable housing.
“But we said, ‘no, 50 percent has to be devoted to affordable housing and Art agreed, and that’s been the case since 1990,” Welch recalled. “And since then our Redevelopment Agency has been the principal source of affordable housing revenue in San Francisco.”

So, in another words, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency is pretty much alone in the state, in terms of devoting half its tax increment financing revenues to affordable housing. But by the same token, San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency is pretty much alone in the state in terms of not being governed directly by a city council or a county Board of Supervisors. Instead, it’s governed by a Commission, whose members are appointed solely by the mayor . And therein lies the problem, Welch says.
‘It would only take six votes on the Board of Supervisors, or eight votes to override a mayoral veto, to change that,” Welch observed.

But to date there haven’t been eight votes to do that, even with a progressive Board.
Welch believes the problem is that supervisors, who currently each only have two legislative aides, fear swampage from Redevelopment responsibilities.
“To contemplate taking over a multibillion dollar agencies and taking on the likes of Catellus with only two staffers, well it’s a recipe for disaster,” Welch said, acknowledging that additional reforms, including splitting appointments on the Redevelopment Commission between the mayor and the Board, or allowing the Board to hire additional legislative staff to work on redevelopment issues, could solve the problem.

Bloom, who recently sued after the Redevelopment Commission threw his non-profit under the bus, said his non-profit’s recent experience perfectly illustrates why and how Redevelopment should be reformed, rather than completely eliminated.
“Redevelopment is a process that has been much abused, so it’s easy to say, let’s get rid of it, but I’m not there, ”Bloom said, noting that his beef has been with the way his non-profit was treated by Redevelopment Commissioners, rather than Redevelopment staff.
“But I do believe there needs to be a modification of the process, in which redevelopment is put in the hands of an entity that is answerable to the public.”

Bloom believes this modification could be achieved by making the Board of Supervisors the governing body of the Redevelopment Agency, which is already the case in almost all municipalities in California.
“Give that role to the Board of Supervisors because you can fire your supervisor,” Bloom said, noting that currently there are no limits on how long individuals, who are appointed by the mayor, can serve on the Redevelopment Commission. ‘If you give that role to the supervisors, they will be able to utilize more staff to become better Board members. So, this is an opportunity to increase people’s participation in the process.”

Meanwhile, it’s possible that Brown’s threat to eliminate Redevelopment will be like the time Warren Buffett, who’d just been announced as then newly elected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s financial adviser, caused a brou-haha when he threatened to reform that even holier of cows, Prop. 13.

 

Does Mayor Newsom represent SF workers or San Mateo politicians?

Mary Magee
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2

“Does Newsom represent local workers or San Mateo politicians?” That’s the question being asked  at City Hall today. And it’s threatening to deliver an unwelcome kick to Mayor Gavin Newsom on his way out of City Hall’s revolving doors, as dozens of unemployed construction workers deliver 1,000 Christmas cards that residents of Bayview Hunters Point, Chinatown, the Mission, the Tenderloin and South of Market have signed. The cards urge Mayor Gavin Newsom to “put the Merry into Christmas and the Happy back into New Year” and sign local hire law that the Board passed a week ago.

This special holiday season delivery has been in the works since Dec. 14, when Bayview-based job advocates Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU) tried to meet with Newsom and get his signature on legislation that a super-majority on the Board support.

But after Newsom was a no-show and his chief of staff Steve Kawa refused to give ABU any assurances, community advocates Brightline Defense Project printed up a thousand of the cards urging Newsom to “put the Merry into Christmas”. And Brightline, ABU, Chinese for Affirmative Action, PODER, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute then asked unemployed workers, activists, and concerned citizens to sign this unusual set of greeting cards.

The move comes a day after the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to urge Newsom to veto Avalos local hire policy. Local hire advocates suspect this counter-move was orchestrated to give Newsom political cover, should he choose to make the seemingly Scrooge-like move of vetoing, just before the holiday season, legislation that would help San Francisco residents secure work on billions of dollars worth of local tax-payer funded construction projects .

But the San Mateo supervisors claim that San Francisco’s plan, which would mandate that 50 percent of workers on city-funded projects are local residents, threatens to hurt an already sluggish regional economy.

“This is not the time to put isolation around a community,” San Mateo Sup. Carole Groom reportedly said at a hastily convened Dec. 21 special session.
 “If this is rejected, it would be time for all of us to sit down and talk about this,” fellow San Mateo County Sup. Adrienne Tissier reportedly said.

Newsom has until Christmas Eve to either sign or veto the law, though the Board can still override his veto, provided Avalos still has eight votes in the New Year. And if Newsom doesn’t sign or veto the law by week’s end, it will go into effect in 60 days.


San Mateo officials are arguing that the local hire legislation particularly impacts their county, because the law contains a “70-mile” clause that includes the San Francisco Airport, the Hetch Hetchy water system and the San Bruno jail.

Sup. John Avalos previously told the Guardian that project labor agreements protect workers at the airport and working on projects that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission funds. But Tissier reportedly claimed that San Francisco’s local hire policy would kick in, once new contracts are negotiated.

Reached by phone, Avalos said it’s not clear if the San Mateo supervisors have actually read his legislation
‘If they had, they’d see a lot of ways that is supports San Mateo workers,” Avalos said.

San Francisco’s local hire legislation, which is the nation’s strongest, requires that 20 percent of workers within each construction trade be local residents starting in 2011. That number increases 5 percent annually for seven years, as local workers join trades where community representation is lacking, before reaching 50 percent. In other words, 80 percent of the workforce could be non-city residents in 2011, and even at 50 percent local hire, half of the jobs will still be available to workers who don’t live in San Francisco.
 
“That’s hardly an exclusion especially when you consider that San Francisco taxpayers are making the investments on these projects,” Avalos stated.
He believes that the San Mateo County Building Trades Council pressured the San Mateo Board to pass their Dec. 21 resolution urging a veto on his measure. Either way,  Victor Torreano, vice president of the San Mateo County Building Trades Council was quoted in media coverage of the Dec. 21 vote, saying, “the need for housing in San Francisco and the Peninsula make it impossible for many blue collar workers from sinking family roots in the area.”

Avalos acknowledges that San Francisco International Airport is in San Mateo County, and its workers understandably wants jobs there,
“San Mateo County has to put up with the sound of the airport, and its residents deserve to have jobs there, but this is much ado about nothing,” Avalos said. “But it’s the Building Trades that are uncomfortable with changing slightly their practices.”

Mike Theriault, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Building Trades Council, acknowledged that his group has never been pleased with Avalos’ legislation.

“But we are resigned to seeing how it plays out,” Theriault told the Guardian. “We think there are better things they could have done to guarantee access of San Francisco residents to careers in our trades.”

Theriault believes that Avalos may not understand the project labor agreement are of limited duration.
“So, they will require an extension of the existing labor agreement,” Theriault said,  noting the legislation states that future extensions would have to comply with the new law.

But Theriault acknowledged that with or without Newsom, Avalos’ legislation still has a chance to move forward.
“If he vetoes it, I understand that the Board will have another crack at it, Jan. 4,” THeriault said, referring to the current Board’s last meeting in January.
 
The Bay Area Council has also announced its opposition to Avalos’ legislation,
 “This troubling trend of intra-county battles being started by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors needs to stop,: Bay Area Council President and CEO Jim Wunderman said in a Dec. 21 statement. “The Bay Area is one regional economy, not nine island states. We need to focus on nurturing the fragile economic recovery in our region, not setting bad policies that pit county against county.  The Bay Area Council urges Mayor Newsom to veto this foolhardy piece of legislation.  Right now, we do not need any more incentives for businesses to leave any county, the Bay Area, or California.”

But advocates for the legislation note that the San Francisco Controller recently estimated that the law will pump $270 million into the local economy over the next 10 years. They hope Newsom will emerge from his warren-like office today and sign the law, delivering a historic Christmas present to the city’s growing ranks of unemployed workers.


But even if he doesn’t, Avalos isn’t sweating it.


“Newsom probably won’t sign it, and he’ll write a letter saying he’s opposed to it,” Avalos predicted. “And even if the new mayor is [SFPUC director] Ed Harrington, he’s been supportive of the measure. So Newsom has to answer his own conscience and ask himself, if he’s going to represent local residents or San Mateo politicians.”


According to Brightline’s Joshua Arce, ABU led about 30 to 40 workers from Bayview, Chinatown, and the Mission up to Room 200 today to drop off 1,000 signed  cards from residents in every neighborhood asking the Mayor to sign the community’s local hiring law by Christmas.
 
“Room 200 was locked, but we kept knocking,” Arce told the Guardian. “Eventually the doors opened and out came [Mayor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff] Steve Kawa. We showed him all of the Christmas cards that we had for his boss and he thanked us. Ashley Rhodes of ABU explained that since we heard how much the Mayor liked the ABU holiday card last week, we printed up 1,000 more and got them signed by people from every community in San Francisco.”
 
“We asked where the Mayor was in terms of making his decision, he said that the Mayor was still studying all of the issues,” Arce continued. “He brought up the opposition from the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, so we asked him to tell the Mayor to support us, the thousands of unemployed and job-hungry San Franciscans, over four San Mateo politicians.”
 
“Steve Kawa said that they will be working around the clock to make sure all concerns are addressed, and we showed Steve a card signed by Sup. Bevan Dufty just moments before we came upstairs,” Arce addded. “Sups. John Avalos and Eric Mar also signed Christmas cards to the Mayor.”

According to Arce, ABU left the two huge Santa bags full of cards with Kawa, who picked them up, commenting “These bags are awfully heavy.” 

“I asked him to make sure to tell his boss that the cards were printed on 100% recycled paper,” Arce concluded. “Let’s hope that Mayor Newsom puts the Merry into Christmas and the Happy back into New Year!”

Homelessness: Newsom’s real legacy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Homelessness: Newsom’s real legacy

OPINION His voice tinged with modest pride, Gavin Newsom recently announced that he has housed 12,000 people since becoming mayor. This is an absurdly high number, four times larger then any street count of homeless people since he has been in office, but it’s been accepted by the media and public.

Homelessness has been a key issue for Newsom. He first got elected in large part by taking it on, and has been celebrated in some quarters as a champion for homeless people.

But digging behind the veneer, removing bus tickets out of town, permanent housing his predecessor, Willie Brown, created, and temporary stays and duplication, there are 1,395 permanently affordable housing units that Newsom can truly take credit for. More frequently his administration has housed people (fewer then 2,000) by leasing residential hotel rooms from slumlords and charging homeless people unaffordable rents to live there.

Only 14 percent of the units have been for families, although they make up 40 percent of the homeless population.

Newsom put three different initiatives on the ballot that have spurred hatred against homeless people. His signature operation was mixing kindness with punishment. This way, he wooed conservatives who saw through the camouflage, and liberals who did not.

Care Not Cash was the first measure. That campaign focused on accusing homeless welfare recipients of spending all their money on booze and drugs. The proponents claimed they would take public assistance away, in return for housing and treatment. The treatment part never came to fruition, and of course proponents never mentioned they were counting shelter as housing.

Care Not Cash catapulted Newsom into the limelight. His self-deprecating charm conveyed the message: “The status quo simply isn’t working.” In the end, benefits were slashed and perpetual shelter vacancies were created while shelter-seekers were turned away. Food lines exploded.

Newsom could have used his power to raise the money to house people — without stealing it from other destitute people. He chose not to.

The next year Newsom ran for mayor and simultaneously put an anti aggressive panhandling initiative on the ballot. In classic Newsom strategy, the proposition loosely defined the term “aggressive” and bizarrely required, but did not fund, substance abuse treatment for perpetrators.

It was the meanest campaign in three decades. Several violent acts were wrongly attributed to homeless people. The Golden Gate Restaurant Association put out billboards claiming homeless people spread venereal disease. Once implemented, the initiative made no visible impact on the number of panhandlers in San Francisco.

Most recently, Newsom introduced Proposition L, an ordinance that could put people in jail for 30 days on a second offense just for sitting or lying on the sidewalk. It passed, and set the parameters for very nasty dialogue about poor people once again in San Francisco.

All three of these votes took place very strictly along class lines — affluent people supported them and poor people did not.

Homelessness is not a lifestyle choice; it’s a symptom of poverty. Yet Newsom’s legacy of hatred against homeless people has made it difficult to amass the public support needed to create true solutions. Overstating his accomplishments and spreading myths about homeless people sets us back. It gives San Franciscans the impression homeless people have the help they need but simply choose to remain out on the cold hard pavement.

In a city filled with thousands of destitute people, it is now illegal to sleep unsheltered. After Newsom’s plaster media façade crumbles, this will be his lasting legacy. *

Jennifer Freedenbach is executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

 

Weighing a landlord’s promise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Weighing a landlord’s promise

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Emotions ran high at meetings held by the San Francisco Planning Commission about a massive overhaul of Parkmerced, a housing complex located next to San Francisco State University that is a neighborhood unto itself.

The plan envisions tearing down 1940s-era garden apartments and townhomes to make way for new low-rises and high-rises that would contain a mix of rental housing and for-sale units. Over the course of a construction project spanning three decades, Parkmerced would expand to 8,900 units — enough to triple the number of residents who can now be accommodated. Final approval for the project is expected in March at the earliest.

Some 150 residents turned out at a Dec. 9 special meeting held near Parkmerced to make it more accessible for seniors and people with limited mobility. Although commissioners had planned to open with a staff presentation, residents protested and demanded to speak first, and their request was granted. After listening to residents comment for hours, commissioners continued the discussion until the Dec. 16 meeting, which drew a smaller turnout.

While some residents were pleased by the plans, the majority who attended the first meeting expressed alarm and anxiety. People aired concerns about the long construction timeline, increased density, traffic congestion, and the impact the plan would have on a well-established, multigenerational community. Many of the speakers had been born at Parkmerced or raised families there. The comments portrayed an economically diverse neighborhood supporting close-knit circles of friends and family.

One question that seemed to have residents rattled most was whether they could trust the developer’s promise that their rent control would be preserved, even after their existing apartments have been torn down.

Among them was octogenarian Robert Pender, a founding member of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, who hobbled from his wheelchair to the podium to deliver his statement for the public record. “Parkmerced is my home, and I’m not going to be evicted because some landlord wants to make some more money,” he announced. After making his comments, Pender turned to face the audience, lifted his cane in the air, and issued a rally cry that captured the sentiment of the evening: “fight!”

Under the development plan, 1,500 apartments would be razed to make way for new residential units. The midcentury garden apartments open out to shared courtyards and patios. Many house tenants who’ve lived at Parkmerced for decades. For elderly residents or those who have disabilities, the exceptionally low rent makes it possible for them to stay in San Francisco despite limited income.

From the outset, Parkmerced Investors LLC and Stellar Management have promised existing tenants that they will be relocated to replacement units with roughly the same square footage, where they’ll continue to pay the same monthly rates and keep their rent control. The developer has even promised to keep the existing apartments intact until the new units are available so that none of the residents will have to move twice.

“Our promise to our residents is that we will preserve the rent control,” said P.J. Johnston, a spokesperson for the developer. “Our attorneys believe that the rent-control protections are absolutely ironclad.”

Johnston emphasized the big picture: “For decades, progressive San Francisco has been talking about the need for developing large chunks of affordable housing, for increasing density on the west side, and for creating more housing around transit. Here we finally have the opportunity to do all that while introducing major transit improvements and extending rent control.”

The landlord’s promise of continued rent control is written into a development agreement, a contract between the developer and the city that would be filed along with permits and entitlements for the property. Any subsequent owner would also have to adhere to the terms of the agreement.

Despite those assurances, tenant advocates speaking at the Dec. 9 meeting sounded the alarm that the guarantee could be called into question in court if the developer or a new owner ever sought to challenge it. The Costa-Hawkins Act, passed in 1995, prohibits rent control on newly constructed units, and San Francisco’s rent ordinance guarantees rent control only for units built before 1979.

“It is disingenuous for the Parkmerced landlord and for city staff to assure tenants that they will have rent-controlled replacement units after their units are demolished,” noted Polly Marshall, a tenant commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board who spoke as an individual before the Planning Commission. “We simply don’t know if this will be the case.”

Marshall said the agreement could be susceptible to a legal challenge, given recent court rulings in Los Angeles and Santa Monica finding that the Ellis Act and the Costa-Hawkins Act preempted any contracts brokered with the municipalities. In each case, signed agreements between a developer and a city were dissolved in California courts.

“There’s nothing in state law that says that when you demolish rent-controlled housing, it has to be replaced with rent-controlled housing,” said Dean Preston, director of Tenants Together, a statewide tenant advocacy group. “I don’t think the city or the developer can make those guarantees.”

Preston added that the problem would be intensified if the property is conveyed to a new owner who didn’t make the same commitments, and acknowledged that he didn’t perceive a surefire way to guarantee enforceability. “It’s not the developer’s fault, and it’s not the city’s fault,” Preston added. “Ultimately this needs to be addressed In Sacramento.”

City staff and the developer seemed responsive to the concerns. In comments submitted to commissioners Dec. 9, Marshall said the development agreement should be amended to specify that the developer agreed to waive any rights to challenge the requirements of the agreement. The following week, at the Dec. 16 meeting, planning staff distributed revised copies of the agreement that had been changed to include that language.

During a staff presentation at the Dec. 16 meeting, mayoral development advisor Michael Yarne addressed the rent-control question in a detailed presentation. “The city wants to protect existing tenants,” Yarne told commissioners. “It is not the city’s intent to leave existing tenants vulnerable.”

Under Costa-Hawkins, Yarne said, exceptions to the rent-control prohibition apply in cases where a municipality has made a valuable contribution to a developer for a residential project in exchange for the waiver of rights under Costa-Hawkins.

Yarne ticked off a slew of contributions he believed would pass muster in a court of law as enough to qualify for the exception. Among other perks, maximum density controls for the site would be eliminated; the height and bulk for new buildings would be increased beyond what’s normally allowed; the city would not assess impact fees for the replacement units; the amount of permitted commercial mixed-use development for Parkmerced’s zoning category would be substantially increased; and the development rights would be frozen for 30 years with no required milestones.

“We believe this satisfies the public-assistance exception,” Yarne said. He noted that the document was drafted with feedback from City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

Tenant rights activist Calvin Welch, who had not yet seen the latest draft of the development agreement when the Guardian caught up with him, said “we’re agnostic” on the rent-control provision until having had a chance to carefully vet the final agreement. Yet he said the tenants were “absolutely right to be concerned,” given the recent legal precedent.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd, whose District 7 includes Parkmerced, said he tuned into the hearings though he did not attend. Elsbernd said he would feel comfortable moving forward with the plan as long as he had assurance from the City Attorney’s Office that the agreement was enforceable. “I don’t want to see that project go forward without certainty,” he said.

Christina Olague, vice president of the Planning Commission, acknowledged the strong concerns voiced by residents about the coming changes to the property. “We have to be sensitive to the emotions that we witnessed that day,” Olague said. “We have to balance out a lot of different needs.”

At the Dec. 16 meeting, more residents made comments echoing the furious opposition expressed on Dec. 9. At the same time, a small contingent of residents who favored the plan turned out to urge commissioners to approve it.

“I have witnessed consistent honesty from one source — the owner of Parkmerced, Rob Rosania,” Daniel Phillips, who identified himself as president of the Board of Directors of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, noted in written comments submitted to commissioners. “As long as I have known Rob Rosania and Stellar Management, they have made promises and kept them.”

Yet it was clear that many other tenants were not convinced, and on Dec. 9, several lamented the idea that their homes would be knocked down and their longstanding community impacted by the new development.

Residents who oppose the development recently formed a new residents organization called the Parkmerced Action Coalition. Members of that group are opposed to the wholesale demolition of the 1,500 garden apartments and would rather see them retrofitted and preserved.

“We are living in panic,” a woman who had lived in Parkmerced for many years told commissioners. “I am completely opposed to the tear-down of our community.”

Hiring at home

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Hiring at home

sarah@sfbg.com

The lame duck Board of Supervisors made history Dec. 7 when it voted 8-3 to approve mandatory local hire legislation for city-funded construction projects. The measure ends a decade-long effort to reach 50 percent local hiring goals through good-faith efforts.

“That’s a sea change in our local hiring discussion,” said Sup. John Avalos, who launched the legislation in October as part of the LOCAL-SF (Local Opportunities for Communities and Labor) campaign, which seeks to strengthen local hiring, address high unemployment rates, and boost the local economy.

The veto-proof passage of Avalos’ measure comes in the wake of a city-commissioned study indicating that San Francisco has failed to meet good-faith local hiring goals for public works projects even as unemployment levels rise in the local construction industry and several local neighborhoods face concentrated poverty.

Although Cleveland also has a local-hire law, the Avalos measure will be the strongest in the nation. Avalos’ legislative aide Raquel Redondiez told the Guardian that Cleveland’s 2003 legislation requires 20 percent local hire.

“This legislation doesn’t just have a mandated 50 percent goal,” Avalos explained, noting that San Francisco will require that each trade achieve a mandated rate and that 50 percent of apprentices be residents.

“This will ensure that our tax dollars get recycled back into the local economy, and that San Franciscans who are ready to work are provided the opportunity to do so,” Avalos said.

Avalos’ groundbreaking legislation phases in mandatory requirements that a portion of San Francisco public works jobs go to city residents and includes additional targets for hiring disadvantaged workers.

 

WHO GETS $25 BILLION?

The legislation replaces the city’s First Source program, under which contractors were required only to make good faith efforts to hire 50 percent local residents on publicly-funded projects. But the measure begins slowly by mandating levels some contractors are already reaching. According to a study commissioned by the city’s Office of Employment and Workforce Development and released in October, 20 percent of work hours on publicly-funded construction projects are going to San Francisco residents.

Avalos’ legislation, which is supported by a broad coalition of labor and community groups including PODER, the Filipino Community Center, Southeast Jobs Coalition, Kwan Wo Ironworks Inc., Rubecon, and Chinese for Affirmative Action, comes at a critical moment for the recession-battered construction industry.

Under the city’s capital plan, more than $25 billion will be spent on public works and other construction projects in the next decade — and two-thirds of this money will be spent over the next five years.

The measure has environmental benefits too. Transportation still accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions generated in the Bay Area than any other source, and San Francisco residents are more likely to take transit, walk, or bike to work than residents of other Bay Area counties. “When local citizens are able to work locally, there are fewer cars on the road and less air pollution,” Avalos said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said that Avalos’ legislation is “just a start.”

“People have talked a good game about local hiring,” observed Mirkarimi, whose district includes the high unemployment-affected Western Addition.

“We are going to have to go beyond construction and start thinking about delving into the private sector,” Mirkarimi continued, pointing to the need to build 100,000 housing units over the next 25 years if the city is to keep up with a projected population increase. “Who is going to build that housing?” he asked.

Sup. Eric Mar noted that “the Sierra Club endorsed the measure early on because of the environmental benefits of having people work close to where they live.”

Sup. David Campos, whose district includes the Mission, said the measure was one of the most significant pieces of legislation to emerge from the board in recent years. “In the past, a lot of obstacles got in the way, including some legal challenges,” said Campos, who credited Avalos for navigating a complicated legal structure. “At the end of the day, I think this is going to benefit everyone.”

Mike Theriault, secretary-treasurer for the San Francisco Building Trades Council, told the Guardian he remains opposed to the legislation because the union presers to allocate jobs based on seniority, not residency. But he said the amendments make the measure “less harmful and more survivable in the short-term.”

 

THE ECONOMIC GAP

Termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who represents the city’s economically distressed southeast sector, has often noted that the construction industry provides a path to the middle class for people without advanced degrees or facing barriers to employment. She thanked Avalos for pushing legislation that promises to provides opportunities for “growing the middle class instead of importing it.”

“This industry closes the economic gap,” she said.

Board President David Chiu and termed-out Sups. Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty also supported Avalos legislation. But Dufty, who is running in the 2011 mayoral race, cast the eighth vote, which gave the measure a veto-proof majority.

The board’s Dec. 7 vote came a few hours after Bayview-based Aboriginal Blacks United founder James Richards and a score of unemployed local residents rallied at City Hall in the hopes of securing Dufty’s vote.

ABU has recently been protesting at UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital buildings site on 16th and Third streets. Its members also triggered a shut down at the Sunset Reservoir last month after a court ruled that locals promised jobs installing solar panels at the plant be replaced by higher-skilled engineers,

“It’s been too long that we have been protesting and fighting this good faith effort,” Richards told the Guardian. “We need a mandatory policy.”

Dufty is also hoping the Avalos measure could spread to other cities and benefit workers nationwide. “At a certain point I looked at labor and said, ‘Yes, I’m going for this legislation. But not just for San Francisco — you want to take this concept to other cities,’ ” Dufty said, as he made good on his promise to Richards to vote to support Avalos’ law.

Dufty seemed hopeful that Mayor Gavin Newsom would get behind the legislation. “But I respect that there may be a little bit of coming together between now and the second reading.”

Newsom spokesman Tony Winniker told the Guardian that the mayor has 10 days to review Avalos’ legislation after its Dec. 14 second reading. “He supports stronger local hire requirements but does want to review the many amendments that were added before deciding,” Winnicker said.

But will Newsom, who is scheduled to be sworn in as California’s next lieutenant governor Jan. 3, issue a veto on or before Christmas Eve on legislation that has been amended to address the stated concerns of the building trades?

That would be ironic since the amended legislation appears to match recommendations that the Mayor’s Taskforce on African American Outmigration published in 2009. The California Department of Finance projected that San Francisco’s black population would continue to decline from 6.5 percent (according to 2005 census data) to 4.6 percent of the city’s total population by 2050 — in part because of a lack of good jobs.

 

WILL NEWSOM VETO?

Avalos originally proposed to start at 30 percent and reach 50 percent over three years. But after the building trades complained that these levels were unworkable, Avalos amended the legislation to require an initial mandatory participation level of 20 percent of all project work-hours within each trade performed by local residents, with no less than 10 percent of all project work-hours within each trade to be performed by disadvantaged workers.

He also amended his legislation to require that this mandatory level be increased annually over seven years in 5 percent increments up to 50 percent, with no less than 25 percent within each trade to be performed by disadvantaged workers in the legislation’s sixth year.

A Dec. 1 report from city economist Ted Egan estimated that the local hire legislation would create 350 jobs and cost the city $9 million annually. But Egan clarified for the Guardian that this cost equals only 1 percent of the city’s spending on public works in any given year.

Vincent Pan of Chinese Affirmative Action, which supports Avalos’ local hiring policy, suggested that the mayor “check the temperature.”

“It would be leadership on the part of the mayor not to veto legislation that’s about San Francisco,” Pan said.

And Mindy Kener, an organizing member of the Southeast Jobs Coalition breathed a deep sigh of relief when Dufty’s vote made the law veto-proof. “It’s gonna go across the country,” Kener said. “We just made history.”

Scott Hammel’s street treats

Andrew Lam
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0

One of the beauties of living in weirdo town is that the streets can always surprise you. The other day, I went out for a mushroom taco and came back with a bag of sparkly fabric from an artist collective’s yard sale on lower Divisadero. I’m sure something attractive will happen with that bag, but after subsequently stumbling into Scott Hammel‘s toy art show in Mini Bar (through Jan. 30), I can’t help but wonder: what would have happened if my plastic sack was instead a full trash bag of plastic kids toys, cigarette butts, and the odd syringe?

Besides the possibility of contagion, of course. But real talk, even in the heady first days of a blood-borne pathogen, I still wouldn’t have come up with stuff this cool. Hammel’s art looks like the productions of an adult Sid from Toy Story, if Sid had gotten fabulous and started doing LSD.

Plus, seasonal! The head of a retro plastic elf pokes unsettlingly from a gold wall sconse, teddy bears with guns drip from their ornament hooks and a wreath that I’d hang on my front door in a minute if it wouldn’t be covetously snatched by a fellow #24 bus-waiter-forer adorn Mini Bar’s back eyrie room like jars of rhinestone-speckled candy. Gleaming light fixtures made from orange prescription pill bottles and a Donald Duck diorama in which he inspects wide-eyed the drug paraphernalia around him. It’s all really colorful and delicious and freaky, love. 

 After picking up aforementioned trash bag ‘o’ fun on the corner of Jones and Eddy, the photographer-visual artist started to see the urban life cocktail in contained as a metaphor for his own strut through his TL home. “The first piece I created was titled “Living in the Tenderloin,” which featured a tiny hush puppy figurine snuggled in a nest of window glass, cigarette butts, and rusted beads, and nails,” says Hammel in our email exchange about the installation.

“The best describing word for my style and aesthetic would be brazen. This might have something to do with living in the Tenderloin, where being brazen can sometimes help shield me from the oddities of life here,” he confirms. The glue gun art he creates (that ranges from affordable detritus tree ornaments to less-so chaotic balls ‘o’ toy that drape strands of pearl to the floor below) “helps me find comfort and reliance in a pretty disturbingly creepy place.”

Which, y’know, is high praise for one’s own neighborhood — but it’s clear that Hammel has a soft spot for SF’s most maligned ‘hood. A stunning video clip called My Life in a Day he filmed tracks his own perspective whilst making his merry way through late awakenings, the SF Party store, and aesthetically motivated inspections of the random pieces of street beauty in the neighborhood, like a stand of orange flowers or particularly prettily-bedecked traffic sign. 

A nice affirmation of the reason why we all pay out our ass for housing in these parts: these streets give back in a big way.

 

“Exhibit by Scott Hammel”

Now through Jan. 30

Mini Bar

837 Divisadero, SF

(415) 525-3565

www.scotterpop.com

 

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