Housing Archives — Page 52 of 76 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Will Arnie’s ‘park closure solution’ save Candlestick Point?

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September 25, 2009

Text and photo by Sarah Phelan

Does San Francisco really need to sell Candlestick Point park for Lennar condos?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has unveiled a plan to allow for all state parks to remain open without increasing Parks and Recreation budget appropriation. Does this mean the Bayview’s only major park can be saved? Developers are arguing that if the state sells a chunk of the waterfront property for $50 million, the rest of the park can be saved. But environmentalists disagree, noting that Lennar simply wants the land for luxury condos.

“Working closely with my Departments of Finance and Parks and Recreation, we have successfully found a way to avoid closing parks this year,” Schwarzenegger said in a press release today. “This is fantastic news for all Californians.”

But does this mean that Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 792 is no longer necessary?

Leno’s bill would allow the state to sell a chunk of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area for $50 million, so that developer Lennar, which has entered into a nebulous public-private partnership with the city of San Francisco, can build luxury condos on this waterfront parkland.

Leno’s bill, which the Assembly and the Senate have approved, is sitting on Arnie’s desk awaiting the governor’s signature. But it has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups in recent months.

And their neutrality was only recently secured, based on the spurious argument that, without the bill’s approval, Candlestick Point SRA would have to closed in its entirerity.

But now the Governor is proposing to reduce ongoing maintenance for the remainder of 2009-10, eliminate all major equipment purchases, and reduce hours and/or days of operation at most State Park units, expenditures on seasonal staff, and staffing and operations at State Parks headquarters.

According to Arnie’s proposal, some facilities could close weekdays and be open on weekends and holidays, or portions of a unit could be closed, such as the back loop of a campground. For a park with multiple campgrounds, one whole campground or day use facility could be closed while the rest of the park remains open, while parks that already close due to seasonal conditions could see longer closures.

“Service reductions will be planned to minimize disruptions to visitors, achieve cost savings and maintain park fee revenues,” the memo says.

Hmm. Seems like Arnie’s memo just gave Candlestick Point park supporters more ammo in their ongoing quest to challenge Lennar’s plan to take 23 acres of Candlestick Point SRA.

Lennar never spelled out this plan to take a chunk of the Bayview’s only major park, when they asked voters to approve Prop. G in 2008.

Instead, Prop. G was billed as a way to clean-up the abandoned Hunters Point shipyard and “create” hundreds of new acres of parkland.

It wasn’t until after Prop. G passed, that Lennar began publicly arguing that they would need 42 acres of the existing parkland, if the rest of their plan, which involves building 10,500 housing units on 770 acres of former industrial/ military land, is to pencil out. As for the new acres of parkland, that turned out to be acres of polluted shipyard that Lennar was proposing to cap with a cement cover and convert into a park.

Understandably angered, park advocates beat Lennar down to 23 acres, this fall, during the most recent round of the “parks for condos” battle.

Now, in light of Arnie’s plan and the soon-to-be released environmental impact report for Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan, those battlelines are perhaps, once again about to be redrawn. Only this time in favor of the park.

Stay tuned.

Crunch time

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September 23, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

The proposal by city officials and Lennar Corp. to build more than 10,000 new housing units at Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick Point is entering a critical phase, particularly for Bayview-Hunters Point residents who want greater oversight and scrutiny of the project.

Candidates are lining up to replace termed-out District 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell next year; the project’s draft environmental impact report will be released, considered for approval and potentially challenged; and Lennar officials will seek to get the final development agreement with the city signed before Mayor Gavin Newsom leaves office in 2011, or earlier.

The 770-acre redevelopment plan, which the Mayor’s Office is touting as a shining example of a public-private partnership, has come under repeated attack from community advocates after Lennar’s failures to monitor and control toxic asbestos dust at the shipyard. The crash of the housing market and plunge in the company’s stock price also triggered concerns about the project.

And in light of the U.S. Navy’s recent decision to dissolve the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board (RAB), the community is concerned that decisions about radiologically-affected dumps and the shipyard’s early transfer from the Navy to the city could occur without important public oversight.

Another aspect of the project — a proposal to build condos on 42 acres of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area — was criticized by the Sierra Club, Arc Ecology, and Friends of Candlestick Park. Lennar argued it was necessary for the project to pencil out and this sale of state land was to be authorized by Senate Bill 792, sponsored by Sen. Mark Leno.

In August, Leno secured the neutrality of the environmental groups and the support of the California Assembly (but not Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, the lone dissenting vote) for an amended version of his bill, arguing that selling 23 acres for $50 million would spare the rest of Candlestick Point SRA from being closed by budget cuts. The legislation now awaits Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature.

Now, with the project’s EIR due to be released Sept. 28, people have the chance to register concerns about plans for such a massive development project, which includes condos on the Bayview’s only major park and a controversial bridge over Yosemite Slough.

On Sept. 15, community members packed the Board of Supervisors’ meeting to demand an investigation into their concerns, which also include the apparent inability of Newsom’s African American Out Migration task force to issue its overdue final report about the ongoing exodus of the city’s black population, which this project could exacerbate.

Sup. John Avalos told us he is now gathering information on the issue and hopes to schedule Land Use Committee hearings on the shipyard cleanup and Lennar’s economic health. "The documentation gives real strength and power to the community’s contentions," Avalos said.

He also noted that Maxwell is scheduling a hearing into the dissolution of the RAB, while Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is resurrecting legislation that seeks to put the San Francisco Redevelopment Authority under the control of the Board of Supervisors.

Arc Ecology director Saul Bloom said his group will study the project’s EIR to see if it accurately assesses the effects of Lennar’s development.

"We are concerned about the impact of truck traffic, the bridge over Yosemite Slough, and whether the transportation plan is going to effectively put the Bayview between three freeways," Bloom said. "But we’re going to be even-handed. If the EIR does a good job, we plan to say so."

Jaron Browne of the Bayview advocacy group POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) told the Guardian that her group wants the shipyard cleaned up and the community respected.

"This is not just a Bayview issue," Browne said. "The whole city will be affected by the decisions that take place in terms of the future of affordable housing and environmental protection."

Lennar’s third quarter earnings are down

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September 22, 2009

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Lennar kicked off the first day of fall by reporting a $171.6 million third quarter fiscal loss for the period ending August 31. That’s more than double Lennar’s $89 million third quarter loss in 2008.

In a peppy press release posted at the corporation’s investor relations website, Lennar President and CEO Stuart Miller attributed his company’s 3Q loss to lower sales volumes and falling house prices.

“While high unemployment and foreclosures will continue to present challenges, consumer sentiment has significantly improved as homebuyers have recognized that the residential housing market is stabilizing,” he said.

“Assuming the economy continues to stabilize, we believe our improved sales environment, increasing pre-impairment gross margins and ability to leverage S,G&A [ selling, general and administrative expenses] should enable us to return to profitability in fiscal 2010,” Miller concluded.

That’s a pretty big assumption that Wall Street apparently wasn’t swallowing: it sent Lennar’s shares down 53 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $16.01 in yesterday’s midday trading.

Further casting doubt over Lennar’s hopes of a 2010 comeback is the fact that it’s still unclear if lawmakers will decide to extend a federal tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homebuyers which expires Nov. 30.

Can we talk about capitalism now?

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September 18, 2009

26

By Steven T. Jones

Are we actually, finally, about to have a long overdue national conversation about capitalism? I really hope so, and perhaps the catalyst for that conversation can be Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” which I saw yesterday and which debuts in theaters on Oct. 2.

Moore doesn’t pull any punches in assailing an economic system that has created huge and growing disparities in wealth, corrupted both the public and private sectors, destroyed people’s lives and the country’s manufacturing base, and is both wasteful and unsustainable — a system that even the mainstream clergy he interviews labels as “evil.”

He makes excellent use of last year’s financial meltdown and the electoral gun that Wall Street power brokers (working inside and outside the federal government, Democrats and Republicans alike) held to the heads of Congress members in order to get their $700 billion bailout, which Moore calls a theft of the US treasury.

But it’s his use of archival footage that really brings home just how much capitalist propaganda has conditioned the American people into accepting as natural and inevitable an economic system that is so hostile to their interests. Particularly powerful was a speech that FDR made a year before his death calling for a “Second Bill of Rights” that would guarantee the right to work for livable wages, have access to affordable health care and quality education, housing that is adequate and reasonably priced, a pension and vacation time, and the resources to enjoy recreation and pursue our happiness.

These are reasonable expectations that the richest 1 percent of the country – which Moore shows as actively conspiring against basic equity, fair competition, and the common good, citing an incriminating Citibank memo among other evidence – has removed from the realm of the possible. And it’s time that the people rose up against our economic masters and demanded a new economic system that is sustainable, equitable, and just, something he shows as already starting to happen here and there.

“I refuse to live in a country like this and I’m not leaving,” Moore said toward the end of the film, soon adding, “Capitalism is an evil and you can’t regulate evil — you have to eliminate it.”

Where would we be without rent control?

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September 15, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

OPINION This year marks the 30th anniversary of rent control in San Francisco. On June 13, 1979, the Board of Supervisors passed a law that was seen by tenant activists as a fairly weak version of rent control. The supervisors were acting under pressure from landlords, who were lobbying them to hurry up and pass a law before the November election, when landlords feared San Francisco voters would enact a stricter version.

So the supervisors went with a middle-of-the-road measure, but its passage was still a milestone. Today, San Franciscans in rent-controlled apartments shudder to think where they would be without this basic protection. Many would be priced out of the rental market — and out of the city altogether.

The original legislation has been amended many times to limit annual rent increases, to expand who is covered by rent control, and to give increased protections from eviction to seniors, disabled people, the catastrophically ill, and long-term tenants. To curb the use of Ellis Act evictions by real estate speculators, buildings where seniors or disabled tenants have been evicted are now barred from condo conversion. In the past few years, we have worked to raise mandatory relocation payments for tenants, and added increased protections against landlord harassment.

Tenants are still being pressured to leave their apartments with supposed voluntary buyouts, a type of roulette in which speculators wave cash and tenants need nerves of steel to resist the threat of little money and no apartment — or more money and no apartment. But tenants keep organizing and holding on.

The San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee, St. Peter’s Housing Committee, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, and the Eviction Defense Collaborative all work with limited staff and many dedicated, inspiring volunteers to inform tenants of their rights and represent them when they need legal assistance. Tenants Together, founded last year, is now organizing tenants statewide and making progress all over California.

Sup. Eric Mar is sponsoring legislation that would give eviction protection to families with children — currently an endangered species in San Francisco. Study after study has shown the negative effect of evictions on families with children. More than half of all families with children in San Francisco live in rent-controlled apartments. A recent nationwide report named San Francisco as the major metropolitan area with the lowest number of children. In addition to tenants groups, a broad coalition of education and health groups have given their support to the Mar legislation. If you haven’t already done so, write or fax your supervisor in support of the legislation.

Meanwhile, come celebrate the 30th anniversary of rent control by stopping by one of our tenants rights counseling booths Saturday, Sept. 19 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. (see www.sftu.org for locations). Get info on our reduced price anniversary memberships and commemorative t-shirts. Then join us back at 558 Capp St., the Tenants Union office, for a barbecue, raffle, and Tenants Hall of Fame festivities where we can all celebrate 30 years of fighting for safe, fairly priced housing.

Susan Prentice is a San Francisco Tenants Union counselor/activist.

I’ll miss the defenestration building

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September 14, 2009

9

By Tim Redmond

I’m not about to start a campaign here; I know the place is falling apart and a hazard to everyone and ought to be turned into affordable housing, so there’s no rational reason to protest the Redevelopment Agency’s plan to bulldoze the old Hugo Hotel.

But I have to say: I’m going to miss the place.

It just sat there for so long, a weird piece of street art, an abandoned building with furniture flowing out of the windows and hanging on the walls defying gravity and progress. Every time I’d pass by, I’d say: God, I love this fucking city.

It was just art for art’s sake, no money in it, no sign describing the vision of the artist, no discussion of what it means or meant … just old stuff miraculously bolted to the old crumbling walls of an an old crumbling building. I always wondered what would fall down first and what the green couch would look like after it hit the sidewalk.

It was never meant to be permanent. And now it will be gone. That’s appropriate, in a sad kind of way.

But every time something truly strange goes away, San Francisco loses a bit of itself. I hope we don’t forget this one; maybe Redevelopment can find the cash to hire a photographer to document the place, and put great big color pictures of it up in the lobby of the new, clean, sterile project that takes its place, just to remind us that things were different here, once.

Lawns to highrises

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September 8, 2009

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

When Aaron Goodman walks the grounds at Parkmerced, a sprawling apartment complex spanning about 116 acres in southwestern San Francisco, he picks up on details that might escape the notice of a casual observer. A gregarious tour guide, he chatters on enthusiastically about the unique design elements of an entryway or townhouse facade, the curve of a knee-high brick wall defining the slope of a courtyard, the simple elegance of a tiered planter or classic window frame, or the spacious feel of a breezeway that opens onto shared grassy space encircled by backyard terraces. "No two courtyards are alike," Goodman says. "Each one is like a little vignette."

An architect who lives in a rental unit in one of Parkmerced’s towers, Goodman is on a mission to document the complex’s 1940s-era courtyard landscapes — but he’s racing against the clock. Landscape and carpentry crews are constantly rearranging things before he can get to them, he says — and those piecemeal cosmetic changes are nothing in comparison with what’s coming.

A total overhaul has been proposed for Parkmerced. The low-rise town houses would be razed, the landscape drastically altered, and an additional 5,665 housing units constructed, nearly tripling the number of residents that can be accommodated.

Goodman regards the plan as a "total tear-down," an affront to the work of the influential landscape architect who designed the grounds, and a terrible waste.

But Skidmore, Owens and Merrill, the internationally renowned architecture firm hired by the owner, a real-estate investment group called Parkmerced Investors LLC, describes the future Parkmerced as a cutting-edge eco-neighborhood that would provide the city with desperately needed rental housing. "This will be the largest sustainable revitalization project on the West Coast — perhaps in the entire nation," says Craig Hartman, the principal architect. "Our goal is to create an international model of environmentally sustainable urban living, and all our decisions are being made in that context."

A development of this scale would fundamentally change the feel of an entire San Francisco neighborhood. It’s also, potentially, a case study in one of the most complex urban planning problems of our time.

"This is the kind of problem that America is going to be faced with over and over in the coming decades," Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, told us. "It’s this question of how do we retrofit suburbia?"

Parkmerced is one of many similar areas developed after World War II, "when people hated cities," Metcalf said, "when the idea was that everybody would drive everywhere, and it was a sort of new town in town. It’s a period piece. It’s from a time when people were trying to escape density and traditional Victorian patterns like in the Tenderloin or SoMa or North Beach — [instead], you would have big lawns, and it would look very suburban."

But that model, most environmentalists and planner agree, isn’t sustainable. And activists say that the western part of the city, which has always resisted density, will have to accept more residents in the coming years.

But a development of this size and magnitude, driven by a profit-seeking real-estate operation, creates all sorts of other problems, including potential traffic disasters on the nightmare called 19th Avenue. And while much of the new housing will be rental and some will be affordable, it raises the question: is this the sort of new housing the city needs?

TOO MUCH WATER

The plans for Parkmerced are bold, and the construction timeline spans 15 to 20 years. The 11 towers on the site, which account for about half the 3,000-unit housing stock, would remain standing, while the low-scale apartment dwellings would be demolished to make way for a mix of taller buildings, including 11 new towers at about the same height. Once the project is complete, Parkmerced would have a total of nearly 8,900 housing units, with a mix of rental and for-sale properties.

"Our plan for Parkmerced will directly address the city’s housing shortage for households at all income levels," Hartman told the Guardian, adding that existing rental units would be preserved, and the project would comply with the city’s affordable-housing requirements. The city typically requires about 15 percent affordability, which would mean about 850 new below-market units — and 4,800 at market rate.

And while the complex was originally designed for middle-class families, the owners have been targeting San Francisco State University students — who typically have their parents co-sign the leases and who don’t present a rent-control issue, since they don’t stay long.

Sustainability and energy-efficiency are underpinnings of the project, according to Hartman. The poorly insulated garden apartments are moisture-ridden and inefficient, he said, and the entire neighborhood layout reflects the car-centric mentality of a bygone era. The landscape also poses a problem. "Maintaining the expansive lawns … requires the application of tons of fertilizer and wastes millions of gallons of drinking water annually. In fact, actual metering shows the consumption of 55 million gallons of potable water per year — just for irrigation."

Parkmerced residents would use 60 percent less energy and water per capita than they do now, according to Hartman, through efficiency improvements and investments in renewable energy sources. Plans also call for an organic farm and a network of bike paths. A storm-water management system would naturally filter runoff and use it to recharge Lake Merced, which has been seeping lower in recent years.

The developers hope to re-route the Muni M line through the complex to make transit more accessible. New retail would eliminate the need to drive somewhere for something as simple as a quart of milk.

"To me what’s most exciting about this is, if they get it right, it’s actually taking an area that right now generates a ton of car trips, and making it walkable," Metcalf said.

But Goodman and others have suggested that Parkmerced should be designated as a landmark, which would hamper development plans, precisely because its character is reminiscent of that postwar era. A draft report issued by Page & Turnbull, a historic-architecture firm, found that Parkmerced would be eligible for designation as a historic district on the California and national registers of historic places.

It was built in the 1940s by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. as part of a government-supported effort to supply housing for the middle-class and families of servicemembers. The "courtyard vignettes" bear the mark of Thomas Dolliver Church, regarded as the founding father of the modern movement in landscape design.

"It was Church’s biggest public project," notes Inge Horton, an architect and former regional planner with the San Francisco Planning Department who completed an historic assessment of Parkmerced for Docomomo, the International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement. Horton has mixed feelings about the proposed development. "It is one of these things where the developer or owner proposes to tear down all the low-rise buildings and put up a high-rise and make it a little bit green," Horton said. "Sorry to be so cynical."

Goodman wonders just what’s so sustainable about demolishing buildings that the owners have just sunk millions of dollars into for fix-ups and cosmetic repairs. "When you look at the overall site, it’s a functioning community — and it’s essential housing," he says, wondering why it can’t be reused and expanded," he says.

Hartman says he views the site "as an architect," and finds it to be incongruous with San Francisco’s character. "To be frank, the architecture is unworthy of this extraordinary site," he says. Instead, he sees potential for what it could be: a pioneering example of a green neighborhood that uses urban density to meet the challenge of climate change.

MOVING OUT

At a public meeting held in June to discuss the future plans, residents shared their anxiety about being forced to move. Some tenants, particularly seniors, have lived there for decades in rent-controlled units. Parkmerced Investors has promised that those residents would be able to maintain their current rents in brand new, comparatively sized apartments. But Goodman points out that many would lose their meticulously cared-for garden plots and be forced to adapt to life in a high-rise instead.

About half the tenants are college students who attend San Francisco State, which lies adjacent to Parkmerced. District 7 Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who represents the neighborhood, told the Guardian that he often receives complaints from his constituents about "keggers" that go on until the wee morning hours.

"Parkmerced is such a fascinating societal study," Elsbernd noted. "You’ve got a lot of folks who’ve been there since it was built, but really the vast majority now are students at San Francisco State who are so transient and really aren’t terribly invested in the neighborhood."

Elsbernd said he also shares a different concern, which came across at the meeting loud and clear: traffic. Although development plans emphasize cycling, Muni access, and a shuttle that would carry passengers to the Daly City BART, the redesign would come with a grand total of more than 11,000 on-street and off-street parking spaces. And it’s situated along the 19th Avenue corridor, which is already notorious for traffic snarls (and for pedestrian deaths). Some fear the combination of two new developments would fuel perpetual, dangerous gridlock.

"At minimum, we’re talking 5,000 additional vehicular trips a day," said Calvin Welch, a longtime affordable housing activist. "You couldn’t build housing further from where people work if you tried." Welch regards the smart-growth school of thought, enthusiastically endorsed by SPUR, with skepticism. The pitfall, he says, is "allowing high-density development in transit-oriented neighborhoods … and then finding out that people drive."

On the other hand, Welch said, market-rate rental housing is much more affordable than market-rate condominiums, so Parkmerced will provide a service compared to the condos that are pricing so many middle-class families out of San Francisco. And the eastern half of the city has had its share of new residential development, so building new rental units in the western half might be an appropriate counterbalance.
Goodman said he has his own vision for Parkmerced, which would employ adaptive reuse of the existing structures and ensure truly affordable housing for people of modest means. "If I had money and tons of land and all the power in the world, I’d do it a completely different way," he says. "But I don’t. I’m a tenant living on site."

Editor’s Notes

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September 8, 2009

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Every poor and working class community in San Francisco has learned the hard way that its interests are at the bottom of the list as far as City Hall is concerned. At the top of the list are the banks, real estate interests, and large corporations, who view San Francisco not as a place for people to live and work and raise families, but as a corporate headquarters city and playground for corporate executives. By using their vast financial resources, they have been able to persuade local government officials that office buildings, hotels, and luxury apartments are more important than blue-collar industry, low-cost housing and decent public services and facilities.

Sound familiar?

It’s more than 30 years old.

Back in 1974, more than 50 San Francisco community groups — from Bay Area Gay Liberation to the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center, from the Federation of Ingleside Neigbhors to the San Quentin Six Defense Committee, from the Golden Gate Business and Civic Women’s Association to the Socialist Coalition — started meeting to develop a plan to take back the city.

It culminated with a Community Congress, on June 8, 1975, at Lone Mountain College (now part of the University of San Francisco). More than 1,000 people attended, and they drafted a remarkable 40-page document that outlined an alternative political, economic, social, and environmental agenda for San Francisco. The movement led, among other things, to the advent of district elections of supervisors (a key element in the platform) and the rise of active community-based organizations in this city.

Calvin Welch and Rene Cazenave, the veteran activists who run the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse, were among the organizers. They found the old manifesto recently and sent it out to a few of us by e-mail. I’ve posted it on the Politics blog. It calls for rent control, a sunshine ordinance, a health commission, full-time supervisors (who were to be paid $20,000 a year, the equivalent of $86,000 today), cable-TV coverage of the supervisors meetings, a mandate that developers build affordable housing and a feasibility study on public power. In fact, much of what the left has achieved in San Francisco in the past three decades is outlined in the Community Congress document.

(The congress also called for decriminalization of victimless crimes, including public inebriation, a guaranteed annual income, the abolition of the criminal grand jury, and some other things that didn’t quite come to pass.)

I mention this not only because it’s a fascinating historical document but because Welch and Cazenave think it’s time for a new Community Congress. Their draft agenda refers to a New Deal for San Francisco, and they’re talking about holding a series of meetings culminating in a major session sometime next year.

It’s tough to get the San Francisco left to come together on issues, even harder to build a broad-based organization that can push an agenda. Sup. Chris Daly tried several years ago, but the San Francisco People’s Organization never got the traction many of us had hoped for.

But although the progressives have accomplished a tremendous amount in this city, and have come a long way since 1975, the need is still there.

"San Francisco’s downtown corporate and banking interests and their representatives in city government are attempting at a local level to shift the burden of the current economic and political crisis ever more fully onto the backs of the poor and working people of San Francisco."

That was then. Today, Welch and Cazenave write, "San Francisco stands at a crucial junction brought about by the collapse of the real estate based speculative bubble and the related steep reduction of city revenue resulting in cuts in funding important programs and services … There needs to be a general coming together of community groups to articulate a set of policies able to be implemented at the local level which seek to maximize community control over the provision of critically needed health and human services and beneficial community development and to maintain a vital public sector."

Sounds like a plan. *

Flash: Yee wants to sell the Cow Palace!

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September 3, 2009

4

By Tim Redmond

Okay, this is pretty radical:

State Sen. Leland Yee has been a bill that would force the Cow Palace, a state-owned operation, to sell 13 acres of land to Daly City. Okay, we’ve got some problems with that, but basically, the idea is to force the Cow Palace folks to negotiate a deal with a developer for a long-term lease so that neighborhood can get a supermarket and some other amenities.

But now, at the last minute, with only days left in the legislative session, Yee is trying to amend the bill to authorize the sale of the entire site — 63 acres of public land.

“We were hoping for a lease deal, but that hasn’t happened,” Adam Keigwin, Yee’s press spokesperson, told me. “That neighborhood has no grocery store. The land is currently underutilized. The governor wants us to include the entire parcel in the bill.”

So in cooperation with Gov. Schwarzenegger, Yee is preparing to allow the state to sell off 63 acres of public land. That’s a huge site, a vast amount of immensely valuable property in one of the densest urban areas in America.

Joe Barkett, CEO of the Cow Palace, is (not surprisingly) upset: “The Cow Palace is an historic institution with wonderful memories for many people,” he told me. “To try to sell it off in this manner is a disservice to the community.”

Keigwin notes that the bill doesn’t mandate that the Cow Palace be torn down; “all it would do is change the ownership.” And that might not happen right away; “the governor’s office agrees that this might not be the best time to sell.”

But the governor and Yee are also looking for cash to address the horrifying budget deficity, and this is one potential source of millions and millions of dollars.

The problem is that once you sell public land, it’s gone, forever. And with all the needs in San Francisco and Daly City — affordable housing, parks, cultural facilities as well as a supermarket — there ought to be a way to keep this in the public sector. I asked Keigwin about some sort of public development authority, and he agreed that was a nice idea, but “that’s never happened at the state level.”

Folks: This is a bad idea. I’m in full agreement that the site is underutilized, but I have this visceral opposition to selling off 63 acres of land to a private developer.

And if the Assembly goes along, this will happen in a matter of days.

Word on the street

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September 2, 2009

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news@sfbg.com

You see them everywhere. When you’re getting off Muni, when you’re crossing the street, in the corner of your eye: Street Sheets for sale. Behind every Street Sheet is a homeless person trying to legitimately make a buck and provide a voice for these frequently-ignored people and issues.

This month Street Sheet celebrates its 20th anniversary as the nation’s oldest, continuously operating street newspaper. Street Sheet is a newspaper focused solely on homelessness, poverty, and affordable housing issues and is distributed by homeless or formerly homeless vendors for a $1 donation.

The vendors keep the profits as a small source of income and, ideally, as a stepping-stone toward a a better life. Street Sheet, a project of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness, currently prints 16,000 copies twice a month with more than 200 vendors.

Lydia Ely, Street Sheet‘s editor for its first 10 years, believes that one of the paper’s strengths is the consistency of its mission. Bob Offer-Westort, the current coordinating editor, breaks down the mission into three objectives. The first is to provide supplemental income, in a dignified manner, to homeless men and women. Offer-Westort understands that this income is not a solution to homelessnees, but merely a stopgap measure.

Debbie, a vendor who has been selling the newspaper a couple times a week for eight years, uses the roughly $30 per day she earns to "make ends meet, pay for laundry and shampoo, or to go to the food bank."

The second mission, Offer-Westort says, is to "inform the broader public on issues that don’t make it into mainstream media." Even when homelessness, poverty, or housing issues seep into the news, they often are skewed, misinterpreted, or presented with a tone of judgment.

Andy Freeze, director of North American Street Newspaper Association, says street newspapers are "changing conversations around homelessness. Not everything revolves around drugs and alcohol," and street newspapers are bring the real issues of life on the streets to the forefront of discussion.

Despite pressure over the years to include positive stories for tourists, morality tales, horoscopes, and crosswords, Ely says Street Sheet continues to address serious news.

Last, Offer-Westort says, Street Sheet "creates a forum where an oppressed people get their voices heard." As of 2007, San Francisco’s official homeless count was 6,514; and in such a geographically small city, it is a community that is alternately ignored and vilified.

Even respectable vendors like Debby experience people who don’t understand Street Sheet. Debby says some people will "spit at you and call you names. They tell you to get a job." The irony in this is that the people yelling vulgarities at the vendors are the people in need of the education Street Sheet provides.

What those people don’t understand is that homelessness is not a choice and is not always drug or alcohol-related. In this economic crisis, Debby believes that a lot of the people who yell vulgarities "are just a paycheck away from being on the streets themselves."

But she doesn’t let the negativity get to her. "You learn a lot when you are on the other side of the fence. I have learned a lot about myself." Debby has an established spot to sell Street Sheet, a selling strategy, and has developed friendships with some of her regulars.

Offer-Westort, the coordinating editor for the past four years, says his role in the newspaper is not typical of editors in that he doesn’t write. Most of the stories are produced by homeless people. The Coalition on Homelessness includes three work groups — Civil Rights, Families and Immigration, and Right to a Roof — that work with volunteers and homeless or formerly homeless people to determine the content of each issue. Offer-Westort coordinates and "checks for spelling."

Much of what goes into print in street newspapers is "high quality journalism that is being recognized in their communities and nationally," according to Freeze. And while the mission of the paper hasn’t changed in 20 years, the material, as Ely says, has gotten better because of increased awareness and circulation.

When asked where Offer-Westort wants to see the paper in 20 years, he said he’d like to see it "going out of business because homelessness has ended."

Join Street Sheet‘s anniversary celebration Sept. 10 at 5:30 p.m. at SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan, SF. Admission is $25 and includes food, drink, and entertainment. For more details visit www.cohsf.org/artauction.

‘Can I buy your park?’

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August 12, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, recently donned his best suit and a sandwich-board saying "Can I buy your park?" then headed to some of the city’s most popular open spaces: Dolores Park, Golden Gate Park, Crissy Field, and Ocean Beach.

Bloom’s quest? Pose as a developer and videotape reactions to a fictitious proposal to sell 25 percent of the parks for housing, a ruse designed to illuminate how the city and its master developer, Lennar Corp., have never been nearly that honest about their plan to get the state to sell 25 percent of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area so Lennar can build luxury condos on prime waterfront parklands.

Predictably, responses to Bloom’s poll were mainly negative, occasionally violent. "A couple of people tried to clock me over the head," Bloom recalled. "They got aggressive. They said ‘You’re an asshole, man.’ But the predominant reaction was ‘I love my park.’ People asked, ‘Why do you want to sell them?’ They feel there’s not enough open space."

Perhaps the most chilling response came when Bloom told folks about the city’s actual plan to build condos at Candlestick Point SRA in the Bayview District. "Their response was, ‘Oh, it’s in the Bayview? Who cares?’" said Bloom, who fears that apparent indifference to the plight of the Bayview may explain why the city and Lennar see Candlestick Point SRA as a development opportunity.

Arc isn’t the only group accusing Lennar and the city of not properly informing the public that a vote for Proposition G, which was billed as the "clean-up the shipyard initiative" during the June 2008 election, was also a vote to push Senate Bill 792, state tidelands legislation that authorizes the Candlestick Point sell-off.

Introduced by State Sen. Mark Leno in February, SB 792 has since been amended and approved by the full Senate and is currently scheduled for a hearing by the Assembly Appropriations Committee Aug. 19. Passage by the committee is virtually certain, given that it only delays legislation based on fiscal impacts.

But even some Prop. G supporters, including Bloom, are now raising questions about the deal.

San Francisco’s Park, Recreation, and Open Space Advisory Committee (PROSAC) unanimously approved a resolution recommending that the city’s Recreation and Park Commission and the sponsor of SB 792 require both the city and Lennar to "provide detailed accounting of the park and open space acreage in the Candlestick Project." The committee asks that no net open space in the region be lost in the transfer.

PROSAC claims it was in the dark about the deal and asked those who pushed Prop. G to "provide documentation of when PROSAC and any other relevant advisory committees were informed of the intention to purchase state parkland for the Candlestick Project." So far Lennar and the city have pointed to conceptual maps and a couple of notices of public meetings as evidence that the public was adequately informed before voting.

But according to Bloom, who studies the maps and attends the meetings, "There really is not anything other than two graphics, neither of which call out the alteration to the park boundary. You’d really have to know what you were looking for. And why would the city’s own advisory committee be asking Lennar and the city for information if they were in fact told of this plan?"

Adding fuel to the fire is a July 21 resolution by Sups. Chris Daly and John Avalos, which argues that it should be official policy of San Francisco to oppose SB 792 in its current form and remind city lobbyist Lynn Suter "to accurately represent the City and County of San Francisco policy in Sacramento."

The resolution has been assigned to the board’s Land Use Committee and likely won’t be heard until September. It contends that SB 792 is "premature and preempts the process for public input and environmental assessment since the environmental impact reports for the proposed development on Candlestick Point and the Hunters Point Shipyard will not be released until the fall of 2009."

Noting that the state "purchased this beautiful waterfront parkland for $10 million in 1977," Daly and Avalos assert that "this land represents a valuable and irreplaceable asset to the state of California that should not be disposed of for private development."

The resolution notes that many people oppose the transfer "because of the impact of environmental racism caused by selling a clean park to a private developer for condominium construction denying Bayview Hunters Point residents equal access to healthy open space as is enjoyed by other neighborhoods in San Francisco."

As Daly told the Guardian, "Everyone wants the shipyard site cleaned up, development that works for the community, and real open space opportunities on the shoreline. And Prop. G was billed as doing this, which led to a division of people who believed Lennar and those who didn’t."

As a result, Daly said, people like Saul Bloom, who supported Prop. G, are coming out against SB 792. "So now, it seems, the skeptics are right," Daly said. "A lot of promises have been made. But unless you get them in writing, and have an insurance policy, Lennar is not delivering."

But Lennar Communities of California, the developer’s major political action committee, seems to be delivering when it comes to advocating for the park sell-off. In the second quarter of this year, Lennar more than doubled its spending on lobbying, including on SB 792. And Aug. 3, it alerted its Prop. G supporters that help is needed "passing SB 792 through the California State Legislature."

The e-mail blast claims that SB 792 is "straightforward and necessary legislation that reconfigures the state park boundaries at Candlestick Point and exchanges under-utilized land (most of it dirt, rubble, and a parking lot) for tens of millions of dollars of needed new improvements to the state park and a steady stream of dedicated funding to operate and maintain the improved park and open space."

But recently, there has been talk of an SB 792 compromise. According to insiders, the city and Lennar are willing to concede 20 acres of the contested 42-acres of park, although the developer insists it needs to build hundreds of condos (of which only 15 percent will be below market rate) on the 22 remaining acres of state park land if its entire 700-acre development is to pencil out.

Privately, environmental advocates say they may be unable to stop the land grab. And they worry that seven of the 20 acres Lennar is prepared to concede could be inundated by rising seas caused by global warming, as shown in a 2007 study by engineering firm Moffat & Nichol. It would be an ironic fate given Mayor Gavin Newsom’s July 30 announcement of a proposed United Nations center focused on climate change and green technology as part of Lennar’s project.

The Sierra Club opposes selling state parklands, building a bridge over Yosemite Slough, and capping a radiologically-affected dump on the shipyard’s Parcel E2. But the club does not oppose Lennar’s entire redevelopment plan. Arthur Feinstein, the group’s local representative, said, "We’re interested in saving as much land as possible. We are pushing to save the park’s grasslands. It’s existing habitat."

Noting that some amendments to SB 792 have been made, including removing proposed exchanges of parklands for shipyard land, Feinstein said that "there’s now a map that defines the project and no longer carries shipyard land."

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s chief economic adviser, said, "At Leno’s request, we’ve made amendments to address concerns, including taking steps to ensure there is no adverse impact on wildlife habitat."

Cohen called Newsom’s United Nations Climate Center "the perfect institution" for the entire redevelopment project, since it provides the shipyard with a green technology anchor. Cohen said he was unaware of the study showing the area could be flooded by global warming.

"But no one disagrees," Cohen continued, "that the state park will benefit from infrastructure and much needed capital for operations and maintenance."

Leno told the Guardian that his goal is to arrive at the best possible bill. "At the request of the opposition, we did amend the bill so that land at Hunters Point Shipyard won’t be part of any exchange," Leno said. "But it is conceivable that once the cleanup is completed, there could be a gift from the city to the State Parks Commission."

Leno said he hadn’t seen the flood map and joked, "If someone thinks they know exactly where the water is going to stop, they can place some bets now."

Assuming a more serious tone, Leno added that "the entire park system is under threat." He recalled how Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed to eliminate all General Fund money for parks and said, "We fought back and were able to restore most of the money."

But with the state’s ongoing fiscal woes and political stalemate, "Anyone who believes CPRSA is going to be open and funded indefinitely is not thinking clearly … so this deal has the potential for being an opportunity for our taking responsibility for the future of our state park system."

As currently drafted, SB 792 provides millions for improvements and $700,000 annually for operations and maintenance, Leno explained. "So I’m trying to make a bad situation better in a way that brings along this bill’s opponents so that they see that they are being taken seriously."

Teh ghey

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August 12, 2009

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SUPER EGO It’s been a coon’s age (is that racist?) since I lifted the bloody glitter-crusted rock of alternaqueer nightlife and peeped with prickled horror at the writhing wigged creatures of darkness beneath. There’s a lot going on this month, so buckle up your birdseed boobs and ride, baby, ride. But first, I’ve got to give a special screechy shout-out to Faux King Awesome and his filthy-excellent trash-club blog, www.dragslag.org. Check it, chicas, that child never sleeps.

HOMO A GO GO FESTIVAL

As Zombie Cher would say, "A-woooaaaah!" And then, "Brains." Four nights of edgy queer music, fashion, film, art, activism, and, yes, parties with more than 50 performers spread out across the city. Italo disco darlings Glass Candy swoop in to join noise-makers like Erase Errata, Katastrophe, Younger Lovers, Hunx and his Punx, Honey Soundsystem, Chelsea Starr, Girl in a Coma, and a spectacular buttload of others. Plus: old-school zine exhibitions, activist workshops, and plenty of classic homopunk/queercore/riot grrrl spirit in the air — so strap on your 16-holes and let’s get mish-moshed.

Thur/13-Sun/16, various times and locations, www.homoagogo.com

THE ROD

"Wet jock strap contest" — are any four words in the English language more titilutf8g besides "five-second rule, bitches"? Almost five years ago, DJ Bus Station John launched his bathhouse disco-drenched tribute to teasingly moistened fabric, bringing many a screw-worthy type through Deco’s doors to compete for $100. (Full dis-clothes-ure: I host the contest when I can remember what’s happening, and Hunky Beau recruits contestants with his "special talent.") All good things must come to a tight little hairy ass end, however, and with this final installment The Rod promises to go out with a sopping bang.

Fri/14, 10 p.m., $5. Deco, 510 Larkin, SF. www.decosf.com

SF GRAND VOGUE BALL

Chop, mop, fierce, and shade, Miss Realness. People have forever been talking about holding a grand vogue ball in San Francisco. Finally the money’s where the mouth is and the chin is on the floor, dropping for you as local houses compete each Friday until the final battle royale Sept. 11. Categories include: Face, Drama, Butch Boyz in Pumps, Look in the Book, Butch Queen Femme, and Old Way/New Way. Walk, work, walk — are there any more?

Fridays through Sept. 11, 8 p.m., free. Yerba Buena Center, 700 Howard, SF. groups.google.com/group/sfgrandvogueball

14TH SAN FRANCISCO DRAG KING CONTEST

It’s big time, y’all, for the sexy kings to come tearing out of the closet in their testosterone Testarossas — and my stubble is itching with adrenaline. For 14 years, Fudgie Frottage and company have brought out the munchable machos to stomp the boards in a quest for the spiky Mr. San Francisco Drag King crown. The talent numbers are uproarious, the crowd bursts with rare hotties, and all involved have a sweaty ball. The whole thing benefits P.A.W.S., so you know you’ll be riding that mustache for a very good cause besides your own.

Sat/15, 8 p.m., $15–$35. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.sfdragkingcontest.com

HERR-A-CHICK

This raucous biweekly Wednesday rock ‘n’ roll lady night at the Eagle just got a reboot of sorts: felch whore Renttecca has climbed aboard Anna Conda’s wig and Juanita Fajita’s taco truck to join them in hosting live bands, drag disasters, and the occasional poetry interlude(!).

Wed/19 and every first and third Wednesday, 9 p.m., $5 (free in drag). Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St., www.sfeagle.com

BJÖRK NIGHT

Oh, how I wish this event were called Björk Wars, and tranny Megabots had to trudge their four-story iridium stilettos across the frozen tundra, transforming with groans into stupendous radioactive igloos housing prancing bands of radical faeries and elfin gals fashioning their own soy jerky shoes. Well, instead we get Trannyshack arising from the grave to pay tribute to the Voltaic princess with stunning low-cost effects and volcanic performances. OK, then.

Fri/28, 10 p.m., $12. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF.www.trannyshack.com

Why the rich attack Daly’s voting record on housing

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July 31, 2009

3

Text by Sarah Phelan
Illustration by Jose Luis Pavon

Pavon80%.jpg

Actually, you’ll never see the rich attack Daly’s actual voting record on housing, which you can find here.

That’s because facts don’t concern San Francisco’s well-heeled political elite, who remind me of a high school clique that knows how to demean folks they don’t like. I always wondered what those folks would do when they grow up. Apparently, some of them run for higher office.

“It’s garbage,” is how cartoonist Jose Luis Pavon, describes C.M. Nevius’ and Sup. Michela Alioto’s Pier’s most recent attempt to blame San Francisco’s housing crisis on Daly.

Pavon, who grew up in San Francisco, says his grandparents came here in the 1940s and spent their whole lives working, yet none of their grand kids can afford to hang on.

“And I’m scrambling,” said Pavon, who fears that left to millionaires like Mayor Newsom and Alioto-Pier, San Francisco is destined to become another Venice.

‘Venice was really scary,” said Pavon, who visited the fabled city on a recent trip to Italy. “There is virtually no working class at all. The workers all come in on buses, then go back to their ghettos and suburbs at night. Venice is only for the elite rich.”

And just to be clear, this post is about Daly’s voting record on housing, not his family’s decision to move to Fairfield, which, me thinks, is a whole other story.

Best of the Bay 2009: Local Heroes

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July 28, 2009

0

>>BEST OF THE BAY HOME

————-

ANGELA CHAN

As staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, Angela Chan has been at the forefront of a yearlong effort to ensure that all undocumented juveniles have the right to due process in San Francisco.

That effort began last summer, shortly after Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had just decided to run for governor, announced that undocumented juveniles henceforth would be reported to federal authorities the minute they are booked on suspicion of having committed a felony — and before they can access an immigrant-rights lawyer.

These changes primarily affect Latino youth, but Chan, whose Cantonese-speaking parents ran a restaurant in Portland, Ore., sees the broader connections to other immigrant communities.

"I grew up in an immigrant community in a white working-class neighborhood," Chan explained. "I saw the barriers — language, culture, racism, xenophobia — and I realized that there was not a lot of power and awareness. I learned to appreciate civil rights."

As a teenager, Chan was determined to become an attorney. The temporary passage of California Prop. 187 — prohibiting undocumented immigrants from using social services, health care, and public education — intensified her determination. Chan graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, and has been able to focus on this particular juvenile justice battle thanks to a Soros Justice Fellowship and the ALC’s "innovative, fluid, creative, and client-centered vision."

"I’ve tried different ways of challenging inequality — direct confrontation, anger — but I’ve found the best way is through policy, and being very educated and strategic," Chan said.

She said she’s hopeful that Sup. David Campos has the votes this summer to pass veto-proof amendments to the city’s undocumented-youth protection policy. As she put it: "People are starting to understand the difference between the juvenile and adult justice system and the issues around due process." (Sarah Phelan)

————-

JULIAN DAVIS

Take a look at just a few of the things Julian Davis has done: He ran the 2008 public-power campaign. He’s on the board of San Francisco Tomorrow. He’s president of the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center. He’s a founder of the MoMagic Collaborative, which fights youth violence in the Western Addition. He’s on the board of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation. He’s been appointed by the Board of Supervisors to serve on the Market-Octavia Citizens Advisory Committee. He’s a founder of the Osiris Coalition, which is working to ensure that public-housing tenants have the right to return to their homes after renovations. He’s hosted countless events for charities and political campaigns.

Then think about this: he’s only 30.

Davis grew up in Palo Alto, and moved to the corner of Haight and Fillmore after getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from Brown University. Philosophers weren’t exactly in demand at the time, so he wound up "playing my guitar on the streets for burrito money" while starting a PhD program at Stanford.

He also saw three people shot to death on his corner. "And I realized," he explained, "that the academic life wasn’t going to be for me."

Davis started organizing against community violence, and, inspired by Matt Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign, ran for supervisor in 2004. That got him started in local politics. He’s headed to law school at Hastings this fall, and it’s a safe bet that he’ll be a leader in the progressive political community for years to come. (Tim Redmond)

———–

DAVID SCHOOLEY

"He’s a visionary. He’s very determined. He never gives up."

That’s how Ken McIntire, executive director of San Bruno Mountain Watch, describes David Schooley, who founded the Mountain Watch nonprofit four decades ago.

"For many years, David led every Sierra Club hike, organized every restoration party, and even took the bus to community fairs up and down the Peninsula so he could set up a table and distribute fliers about San Bruno Mountain," McIntire recalls.

Now snowy-haired and allegedly semiretired, Schooley, 65, remains as nimble as a goat when it comes to hiking across his beloved mountain, which rises and cuts across the Peninsula just south of San Francisco in San Mateo County — and whose ecosystem has been identified as one of 18 global biodiversity hotspots in need of protection

Schooley’s love for the mountain — which is covered with low-growing grasses, coastal sage, and scrub year-round and is dotted with wildflowers each spring — led him to found SBMW in 1969 and fight the expansion of the Guadalupe Valley Quarry and the growth of nearby Brisbane. Both were threatening to destroy the biggest urban open space in the United States and the habitat of rare butterflies, including the San Bruno elfin.

As Schooley explains, while the mountain is often hit with strong gusty winds and enveloped in thick fog, it is a great butterfly habitat and the last fragment of an entire ecosystem — the Franciscan region — the rest of which has been buried beneath San Francisco’s concrete footprints.

Two years ago, Schooley had the pleasure of once again finding the tiny raspberry-colored elfin caterpillars on some sedum (its host plant) on the north-facing upper benches of the quarry.

"It’s a miracle," Schooley told me at the time, delighted by this living example of nature’s ability to overcome human-made damage on the mountain.

At the time, Schooley was hoping the state park system would annex the property where the elfins were found. That hasn’t happened yet. But as McIntire says of Schooley (who dreams of a wildlife corridor that runs from the bay to the ocean), "David is always pushing for more open space around the mountain, for more nature and less development, and trying to reach a bigger audience." (Sarah Phelan)

————-

SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is the conscience of the city, our proudest export, and — as it celebrates its 50th year — perhaps our most enduring sociopolitical institution. That’s a lot of kudos to heap on an artists’ collective, particularly one that delivers its theatrical social satire with such over-the-top comedy and music, but it isn’t a statement that we make lightly.

The SFMT embodies the very best San Francisco values — limitless creativity, a hunger for justice, courage under fire, an uncompromising commitment to creating a better world, and a progressive missionary zeal — and offers a powerful and entertaining reminder of those values every July 4, when it presents its new show in Dolores Park.

After it sings (and preaches) to the progressive choir of San Francisco, the troupe hits the road, visiting such less-than-enlightened outposts as the Central Valley and rural Northern California, delivering important messages to audiences that need to hear them most. "First of all, it’s humorous, so that breaks down a lot of barriers from the get-go," SFMT general manager Jenee Gill tells us.

But even here in the early ’60s, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission tried to use obscenity laws to ban the SFMT from performing in public parks. The troupe successfully fought the commission in court, setting an important free speech precedent. Modern San Francisco has grown up with the SFMT showing us the way forward with its uniquely high-stepping, knee-slapping, consciousness-raising style, and we’re a better city for it. (Steven T. Jones)

All local heroes photos by Pat Mazzera

———–

BEST OF THE BAY 2009:
>>BEST OF THE BAY HOME
>>READERS POLL WINNERS
>>EDITORS PICKS: CLASSICS
>>EDITORS PICKS: CITY LIVING
>>EDITORS PICKS: FOOD AND DRINK
>>EDITORS PICKS: ARTS AND NIGHTLIFE
>>EDITORS PICKS: SHOPPING
>>EDITORS PICKS: SEX AND ROMANCE
>>EDITORS PICKS: OUTDOORS AND SPORTS

Appetite: Drink on the cheap…with class

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July 28, 2009

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Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.

Redwood Room.

EVENTS

RN74’s $1-3 offerings
Didn’t think it was possible? Michael Mina’s newest wine bar/restaurant mecca offers a real deal. Every day after 10 pm, late-nighters are rewarded with $1 shots of Fernet and $3 Kronenbourgs. No, it’s not fabulous wines from the 3000+ list, though you can still order any of those. But Burgundy can wait when Fernet and Kronenbourgs are this cheap.
Daily, 10 pm-close
301 Mission, SF
415-543-7474
www.michaelmina.net/rn74/

5A5’s Steak Lounge happy hour… and once a week $1 champagnes
5A5, downtown’s chic/hip steak lounge, has a 5 at 5 deal going six days a week. Enter the dimly lit bar area, gaze at the striking dome, and fill up on a $2 daily-changing bar bite and $5 appetizers, like truffle fries, beef carpaccio (this is a steak lounge, after all), or 2 for $5 popular hamachi, poke, or oyster shooters. Wash it all down with $5 wines, beers, and cocktails. Bonus "secret": hit 5A5 on Thursday nights between 9-10pm and you can sip as many $1 glasses of champagne as you like.
Monday-Saturday, 5-7:30 pm
244 Jackson, SF
5a5stk.com/promotions.php

Redwood Room’s weekly $8 cocktail
Duck into the Clift Hotel, housing the historic Redwood Room. Though we love those redwood walls and retro-meets-modern ambiance, I know the bar can get touristy — even snooty. That’s why I prefer it on a weeknight for a chance to soak up the gorgeous surroundings while those creepy-cool "live portraits" follow me with their eyes. Redwood is now introducing a different specialty cocktail each week for $8 (their drinks are usually $12 or more). Recent creations include a Clementine Blossom, made with St. Germain and prosecco, or a Blackberry Margarita with Tres Generaciones Plata Tequila, fresh blackberries and lime juice and simple syrup.
Sunday-Thursday, 5pm-2am
Friday-Saturday, 4pm-2am
495 Geary Street
www.clifthotel.com

Daly’s family more newsworthy than Mitchell’s “not guilty” plea

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July 27, 2009

10

Curious to discover how James Rafe Mitchell, who stands accused of killing his former girlfriend with a baseball bat, was going to plead, but unable to be in Marin last Friday, I searched the Chron’s Bay Area print section in vain on Saturday.

Instead, the main “news” coming out of that paper was that Sup. Chris Daly’s family no longer lives in San Francisco. And that the Guardian had risen to his defense. (Actually, we rose to defend his record on issues related to affordable housing, but sad to say, there has been no analysis of Daly’s votes on housing in the Chron.)

Later I surfed the web and discovered that Mitchell pled “not guilty” to murder, domestic violence, kidnapping, and child abduction and endangerment, and that a prelimary hearing has been scheduled for October 5.

Sadly, this news, which I thought of major significance, was buried in Section C of the Chron’s print edition. Wow.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton Cafe in Novato says it will donate 10 percent of today’s proceeds to a fund set up for Samantha, the daughter that Keller and Mitchell had a year ago, and who remains in child protective services.

JamesRafeMitchell.jpg35%2.jpg
James Rafe Mitchell

Appetite: Drink on the cheap…with class

-

July 27, 2009

0

Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.

Redwood Room.

EVENTS

RN74’s $1-3 offerings
Didn’t think it was possible? Michael Mina’s newest wine bar/restaurant mecca offers a real deal. Every day after 10 pm, late-nighters are rewarded with $1 shots of Fernet and $3 Kronenbourgs. No, it’s not fabulous wines from the 3000+ list, though you can still order any of those. But Burgundy can wait when Fernet and Kronenbourgs are this cheap.
Daily, 10 pm-close
301 Mission, SF
415-543-7474
www.michaelmina.net/rn74/

5A5’s Steak Lounge happy hour… and once a week $1 champagnes
5A5, downtown’s chic/hip steak lounge, has a 5 at 5 deal going six days a week. Enter the dimly lit bar area, gaze at the striking dome, and fill up on a $2 daily-changing bar bite and $5 appetizers, like truffle fries, beef carpaccio (this is a steak lounge, after all), or 2 for $5 popular hamachi, poke, or oyster shooters. Wash it all down with $5 wines, beers, and cocktails. Bonus "secret": hit 5A5 on Thursday nights between 9-10pm and you can sip as many $1 glasses of champagne as you like.
Monday-Saturday, 5-7:30 pm
244 Jackson, SF
5a5stk.com/promotions.php

Redwood Room’s weekly $8 cocktail
Duck into the Clift Hotel, housing the historic Redwood Room. Though we love those redwood walls and retro-meets-modern ambiance, I know the bar can get touristy — even snooty. That’s why I prefer it on a weeknight for a chance to soak up the gorgeous surroundings while those creepy-cool "live portraits" follow me with their eyes. Redwood is now introducing a different specialty cocktail each week for $8 (their drinks are usually $12 or more). Recent creations include a Clementine Blossom, made with St. Germain and prosecco, or a Blackberry Margarita with Tres Generaciones Plata Tequila, fresh blackberries and lime juice and simple syrup.
Sunday-Thursday, 5pm-2am
Friday-Saturday, 4pm-2am
495 Geary Street
www.clifthotel.com

Celluloid Nation

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July 22, 2009

0

Unsurprisingly, Israeli films have been a big part of each San Francisco Jewish Film Festival program from the beginning. Yet despite that annual local sampling, occasional theatrical exports, and Oscar’s devotion (seven Israeli features have been nominated for Best Foreign Film so far, including 2008’s highway-robbery loser Waltz with Bashir), the general narrative of how that industry got where it is today has remained hazy. It clears up quite a bit after three and a half hours spent with Raphael Nadjari’s A History of Israeli Cinema, the new two-part documentary screening at SFJFF.

Nadjari’s choice of article is apt — this is a history, not any attempt at creating "the" definitive one, and no doubt seasoned viewers will be left scratching their heads over an omission or eight. (The weirdest being M.I.A. Eytan Fox, of 2002’s Yossi and Jagger, 2004’s Walk on Water, and 2006’s The Bubble.) But the myriad clips and commentators he assembles nonetheless piece together a cogent overview that will have you running to check DVD availabilities (usually in vain, alas).

Early features, before and after nationhood was declared in 1948, mostly sold the "Zionist utopia" that would unite millennia of Jewish diaspora, often using filmic language reminiscent of Soviet propagandist cinema. When audiences no longer needed that basic affirmation, more escapist forms emerged, notably the broad "bourekas" comedies and sentimental dramas depicting struggling ethnic groups (mostly Mizrahi Jews). Alongside these in the 1960s there developed a "New Sensitivity" school indebted to European art film that appealed to the intelligentsia if not the wider public. A gradual shift from collective to individual concerns affected everything from the omnipresent military dramas to dissenting political content, plus depictions of hitherto ignored or stereotyped figures whether Arab, gay, Georgian émigré, or simply female.

SFJFF 2009 continues this history with a sizable range of new Israeli screen work. Home-turf hit Lost Islands is a seriocomic family saga played to the big-hair beat of early ’80s New Wave (come back, Flock of Seagulls!). The excellent Zion and His Brother provides darker domestic strife amidst Haifa’s meanest housing-project streets. Coming highly recommended for a good time is A Matter of Size, which is pretty much The Full Monty (1997) of sumo wrestling. (Dennis Harvey)

A HISTORY OF ISRAELI CINEMA

Aug 1, 11:45 a.m., CineArts

Aug 8, 11:30 a.m., JCCSF

The mobility of space

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June 30, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

Jason Henderson is standing on Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley, shielding his eyes from the midsummer sun, as he explains how this area, which once lay in the shadowy underbelly of the Central Freeway, was reclaimed as a pedestrian-friendly park.

"In 1989 the freeway went all the way to Turk Street," said Henderson, an assistant professor of geography at San Francisco State University, describing how the raised concrete roadbed, built in the 1950s, cut across this neighborhood and blocked the sky — until the Loma Prieta earthquake hit and damaged the final section so badly it had to be torn down.

That natural disaster triggered a public discussion about the use of the surrounding space, and a 15-year fight that culminated in 2005 in the dedication of the Green, which is part of the Octavia Boulevard Project. Neighbors and business owners pushed the city to convert a damaged freeway into a landscaped park.

That sort of change fascinates Henderson. "I am interested in how people move around cities, and how urban space is configured for movement," he said.

The young professor was raised in New Orleans and wrote his dissertation on transportation and land use debates in Atlanta — which, as Henderson notes, is "the poster child for sprawl but became a hotbed in the ’90s of a national discourse about how we should grow, which became this very interesting debate about reurbanizing."

Henderson’s research focuses on the politics of mobility. He decided to move to San Francisco in 2003 because he saw it as an opportunity to live in a city where a car is not necessary and to study the history of the city’s freeway revolt, which began in the 1960s.

And while he is proud of this park, which was dedicated as Hayes Green then renamed for the late Patricia Walkup, a Hayes Valley resident who tirelessly advocated for the park until her death in 2006, Henderson thinks the local politics of parking have reached "a spatial stalemate."

"During the freeway revolt of the 1960s, San Francisco rejected the freeway but not the automobile," Henderson explained. "But even as San Francisco residents decided that they did not want big gashes of freeway through their waterfront, the Marina, and Golden Gate Park, the city continued to have laws that said every housing unit was to have one parking space.

"So the city adopted a transit-first policy on paper, but didn’t take space away from cars. And if you don’t do anything, you’re not solving the problem."

The problem in San Francisco is what he called the "essentializing of cars."

"A core idea within the parking debate is that there is a universal love affair with the automobile," Henderson explained. "But Obama is downsizing GM and Chrysler, and for the first time since 1960, vehicle miles traveled have started to go down. Until last year, the mantra was that Americans are going to drive. But then we found out that at $4 a gallon, this country freaks out and changes."

Earlier this year, Henderson published a paper that analyzes the city’s politics of parking through the lens of two ballot initiatives from the November 2007 San Francisco election.

"San Francisco’s parking debate is not just about parking. It is a contest over how the city should be configured and organized, and for whom," Henderson wrote in his paper, titled "The Spaces of Parking: Mapping the Politics of Mobility in San Francisco."

His research led him to conclude that progressives, who want to make the city more bike- and public-transportion friendly, are pitted against the more conservative elements (he calls them neoconservatives), who want to increase space for parking and cars at all costs, with the moderate (or in his words, "neoliberal") factions tangled in between.

Part of Henderson’s critique involves estimating the hidden costs of parking — and as it turns out, that can be done using Google and Craiglist. According to a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 2008 fact sheet, there are an estimated 320,000 on-street parking spaces in San Francisco, including metered spaces, each consuming, on average, about 160 square feet.

According to a 2002 presentation by Jeffery Tumlin, a national transportation consultant, if the city rented these spaces for the lowball rate of $1,000 a year, San Francisco would rake in $320 million annually.

There would be no shortage of demand — market prices are way higher. Henderson’s review of Craiglist unearthed folks who looking to rent parking spaces in San Francisco and willing to pay from $100 to $500 a month.

But SFMTA — which issues more than 89,000 residential parking permits annually and recently opted to cut Muni service and routes and increase fares on public transit rather than extend parking meter hours to balance its budget shortfall — decided to increase the cost of these parking permits, starting July 1, by only $2, from $72 to $74 — per year. That’s less than 10 percent of market value.

The resulting revenue will be dedicated to the cost of administrating the program — not to offset the hidden costs of parking, which include carbon dioxide emissions, air pollution, congestion, and occupying valuable space.

Henderson is intrigued by the relationship between parking policy and a complex set of factors that include public health, obesity, and the cost of affordable housing. He notes that if a city’s housing policy requires developers to provide a parking space for each housing unit, too often developers don’t build that housing, or build it smaller, or build it as part of a luxury complex.

"The progressive response to this dilemma is to try to get government to eliminate the one parking-space-per-unit goal and cap the total amount of parking built. Meanwhile, the neocons, who believe government should be active in creating more parking, rail against more bus lanes," Henderson said.

As he notes, common to both groups is the desire for government to help them achieve their vision.

"Much as we see San Francisco as a progressive place, it’s also peopled by neoliberals and very conservative folks — and progressive and neoliberals coalesce on the issue of ‘smart growth.’ And there are lot of progressives who have a car and say, ‘I don’t want to be car dependent; I’d like to do city share, but I’d feel stranded.’ And those who say ‘I always want to have my own car, but I only drive it once a month.’"

Conceding that "tweaking the system" will cost money, Henderson cites congestion pricing as an area where the various factions can find agreement.

"The important question is, what will the revenue be used for?" Henderson said, noting that some will argue that if you charge motorists to use roads, then the money should be used to improve the roads, which is what has happened with toll roads in Texas.

But in San Francisco, activist are pushing the opposite approach. "Whereas the sustainable transportation movement in San Francisco wants to use the revenue from congestion pricing to fix Muni and discourage driving," he continued.

In his paper on parking policy, Henderson details exactly how parking allocations push up the price of housing — and change the face of ongoing developments.

A typical off-road parking space takes up 350 square feet when room to move in and out is factored in — and that’s comparable to many offices and living spaces in San Francisco. The parking alone costs $50,000 to $100,000 to develop — a cost that’s passed on to the homebuyer.

But in most neighborhoods, developers can’t avoid parking, because of planning laws. "This means that neighborhoods like the iconic North Beach simply could not be built today," Henderson wrote, noting how mandatory parking provisions mean that the lower floors of new buildings are likely to contain parking garages, not storefronts and cafes, and garage entrances take away street parking and limit where street trees can be planted.

"But at least contesting car space is on the table in San Francisco" Henderson said. "That makes it an intriguing bellwether for other places."

Editor’s Notes

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June 30, 2009

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tredmond@sfbg.com

Lucy Dalglish, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is about as much of a national leader on open-government and free-speech issues as we have in this country. She’s been watching (and fighting) the battle against government secrecy for more than a quarter century as a reporter in St. Paul, a media lawyer, and since 2000 the head of RCFP. So when she sounds an alarm, it’s worth listening.

And at the annual conference of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, she warned that the decline of daily newspapers — something those of us in the alt-media often treat as a spectator sport, jeering at the losers who for years couldn’t figure out how to print news people wanted to read — is going to have a serious impact on open government.

The thing is, conservative, weak, and lame as so many dailies were, they have been the ones funding almost all of the major freedom-of-information lawsuits and organizations. The case law that protects the news media (including bloggers) from nuisance libel suits? That came from The New York Times. The law preventing the government from using prior restraint to block the publication of material it thinks might damage national security? The New York Times. The most important open-government cases in the nation? Mostly filed by medium-sized dailies like The Press Enterprise in Riverside.

I’m not here — lord knows, I’m not here — defending the likes of Knight-Ridder and Copley and Scripps-Howard, which are mostly very conservative newspaper chains that have decimated news coverage, kowtowed to the powerful, and screwed up a lot of communities. But Dalglish has a point: as the old guard in the media spirals into decline, who’s going to take up the free-speech and open-government banner — and by that I mean, who’s going to put up the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to file and defend these key lawsuits and keep these organizations alive?

"It isn’t," Dalglish said, "going to be Google."

The Chronicle ran a story June 29th talking about the growing discussion of the need to reform Proposition 13. It was mostly a political piece, looking at the popularity of the measure and the complications of trying to change a law that has pretty much defined public finance in California for 30 years.

Robert Cruickshank at Calitics.com brought up something in response to the Chron story that hadn’t really occurred to me:

"Since 1978," he wrote, "California has experienced two massive housing bubbles. The 1980s bubble, which seemed large at the time, was primarily focused on California and caused widespread unaffordability before the 1989 crash. The 2000s bubble was a nationwide phenomenon, but Prop. 13 played a role by removing a brake on housing inflation. If homeowners saw tax assessments rise in relation to their values, instead of being largely fixed at the rate at the time of purchase, it seems unlikely we would have had the enormous and destructive boom and bust in the housing market we witnessed."

So Prop. 13 causes high housing prices. Probably high rents, too. Worth thinking about. *

Insuring against asbestos exposure, SF style

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June 30, 2009

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Text By Sarah Phelan

Serpentinite rock with veins of naturally occurring asbestos

Henry Alvarez, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority, acknowledges that a judge tossed out the unlawful detainer suit that the SFHA brought against the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self Improvement in the Bayview and its leader Minister Christopher Muhammad.

“But the court left room for us to refile with some guidance,” Alvarez added, claiming that his agency tried to amend its complaints outside the court with Muhammad’s lawyer, Richard Drury, “but we could not reach an amicable solution.”

So, is the SFHA planning to file again, and if so, on what grounds?

Judge tosses Newsom’s political payback suits against Minister Muhammad

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June 24, 2009

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Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

For several years, Minister Christopher Muhammad (at lectern) has been trying to get Mayor Gavin Newsom to temporarily stop work at the Hunters Point shipyard, until the children at Muhammad’s school and members of the surrounding Bayview community get asbestos dust-related health tests.

The city’s health department claims there is no health problem related to the dust and that there are no tests available, other than autopsies.
But thanks to Lennar’s failure to properly install and maintain air monitors, there is no data available to prove exactly what levels of dust the community was exposed to, when the developer’s massive grading project began at the shipyard in 2006.

Since then, air monitors at the site have repeatedly recorded exceedances that, the city claims, have triggered protective shutdowns, though often these shutdowns did not occur as fast as the community would like. And the ongoing exceedances have raised additional questions about the cumulative risk to public health and safety of all these dust clouds, where exactly the dust is coming from, and what exactly it contains.

Under new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, the community’s request for additional assessments of the dust situation is reportedly being reviewed. But meanwhile, Muhammad’s refusal to shut up about the dust, has clearly angered Mayor Gavin Newsom, who recently said, via his spokesperson Nathan Ballard, that he supported a lawsuit that was filed against Muhammad and his group’s school, via the San Francisco Housing Authority, allegedly to recover unpaid back rent.

It was Chronicle columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross who first asked whether the lawsuit that the San Francisco Housing Authority recently filed against Muhammad and the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self-Improvement, which operates the K-12 school next to the shipyard’s Parcel A in the Bayview, was “pay up or pay back”.

“You decide” the duo wrote on April 1, when they broke the news that the San Francisco Housing Authority had filed a lawsuit against Muhammad, alleging irregularities at the school, shortly after Muhammad and other activists showed up at Newsom’s gubernatorial town halls, asking loud and embarrassing questions about asbestos dust at the shipyard.

But the M&R column has remained deafeningly silent about the outcome of that lawsuit, even though Ross phoned the Nation of Islam’s lawyer Richard Drury minutes after the judge threw out not just one, but all three lawsuits that the SFHA had filed against Muhammad. That was over a week ago, on June 16.

So, does this mean the Chronicle only wants to write about stuff that they can spin to make Newsom look good and Muhammad bad? You decide.

It also turns out that it cost the city very little to file what appears to have been a series of frivolous lawsuits as payback for the Minister’s ongoing questions about asbestos dust: the city used in-house counsel at the Housing Authority, and the City is exempt from filing fees.

Reached by phone, Muhammad’s attorney Drury said he felt all three the lawsuits were “payback” against Muhammad for his attempts to try and get help from Newsom around ongoing issues with dust and asbestos at the shipyard.

“When the Minister didn’t get Newsom’s help, he attended a town hall meeting—and shortly afterwards, the San Francisco Housing Authority sued the Minister for breach of contract, payment of rent and unlawful detained,” Drury said. “In other words, the San Francisco Housing Authority is trying to evict a K-12 school, where 70 percent of the kids were failing in the public school system, and where 80 percent of the center’s graduates go to college.”

Selling the park

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June 24, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Considering that it exists just a short hop from the industrial grind of Third Street, Candlestick Point State Recreation Area is a surprisingly wild and peaceful 150-acre bayshore park.

On a recent afternoon, a man practiced his golf swings, a group fished off a pier, and a lizard darted across a trail and into a clump of wildflowers, all apparently unaware of the storm gathering around the future of this waterfront habitat.

State Sen. Mark Leno’s Senate Bill 792 would give the State Lands Commission and State Parks Department the authority to negotiate an exchange of 42 acres in the park for patches of land on the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, allowing Lennar Corp. to build condos in the state park and reducing Bayview’s only major open space by 25 percent.

Leno claims that SB 792 "will help realize one of the few remaining opportunities for large-scale affordable housing, parks, open space, and economic development in San Francisco by authorizing a key public-private land exchange necessary for the development of Hunters Point/Candlestick Park."

"A lot of this property is dirt, and much of it is used by the 49ers for parking. It’s not high quality park land," Leno told the Guardian.

In addition to adding some amendments suggested by the Sierra Club, Leno said state and federal agencies must approve the deal, which would also require a full environmental impact report. "There will be no environmental shortcutting," Leno said.

But environmental advocates are outraged that Mayor Gavin Newsom and his chief economic advisor, Michael Cohen, are trying to get state legislators to facilitate an unpopular land swap that allows an out-of-state developer to build thousands of condos on state tidelands in exchange for strips and pockets of the toxic shipyard (see "Eliminating dissent," 6/17).

"When Michael Cohen asked us to endorse what they were calling a conceptual framework, he called it a rush to the starting line and promised us a full and robust discussion of the actual proposal," Kristine Enea, who works for the India Basin Neighborhood Association, said of last year’s Proposition G. "We’re not trying to stop the development, but we want a discussion. And we’re raising questions that otherwise won’t be raised until after the environmental impact report is completed."

In April, Newsom wrote to Sen. Fran Pavley, who chairs the state’s Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water, claiming that plans for the shipyard and Candlestick Point had already been endorsed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and overwhelmingly approved by voters in June 2008.

"By utilizing a true public-private partnership, this [SB 792] will cause tens of millions of dollars of public open space investment to state park lands and public trust lands, at no cost to the state or the city’s general fund, providing a significant benefit to the state as well as to the citizens of San Francisco," Newsom wrote.

As part of the land swap, Lennar would pay fair market value for much of the parkland, with estimates of about $40 million that would go to the state for managing the remaining acreage. Lennar proposes to build 7,850 housing units on Candlestick Point, and it’s unclear how many of those will go into what is now a state park.

Critics say Newsom is trying to use Prop. G like a hammer to force through legislation that wouldn’t pass locally and would destroy the park’s current functions and wildlife habitat, forever changing life in Bayview Hunters Point, due to the scale and socioeconomic and environmental impacts of Lennar’s proposed redevelopment.

Created by the legislature in 1977, CPSRA is the state’s first urban park. It offers panoramic views of the wind-whipped bay, San Bruno Mountain, and Yosemite Slough, the only unbridged waterway in the city’s southeast sector. And while it’s not typically crowded, the park is well-used by residents, who like to hike and jog, walk their dogs, and windsurf adjacent to Monster Park stadium.

Saul Bloom — whose nonprofit group, Arc Ecology, angered Cohen and Newsom in February when it published "Alternatives for Study," a draft report that identified deficiencies in Lennar’s current proposal — admits that a section of the park is a weed-filled lot that 49ers fans use for parking on game days.

"But the leasing for parking contributes $800,000 toward park maintenance annually," Bloom told the Guardian, noting that this is a vital source of funding in tough times.

He also noted that the California State Parks Foundation recently raised $12 million to restore Yosemite Slough and the California Solid Waste Management Board (whose members include former Sen. Carole Migden, whom Leno defeated last year) recently completed a $1 million rehabilitation of a former construction debris field on the state park property.

But neither this nor the state Budget Conference Committee’s recent decision to institute a $15 surcharge on vehicle license fees of noncommercial vehicles as a dedicated funding source to keep California’s state parks open will save CPSRA from being hobbled if SB 792 is approved in its current state.

"Surely other land can be used for building condos. Affordable housing and condo residents need open space too," said Peter Barstow, founding director of Nature in the City, noting that the 42-acre parcel of contested land represents 25 percent of the park, but only 5 percent of the 770 acres the developer has at its disposal to build 10,500 units of proposed housing.

"Any loss in acreage would seriously diminish the ability of the park to serve the city’s needs, especially with 10,500 new units proposed for the Lennar development," Barstow said.

He said some "logical swapping" is possible. "But they are doing some numbers game, in which they are counting a huge amount of parkland that is already there."

"We should be thinking how to connect these ecologically isolated islands," Barstow said, who sees this debate as an opportunity to link CPSRA to wildlife corridors in McClaren Park and Bayview Hill. "The development should be in the interest of the people, critters, wildlife and plants in the Bayview, not in those of someone in an office thousands of miles away."

He also scoffed at proponents’ arguments that the density of the development means that it is smart urban growth. "Just because a development is dense is not an argument to build it on a park."

Cohen recently told the Guardian that the 77 acres of the 49ers stadium and all the paid parking inside its facility will be filled with "mainly retail and entertainment," while the 42 acres of state park would be used to build condos.

Meredith Thomas of the Neighborhood Parks Council noted that her group "fully supports the revitalization and redevelopment of the Candlestick Point/Shipyard area … But when folks voted for Prop. G in June 2008, nowhere did the measure say that by voting for it, you are agreeing to sell parkland."

"We are always concerned when municipal land that is being used as a park is put up for sale," Thomas said. "While it’s a state park, it really functions as a neighborhood park for those who use it. I think what happens when we plan for large developments is that we don’t do enough to plan for parks with the density increase that’s coming."

The Sierra Club has been leading the charge against the bill. "We lose 40 acres but gain a bathroom," Arthur Feinstein, the Sierra Club’s local representative jokingly told the Guardian. "Now that’s a good deal!"

Observing that the organization’s position is "no net loss of acreage, no loss of biodiversity, no loss of wildlife corridors," Feinstein said, "There are a ton of alternatives to this plan and no reason to destroy 25 percent of the park or build a bridge and a road over Yosemite Slough."

With Arc’s studies showing that the bridge, which will cost $100 million to construct, only shaves two minutes off travel time, Feinstein added: "This is a road to nowhere. It’ll cost $50 million a minute."

He also said that allowing a company to buy state parkland "sets a terrible precedent… Then every state park is at risk from developers as the state’s budget woes grow. I hope Sen. Mark Leno sees this."

"No one would ever think put housing on Crissy Field," Feinstein continued. "But in the Bayview, the attitude is, why not? That whole mentality has made the area into an environmental justice community. Even when it’s given something, it comes in a costly way to the community, but a cheap way for the developers."

No surrender, no retreat

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June 23, 2009

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

The dueling budget rallies that preceded the June 16 Board of Supervisors hearing on the city’s spending priorities officially ended the conciliatory approach offered by Mayor Gavin Newsom — a rhetorical political gambit that the Mayor’s Office never really put into practice.

The emotionally charged police and fire workers’ rally — where Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes riled up the crowd by ridiculing supervisors as "idiots" and "carpetbaggers" — featured Newsom as the guest of honor at an event overseen by Eric Jaye, the political consultant running both the firefighters’ union budget offensive and Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign.

On a stage lined with American flags and burly public safety workers, Newsom condemned the progressive supervisor’s proposal to amend his budget over a blaring sound system. "They’re asking us to retreat," Newsom said, in full battle cry mode, "and we’re not going to do that."

Across the street, city employees from the Department of Public Health held a competing rally, flying a banner that read "No Cuts to Vital Services!" It was painfully obvious that in a squabble between city employees, the mayor was positioning himself on the side of well-paid, powerful union members who got raises instead of layoffs, rather than the public health workers and advocates for the poor whom Newsom’s budget cut the deepest.

But before progressive supervisors challenged Newsom’s proposed budget — which ignored the supervisors’ stated priorities, despite Newsom’s December pledge to work closely with the board on it — the rhetoric was quite different. "We work through our differences and ultimately try to look at the budget as apolitically as possible," Newsom said during a June 1 event unveiling his budget. "It’ll only happen by working together."

Six months earlier, when the mayor made a rare appearance at a Board of Supervisors meeting to announce the unprecedented budget shortfall of more than $500 million, he adopted a similar tone. "We have the capacity, the ingenuity and the spirit to solve this," Newsom told the board in December. "It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here."

The mayor’s proposed budget has spurred outrage from poor people and progressive supervisors, who charge that his decision to cut critical services while simultaneously bolstering funding to the police and fire departments is morally repugnant.

Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and David Chiu responded by passing an amendment in committee to slash $82 million from the public-safety budget in order to restore some of the cuts to public health and social services. After that move, the spirit of "working together" quickly eroded, and seemed to be replaced by the bare knuckles politics of fear and division.

After the rallies, which even spilled indoors and devolved into shouting matches between the two camps, supervisors finally got to work on the budget. And they didn’t ask Newsom to retreat, they just asked him to listen and work with them.

The $82 million dent in the public-safety budget was described as a symbolic gesture to get the mayor to take progressive concerns seriously. "For many of us, it was the only way we felt we could have a seat at the table — a seat that was real, where the discussion was going to be meaningful," Campos said.

"I do not think that this budget is bilateral. It is a unilateral budget," Chiu noted at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting.

This year’s budget battle is especially intense because of the unprecedented size of the deficit, as well as the dire economic conditions facing many San Franciscans. California’s unemployment rate climbed to 11.5 percent in May, and stood at an only slightly less miserable 9.1 percent in San Francisco, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of San Franciscans in need of emergency food assistance, homeless services, and help with other basic necessities has spiked. Everyone seems to be feeling the pinch, but for the least fortunate, falling on hard times can mean relying on city-funded services for survival.

Against this dismal backdrop, big questions are emerging about the role of government. "The city’s budget," City Attorney Dennis Herrera noted at a recent hearing, "is correctly called the city’s most meaningful policy document. More than any other piece of legislation, it sets out the priorities that tangibly express the values of the City and County of San Francisco."

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi took this idea even farther at the budget hearing. "Aside from the politicking and any of the hyperbole, we [have to] do the best we possibly can for all the people of San Francisco," he said. "But in particular, the vulnerable classes, because what is also at stake is … the key question: Who’s this city for? And who gets to live here over the next 10 to 20 years, considering how cost-prohibitive it is to be in San Francisco?"

The budget battle is shaping up around some fundamental questions: is this budget going to protect the politically powerful while ignoring the thousands who are in danger of slipping through the cracks? Or will everyone be asked to make sacrifices to preserve the city’s safety net? And as these difficult decisions are hashed out, is the mayor going to sit down with the board to seek common ground?

A board hearing on the cuts to health services — which state law requires cities to hold when those cuts are deep — illustrated the divide with hours of testimony from the city’s most disadvantaged residents: those with mental health problems, seniors, SRO tenants, AIDS patients, and others.

"If we make the wrong decisions, it will mean that our homeless folks will be in ever-increasing numbers on the street. It means that folks with HIV will not receive the care they need. It will mean that kids will not have the after-school programs they need during their critical years. It will mean that our tenants will continue to live in substandard housing," Chiu summarized the testimony.

Avalos, the Budget Committee chair who has led the fight to alter Newsom’s budget priorities, has said repeatedly that cutting critical services does not work in San Francisco. And even as he proposed the amendment, he expressed a desire to reach a solution that everyone, not just progressives, would find palatable.

"We want to talk directly to the mayor, to have him meet us half-way, about how we can share the pain in this budget to ensure that we have a balance in equity on how we run the city government," Avalos noted as his committee began its detailed, tedious work on the budget. "We can do that across the hall here at City Hall, and we can do it across every district in San Francisco."

The Board approved the interim budget that more evenly shared the budget pain on a 7-3 vote, with Sups. Bevan Dufty, Carmen Chu, and Michela Alioto-Pier dissenting (Sup. Sean Elsbernd was absent because his wife was giving birth to their first child, but was also likely to dissent).

If Newsom chooses to veto the interim budget or the permanent one next month — which the board would need eight votes to override — San Francisco could be in for a protracted budget standoff, the least "apolitical" of all options. But for now, the political theater is yielding to the detailed, difficult work of the Budget and Finance Committee.

Progressive members of the committee have already signaled their intention to scrutinize city jobs with salaries of $100,000 or positions in each department that deal with public relations.

Among those highlighted in a budget analysts’ report is Newsom’s public relations team, a fleet of five helmed by a Director of Communications Nate Ballard, who pulls down $141,700 a year. Yet when the Guardian and others seek information from the office — for this story and many others — we are often stonewalled, ignored, or insulted.

During the budget hearings, the disproportionately high number of positions with six-figure salaries in the city’s police and fire departments also came under scrutiny. "What has worked in a lot of other agencies is you have employees who care deeply enough about the City and County of San Francisco that they are willing to give back in terms of salaries," Campos commented to Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White during a budget hearing, referring to firefighters’ refusal to forgo raises.

Another looming question is whether new revenue measures will be included as part of the solution. While progressive supervisors continue to call for tax measures as a way to stave off the worst cuts to critical services, Newsom proudly proclaimed his budget’s lack of new taxes.

A press release posted on Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign Web site suggests that since raising revenues doesn’t fit with his bid for governor, it’s not likely to be entertained as a possibility. "Mayor Newsom crafted a balanced budget on time," a press release notes, "without any new general tax increases, without reducing public safety services."

It’s a stand that’s certain to yield more political clashes down the line.

"I don’t see how we can get out of this budget without bringing additional revenue into the system," Campos noted at the committee hearing. "Once people learn about the situation we are facing, they will understand the need for the city and county as a whole to contribute."