Lennar

Board votes on Candlestick-Shipyard project EIR appeal today

Mary Magee
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All images by Luke Thomas

The Chronicle’s suggestion that the city’s massive Candlestick-shipyard project may be facing smoother sailing seems like wishful thinking to those who attended a July 12 noontime rally that was organized by POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) and featured two Louisiana-based advocates who protested the project’s EIR and shared many of the longstanding concerns about project cleanup, infrastructure and financing.

The Chronicle was of course referring to five amendments to the city’s massive redevelopment proposal that Board President David Chiu introduced during yesterday’s July 12 meeting of the Board’s Land Use committee. The Chron interpreted these amendments as a sign that Chiu plans to approve the project’s environmental impact report, which comes before the Board today, after several groups appealed the final EIR that the Planning Commission approved last month.

But while city officials fear the developer will walk, if the Board does not approve the final EIR, some environmental advocates hope a better plan could be reached.

At POWER’s July 12 rally, nationally acclaimed environmental scientist Wilma Subra called on the District Attorney’s environmental justice department to “step up.” Subra claimed that the project’s final EIR “failed to evaluate and assess the cumulative impacts of exposure to children, adults and the environment as a result of exposure to all of the chemicals at the site.”

Monique Harden, co-director and attorney for Advocates for Environmental Health Rights (AEHR) of New Orleans, Louisiana, pointed to “deep flaws in the environmental regulation system,” as a reason why low-income communities of color should be concerned about the proposed plan.
“Why in the middle of an environmental crisis caused by BP in the Gulf am I coming to San Francisco?” Harden asked. “Because San Francisco is providing unequal environmental protection to its residents. As a resident of New Orleans, I’m concerned that San Francisco is careening towards making a decision that can crush the future of Bayview Hunters Point,”

But as local Bayview resident Jose Luis Pavon began talking about seeing gentrification occur in his lifetime within San Francisco, he and others got shouted down by a group of yellow and green-shirted project supporters, who were led by a guy calling himself Bradley Bradley and Alice Griffith public housing resident Stormy Henry.
“This is the devil’s trick in the last hour,” Henry said of the POWER rally.

Henry shared her heartfelt belief that if the Board approves the project’s final EIR, she and other Alice Griffith residents will get desperately needed new housing units. even if it takes some years to build them. Others in her group were unable to answer media questions: they had difficulty speaking in English, but were clutching neatly written statements in support of the project that they later read aloud at the Board’s Land Use Committee hearing.

As these project supporters prepared to move inside to attend the Land Use Committee meeting and lobby supervisors for their suppor, D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly shared his concerns that the Navy has a demonstrated history of finding nasty things at the shipyard years after they say everything’s clean, and that this pattern could jeopardize the plan.

“This happened at Parcel A,” Kelly said, referring to the first and only parcel of land that the Navy transferred to the city for development in 2004. “Since then, Parcel A has gotten smaller and as they found stuff on sites they then renamed as new parcels, like UC-3, which has radiological contamination in a sewer line that goes into the Bayview. So, that means the contamination is now in the Bayview.”

Kelly is concerned that the city is trying push through EIR certification before the Navy completes an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to shipyard cleanup activities. “The EIS is supposed to go before the EIR, as far as I know,” Kelly said

At the Land Use Committee meeting, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Candlestick and the Shipyard,said, the project was about “revitalization and opportunity.”

She noted that the certification of the project’s final EIR has been appealed to full Board’s July 13 meeting. She further noted that she intends to introduce legislation next week to address concerns that Ohlone groups have expressed.

The next two hours were full of testimony from a bevy of city officials, beginning with Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor in the Office of Workforce and Economic Development.

“Every single element [of this project] has been discussed and debated at countless meetings,” Cohen claimed, as he sought to quell fears that the community had not been properly consulted with over the plan. “As we get closer to a vote, all of a sudden pieces of paper start circulating, criticizing project and suggesting that community involvement just began,” he continued. ” That’s factually untrue.”

He also sought to reassure the supervisors that the Board will have a say-so as to whether the city accepts early transfer of shipyard parcels from the Navy.
“Neither the city nor the developer have any specific authority over the cleanup,” Cohen said, noting that the cleanup is governed by specific rules set out in CERCLA [Comprehensice Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, aka Superfund].

“Regardless of what we do, CERCLA will continue to be the regulatory tool,” Cohen said. ” I urge you not to be confused by CEQA and CERCLA.”

So, how can the city implement Prop. P, which voters overwhelmingly supported in 2000, urging the Navy to clean up the shipyard to highest attainable standards.
“Prior to any transfer, US EPA and DTSR have to concur in writing that the shipyard is safe,” Cohen explained, noting that, thanks to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the Navy has already spent over $700 million on shipyard cleanup efforts.

“We have 250 artists at the shipyard….but not a shred of scientific evidence to say that the shipyard is not safe,” Cohen claimed. “It’s safe to develop the shipyard in precisely the manner we are proposing.”

When Sup. Eric Mar raised the question of radiological contamination on Parcel UC-3, Cohen downplayed Mar’s concerns.
“The exposure levels are lower than watching TV,” Cohen claimed. “The primary source is very low level radiation from glow-in-the-dark dials.”
Indicating a map that showed a network of old sewers (in blue) and old fuel lines (in red) under the entire development area, Cohen said, “The radiological contamination that has and will be addressed at the shipyard is quite low level. You have radiation, you get nervous. We asked EPA to come out and do a scan to deal with the issue.”

IBI Group’s David Thom, the lead architect and planner for the project said the plan is designed “to connect new development back into the Bayview.”
“And this plan connects the Bayview through to the water.”

Tiffany Bohee, Cohen’s deputy in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, insisted that project’s proposed bridge is better than Arc Ecology’s proposed alternative route, which would not involve constructing a bridge over an environmentally sensitive slough.
“The non-bridge route increases the number of intersections,” Bohee said, seeking to turn an environmental question (the impact of bridge on wildlife and nature experience) into a public safety issue.”
She claimed the BRT route over bridge was 5-10 minutes faster than Arc’s proposed alternative, “because there are fewer turns, it can go at higher speeds.” But Arc’s studies suggest the BRT route over the bridge is only a minute faster, and would cost over $100 million.

Bohee noted that $50 million from the sale of 23 acres of parkland for condos at the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area (CPSRA) will be “set aside for the state, and won’t be able to be raided by the city,” with $40 million going to improvements, and $10 million to ongoing operation and maintenance costs.

She also cited additional benefits that the project would bring to the community, including thousands of construction job opportunities.

“We are working with City Build to make sure they are for local residents,” Bohee said.“And there is absolutely no displacement for the rebuild,” Bohee continued referring to proposal to place current Alice Griffith public housing iresidents n new units, on a 1-1 basis

Eric Mar said he was impressed by many elements of the plan, but continued to express reservations.
“I’m still concerned that is seems to serve newcomers as proposed to existing residents,” he said. “And I’m still not convinced that the bridge is the best for existing residents.”

Rhonda Simmons, who works in Cohen’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development,  tried to flesh out details of the project’s job creation promises.
“The most immediate workforce is related to the construction site, and as you know, this project goes over a 15-20 year span,” Simmons said, pointing to green tech and retail as job opportunities that will exist once the project is built.

Mar expressed concern that the jobs may not be at the level of D.10 residents
“How is this gonna bring their skill level up?” he asked.
“The idea is that training gives first level entry at a variety of building trades,” Simmons said, pointing to the project’s large solar component.

“What about women?” Sup. Maxwell asked
Simmons pointed to retail opportunities,
“The idea of the training is to give folks job readiness skills, like getting there and showing up on time,” she said

Mar wanted to know who would have oversight of monitoring and compliance.
“In the city we have a tapestry of folks who do contract compliance,” she said. “The oversight will come from a variety of places.”

After Kurt Fuchs of the Controller’s Office listed the estimated economic benefits of the project, Board President David Chiu observed that the city is “at a crossroads.”

“I do not plan to prejudge,” Chiu continued, as he introduced his five amendments to regulate the Parcel E-2 cleanup, the size of a proposed bridge over the Yosemite Slough, expand healthcare access in the Bayview, create a workforce development fund and lay the groundwork for bringing public power to the project.

During public comment, Bayview resident Fred Naranjo pleaded for project support.  

“Please don’t let the train leave the station,” Naranjo said. “If Lennar leaves, the Bayview will never be developed.”

And Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council expressed hope that an agreement was getting closer.
“There really is a path to getting this done,” Paulson said. “This really is a model project in many ways for the rest of the United States.”
But D. 10 resident Linda Shaffer with the Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant society indicated the huge pressure exerted on folks to support the project
“I do not want to be classified as an opponent, but we have concerns,” Shaffer said, noting that her group has filed an appeal of the project’s final EIR.

And while the Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein thanked Chiu for proposing to reduce the size of the bridge, he pointed out that Chiu’s amendment wasn’t really a compromise.
“That’s because it’s still a bridge,” Feinstein said, as he explained how noisy the area surrounding the slough will become as traffic whizzes by.

Connie Ford of the Labor Council accused some project critics of being “disrespectful.”
Ford took particular issue with claims that the project will gentrify the area
“The neighborhood is changing,” she said. “Since 1990, African American families have been leaving the Bayview in huge numbers. I encourage you to see this project as a good plan.”

Gabe Metcalfe of SPUR expressed his unconditional support for the plan,
“This plan is being asked to fix a huge number of problems,” he said.
Noting that the bridge continues to be a sticking point, Metcalfe said he sees opposition to every transportation project these days.
“We seem to be in a moment when you can’t build anything without it being opposed.”

But other speakers from the Sierra Club reiterated their stance that there are better and viable options to the bridge, noting that it is too costly, and that the surrounding community and wildlife would be better off without it.”

All these competing viewpoints suggest that whatever decision the Board makes today, it will take some time and create plenty of uproar. So, here’s hoping the Board votes in a way that will truly benefit the D. 10 community, not career politicians, city officials and out-of-state developers. It’s about time.

Buyer beware of Candlestick-Shipyard project

Mary Magee
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Board President David Chiu has introduced five amendments to the city’s Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment proposal. All five are a good start, but longtime observers question if they are too little, too late, in the face of intense lobbying by a city and a developer intent on getting project approvals before a new Board and possibly a new mayor occupy City Hall in January 2011.

Chiu’s amendments address key concerns with the city’s proposed redevelopment plan, and they come as the Board prepares for its July 13 hearing into three separate appeals of the project’s final EIR certification, as well as amendments to the Bayview Hunters Point and Shipyard redevelopment plans.

Two of Chiu’s amendments seek to address concerns about the clean-up of radiologically impacted waste at Parcel E-2 on the shipyard, and environmental impacts of a proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough.

Chiu’s other three amendments seek to finance the expansion of the Southeast Health Center, create a workforce development fund and analyze the feasibility of providing public power, including natural gas at the site.

But while all five amendments are welcome, some observers worry they do not fully address concerns about the project’s sustainability, financing and infrastructure.  But before we get to those concerns, let’s review Chiu’s five amendments in greater detail:

1. The Parcel E-2 amendment.
This amendment declares that the Board’s adoption of CEQA findings for the project “shall not in any way imply support of a cap for Parcel E-2.” 

As such, this amendment is a critical step towards insisting that the parcel get completely cleaned up, not just capped, as the Navy is currently proposing. On the other hand, it’s not a watertight demand to excavate and haul away all contamination from this parcel, which is the cleanup alternative that many in the community would prefer..

Instead, Chiu’s Parcel E-2 amendment declares that the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy, “should pursue the highest practicable level of cleanup for Parcel E-2.”
And that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency “should not accept the property unless and until that cleanup is satisfied.”

It also establishes that the Board shall conduct a hearing regarding final cleanup strategies for Parcel E-2 before a final remedy is selected, urges the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy to participate in such a hearing, and further establishes that the Board shall conduct a separate hearing prior to any transfer of Parcel E-2 to Redevelopment.”

(There was some question as to why the Board was saying “should” in some parts of this amendment, and “shall” in others. The reason I heard was, you can’t force the Navy to do anything, but you can urge them, and you certainly can refuse to accept the property, if it is not cleaned up a city’s requirements.But this needs to be clarified.)

2. The Yosemite Slough Bridge amendment
Chiu notes that the city’s EIR for the project analyzed a non-49ers-stadium alternative that “includes an approximately 41 ft. wide bridge spanning the Yosemite Slough which is limited to bike, pedestrian and transit use.”
“However, in the event the San Francisco 49ers elect to build a new stadium on the shipyard site, the project will include a bridge spanning Yosemite Slough that is wider than 41 ft. across to accommodate game-day traffic,” Chiu’s amendment states.
(So, Chiu’s amendment doesn’t throw the bridge entirely out with the 49ers’ stadium, and that leaves environmental groups uneasy, afraid that the anticipated 25,000 new residents in the proposed development will subsequently push for legislation to allow for a wider, car-accessible bridge.)

3. The Southeast Health Center amendment
Chiu’s Southeast Health Center amendment demands that the developer contribute $250,000 to the Redevelopment Agency for a needs assessment study regarding the need to expand the center and the ongoing health needs of local residents, and, to the extent such expansion is needed, to help pay for predevelopment expenses associated with this expansion.
The capital costs for expanding the center would be funded through a combination of  tax increment dollars, a $2 million Wellness Contribution paid by the developer, and the City’s ability to finance savings that would accrue to the Department of Public Health by moving from leased space into owned space at the expanded center.

4. The Workforce Development Fund amendment
Chiu’s amendment would modify language in the current community benefits agreement to require the developer to contribute $8,925,000 to a workforce development fund to be used for programs “designed to create a gateway to career development, fiirst for residents of District 10 and secondly for “at-risk job applicants.”
(A member of the public suggested that veterans be specified as “at-risk job applicants,” an idea D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell seemed to support during yesterday’s July 12 Land Use Committee hearing, which was where Chiu introduced his five proposed amendments.)

 5. The Public Power amendment 
Chiu’s public power amendment notes that the SFPUC confirmed the feasibility of providing electric service to the shipyard sire, but requires the agency to update this study and include the Candlestick site and include “an analysis of the feasibility of providing natural gas to the project site.”

But will these steps be enough to ensure that the development actually delivers on its promises of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of affordable housing units,? And is a bridge really necessary across Yosemite Slough, if the 49ers go to Santa Clara as planned?

Long-term observers of the project point to the first phase of the project, which began on the shipyard’s Parcel A, as a warning of where things might end up.

“We approved the fast-tracking of Parcel A based on a bevy of assurances and enthusiastic endorsements from the best and brightest this administration has to offer,” said a source who wishes to remain anonymous. “But what has happened since then, and what are we to learn from this experimental test case?”

This source noted that recent maps of the shipyard show that Parcel A, which the Navy conveyed to the city in 2004, has since been carved up into several new pieces.

“How did Parcel A get divided into two areas that don’t even border one another?” my source asked.

The answer appears to be that sections of the shipyard, including Parcel A,  have since been renamed as new and separate parcels, after it was discovered that shipyard sewers on those parcels contained radiologically contaminated material.

One of these sewer lines, as indicated on recent project maps, leads from a site now known as Parcel UC-3, into the Bayview. In other words, it appears to lead off the shipyard site and into the surrounding community. If so, this raises concerns that shipyard contamination is no longer limited to the shipyard in the Bayview, and could be impacting residents and businesses that are not covered by the Navy’s clean-up commitments.

Either way, it seems that the Board could use an update on what happened on Parcel A, since it was conveyed, what’s the deal with UC-3, and other recently renamed parcels, before they consider an early transfer of the rest of the shipyard.

“How can we start Phase 2 of the project, when we haven’t completed Phase 1?” my source asked.

And since the Navy is still tasked with cleaning up the rest of the shipyard parcels, it would be helpful if the Navy updated the Board on what the Navy is proposing in its Records of Decisions for each of these parcels, including UC-3, before the Board votes on Phase 2 of the project.

My source also noted that since the project plans to use 100 percent recycled water at the site, it would be helpful to have an update as to how issues with sewer contamination and groundwater concerns might impact the project’s sustainability plans.

“These issues touch on half of the documents that make up the EIR, but are now obsolete, because of the issue of radioactive contamination on UC-3,” my source claimed.

And then there’s the question of fproject financing and who the developer for the project actually is, these days.

“The city’s exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) was with Lennar, so who is CP Development and why do we have an ENA with them?” my source asked.”What happened to Lennar? And why would we be obligated to negotiate solely with this CP Development group?”

Now, hopefully the Board has greatly reassuring answers to all these questions, so that the community can rest assured that the supervisors really do understand the ramifications of a project that they are being asked to approve in what appears to be an awful hurry.

Yes, there are plenty of project supporters who keep on urging “no delays.” I understand their concerns. They want jobs, housing, parks and other promised community benefits. And I don’t blame them.

But it’s up to the Board to ensure that it doesn’t get rushed into approving a project that perhaps doesn’t guarantee any or all of these things. So, let’s keep asking questions so the Board of Supervisors doesn’t end up with buyer’s remorse, but instead can truly claim to having secured a deal that really helps all the folks who currently live and work in the city’s southeast sector. Stay tuned.

 

 

T

 

 

D. 10 candidates DeWitt Lacy, Tony Kelly and progressive planners blast Lennar’s plan

Mary Magee
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Recently, I spent some time talking with D. 10 candidates DeWitt Lacy and Tony Kelly about Lennar’s redevelopment plan for the shipyard and Candlestick Point. I also attended a Progressive Planners forum that addressed the massive development proposal. Those conversations and the issues they raised seem timely in light of the city’s crazily tight schedule for trying to ram final approvals for the project past government agencies this summer. And in light of three appeals that have been filed against the city’s recently certified final environmental impact report for the plan, raising concerns that the city will get bogged down in expensive and time-consuming litigation if it doesn’t get the plan right, while it still can.

(Lest other D. 10 candidates complain that they weren’t interviewed, too, I’d like to clarify that I’ll be covering the race between now and November, and I look forward to hearing what they all think at the Board’s July 13 meeting to hear appeals of the city’s final environmental impact report (FEIR) for the project. )

Both Lacy and Kelly are critics of Lennar’s plan, but not in a knee-jerk obstructionist way. Instead, they bring considered and informed critiques to the table at a time when the community desperately needs good advice and a workable strategy, if residents are to get needed amendments and concessions, before the developer get the green light, or before the Board puts  a moratorium on the project until the city’s FEIR flaws are ironed out.

Lacy is a bright and earnest candidate who learned lessons from the school of life, while growing up in San Jose in a working class family. Lacy says his father worked in an Adidas warehouse until he was injured on the job, and his mother worked as a secretary in Atari’s corporate office, but was laid off after two years.

Lacy recalls how his parents opened their own janitorial business, in the hope of making a better life for their six children.  He says that it was while cleaning homes alongside his mother, that he began to recognize the need for working class improvement and growth.

 In 1995, Lacy moved to San Francisco, where he has worked in the District Attorney’s office and formed his own law practice—experience that could serve District 10 well, since it’s home to many working-class residents and will be ground zero in the battle for construction-related contracts and environmental and economic justice, if Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan goes ahead,

“I know how to craft legislation for social justice,” Lacy said.

Lacy observes how Michael Cohen, Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, has repeatedly told folks that land transferred to Lennar will be subject to a “right of reverter.”
This means the Redevelopment Agency may re-take ownership of the land, if the developer fails to substantially complete the infrastructure in the time frame set forth in the city’s development and disposition agreement (the DDA)

But Lacy observes that this “nuclear option” isn’t likely to happen with so much riding on the Lennar deal, and he stresses that additional controls are needed, if the city is to ensure that the deal remains in the best interest of San Francisco, not just the developer.

Lacy’s probably right about that. (Remember how hard the community had to fight to just get an extra 15 days to read and comment on the project’s six volume draft EIR over the winter holidays?)

And how much political pressure was exerted to ram the city’s EIR for this project across the certification line on June 3, five days before Santa Clara voters decided to support a stadium for the 49ers near Great America.

“What’s needed is an impartial arbiter,” Lacy said. “The city needs regulatory controls and the capacity to fine Lennar if it breaks promises to build affordable housing, create jobs and hire locals. You’re not going to be able to hold their feet to the fire without that.”

“I’m not saying that we should be obstructionists, critics who are trying to prevent stuff for the sake of a political battle,” Lacy added. “But we need new blood. The benefit of my campaign is that I’m not downtown’s candidate. I’m a civil rights attorney, who can help the district by figuring out what battles we need to be fighting and which battles are winnable. And I want to make sure there are jobs and business opportunities for working-class folks in San Francisco. You shouldn’t have to be a doctor or lawyer to afford to live here.”

Lacy believes the Navy should remove the radiologically impacted landfill on the shipyard’s Parcel E2.
“That ground has to be taken out of there,” Lacy said. “I would hope the City Attorney’s Office would get involved and advocate for the people. But leadership is about taking a stance when no one else is.”

With the city suggesting that it can still win back the 49ers, Lacy said that he too, would love it if the 49ers decided to stay.
 
“But not at the cost of our health and safety,” Lacy said, referring to the city’s repeated claim that it needed to rush certification of the final EIR for Lennar’s project, if there was to be any hope of winning back the team.

“ I don’t think the solution is the rush,” Lacy said. “I say, let’s make sure we clean up the shipyard properly—and bring back the Warriors [a professional basketball team that relocated to San Francisco in 1962, until 1971, when it moved to Oakland].”

I also hung out with D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly, at an event that POWER hosted as part of a Progressive Planners Forum, the day after Lacy and I unsuccessfully tried to access the shipyard, and the same day that POWER was also blocked from the yard.

Kelly has been tracking issues in and around District 10 for years, and, much like Lacy,  he’s not afraid to speak his mind on the issues.

For instance, Kelly is incensed by the city’s attempt to ram through approval of the final EIR for Lennar’s development, when the Navy has yet to complete an environmental impact statement related to its proposed clean up activities at the shipyard..
“Is the EIS ever a trailer to the EIR?” Kelly asked. “It’s like planning on Mars.”

Kelly has also expressed concern over the developer’s plan to build two peaker plants in the community.

And he is worried about the consequences of the city’s plan to turn the entire Bayview into a project survey area for Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard plan.

“How do you pay for any other improvements in the Bayview, when the shipyard redevelopment plan sucks all the air out of the room?” Kelly said

But Kelly’s biggest concern right now is that once Lennar gets its final approvals this summer, “the developer will never talk directly to the community again.”

At the Progressive Planners Forum that Kelly attended, speakers also voiced measured criticisms of Lennar’s plan.

“The plan has some important elements, especially in the job areas, but I think it adds up to gentrification, which is disruptive to the surrounding community, families and the last bastion of the black community in San Francisco,” said Chester Hartman, who has authored over 18 books on race and urban planning, including the acclaimed City For Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco.

“There is a need for a response in terms of an alternative approach,” Hartman advised.
“It doesn’t have to be a detailed, but it should include a basic philosophy and goals, and retain good parts of the original plan.”

Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning at Colombia University, said the situation at the shipyard reminded him of the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf.

“Cap the land sounds like cap the spill,” Marcuse said, noting that in both cases the community is fighting to get folks who dumped toxins to clean them up.

Marcuse criticized the privatization of the planning process, as illustrated by the City’s claim that it has entered into a “public-private” partnership with Lennar,  and the community’s experience that the city and the developer keep ignoring or dismissing the public’s feedback and opinions.

 “There should have been a range of alternatives open for discussion,” Marcuse said. “Instead, there is a sense, of this mega project’s inevitability. And once the developer has title to the land, the city has to negotiate what should be a public matter.”

Marcuse critiqued the use of tax increment financing, which will use increased taxes on property throughout the Bayview to finance improvements in one relatively small area, the 770 acres of land that, as Marcuse put it, “got sold to Lennar for $1.”

“This is a form of government subsidy,” Marcuse warned.

“There have been some negotiations,” Marcuse continued. He pointed to the community-led Prop. F, which in the spring of 2008 sought to establish 50 percent affordable housing in the development. And the community benefits agreement (CBA) that the San Francisco Labor Council hammered out at in May 2008, in an attempt to nail down benefits for the community in exchange for the Council’s support for the Lennar-financed Prop. G in June 2008.

“But these negotiations with Lennar start on basis that Lennar’s interests have to be protected equally with those of the City and its residents,” Marcuse commented. “It ought to be a public responsibility to show the community what the alternates to Lennar’s vision are.”

Marcuse concluded by suggesting a moratorium on Lennar’s plan to allow for a community-based visioning process, in which residents could express their desire for housing, diversity, open space and protection against environmental hazards

‘The City should then come up with an alternative to Lennar’s plan—and listen to Lennar,” he said. “But this is a public responsibility, rather than a private negotiation with a corporation that has been a beneficiary of a huge subsidy and starts to make a huge profit, the minute its housing units begin to sell.”

Miriam Chion, who works for the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), also expressed concerns with Lennar’s massive plan, which proposes to build thousands of mostly luxury condos at Candlestick Point, with a smaller number on the shipyard.

“We are in the 21st century, how can we continue to use same mechanisms of displacement?” Chion said. “And how can we do that to the African American community, which we have displaced over and over, and which has managed to build a community here, in spite of everything?”

According to Lennar’s plan, 68 percent of its proposed 10,000 units will be built at market rate. Of the remaining 32 percent of units, only 15 percent will be built at truly affordable rates, with an additional 15 percent geared towards the working middle-class income levels, such as those enjoyed by police, fire fighters, nurses and teachers.

But two Bayview residents who attended POWER’s progressive planners’ forum expressed frustration at what they perceived as outsiders trying to tell locals what’s best.

“If you haven’t lived here, you don’t know about the Bayview,” one resident said. “If they are going to do what they are going to do, they should do it all the way, and change things for the better. I’m tired of seeing kids under 12, playing outside at 11 p.m. So, if you are not from here, you can’t come on my ground and pass judgment. If you’d been and lived here, I don’t think you’d see this negatively.”

“$700 million has been spent on cleaning up shipyard, and producing highly technical reports on it,”  another local resident said. “Highly intellectual discussions are not helping, we need some action today.”

“No one here is against development,” countered long-term Bayview resident Espanola Jackson, while a Bayview resident named Nyese resurrected longstanding concerns that the developer fatally broke community trust when it failed to control asbestos dust at the site, when it began grading the shipyard’s Parcel A .

“Four years ago, I found out that they were sending home workers at the shipyard, without informing the surrounding community,” Nyese recalled. “My son was having excessive nosebleeds, so it was phenomenally insulting that they didn’t not notify us.”
“Lennar is just a name, a conglomeration of shareholders,” Nyese further noted. “We need development. But we don’t need it on chemically toxic land.”

These competing concerns indicate that all the candidates in the D. 10 race are going to have to be asking critical questions as they track the progress of Lennar, the city and the Navy’s plans this summer. Failure to do so will cost them credibility within the community—and possibly the supervisor’s race this fall, though downtown money will pour in to support whichever candidate is deemed most likely to rubberstamp present and future development and contracting plans. Stay tuned. It’s going to be a (politically) hot July.

 

Political litmus test for Hunters Point Shipyard access?

Mary Magee
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Even though the U.S. Navy abandoned the Hunters Point Shipyard in 1974, the military has continued to control access to the shipyard that helped launch the A-Bomb. That’s because the Navy still owns most parcels of land on the shipyard and remains on the hook for cleaning up pollutants on these sites, including a radiologically impacted dump on Parcel E2, which has been deemed to be the dirtiest land on the site.

Currently, the Navy is proposing to cap, not excavate this landfill, despite repeated requests from the local community, and a citywide vote in support of Proposition P in 2000, which urged the Navy to clean up the land to the best extent possible, which would mean excavating the Parcel E2 landfill and replacing it with clean uncontaminated soil. And oddly, the City appears to want government agencies and officials to sign off on its final EIR for Lennar’s massive 770-acre redevelopment plan for the shipyard and Candlestick Point, even though the Navy has not yet completed an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to its proposed shipyard cleanup activities.

Currently, the Navy controls access to the facility beyond a couple of trailers that the city’s Redevelopment Agency has set up just within the yard’s main gate. And to gain access to the shipyard these days, you need to call or visit Redevelopment’s trailer and get a pass. Or, alternatively, if you know any of the artists who continue to rent studios at shipyard, you can call them to try and get the city to give you a pass.

Underlying these limits to accessing the shipyard are some legitimate safety concerns related to equipment and excavations on what is now an active clean up and construction site, along with fears that untoward characters could break into the abandoned buildings or bother the artists who still have studios in operation at the shipyard. But has an additional political litmus test been put in place when it comes to critics of Lennar’s redevelopment plan, who want to access to the yard? If so, does it mirror the tap dancing that the local community has had to undergo to get its voices heard as Lennar pushes to get final approval for its shipyard/ Candlestick Point redevelopment plan.

Those questions resurfaced last week when a private security guard manning the shipyard’s front gate denied access to D. 10 supervisor candidate DeWitt Lacy, who had dropped by hoping to take this reporter around the yard as part of an ongoing conversation about Parcel E2, which Lacy believes needs to be excavated completely, and how best to hold the Navy accountable for cleaning up a mess it created decades ago. The security guard told Lacy that folks who want to visit must get a pass at the Redevelopment Agency trailer.

At the Redevelopment trailer, Micah Fobbs, administrative assistant for W.B. Kennedy and Associates, which has a contract with Redevelopment’s Citizen’s Advisory Committee. told Lacy that without a preauthorized pass, he couldn’t let us onto the site. Fobbs added that he would be happy to take us on a tour himself, but he could not leave the trailer unmanned, since he was the only staff member there at the time. Fair enough. Though the rebuff gave us the feel that the City doesn’t want pesky investigative reporters that have been critical of the development running around the site. “And if they found out I was a civil rights attorney, they probably wouldn’t want me out here, either,” Lacy joked.

But the next day, I encountered what sounded like overt hostility to other critics of Lennar’s plan, when I tried to ride along on what had been billed as a “Toxic Tour of the Navy Shipyard” by POWER (People Organizing to Win Employment Rights). POWER had advertised its tour in an email which said it would involve 23 expert urban planners, who happened to be in the Bay Area for a Progressive Planning Forum. The tour was billed as happening on the morning of June 17, before an afternoon discussion at POWER’s Third Street office in the Bayview, which was to focus “on alternative approaches to the city’s current plan for development at the Shipyard/ Candlestick Point.”

Caught in traffic, I didn’t arrive at the Boys and Girls Club on Kiska Road in Bayview Hunters Point in time to join POWER’s kick-off get together. So, I headed direct to the shipyard, a move that meant I arrived alone and ahead of the school bus that POWER had rented for the occasion. At the gate, I was told by the security guard that I couldn’t get in, that another guard lost his job for letting unauthorized individuals onto the site, that POWER didn’t have a pass and that they’d been warned to watch for POWER “because they want to stop the development.”

“If you are not authorized with badges, you are not let through,” the guard said, giving me the telephone number of the Hunters Point Duty police officer, who in turn said I needed to call the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which in turn told me to call the folks at the Redevelopment Agency’s shipyard trailer. And so I called Fobbs again, who confirmed that the Navy still controls all the property, except Parcel A which has already been conveyed to the City which in turn has granted developer Lennar the right to develop thousands of condos on that particular parcel.

“As far as viewing the rest of the property, you have to put in a request, and no photography or videography is allowed,” Fobbs said. This stated ban on photography came as a surprise, given recent photos of the shipyard that ran in a New York Times article about Lennar and the city’s vision for the 770-acre property.

And the sudden difficulties in gaining media access seemed odd, given that Lennar’s PR firm, Sitrick and Company, offered to take the media on a tour on the morning of June 3—the day the Redevelopment and Planning Commissions subsequently approved the final EIR for Lennar’s plan to redevelop the rest of the shipyard, plus Candlestick Point, a FEIR that has now been appealed to the Board, on the grounds that it was rushed for political reasons, leading to fatal flaws in the final document.

“Well, if folks come here through Redevelopment or the Mayor’s Office, then they have been able to take photographs,” Fobbs said. “But we have had people trying to climb fences and get through doors of some of the buildings.” (Fobbs last comment was a reference to a recent climbing of the fence that the Nation of Islam’s Leon Muhammad engaged in, in an effort to determine if air quality monitoring devices near the Nation’s school and Oakdale public housing site were operating. (After Muhammad scaled the fence and reported that he’d found an empty bin where monitoring equipment was supposed to be, a kafuffle ensued, with the US EPA saying Muhammad was looking in the wrong place for the monitors which, it claimed, were in operation.)

Ultimately, Fobbs told me to call Redevelopment’s Audrey Kay if I wanted a tour, and several shipyard artists told me they would be happy to arrange a day pass so I can visit their studios and hear concerns that they will be required to move from a couple of shipyard buildings before replacement studios have been completed–an arrangement that would amount to a breach of promise that Lennar and the city previously made to the shipyard artists.

Shortly after I was turned away for a second time, POWER’s bus arrived at the gate, only to be blocked–a denial of access that meant 23 progressive planners were forced to view the shipyard from various remote viewing spots atop the hills that surround the site.

Together these episodes left me wondering what kind of political litmus test could end up being enforced at the site, if Lennar’s mega project gets the green light this summer, and what will happen if the Board decides to kick the plan back to the drawing board until the Navy completes a environmental impact statement and all of the community’s ongoing environmental and economic justice concerns are addressed.

So stay tuned, and don’t forget to mark July 13 on your calendar when the full Board of Supervisors is tentatively to hear appeals of the project’s final EIR, which the Planning and Redevelopment Commissions rubberstamped June 3. And, as always, it will be revealing to see which candidates in the hotly contested race for D. 10 supervisor, show up and speak truth to power.

 

 

An online defense of print—and a plug for the Public Press’ first print edition

Mary Magee
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An online defense of print—and a plug for the Public Press’ first print edition

I spent my lunch hour yesterday indulging in what media critics say could soon be a lost experience: reading the first print issue of a newspaper.

As I turned the pages of a pilot print edition of the San Francisco Public Press, which has been in existence online since March 2009, I was surrounded by folks who were tapping out messages on plastic coated cell phones or sitting scrunched at table trying to read stuff on laptops.

And I began to wonder, will there be a print renaissance in my life time as upcoming generations begin to feel the impacts of too much screen and keyboard time? And begin to realize the benefits of having a print presence in this increasingly digital world? Or is print really going to go the way of the dinosaurs?

Maybe it’s because I’m old school, but I actually believe there’s a future for print journalism, though it may be a limited one. To my mind you can’t beat the sensation that comes from leafing through a newspaper, while sipping morning coffee, or the welcome relief of reading the news in hard copy, after staring at computer screens all day. And then there’s the fact that I’m never going to get mugged, or have my car broken into, because someone wants to steal a newspaper–something that can’t be said if you leave your Kindle or Blackberry or fancy laptop around.

Yeah, I never have to worry about sand at the beach, or water in the bath, when I read a print newspaper. And I can rest assured that when I am done with my paper, and leave it in a coffee shop, someone else can read it, or recycle it in their blue bin or reuse it as the proverbial bird cage liner or fish wrap.

Now, what’s especially interesting about the San Francisco Public Press—and distinguishes it from most other print newspapers currently available—is that it’s free of advertisements. Or, as the folks at the Public Press like to say, it’s “ad-free news in the public interest.”

    “Why no ads?” the Public Press asks. “As the newspaper advertising market has drained to Internet competitors, we need to search for other sources of income to support quality journalism. Advertising has also warped the content of the newsroom, both explicitly and subtly, encouraging newspapers to shift their coverage to topics of interest to businesses and wealthy readers—the target of ads. Noncommercial news, while often less lucrative, has the luxury of independence.”

The Public Press also devotes some wordage to explaining why they have turned to ink:
    “Newspapers help bridge the digital divide,” they state, noting that San Francisco’s 2009 City Survey showed that more than 34 percent of households with income under $50,000 cannot access the Internet at home via personal computers.
    “Newspapers serve as communal touchstones,” they continue, observing how isolating digital widgets can be, compared to reading a print newspaper in public.
    “We want to pay our hardworking staff for the work they do,” they add, reminding us that folks buy 50 million newspapers everyday in the US, but are still averse to paying for news online.
    “People use paper and electronic devices differently,” they conclude. “There are times and places when even the most tech-savvy Bay Area digerati enjoy some screen relief.”

I got my hands on a copy of the San Francisco Public Press’ first print edition, because Lila Lahood, SFPP’s director of operations, and SFPP contributor Christopher D. Cook, who wrote a timely piece about Lennar using federal taxpayer funds to balance its books, stopped by the Guardian with a stack of papers.

And while they were in newspaper delivery mode, Lahood and Cook also shared their thoughts on “Lessons Learned” from their first foray into print.

“We missed our deadline,” Lahood admitted, observing how, in future, the Public Press plans to focus less on breaking news and more on timely features to avoid deadline stress. The plan going forward, Lahood said, is to publish a print edition on a quarterly basis, with the hope of becoming a monthly print publication at some point next year.

“Some of us we stayed up the whole night, filings our full package at 6 in the morning,” Lahood added, tipping her hat to the “strong and committed core” of Public Press workers that made this first print edition possible.

‘Though most of us are journalists, we worked for publications that were already in existence before we arrived,” Lahood continued, acknowledging that the team had much to learn about putting out a print edition from start to finish this first time around.

‘But we showed it could be done,” Cook added.  “There is a solid professional publication now in the public sphere, making a dent in the San Francisco community.”

Available in 35 bookstores and newsstands in the Bay Area, the Public Press’ print edition is also available on the street for $2 a pop—an exercise in sales that isn’t as easy as the guys who peddle the Street Sheet (a monthly tabloid written primarily by homeless and formerly homeless people) make it look.

“It’s hard to sell newspapers on the street,” Cook acknowledged. “We knew it was going to be challenging. When you are out there, standing on the corner in the urban crunch, no one has an interest, but the minute you connect to folks, on an individual level, it changes.”

On June 22, the Public Press’s first pilot newspaper hit the streets. At 28 pages long, it includes two sections, three investigative reports, a full-page graphic novel and 50 articles from staff members and a broad spectrum of public media and civic groups, including KALW, KQED, Commonwealth Club, World Affairs Council, California Watch and Consumers Union.

I found the Public Press’ special section on Treasure Island intriguing and informative—the kind of in-depth investigation that’s hard for one journalist to pull off, but is crucial if the city of San Francisco and all its many residents are going to make informed planning and development decisions.

I appreciated the wide-range of articles in the Public Press’ main section, including items on the ongoing battle over the future of the open-air sewage digesters that have been stinking up the Bayview for decades now.

I loved the “Sit, Lie, Get Deported” comic strip that merges photos with hand-drawn illustrations and uses the actual words of politicians, city officials, activists and gadflies to help illustrate its point.

And I’m still trying to finish the crossword. In fact,  I plan to read the SFPP’s first printedition from front to back over the July 4 holiday weekend, when I’ll have the time to really absorb and enjoy it.

“Ideally, news will appear in print first, then online, so there’s interest in seeking out the print edition,” Lahood told me, noting that the Public Press’ first edition amounts to about 70,000 words. “So, it a novel, in length,” Lahood laughed. “People are, if not starving, at least very hungry for news analysis and investigative reporting. There are a lot of online sites that aggregate other publications content, and then there’s the corporate model of the Chronicle, but while there is some good reporting in town, there are fewer reporters.”

No kidding. All the more reason for this reporter to write an online defense of print, in the hope that you rush out to secure your copy of the Public Press’s first print edition and evaluate this new model of journalism. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Lennar’s litmus test

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Lennar’s litmus test

sarah@sfbg.com

None of the many stakeholders tracking the progress of Lennar Corp.’s massive Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment plan registered surprise when the Board of Supervisors received three appeals to the Planning Commission’s June 3 certification of the project’s final environmental impact report (FEIR).

Instead, everybody who has been watching the political juggernaut that has been pushing for quick approval of the project over the past month said they anticipated that the FEIR would be appealed, and perhaps litigated. But the real question is whether the project will be substantially changed.

In the seven months since the project’s draft EIR was released, the Planning and Redevelopment Commissions have repeatedly rejected all arguments and recommendations made by its critics to improve or delay the plan, rushing the approval along on a tight schedule (“The Candlestick Farce,” 12/21/09).

The rush job occurred even as numerous groups and individuals warned that the DEIR comment period was too short, (“DEIR in the headlights,” 02/03/10) and complained that the city and the developer had dismissed crucial data and testimony while exploiting fears the San Francisco 49ers would leave town if the city didn’t act quickly (“Political juggernaut,” 06/02/10).

What’s less clear is whether the Board of Supervisors has the political will to heed these appeals and correct what opponents say are serious flaws in the city’s FEIR. The appeal that the Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon Society, California Native Plant Society, and San Francisco Tomorrow filed June 21 lists nine deficiencies.

These included the FEIR’s failure to look into an alternate Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route around Yosemite Slough or adequately assess impacts resulting from the landfill cap on Parcel E2 and the transfer of 20 acres of public shoreline land in Candlestick Point State Recreation Area (CPSRA) to build high-end housing.

“The FEIR failed to analyze those elements of the project’s sustainability plan that could have significant environmental impacts, including two proposed heating and cooling plants (which appear to be power plants) to serve 10,500 housing units and a projectwide recycling collection system,” the coalition further charged.

The appeal also voiced concern that the FEIR failed to adequately assess impacts resulting from the construction and maintenance of the development’s underground utility matrix, impacts to the bird-nesting in the proposed 34-acre wetland restoration project at the state park, and delays to eight Muni lines.

But the Sierra Club-led coalition also indicated that by removing provisions for a bridge over Yosemite Slough, transfer of land in the state park, and compromised clean-up efforts at Parcel E2, resolution of many of these disputed issues could be expedited.

“If the Board of Supervisors acts promptly, revisions to the EIR may be made quickly and result in a minimal delay in the progress of the project,” the coalition stated.

The Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein told the Guardian that the coalition’s top three concerns are “very important, but the six other issues are also very real.”

“Here we have a city cutting 10 percent of its bus service while saying that eight bus routes will need to be improved because of the project, and admitting that the development will increase air pollution in a district that has the highest rates of asthma and cancer without identifying mitigations such as reducing parking spaces in the proposal,” Feinstein said.

POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) also filed an FEIR appeal June 21 listing a broader range of environmental and economic justice-related concerns.

These included the FEIR’s failure to analyze and mitigate for displacement that would be triggered in the surrounding neighborhood by developing 10,500 mostly market-rate housing units in the area and “failure to provide for adequate oversight and enforcement of the terms of the early transfer” of the shipyard from the Navy.

POWER also cited the FEIR’s failure to adequately mitigate against the impact of sea level rise, the risks associated with potential liquefaction of contaminated landfill at the shipyard in the event of an earthquake, and health risks related to chemicals of concern at the shipyard. The group also faulted the city’s failure to get the Navy to prepare an environmental impact statement on its clean-up plan before the FEIR was completed.

Finally, Californians for Renewable Energy (CARE) filed a five-point appeal June 23 charging that the project contravened the intent of Proposition P (which voters approved in 2000, urging the Navy to remediate shipyard pollution to the maximum extent possible), that the project’s FEIR is incomplete because the Navy (which still retains jurisdiction over the project lands) has not yet completed its EIS, and that the FEIR approval process was tainted by 49ers-related political pressure.

“The pre-set goal of maintaining the 49ers in San Francisco has colored the environmental analysis of this decision,” CARE noted, referring to the city’s rush to get the project’s FEIR certified on June 3 — five days before Santa Clara County voters approved a new stadium for the 49ers near Great America .

The appeal filings mean the Board of Supervisors is required to hold a hearing within 30 days, a move that places a roadblock, at least temporarily, in the way of the city’s tight schedule to secure final approvals for Lennar’s megaproject before summer’s end.

Board President David Chiu told the Guardian that the Board’s Land Use Committee will move forward with a July 13 meeting to hear a list of proposed amendments related to the underlying plan along with the FEIR appeals.

“We are back at the board Land Use Committee July 12 with 10 items related to the project,” said Chiu, who is a member of the Land Use Committee. The three-member committee is chaired by Sup. Sophie Maxwell, who represents the project’s District 10; Sup. Eric Mar is vice-chair.

“The next day, July 13, has been tentatively set for a full meeting of the full board,” Chiu continued. He acknowledged that the FEIR related materials are dense and complex, telling us that “they form the largest pile on my desk, and it’s about five inches high.”

But he wasn’t about to prejudge the outcome. “We do need to clean up the area and rebuild it in such a way that it will dramatically increase affordable housing and jobs and support a livable diverse community,” Chiu said. “Obviously there are still a lot of questions and concerns about the proposed project and the board will push to make sure all these issues are adequately addressed.”

CARE president Michael Boyd said he hoped the board would take his group’s appeal seriously and fix the plan’s fundamental shortcomings. “That means going back to square one,” he said.

But others were less sure that the board would seek to overturn the entire plan. “Everyone in the community would like the best level of clean-up,” said Saul Bloom, whose nonprofit Arc Ecology has tracked the proposed shipyard clean-up for three decades. “But what’s possible and practical? And will the city be supportive of that or the most expeditious solution?”

Bloom reserved gravest concern for plans to cap, not remove, the contaminants from the shipyard’s Parcel E2. “The concern is that if you put a cap on E2 without a liner then contaminants could scootch out during a seismic event, or over time, and cause problems because of the parcel’s close proximity to surrounding groundwater and the San Francisco Bay,” he said. “But to place a liner in there is very expensive because you’d have to excavate E2, at which point you might as well replace it with clean soil.”

Bloom acknowledged that the Navy has argued that excavation would cause a nasty smell and nobody knows what is going to be released in the process.

“But long-term Bayview residents like Espanola Jackson have made the point that the community already lives within nose-shot of the southeast sewage treatment plant and would rather put up with a few years of nasty smells, given the relative benefits of cleaning the yard up,” he said. “And how do we know a cap will be protective given the Navy’s argument that we don’t know what’s down there?

“The thing that makes the most sense here is to clean up the shipyard to the best possible extent, but the city isn’t planning to do that,” Bloom added. “And the environmental community’s bottom line has always been the bridge [over Yosemite Slough, which the Sierra Club opposes]. So the sense is that if the bridge goes away, so does their problem.”

Environmental groups appeal final EIR on Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard plan

Mary Magee
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Environmental groups appeal final EIR on Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard plan

The Sierra Club, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the California Native Plant Society’ and San Francisco Tomorrow have filed an appeal with the Board of Supervisor’s and the city’s Planning Department over the Planning Commission’s June 3 certification of the city’s controversial final environment report (FEIR) for Lennar’s Candlestick Point/ Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment project.

The move means that the FEIR, which otherwise would not have come before the Board for review, now heads to the Board for a hearing within 30 days of the group’s June 21 appeal filing. The move also means that the City, which laid out an aggressive schedule for seeking approvals from a myriad of government agencies and departments, cannot seek further approval actions on the project until the Board holds a hearing, which will likely occur on or before July 20.

The San Francisco Bay chapter of the Sierra Club, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the California Native Plant Society’s Yerba Buena Chapter and San Francisco Tomorrow cited nine major deficiencies in their appeal , but noted that by removing plans to a) build a bridge over Yosemite Slough, b)erect luxury condos on state parkland and b) compromise clean-up efforts at Parcel E2, which is the most polluted land at the shipyard, resolution of many of these disputed issues could be expedited.

“If the Board of Supervisors acts promptly, revisions to the EIR may be made quickly and result in a minimal delay in the progress of the project,” the appeal warns. “Alternately, resolution of many of these disputed issues may be expedited by a decision to remove from the FEIR and Project Plan the provisions for the bridge over the Yosemite Slough, the transfer of land in Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, and compromised clean-up efforts at Parcel E2.”

In their appeal, the four groups noted that they each group and its members represent “a sizeable constituency that has been actively participating in the development of the EIR” for almost a decade and that has conducted or funded studies to inform the Draft EIR and has filed comments to the DEIR and other planning documents.

“Unfortunately, the data, comments and testimony provided by the Appellants and their members have been dismissed or outright ignored by the Planning Department and the developer in this process, resulting in fatal flaws in the FEIR and necessitating this appeal,” the four groups state.

‘Because many portions of the FEIR are inaccurate and incomplete, the Planning Commission erred in adopting several findings and certifying the FEIR,” the appeal concludes. ‘Therefore, we are appealing the FEIR because:
1.    The FEIR failed to adequately analyze an alternate Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) router around Yosemite Slough;
2.    The FEIR failed to adequately assess impacts resulting form the landfill cap on Parcel E2, which is a lower standard for the clean-up than required by San Francisco voters as expressed in Proposition P;
3.    The FEIR inaccurately and incompletely assessed the impacts from transferring approximately 20 acres of public shoreline land in Candlestick Point State Recreation Area to the developer for construction of high-end housing;
4.    The FEIR failed to analyze those elements of the project’s Sustainability Plan that could have significant environmental impacts, including two proposed heating and cooling plants (which appear to be power plants) to serve at least 10,500 units in the Project and a Project-wide recycling collection system;
5.    The FEIR failed to adequately consider impacts to the bird-nesting island component of the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area’s proposed 34-acre Wetland Restoration Project, which is already permitted and planned for construction this year;
6.    The FEIR failed to adequately address impacts to eight MUNI lines, which would significantly increase transit times, increase delays during peak hours, potentially dissuade ridership, and/or require increased service, busses, or drivers;
7.    The FEIR failed to adequately assess impacts resulting from the construction and maintenance of the Project’s underground utility matrix;
8.    The FEIR failed to adequately address the fact that the Project will result in increases in air pollution that will exceed existing air quality standards—indeed even though the FEIR admits exceedences of air quality levels will occur, those statements are underestimates because the FEIR failed to consider that the development in combination with other development plans will result in significant traffic congestion on Highway 101 and Interstate 280 and fore more traffic onto surface streets; and
9.    The FEIR included conclusions based on false, inaccurate and/or biased statements as “evidence,” including (but not limited to) that one cannot have an ‘undisturbed nature experience” in an urban area as a rationale for dismissing impacts that will inevitably result from construction of the bridge over Yosemite Slough and/or the reduction of public land in the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area.

In their appeal, Mike Lynes, Conservation Director Golden Gate Audubon Society, Linda J.Shaffer, Vice President, California Native Plant Society, Yerba Buena Chapter, Jennifer Clary of San Francisco Tomorrow, and Arthur Feinstein, Sierra Club, San Francisco Bay Chapter, promised that each of the abovementioned deficiencies will be further documented by additional submissions to the record prior to a hearing on this appeal by the Board. So, stay tuned.

Day after 49ers vote, EPA says shipyard dust monitoring OK

Mary Magee
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Day after 49ers vote, EPA says shipyard dust monitoring OK

The day after the 49ers scored “a touchdown with Santa Clara voters“, the U.S. EPA announced it has finalized a report about asbestos dust control issues at the Hunters Point Shipyard.

Maybe the timing is all just a big coincindence. But the U.S. EPA was hopping mad earlier this year when Lennar claimed that “Obama’s EPA” had declared the shipyard dust conditions safe, after viewing a draft copy of the U.S. EPA report.

So, there’s one worldview that says the U.S. EPA delayed release of its final report, so it wouldn’t get mixed up in the city’s hearings on the final EIR for Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard development.

Either way, if the 49ers really do leave, that’s more land for Lennar to build houses on.

There’s also the worldview that says the 49ers used the Santa Clara vote to squeeze a better deal out of San Francisco.(And as Lenny Kravitz likes to sing, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.)

But with city officials admitting  that it doesn’t make financial sense to build a new stadium, it’s easy to arrive at the view  that the city used fears that the 49ers would leave to rush approval of the city’s final EIR for the Lennar project, a vast document that could have used more scrutiny and review time.

Anyways, amid  the competing conspiracy theories, it’s worth taking the time to read the report i its entirity. And if you don’t have the time for all that, here is the full text of the cover letter that the US EPA released today:

“Dear Bayview Hunters Point Community and Stakeholders:

EPA has finalized the report entitled, “U.S. EPA’s Final Review of Dust/Naturally Occurring Asbestos Control Measures and Air Monitoring at the Former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (June 9, 2010).” 

“About the Report:

EPA conducted a technical review of dust mitigation plans and an independent laboratory analyses of data associated with the City and Air District’s efforts to control naturally-occurring asbestos and dust associated with construction activity on Parcel A at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. EPA also evaluated metals and radiation data for both the Parcel A development work and Navy activities on the Shipyard. “

“EPA made independent technical advisory services available to community members to review the data and EPA’s draft report.  EPA held a public meeting for the community to hear comments from the technical expert.  The comments and EPA’s responses are attached to the final report. “

“Naturally-occurring asbestos in dust at construction sites is a widespread concern in California where serpentine soil is common.  EPA’s report finds that best practices for dust monitoring and mitigation are in place at Parcel A and the Hunters Point Shipyard to protect the community by keeping exposures to asbestos, metals and radiation in dust within
acceptable levels.”

Newsom and his commissioners just love Candlestick/Shipyard report

Mary Magee
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 Text by Sarah Phelan, photos by Luke Thomas

Today, I’m dedicating Michael Franti’s  “Say hey, (I love you)” to the entire Redevelopment Commission and the four Planning Commissioners who approved the City’s final Environmental Impact Report plan for Lennar’s Candlestick/ shipyard development. I’m doing so, not because I love these commissioners, who are  all mayoral appointees, but because they all seem to love everything about the final report, despite ongoing concerns about building a bridge over an environmentally sensitive slough, taking park land for luxury condos and unresolved questions about the Navy’s cleanup of the shipyard.(Yes, the EIR doesn’t address the toxic cleanup, but does it make sense to approve it before the Navy has completed its cleanup assessment plan?)

I’m also dedicating Franti’s bubbly soul-lifting song to Planning Commissioners Christina Olague. Kathrin Moore and Hisashi Sugaya for refusing to rubberstamp the final EIR or the related CEQA findings. Thanks guys for having some moral backbone!

Mayor Gavin Newsom, presumably tweeting while leaving town again on the Lt. Governor campaign trail, hailed yesterday’s rubberstamping process as a critical milestone.
“This is a major milestone for our efforts to transform the shipyard from an environmental blight to a showcase of jobs, affordable housing, parks and green-technology investment for the Bayview and our entire City,” Newsom said in a press release. “The approvals of the EIR and Redevelopment Plan reflect the years of hard work, rigorous study and extensive community involvement invested in revitalizing our City’s Southeastern Waterfront…our progress today is a testament to their leadership and commitment to thoroughly cleaning up the Shipyard so we can forge ahead towards a new vision for Hunters Point.”

One of the key points to emerge from last night’s hearing is the bifurcated nature of the process, which yesterday let the city push the EIR certification through, before the Navy completes a related EIS (environmental impact statement) about the cleanup on the shipyard—including areas of land where Lennar hopes to develop homes if the 49ers leave.

Fog City Journal’s Luke Thomas told me today that during public comment, the Nation of Islam’s Minister Christopher Muhammad called the commissioners “paid prostitutes” and “political whores” and said there would be a “political earthquake” if the commissioners go forward with EIR. 

“However, I don’t think he understood that the EIR and the EIS (which deals with the toxic cleanup) are two separate documents,” Thomas said, accurately noting that the joint commission was only voting on the EIR yesterday.

(According to Thomas, the Minister also promised that coalition of activists that would dog Newsom up and down the State during his campaign for Lt. Governor to expose Newsom’s record, so expect more fireworks along the campaign trial this summer.)

Another key fact to emerge from yesterday’s hearing was the lack of public comment on the part of almost all the candidates running to replace D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes this massive development. Only Kristine Enea, Tony Kelly and Espanola Jackson spoke on the record—with Enea in favor of the plan with amendments, and Kelly and Jackson opposed as things currently stand.

Now, you’d think that everyone running in this race would be eager to show D. 10 constituents (and beyond) that they were at the meeting, not only silently tracking, but also publicly expressing their opinions. And while it’s true that Marlene Tran and DeWitt Lacy filled in speaker cards, Chris Jackson showed up during the proceedings, and Lynette Sweet got ushered into the press box by Sup. Bevan Dufty, none of these D. 10 candidates got their thoughts in the public record. Now, no doubt Cedric Akbar, Bill Barnes, Isaac Bowers, James Calloway, Malia Cohen, Ed Donaldson, Marie Franklin, Rodney Hampton Jr., La Vaughan Moore, Geoffrea Morris, Steve Moss, Jacqueline Norman, Nina Pickerrell, Dwayne Robinson, Diane Wesley Smith, Eric Smith, (and the many others rumored to be running) had their reasons for not being there, and I’d be happy to hear all about it from all of them between now and the November election.

But it doesn’t instill confidence in candidates when they won’t say in public what they are only too willing to say off the record. So, kudos to Enea, Kelly and Jackson for taking that leap and refusing to act like politicians before they have even been elected.

“So much of it was shocking but not surprising,” Tony Kelly told me today, after he recovered from last night’s meeting which lasted until 2 a.m. ‘Everyone knew there would be a snappy 4-3 decision by the Planning Commission on the stuff that mattered. And in a way, I can see why the mayoral appointees on the Commission would decide that they would leave it to the elected officials on the Board to stop this plan. But there was zero excuse for the lameness of the Redevelopment Commission [who are all mayoral appointees]. Still, it showed what the Planning Commission [which today consists of four mayoral appointees, and three Board appointees] must have been like  before it was reformed [and still consisted solely of mayoral appointees].”

“It was heartbreaking to see the endless parade of Bayview Hunters Point residents saying, ‘I need a job,’ or ‘ I need to live in a new house,’ as they argued in favor of certifying the project’s final EIR, despite all the flaws,” Kelly acknowledged.

Still, as Kelly points out, the city could have pushed to acquire foreclosed housing in D. 10 so residents in substandard public housing could be relocated into decent units now, instead of having to stay at least another five years, or longer, in rat, cockroach and sewage inundated units, under Lennar’s plan.

Kelly also notes that the city could have used the Redevelopment Agency’s “massive power” to do stuff up and down Third St, where unemployment is especially visible.

“Having done planning elsewhere, this plan [for Candlestick and the shipyard] is like planning on Mars,” Kelly said. ‘This is a bigger badder version of 555 Washington.”

Last but not least, Kelly voiced concern that a couple of peaker plants will be built within Lennar’s project area.
.“There are going to be two combustion turbines generating steam heat, but not electricity within the project boundaries,” Kelly clarified. “That means they don’t have to register as a power plant, but they will be generating greenhouse gases. The only difference is they won’t be generating electricity.”

So, now the charade of approvals heads to the Port Commission, which has got some folks asking whether Port Commissioner Stephanie Shakofsky, another Newsom appointee should recuse herself , given that her non-profit is clearly such a fan of the project.

 

 

Should Antonini recuse himself from Lennar vote?

Mary Magee
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1
Should Antonini recuse himself from Lennar vote?

As a Newsom appointee, Planning Commissioner Michael Antonini is expected to be a key vote today in favor of Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan at Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard.

And then there’s the fact that he wrote an op-ed for the San Francisco Business Times in December 18, 2009, suggesting that business, civic, labor and government leaders can keep the 49ers in town by “joining forces to assist in needed repairs and improvements to Candlestick Park and to expedite development of the Candlestick Point Hunters Point Shipyard, a project that features a “state-of-the art,” 69,000-seat football stadium.”
(The full text of Antonini’s op-ed is included at the end of this post to put his words into full context.)

But Antonini’s cheerleading has got some folks questioning his impartiality when it comes to the decisions that members of the Planning and Redevelopment Commissions will make today around certifying the project’s Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) and adopting related environmental findings.

In a June 2 letter to Planning Commission president Ron Miguel, Arthur Feinstein of the Sierra Club, Mike Lynes of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, Jennifer Clary of San Francisco Tomorrow and Jaron Browne of POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) claim that “Commissioner Antonini has clearly prejudged the proposed project and become a strong advocate for locating a football stadium for the 49ers at the Hunters Point site as part of this project.”

“He has publicly urged others to support that stadium and cannot impartially review the record before him to determine whether the EIR is adequate, accurate and objective and whether adequate measures are required to protect the environment,” the foursome continue.

 Noting that he could have chosen to sign the December 2009 op-ed as a Member of the Republican County Central Committee, Feinstein, Lynes, Clary and Browne observe that Antonini “ instead identified himself in the capacity where the law requires him to act impartially – as a Planning Commissioner.”

With others arguing that Antonini’s right to express his opinion is protected by the First Amendment, and Antonini planning to read a rebuttal into the record at 1 p.m. today, it sounds like there’ll be plenty of drama at today’s hearing.

Antonini’s Op Ed in San Francisco Business Times

Friday, December 18, 2009
Business leaders can save the Niners
San Francisco Business Times – by Michael J. Antonini

“The 49ers are deeply and historically identified with San Francisco. San Franciscans Vic and Tony Morabito founded the team in 1946, many years before the Giants moved from New York and the Warriors from Philadelphia.

Hence business, civic, labor and government leaders are joining forces to assist in needed repairs and improvements to Candlestick Park and to expedite development of the Candlestick Point Hunters Point Shipyard, a project that features a “state-of-the art,” 69,000-seat football stadium. Leaders from the Committee on Jobs, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Recreation and Park and others are asking businesses and individuals to help with funding of improvements at Candlestick in return for advertising. These improvements could translate into increased revenue for the contributor, the city and the team. Replacement of aging seats and a highly visible new luxury section are two concepts being studied.

Naming rights to Candlestick Park is an attractive opportunity for a company or an entity to gain nationwide exposure and local acclaim — and, perhaps, position itself to be a key contributor when a new stadium is built at Hunters Point. No new stadium can be built anywhere without significant private investment, in addition to $100 million assured from Lennar Corp. as a precondition of development rights and the amount which the 49ers ownership would invest.

On Thursday, Dec. 17, the San Francisco Planning Commission was to hear comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Candlestick Point Hunters Point Shipyard Plan. Because this plan features many diverse uses, particularly huge amounts of housing, funding is being rapidly obtained for greatly improved transit and traffic access.

San Francisco must avoid the errors of the past, when we failed to build an arena for indoor sporting, major conventions and entertainment events. Such a facility could have brought huge amounts of revenue to San Francisco businesses.

Leaders have twice stepped up to save the San Francisco Giants. One would expect no less from our leaders when dealing with our home grown, five- time Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers!

Michael J. Antonini is a planning commissioner for the City and County of San Francisco.”

 

Political juggernaut

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Political juggernaut

sarah@sfbg.com

City officials are scrambling to secure final approvals to allow Lennar Corp. to move forward with its 770-acre Candlestick/Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment of San Francisco’s impoverished and polluted southeast sector. But the community remains divided on the project, raising concerns that wary residents will end up being steamrolled by this politically powerful juggernaut.

Some groups say the project needs major amendments, but fear it will be rushed to the finish for political reasons. Others say they are hungry to work and desperate to move into better housing units, so they don’t want all the myriad project details to slow that progress. And Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration is arguing that approving the project’s final environmental impact report by June 3 is crucial if San Francisco wants to keep the San Francisco 49ers in town.

But many observers fear Lennar wants its entitlements now before its project can be subjected to greater scrutiny that could come with the November elections. Newsom, who made Lennar’s project the centerpiece of his housing policy, will be replaced as mayor if he wins the lieutenant governor’s race. And a crowded field of candidates, many of them progressives concerned about the project’s impacts on the poor and the environment, are vying to replace termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Lennar’s massive territory.

“It’s 180 percent about the 49ers,” land use attorney Sue Hestor told the Guardian, referring to the city’s proposed rush job, as evidenced by a rapid entitlement schedule that the Newsom’s administration wants city commissions and the board to follow.

Under that schedule, which Hestor procured from the Mayor’s Office, Planning and Redevelopment commissioners are expected to certify the project’s final 6,000-page EIR, adopt California Environmental Quality Act findings, approve amendments to the project’s original disposition and development agreement, and authorize land trust and open space reconfigurations — all during a June 3 meeting where public comment will likely last for many hours.

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, a community-based nonprofit that tracks the development, says this schedule stretches the credulity that this is a deliberative process. “There’s no way anyone could make a functional reasoned assessment,” Bloom told us. “How do you have any meaningful public conversation under those circumstances?”

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s chief economic advisor, asserted in an April 29 article in The New York Times that Lennar’s plan is a “really, really good project,” echoing the glowing praise he’s heaped on the project since its conception.

“But there’s nothing new in their proposal,” Bloom told us. “That’s because they haven’t been listening to the public’s concerns. [Cohen] says, ‘Haven’t we talked enough? The community’s been waiting all these years!’ But waiting to get what done?”

Lennar’s project — which had early backing from Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and other political power brokers — was sold as creating “jobs, housing, and parks” and “revitalizing the abandoned shipyard” when voters approved the Lennar-financed Proposition G in 2008.

“Proposition G is from the community and for the community,” Lennar’s campaign promised. “You can turn the abandoned Hunters Point Shipyard into a clean, healthy, sustainable, livable neighborhood — a place where people can raise their children.”

The shipyard once employed thousands of workers, including African Americans who were recruited from the South in the 1940s and ’50s. But the district’s economic engine fell into disrepair when the military left in 1974. Today the neighboring Hunters Point and Bayview neighborhoods have the highest unemployment and crime rates and the largest concentration of African American families in the city.

But the city’s final EIR for the project, which the Planning Department released mid-May, shows that 68 percent of the developer’s proposed 10,500 new housing units will be sold at market rates unaffordable to area residents, and that many of these units will be built on state park land at Candlestick Point.

Lennar is also proposing to build a bridge across the environmentally sensitive Yosemite Slough, significantly changing the southeast waterfront. Lennar says it plans to develop the project’s remaining 3,000 units at below market prices, including one-for-one replacement of rundown Alice Griffith public housing units. Its proposal includes a dozen high-rise towers, 2.7 million square feet of commercial space, 1 million square feet of retail space, a performing arts theater, and an artists colony.

Lennar claims its proposal will create 1,500 construction jobs annually during the project’s 20-year build-out, along with 10,000 permanent jobs, thanks to a United Nations Global Compact Sustainability Center and a vaguely defined green technology office park.

The project and its impacts are already an issue in this year’s District 10 supervisor’s race (see “The battle for the forgotten district,” Feb. 23). Candidate Chris Jackson says Lennar’s proposal is weak when it comes to creating well-paying, low-skilled green collar jobs. He supports Arc’s proposal to including green maritime industrial use at the shipyard.

Arc recommends that the city’s final EIR allow recycling and repairing of ships, including the Suisun Bay Ghost fleet — decommissioned U.S. Navy, cruise, and ferry ships — arguing that “ship recycling and repair are resurgent strategic industrial activities yielding employment opportunities for our existing pool of skilled and unskilled workers.”

Jackson, who was elected to the Community College Board in 2008 and recently jumped into the District 10 race, wants the city to assert that the project is not a regional housing plan.

“It’s a local housing plan for local residents,” Jackson asserts. “It’s not here to provide housing for Silicon Valley. It’s for Bayview-Hunters Point and District 10 residents.”

Jackson understands why some local residents want no delays on final EIR approval: “I can never blame folks in Alice Griffith public housing for coming out and saying ‘no delays.’ They really want something real, housing that is not rat and cockroach infested.”

As a policy analyst (a position he’s quitting to focus on the District 10 race) for the San Francisco Labor Council — which gave key backing to the project in the 2008 election — Jackson knows labor is frustrated by all the project meetings. “I try to tell them it’s better to get this project right than rush it through and find out later that it goes against the interests of labor,” Jackson said.

In May 2008, the Labor Council signed a community benefits agreement (CBA) with Lennar. Since then labor leaders have urged no delays on the project’s draft EIR review. But Jackson believes the city must demand that financial consequences, such as liquidated damages, be a project approval condition if the developer reneges on the CBA.

“Right now the only push-back the city has is to threaten to kill the whole project if Lennar doesn’t meet its timeline,” Jackson said. “But people are really invested in this project, and I don’t believe anyone would pull the trigger and end the entire development. We don’t need to throw everything out; we just need to change them.”

Jackson wants to see the inclusion of a special-use district that would create a cooperative land trust to ensure affordability and home ownership opportunities for local residents. “I love open space and sustainability, but I also want affordable housing and real light-industrial opportunities that can employ people living in the district now.”

Special-use districts, Jackson argues, give city commissioners a way to amend this project to make it more acceptable.

Jackson wants to see strong tenant protections for public housing residents. “The vast majority of those residents are African American. At the end of the day, I want to see economic and environmental justice, so we can say we brought the right change to our community.”

Jackson also would like to see a more independent Mayor’s Office. “Don’t you feel like its 2002/2003, and that if you speak out against the project, it’s like you are speaking out against the Iraq war, and all of a sudden you are not patriotic?”

Fellow District 10 candidate Eric Smith concurred. “The powers that be are definitely moving this thing forward,” he said. “And this is a monster train, a juggernaut that is gathering steam. But how it shakes out down the road remains to be seen. My whole mantra is that there needs to be greater transparency down the line. If I become the sheriff, I’ll be shining a light on all this stuff.”

Smith warned that the community needs to work together or it won’t win a better deal. “It’s clear that folks in the city are hoping against all odds that Lennar can pull this stuff off so they can prove all the naysayers wrong and these community benefits can be realized, and that scrutiny of the projects can go on while all this happens,” he said.

But Arthur Feinstein, the Sierra Club’s political chair, worries that the city’s rush job is resulting in seriously flawed documents and decision-making. “It’s difficult for folks to digest 6,000 pages of comments and responses on the draft EIR in the three weeks since planning posted them online,” Feinstein said. “And nothing has changed despite all the comments, which is why it continues to be a nonsense process.”

Feinstein says the Sierra Club’s top concerns are the Parcel E-2 cleanup on the shipyard, a deal to transfer 23 acres at Candlestick Park for development, and the bridge over Yosemite Slough.

“You can cover most of the site,” he said. “But when it comes to Parcel E-2, where the dump burned for six months in 2002, that’s only 20 acres, it could and should be removed. This is the environmental justice issue that has the community up in arms.”

Feinstein worries about the precedent that selling a state park for condos sets. “This is our park, and they are shrinking it.” He is also concerned that the developer wants to bridge Yosemite Slough for cars.

How many of these concerns will be addressed at the June 3 hearing, which is just days before Santa Clara County voters decide whether to try to lure away the 49ers with a new publicly financed stadium? We’ll see.

Triumph of tenacity

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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10
Triumph of tenacity

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Nearly four years after City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit against Frank and Walter Lembi and their dizzying array of companies affiliated with CitiApartments for “an outrageous pattern of corporate lawlessness,” the powerful and notorious San Francisco landlords have watched their empire crumble.

The Lembi empire consisted of more 300 apartment buildings in San Francisco at its peak. Four Lembi subsidiaries that owned 16 buildings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. Twenty Lembi properties were taken over by Lennar spin-off LNR in late May; another 24 buildings are slated to be foreclosed in early June; 51 were deeded back to UBS bank in lieu of foreclosure early last year; and still others are now held by court-appointed receivers and managed by Laramar, an unaffiliated property-management company.

CitiApartments still owns and manages a large portion of the buildings it controlled in its heyday, but it’s had to either restructure loans or get payment extensions to hold onto many of them, according to general counsel Ed Singer. The Lembi Group staff has dwindled, and a team of 18 dedicated solely to relocating tenants is now long gone.

For many renters in foreclosed units who managed to ride out what San Francisco Tenants Union director Ted Guillicksen has labeled CitiApartments’ “war of terror” against its occupants, the dust has finally settled. Gullicksen says that living in limbo is better than living under Lembi.

There are no more harassing phone calls pressuring them to move. No more sudden utility shutoffs. No armed agents showing up at the doorstep unannounced. No illegal construction projects clamoring away on the other side of paper-thin walls, destroying any hope of tranquility at home.

These are tactics CitiApartments used to drive people out, according Herrera’s 2006 complaint and an award-winning Guardian series (“The Scumlords,” March 25), in order to vacate units so they could be renovated and removed from rent control protections. A San Francisco Rent Board roster of 174 current and former Lembi properties as of May 25 lists no fewer than 1,890 cases associated with those buildings, the majority of them now settled.

While the sordid history of CitiApartments’ strong-arm tactics has been well-documented, tenant-rights advocates say the untold story of the Lembis’ rise and demise is that its entire business model hinged on evicting and relocating existing tenants — but that strategy failed, in large part because of a grassroots organizing effort that emboldened renters to stand their ground.

“The economic downturn played a role in it because the money stopped flowing,” says Gullicksen, who helped form the CitiStop Campaign in 2004 in response to reports of outrageous tactics. “But if the money kept flowing, I think they would have failed anyway. The end result was inevitable, given the tenant resistance.”

Darin Dawson moved into his apartment at 2 Guerrero St. in 1994 on a lease secured through the federal Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program. Dawson, who was diagnosed in 1987, said things turned sour in 1998 when Trophy Properties I DE LLC — one of the Lembis’ dozens of subsidiaries — snapped it up.

Their first contact was to inform him that he would have to move “because we don’t allow those kinds of leases in our buildings,” he recalled. He fought it with the help of the Housing Authority and managed to stay put. It was the first in a series of standoffs that ultimately stopped last September when the property was repossessed.

“Basically, I just dug my heels in and knew that I couldn’t get evicted,” Dawson said. Nonetheless, he spent years embroiled in conflict with the Lembi subsidiary while also battling AIDS-related illnesses.

There was the time he was ordered to vacate his apartment for two weeks during a seismic retrofit only to find it trashed when he returned. “The floors were ripped up,” he said. “The ceiling was hanging in some places. There was black grease smeared all over the walls.” He repaired it himself. Then came the constant phone calls, which started off artificially cheerful but turned threatening if he refused to accept money to relocate.

Dawson pays a base amount of $635 per month for his rent-controlled studio, so he suspected he might be a target. Once a residential manager discreetly warned him that his name was on a “hit list” of tenants whom the owners wanted gone, he said.

According to a confidential document leaked to advocates by an anonymous source, tenants who paid the least came under the greatest pressure to relocate since San Francisco rent-control laws prohibit raising existing occupants’ rents to market rate. The document outlines how loan repayment and estimated profits were calculated wholly on the expectation that existing tenants would vacate, rather than relying on normal projections like natural turnover.

“Tenants with significantly below market rents are chosen for thorough screening to see if they might be relocated,” according to the document, a 2008 Credit Suisse prospectus concerning a pool of 24 buildings under Lembi ownership that have since been foreclosed. “Those tenants most below market and/or with the longest history are the priority for relocation.”

All 24 buildings in question — including properties on Larkin, Market, Cesar Chavez, Post, and Leavenworth streets, in addition to others — were subject to rent control. “At acquisition [Aug. 30, 2007], the portfolio was approximately 5 percent vacant,” it notes. “As of May 2008 the portfolio was 19 percent vacant, as a result of Lembi successfully executing their business plan of vacating units and rolling them to market.”

Although the paperwork spelling this out in stark terms didn’t surface until recently, advocates who worked on the CitiStop campaign essentially figured it out years ago. A collaboration between the Tenants Union, Pride at Work, and other advocacy groups, the campaign sent organizers door-to-door to inform tenants of their rights, hosted potlucks where people could swap horror stories and forge alliances, and staged demonstrations outside CitiApartments’ Market Street offices.

They tracked public records from the Assessor-Recorder Office and swooped in to warn tenants whose buildings had fallen into the Lembis’ clutches. It didn’t always work. According to the Credit Suisse document, Lembi had relocated 2,500 units as of August 2008, a fact pointed to as evidence of its “successful track record.” But the relocation team only drove out a small number of the lowest-paying tenants; the vast majority of those who took buyout offers left units that paid closer to market rate.

“They really needed to get more turnover than what they accomplished,” Gullicksen said. “The fact that they couldn’t is attributable to the CitiStop campaign.”

Singer rejected this assessment, saying the real problem was the economic downturn and the loss of capital availability. “I can see why they want to say that, why they want to take credit for bringing down the Lembis,” he said. “But I don’t think it would have made any difference if [tenants] left or not.”

A common complaint nowadays is that former tenants haven’t gotten their security deposits back, a matter that has spurred a class-action lawsuit against 57 corporate defendants associated with the Lembi Group.

“They’re claiming that they have no money,” Brian Devine, an attorney with Seeger Salvas LLP, told the Guardian. Devine estimates that he will end up representing several thousand tenants who are entitled to their deposits. In March, a judge awarded sanctions of $30,000 to Devine’s firm because the Lembi Group refused to cooperate with discovery, withholding documents necessary for the case to proceed.

Herrera has encountered a similar recalcitrance in his own suit and won court sanctions of $50,000 in February for the same reason. “We have been engaged in discovery for a long, long time,” noted city attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey. “We’re hoping that the judge is at the edge of his patience.”

Singer said the problem was that there wasn’t enough “people power” to photocopy thousands of documents. The Lembis were never up to any nefarious purpose, Singer insisted — they only wanted to make the buildings nicer. As for the tenants who endured the most brutal relocation tactics? “I can understand why they didn’t want to leave,” he said. “Some of them didn’t leave — and they’re still there.”

What happens when Lennar doesn’t have a say

Mary Magee
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1
What happens when Lennar doesn’t have a say

Today the Planning Commission holds a hearing about Lennar’s massive development plan for Candlestick and Hunters Point Shipyard, a plan the Guardian has been critically tracking for years, but the Mayor’s Office and a non-profit called the Center for Creative Land Recycling have been busily promoting (check out the above video clip). But one thing they won’t be talking about is the Alternatives For Study that Arc Ecology proposed, Bionic developed and Urban Strategies reviewed two years ago, in an effort to improve the developer’s otherwise Foster City-like vision for the heart of District 10 in the city’s southeast sector.

And that’s ironic, because the AFS proposal just received an honor award.(Scroll to bottom of AFS proposal link to see award.)

Saul Bloom, Arc Ecology’s excutive director, explains why Bionic got the award, and who was involved in the AFS proposal.
“Bionic is our landscape architectural and planning consultant,” Bloom said. “We do the conceptual planning and they do the detail, design and associated planning work. So in AFS, I worked with Bionic to develop the land use plans and analysis. I conceptualized where they would put various features of the plan, they either agreed, offered alternatives, or argued why I didn’t know what I was talking about. It was then my decision as to what went forward to the draft document.Once the draft document was produced Eve Bach [recently deceased], Ruth Gravanis, Arthur Feinstein, Junious and Anne from Urban Strategies and a number of other folks reviewed the materials and edited text. Bionic then finalized the design, I gave final approval and the document was published.  As such it really was a team planning effort.However because Bionic is the landscape architecture firm – they get the fame.  Because of Arc’s karma we get the infamy.”

So, is it fair to say that none of the AFS proposal are in the plan that will be the subject of today’s hearing, which promises to focus on the below-market rate housing plan, the community benefits plan, workforce development and local hiring policies?

 “Not entirely,” Bloom quipped. “They have been integrated into the study in order to reject them.”

Chris Jackson leaps into the District 10 race

Mary Magee
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9
Chris Jackson leaps into the District 10 race

Community College Board Trustee Chris Jackson has thrown his hat into the District 10 Supervisor race. The move is guaranteed to upset the already crowded field of candidates in the district. District 10 lies in the city’s southeast sector and is home to San Francisco’s largest remaining African American community, and some of its most economically disadvanted communities and environmentally polluted lands.

Jackson was elected to the Community College Board in 2008, winning more than 8,000 votes in District 10, as part of that citywide election. And he has done a good job on the Board ever since.

The only African-American male currently holding elected  public office in San Francisco, Jackson works as a policy analyst for the San Francisco Labor Council. That position is sure to raise questions about Jackson’s ties to Lennar’s redevelopment proposal at Candlestick Point and the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The Labor Council entered a community benefits agreement with the developer shortly before the June 2008 election on Prop. G. and Labor Council representatives appear to be proponents of Lennar’s draft environmental impact report (DEIR). A final version of that report is expected to come before  the Board of Supervisors for approval in June.

But Jackson told us that he will fight to keep District 10 a middle-class district and not a neighborhood dominated by millionaire’s condos.

 

No more stalling on CCA

David Talbot
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1
No more stalling on CCA

EDITORIAL There’s nothing wrong with city officials taking tough stands in negotiations with private contractors. Hundreds, thousands of times in the past few years, San Francisco department heads have rolled over and given away the store in sweetheart deals that put the city on the hook for all the money, make the public take all the risk, and give a private outfit all the profit. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (remember the Tulock-Modesto sellout contract?), Lennar Corp., Recurrent Energy, and countless other developers, builders, suppliers, and service providers have easily taken the public to the cleaners with contracts that never seemed to get stuck in the due diligence process.

But when there’s a looming deadline, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the city’s energy future and environmental footprint at stake, why is the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission moving so incredibly slowly to hammer out a deal for the city’s community choice aggregation (CCA) program? And why is PUC general manager Ed Harrington doing everything in his power to make sure that nothing happens that might put the city in the power business until after PG&E’s initiative, Prop. 16 — which would block public power efforts — passes at the polls?

It’s infuriating — and the supervisors need to tell the PUC that they won’t approve anything the agency does or wants to do until this contract is completed.

Harrington’s shop has known for more than a year that it needed to work out a business deal with a supplier that could replace PG&E and manage a program to buy greener, cheaper power in bulk and resell it to San Francisco residents. Marin County is setting up a similar program and is far ahead of San Francisco. The city has chosen a vendor, Powerchoice Inc., run by people completely qualified to handle the business.

And now there’s a absolute, drop-deal mandate: the city has to complete negotiations and get the program underway before the June 8 election. That’s because PG&E is spending $35 million to try to pass an initiative that would mandate a two-thirds vote of the public before any new CCA can begin selling power to customers. If San Francisco wants to present a solid legal case that its CCA is already in business, the contract with Powerchoice needs to be completed and signed, now.

But Harrington has, to put it kindly, been dragging his feet. The negotiations are hung up on a few points, although none are deal-breakers; Powerchoice already has agreed to assume some of the financial risk, which was the biggest obstacle to a deal. Now it’s just a matter of hammering out the details — but the PUC staff isn’t acting as if there is any time pressure at all.

In fact, last week Harrington circulated a draft press release all but announcing that he was tossing the whole deal under the bus and postponing negotiations until after the June election. He wanted to say that the "uncertainly" surrounding Prop. 16 made a deal impossible.

But Powerchoice isn’t walking away or complaining about the initiative. The company’s CEO, Sam Enoka, made it clear to us in an interview April 26 that he is eager to move forward. If Harrington — an experienced negotiator with a large staff at his disposal — and his boss, Mayor Gavin Newsom, wanted a deal, it could be finished well ahead of the deadline.

Instead, Harrington showed up at the Local Agency Formation Commission meeting April 23 with charts and a PowerPoint presentation purporting to show that renewable energy is too expensive to sell at rates comparable to what PG&E charges local customers. That misses the point — PG&E’s rates are going up every year and renewables are coming down, and the greatest risk to the city, the ratepayers, and the planet is sticking with the unreliable private utility that relies on fossil fuels and nuclear power for much of its electricity portfolio.

If the city has legitimate issues with Powerchoice, fine: Sit down and begin working them out. Now. But the only thing we can see at this point is the administration of a mayor who wants to be lieutenant governor intentionally delaying the process and giving PG&E exactly what it wants. (We called the PUC April 26, our print deadline, to ask why there were no talks scheduled that day, but Harrington wasn’t available; he was taking the day off.)

Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos suggest that the board simply refuse to sign off on any contracts, appropriations, or other approvals for anything the SFPUC does until this contract is completed. That’s a fine idea; they should start today.

No more stalling on CCA

David Talbot
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EDITORIAL There’s nothing wrong with city officials taking tough stands in negotiations with private contractors. Hundreds, thousands of times in the past few years, San Francisco department heads have rolled over and given away the store in sweetheart deals that put the city on the hook for all the money, make the public take all the risk, and give a private outfit all the profit. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (remember the Tulock-Modesto sellout contract?), Lennar Corp., Recurrent Energy, and countless other developers, builders, suppliers, and service providers have easily taken the public to the cleaners with contracts that never seemed to get stuck in the due diligence process.

But when there’s a looming deadline, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the city’s energy future and environmental footprint at stake, why is the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission moving so incredibly slowly to hammer out a deal for the city’s community choice aggregation (CCA) program? And why is PUC general manager Ed Harrington doing everything in his power to make sure that nothing happens that might put the city in the power business until after PG&E’s initiative, Prop. 16 — which would block public power efforts — passes at the polls?

It’s infuriating — and the supervisors need to tell the PUC that they won’t approve anything the agency does or wants to do until this contract is completed.

Harrington’s shop has known for more than a year that it needed to work out a business deal with a supplier that could replace PG&E and manage a program to buy greener, cheaper power in bulk and resell it to San Francisco residents. Marin County is setting up a similar program and is far ahead of San Francisco. The city has chosen a vendor, Powerchoice Inc., run by people completely qualified to handle the business.

And now there’s a absolute, drop-deal mandate: the city has to complete negotiations and get the program underway before the June 8 election. That’s because PG&E is spending $35 million to try to pass an initiative that would mandate a two-thirds vote of the public before any new CCA can begin selling power to customers. If San Francisco wants to present a solid legal case that its CCA is already in business, the contract with Powerchoice needs to be completed and signed, now.

But Harrington has, to put it kindly, been dragging his feet. The negotiations are hung up on a few points, although none are deal-breakers; Powerchoice already has agreed to assume some of the financial risk, which was the biggest obstacle to a deal. Now it’s just a matter of hammering out the details — but the PUC staff isn’t acting as if there is any time pressure at all.

In fact, last week Harrington circulated a draft press release all but announcing that he was tossing the whole deal under the bus and postponing negotiations until after the June election. He wanted to say that the "uncertainly" surrounding Prop. 16 made a deal impossible.

But Powerchoice isn’t walking away or complaining about the initiative. The company’s CEO, Sam Enoka, made it clear to us in an interview April 26 that he is eager to move forward. If Harrington — an experienced negotiator with a large staff at his disposal — and his boss, Mayor Gavin Newsom, wanted a deal, it could be finished well ahead of the deadline.

Instead, Harrington showed up at the Local Agency Formation Commission meeting April 23 with charts and a PowerPoint presentation purporting to show that renewable energy is too expensive to sell at rates comparable to what PG&E charges local customers. That misses the point — PG&E’s rates are going up every year and renewables are coming down, and the greatest risk to the city, the ratepayers, and the planet is sticking with the unreliable private utility that relies on fossil fuels and nuclear power for much of its electricity portfolio.

If the city has legitimate issues with Powerchoice, fine: Sit down and begin working them out. Now. But the only thing we can see at this point is the administration of a mayor who wants to be lieutenant governor intentionally delaying the process and giving PG&E exactly what it wants. (We called the PUC April 26, our print deadline, to ask why there were no talks scheduled that day, but Harrington wasn’t available; he was taking the day off.)

Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos suggest that the board simply refuse to sign off on any contracts, appropriations, or other approvals for anything the SFPUC does until this contract is completed. That’s a fine idea; they should start today.

Connecting the dots between Lennar’s vendors

Mary Magee
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Connecting the dots between Lennar’s vendors

Tomorrow (April 20), the Board of Supervisors will decide whether to support Sup. Chris Daly’s resolution to urge the Lennar Corp. to issue a formal, written apology to members of the Stop Lennar Action Movement and the City and County of San Francisco for irresponsible and potentially dangerous behavior.

At issue is a Feb. 18 incident in which a retired SFPD officer took a concealed weapon to a community meeting at the Nation of Islam’s Third Street mosque, where he gave a false name–and ended up handcuffed to a light pole.

If the past is any indication, plenty of allegations will be swirling tomorrow. So, before that drama unfolds, here is what’s in the public record, so far.

After questions arose as to whether the retired SFPD officer was employed by Lennar’s public relations subcontractor Sitrick and Company, or global security giant Andrews International, which swallowed up Lennar’s security subcontractor Verasys LLC, last fall, Lennar Urban’s president Kofi Bonner sought to clarify the Feb. 18 incident.

In an April 15 letter, Bonner tried to reassure Daly, other elected officials and the community, “that we are working to ensure that such an episode will never happen again.”

“You can be assured that no one from Lennar has any wish to escalate the atmosphere of blame and suspicion that led to this incident, which we truly regret happened,” Bonner said.

“As part of this effort the vendor and subcontractor most directly involved have expressed their apologies and clarified the record and facts surrounding this unfortunate occurrence,” Bonner said.

Bonner was referring to an April 14 letter that Verasys’ managing partner D.C. Page sent to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.
“Verasys was requested by our client, Lennar, to send a consultant to take notes at the public hearing,” Page wrote. “Lennar did not at any time ask that the consultant carry a firearm to the meeting and was not informed in advance that he had a concealed weapon.”

“Similarly, we had no way of knowing that the retired police officer whom we assigned to attend the meeting was going to a mosque or a house of worship,” Page continued. “Had we known, we would have ensured that the consultant did not bring a firearm to the meeting. We apologize to anyone who was offended by the presence of a weapon at a community meeting.”

Daly also received an April 14 letter from consultant Denise LaPointe, who clarified that Sitrick and Company has worked for Lennar and its subsidiaries since 2007.
“The Miami office originally hired the public relations firm to work on various matters relating to Lennar, which is a publicly traded company,” LaPointe wrote.

“As a result, the Los Angeles office of Sitrick became engaged with Lennar’s efforts in California including, but not limited to, the Hunter’s Point Shipyard project,” LaPointe continued, noting that Sitrick has offices in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco and New York, in addition to its Miami and Los Angeles offices.

(Sitrick’s office in Miami is located at 66 West Flagler Street, in Suite 410, which sounds like just a short stroll from Verasys’s office in Miami, which is located at 66 West Flagler Street, in Suite 401.)

‘In my experience, Sitrick and Company has worked in concert with Singer and Associates, a firm with a contractual agreement with Lennar dating back to 2000,” LaPointe continued, noting that Sitrick and Singer are both “communications firms specializing in large companies with complex public relations needs.”

Finally, LaPointe noted that the retired police officer didn’t have a contract with Andrews International.
“I have been informed that no contract exists,” LaPointe wrote.

Last but not least, an attorney for the retired SFPD officer sent the Board an apology, dated April 15, on behalf of his client.

“I would like to sincerely apologize for taking a concealed and un-displayed firearm to a community meeting held at the Nation of Islam center in Bayview Hunters Point on Feb. 18,” reads the apology, which was submitted by attorney James A. Lassart, who works in the San Francisco offices of Ropers, Majeski, Kohn & Bentley.

“I was assigned by a security firm, Verasys LLC, to attend a public meeting to make a record of a lecture concerning a draft environmental impact report,” Lassart’s client continues. “As a retired police officer in good standing with the San Francisco Police Department after 33 years of service, I routinely carry a concealed firearm and am licensed by the state of California to do so. Neither Verasys nor Lennar was aware that I had a firearm that night, nor did they request that I take one.”

”Notwithstanding my legal right to carry a firearm, I was unaware that the presence of my firearm would result in so much controversy,” Lassart’s client continues. “Had I known the meeting was being held in a house of worship, I would not have brought a weapon.”

“I am hopeful that my own ordeal that night is not forgotten,” the retired SFPD officer’s apology letter concludes. “I am withholding my identity because I was terrified by what happened to me and continue to fear for my safety. I was held against my will for nearly an hour, handcuffed to a light pole and repeatedly threatened with death by members of the Nation of Islam.”

Reached by phone, Daly said the letters don’t do what the resolution asks of Lennar.

“First, they are not addressed to the coalition,” Daly said, referring to the Stop Lennar Action Movement. “And I don’t need an apology.”

Daly said the letters seem to apologize for not knowing the meeting was held at a mosque, but not for sending an armed guy into a community meeting.

“It almost seems as if the letters were constructed in such a way as to avoid taking responsibility,” Daly said.

Calls to Lassart, the attorney for the retired police officer, remained unreturned as of this blog’s posting time.

At tomorrow’s Board meeting, there will be public comment on Daly’s resolution, but not a hearing into what happened Feb. 18, since a Board committee examined that incident at an April 12 meeting. So, in an effort to shine light on the serious issues that were raised on both sides of the equation, here are the main points from the SFPD report on the Feb. 18 incident:

According to the SFPD report, two officers were dispatched to 5048 Third Street, which houses the Nation’s Center for Self Improvement and Community Development, around 11.14 p.m, Feb. 18, regarding a “possible gun call” that involved “an approximately 50-year-old white male with a gun, surrounded by a group of eight black males.”

When the officers arrived, they found “a white male”, who identified himself as Robert “Bob” Tarantino* (the name given on the police report is not the real name of the retired SFPD officer) with his arms handcuffed in front of him around a light pole, and several black males surrounding him,” the report states.

The police asked Bob if he had a gun and he said yes, it was located in his left, rear pants pocket. The police removed the gun. Bob then told them that he was “a retired Q50 (Sergeant)”.
In the man’s wallet, police found a retired SFPD ID card that bore a CCW-approved logo on it, “thus allowing him to legally carry a concealed weapon,” the police report observes.
The retired officer also had a California Guard registration card in his wallet.

The report notes that Nation of Islam member Mark Muhammad told the police that night that he was responsible for handcuffing the retired officer and that he wanted to make a citizen’s arrest.
“However, he did not have the key in his possession and would have to go home to get it,” the report states, adding that Muhammad returned a few minutes later and unlocked the handcuffs on Bob, who willingly agreed to return to the Bayview Station, pending further investigation.

When the police interviewed Mark Muhammad, he said it was brought to his attention that Bob, who arrived at the meeting around 7 p.m. with an associate, was attempting to record what was said in the meeting. Muhammad told the police that The Nation doesn’t allow recordings, “unless they have our permission.”

Muhammad said he asked Bob if he could speak with him outside, where he advised him that he could not record the meeting. After speaking with Bob, Muhammad cross-referenced the man’s alleged name with the sign-in sheet and found a different name.
Two other Nation members informed Mark that they had seen, “the imprint of a firearm in the man’s left rear pants pocket as he went to sit at his seat.”
According to the police report, when the Nation members confronted Bob, he denied having a firearm, at which point they physically escorted him from the building.

Once outside, Muhammad told Bob he was going to make a citizen’s arrest.
Muhammad subsequently told the police that at no point did Bob, “brandish a firearm, gesture as if he had a pistol, nor did he physically assault him, or any other members of the congregation throughout the entire incident.”

Muhammad told police that Bob said to him, “You are making a mistake Mark! You’re going about this the wrong way! You are going about this completely wrong! You’ll see!”

The police report notes that Muhammad told police that he interpreted these words as threats. However, the police told Muhammad that since nothing Bob said was an actual threat, he could not be arrested.

Muhammad then told the police that he wanted to make a citizen’s arrest for trespassing, and the officers accepted the citizen’s arrest “pending further investigation of the allegation.”

At the Bayview station, Bob produced a flyer advertising the meeting.
“The flyer stated that the meeting was open to the public, and anyone in the community was welcome to attend,” the police report states.

Bob told the police that he admitted having a tape recorder to the Nation’s Miles Muhammad, but denied taping the meeting.
Bob said Miles at first demanded the recorder, but eventually requested Bob’s name and contact information, then returned with Mark Muhammad, who questioned the validity of his contact information and then asked him to leave.

Bob told the police that as he got up and walked to the door, Mark Muhammad grabbed his right arm and Miles grabbed his left arm, forcing him out of the building.
Bob said that as he was being forced out, Mark said,” You have a gun,” and “You brought a gun in here.”
Bob told the police that he denied having a gun and said it was his wallet.

Outside the building, Bob said Mark, Miles, Terrance Muhammad, and an unknown person threw him against a wall.

Bob said he asked to leave, but was held against his will for approximately half an hour.

According to the police report, Bob said Mark yelled “You white motherfucker!” and “You come to our place.”
The report states that when Bob asked to leave again, Terrance said, “If you move I’ll break your fucking arm.”

Bob said Mark eventually had him call his supervisor in Florida.

Bob said that conversation “lasted for ten minutes of Mark screaming at [Bob’s] supervisor.”

Bob said he feared the Nation members would take his firearm from him. He said he told them he had a legal right to carry a firearm and had documentation to prove it.
“At that point Mark grabbed his left wrist and handcuffed it and forced him to the light pole and handcuffed him to the light pole,”  the police report states.

Bob said he pleaded with the Nation to call 9-11.
According to the police report, “Mark replied, ‘Don’t tell us what to fucking do,’ and ‘You ain’t going nowhere.’”

Bob said he was handcuffed to the light pole for about ten minutes before police arrived.
He again said he was in fear of his life and his associates’ life and believed Mark, Miles, Terrance and the unknown suspect were going to physically harm him. Bob also said during the entire time he never made any threats towards any one and was fully cooperating with the nation.

SFPD’s Captain Jimenez, who headed the police’s investigation into the incident, “decided that due to the fact that the meeting was open to the public and anyone in the community was invited to attend and the fact that Bob did not refuse to leave the meeting once ordered by Muhammad, he could not be cited for trespassing and he was subsequently released.

“Prior to leaving, Bob gladly provided the SFPD with his personal information however requested it be kept confidential as he was concerned with the possible retaliation by the individuals involved in the incident,” the report concludes, noting that Sgt. Daniels took all evidence and took it into custody at the Bayview Station.

Did Lennar hire an armed security guard from Andrews International?

Mary Magee
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Did Lennar hire an armed security guard from Andrews International?

I didn’t attend the April 12 hearing of the Board’s city operations and neighborhood services committee about Lennar’s decision to send an armed ex-SFPD officer to a Feb. 18 community meeting at the Nation of Islam’s mosque on Third Street.

But video footage shows that it was a packed house, during which plenty of folks stated loud and clear that they thought it was a really bad and potentially dangerous idea to send an armed ex-officer into a community meeting in the Bayview.



“What next? Concealed weapons at City Hall?” a member of the public asked.

At meeting’s end, Sups. John Avalos, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd voted to refer a resolution urging Lennar Corporation to issue a formal, written apology to members of the Stop Lennar Action Movement (SLAM.) to the full Board without recommendation, after Elsbernd voiced concern that the ex-officer may have been threatened and had racial epithets hurled his way.

“If the gentleman was threatened, if racial language was used, in that case it should not be one- sided,” Elsbernd said. “There should be apologies on the other side as well.”

Meanwhile, it’s worth shining light on another question: Who was the ex-officer actually working for?

During the meeting, much was made of the fact that the ex-officer, who told police his name was Bob Tarantino though apparently that is not his real name, gave as his work contact an address in Miami, Florida, where PR agency Sitrick and Company, has an office.

(Lennar once sent a Sitrick employee to talk to me and my editors at the Guardian, after we published the first in a series of reports that showed that the company failed to adequately enforce promised asbestos dust mitigation plans at its Shipyard site.)

But Sitrick managing director Glenn Bunting, who oversees the company’s San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Miami offices, told the Guardian that the ex-officer in question has never worked for or been an employee of Sitrick.

“We know who is on our pay roll and we don’t provide security services,” Bunting said.

He confirmed that Sitrick recently opened an office in Miami and sublets space from another firm in the same building. “We have a very small presence in Miami,” Bunting said.

So, who could Tarantino work for who  also has the same address in Miami, Florida, where Lennar Corporation is headquartered?

The building in question looks pretty big, lies across the street from the court house and is home to Andrews International, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, and bills itself as “a full service provider of security and risk mitigation services” and the “largest private, American-owned full-service security provider in the United States.”

In October 2009, Andrews International acquired Verasys LLC, a Miami-based consulting firm focused on global risk mitigation, investigations and security services.

“The acquisition added new offices in Miami, Tampa, Dallas, Atlanta and Bogotá, expanding service capabilities in all 50 states and Latin America” an Andrews International press release states.“ This followed the June 2009 acquisition of the U.S. and Mexico guarding operations of Garda World Security Corporation (TSX: GW), encompassing 14 offices across the U.S. and abroad. Most recently in January 2010, Andrews International acquired A&S Security, a California-based full service security company, expanding operations in its Western U.S. Region.”

So, it’s possible Bob Tarantino, or whatever his name is, works for these folks?
Lennar Urban’s Kofi Bonner has not replied to this question, as of this blog posting. But in a March 15 letter to Board President David Chiu and D. 10 supervisor Sophie Maxwell, Bonner said he was “working with our vendors to prevent such an episode from happening again.”


Bonner’s letter wasn’t entirely apologetic.

“Lennar has become increasingly concerned that some community meetings have devolved into hostility accompanied by intimidation of our supporters,” Bonner stated. “For that reason, I decided against sending any employees or consultants to the meeting in question.”

“I am truly disturbed by the ensuing physical and verbal abuse directed at the security firm employee,” Bonner continued. “Not surprisingly, he is independently considering his legal options.”

SF officials tap corporate cash

Sasha Cuttler
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SF officials tap corporate cash

San Francisco’s $500 campaign contribution limit makes it tough for rich individuals and corporations to curry favor with local politicians, right? Well, not really. Actually, politicians can still tap wealthy interests for tens of thousands of dollars for their special events and pet projects, as long as they fill out a form called “Payments Made at the Behest of an Elected Officer” within 30 days.

Traditionally, those forms have been buried in the files of the Ethics Commission, but the agency recently put them online, a rare bit of user-friendly sunshine from this often-toothless watchdog body. A Guardian review of the forms shows it is almost exclusively the city’s most fiscally conservative elected officials who use this tactic, tapping a relatively small pool of downtown power brokers.

When Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier wanted to support a Bizworld Foundation event in December, she had Pacific Gas & Electric donate $5,000 on her behalf. Sup. Sean Elsbernd throws a big annual crab-feed fundraiser in February, with proceeds going to the Laguna Honda Foundation. The form for this year’s event isn’t in yet, but last year he got $5,000 each from all the top anti-progressive funders: Don Fisher, Dede Wilsey, Charles Schwab, Warren Hellman, Platinum Advisors, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

But far and away the biggest beneficiary of these kinds of corporate donations is Mayor Gavin Newsom, who submitted more than half the forms on file. For last year’s Sunday Streets events, he tapped the Hellman family for $30,000, Blue Shield for $10,000, his favorite developer Lennar for $10,000, and Lennar subcontractor CH2M Hill for $5,000. The year before, the top Sunday Streets donors (at $20,000 each) were California Pacific Medical Center (which is seeking city approval to build two new hospitals) and Catholic Healthcare West.

For his swearing-in events in 2008, Newsom tapped old family friends Gordon and Ann Getty for $30,000, the Fisher family for $20,000, and Charles Schwab, Dede Wilsey, and Marc Benioff for $15,000 each. And, of course, PG&E gave him $10,000.

When Treasurer Jose Cisneros was starting his Bank on San Francisco program in 2008, he had Wells Fargo donate $20,000. When Sup. Bevan Dufty wanted to create Mission High School scholarships in his name, he called his friends Denise and John York, owners of the 49ers, to cut a check for $19,000.

Only one official from the progressive side of the local political spectrum turned to these big donations for help, and that was then-Sup. Aaron Peskin in 2007, when he wanted to raise $84,000 to buy a Telegraph Hill property to turn into open space. His top donors were the Gerson Bakar Foundation for $34,000 and 1301 Sansome LLC for $15,000.

So if you want to find out how downtown corporations are supporting the politicians they favor, keep your eye on this valuable new online resource.

The battle for the forgotten district

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The battle for the forgotten district

sarah@sfbg.com

This November, when voters in District 10 — the largest, sunniest, and most diverse of the city’s 11 supervisorial districts — replace termed out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, they’ll be making a selection that could have pivotal implications for the entire city.

That’s because the next supervisor from southeast San Francisco inherits a district that is home to some of the city’s biggest environmental and public health challenges, as well as the most potential for development that will determine what kind of city San Francisco becomes.

District 10 is where you’ll find the most polluted and most underdeveloped lands in San Francisco, areas that could either be transformed into models of a sustainability or, in the words of Tony Kelly, the president of Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association, “be turned into a toxic Foster City.”

District 10 is where the slaughterhouses, tanneries, and glue factories set up shop and used the bay as a dumping ground. It’s where the smokestacks of coal and oil fired power plants polluted the air. It’s where the Navy filled the Bay, built a shipyard at Hunters Point and loaded parts of the first atomic bomb onto the USS Indianapolis in 1945.

District 10 is where the bottom fell out of this industrial economy in 1974, when the Navy left, taking with it people’s jobs, pay, and hopes for a home of their own and a better future, particularly for what was then a predominantly African American population.

And District 10 is ground zero for plans that will triple the population and double the number of homes — homes that likely will only be “affordable” to Google executives and retirees from Marin, forever changing the face of San Francisco’s southeast sector. Critics fear that will accelerate what has been a steady exodus of black residents, replaced by megadeveloper Lennar’s vision for a new D10.

It’s against this dark history and difficult present that a wide open field of more than a dozen candidates are vying to replace Maxwell, who came to power in 2000 and has had a mixed voting record in her decade on the board. Sometimes, Maxwell was the eighth vote that let the progressive majority on the Board override Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto and pass trailblazing legislation. Other times, she was the swing vote that allowed the moderate minority to carry Newsom’s water.

So, in addition to D10’s many internal challenges, this seat could determine the political balance of power on the Board of Supervisors, placing all the more importance on voters in this long-marginalized part of town.

 

DISTRICT OF DISCONTENT

Eric Smith, a biodiesel activist who has thrown his hat in the D10 ring, says that there is a lot of frustration in the air, and looking at the problems the district is facing, it’s hardly surprising that it has what nearly every candidate agrees is a fractured political culture.

“The Bayview, the Hunters Point Shipyard’s toxic Superfund site, the homicide rate, unemployment, poor public transportation, dwindling services and community resources have made D10 one of the city’s largest melting pots of discontent,” Smith said.

Smith’s words were spoken while the Elections Department was verifying signatures earlier this month on a second failed effort to qualify a petition to recall Maxwell.

Bayview resident and D10 candidate Marie Franklin didn’t support the attempt to recall Maxwell, but she understood it as “a frustration movement.”

“People are sinking in the sand, we’ve already lost so many of them, and they felt Sophie wasn’t doing anything for them,” said Franklin, who praised Maxwell for helping get Franklin’s apartment building complex renovated — a job that was completed 18 months ago, at a cost of $65 million, creating 500 local jobs.

“There are 654 units here, and they were uninhabitable,” Franklin said. “There was black mold, rain falling inside. We had people living worse than Haiti.”

Franklin, who said she is running because she “knows the history,” came here in 1978, when she and her son were living in a car after a fire left them homeless. She said the Bayview was a totally isolated area, barely part of mainstream San Francisco.

“There were no taxis, no services,” she recalled. “Nobody would come here, it was the stigmatized area where no one was accountable to provide services.”

The Bayview — which in some ways is the heart of D-!0 — wasn’t always a black community. But African Americans have been living here for 70 years, dealing with all the racism, denial of services, poverty, and pollution. And it bothers Franklin that 85 percent of the 10,500 homes that Lennar plans to develop won’t be affordable to the elderly, disabled, unemployed and low-income people who currently live in the Bayview.

“We need to preserve the diversity of the community and make sure their issues and information will flow to City Hall,” she said. “You must give the people a handle. If you don’t reach out, they’ll slip. That’s why folks out migrated.

Whoever succeeds Maxwell will be a central player in addressing some very big and dirty issues: the future of the Navy’s radiologically impacted shipyard at Hunters Point, Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan for the Shipyard and Candlestick Point, the polluting power plants, replacement of stinky digesters at the sewage plant, and the SF Hope public lousing rebuild.

There’s also the chance to address violence and crime. James Calloway, a candidate who has long worked in Bay Area schools, told us he believes that education and jobs are part of the keys to rejuvenating the district.

“Job opportunities are not as plentiful in the district,” Calloway said. “When I was a kid, you could walk down Third Street at 2 a.m. Now I wouldn’t walk down it at 9 p.m., and I know the area.”

Calloway is hopeful that the massive redevelopment plan, if done correctly, could start the district’s comeback. “Not a lot of black folks stay here when they have extensive education,” he said. “But it’s not only them. Many were displaced by redevelopment and had no way to go back.”

 

ELECTION UP FOR GRABS

The largest of the city’s 11 electoral districts, D10 is a huge triangular piece of land in the city’s southeast sector that was used as an industrial dumping zone for decades. Today, the district runs from the Giants stadium at AT&T Park to the 49ers stadium at Candlestick Point and encompasses Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, India Basin, Portola, Little Hollywood, and Visitacion Valley. It’s also crossed by two freeways that isolate it from the rest of the city, and is home to a large number of crumbling housing projects that are in the process of being rebuilt.

Candidate Ed Donaldson grew up in the projects until he was 10 years old, when the Redevelopment Agency kicked his family out in the 1970s. “We landed on our feet, but others weren’t so lucky,” said Donaldson, who works as a housing counseling director at the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation.

“There is a sense that the Bayview and Visitacion Valley have not been included within the San Francisco family,” Donaldson said. “There is a sense of being forgotten.”

In 2007, Donaldson co-founded the Osiris Coalition to tackle the city’s dormant Certificate of Preference program, in which the Redevelopment Agency issued a document to displaced residents and businesses in the 1960s promising that they could return.

He also tried to rescue some 700 foreclosed properties and recycle them as affordable housing stock. And now he is trying to prevent the city from bulldozing seven SF Hope projects without guaranteeing residents that they have right to remain.

In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Maxwell convened an African American Outmigration Task Force that didn’t get a public hearing about its findings until August 2008. The timing angered some, who questioned why the report’s findings and implications for urban planning weren’t released before June 2008, when the residents of San Francisco voted for the Lennar-led Proposition G, a proposal to build 10,000 market rate homes at one of San Francisco’s last remaining black communities, which Newsom and Maxwell endorsed.

The taskforce didn’t publish its recommendations until the end of 2009, allegedly because of insider squabbling. Meanwhile, gentrification was going on actively, and many blamed Newsom, and by extension Maxwell, for failing to do anything with the group’s findings as D10 residents continued to suffer from high rates of asthma, cancer, unemployment and an ongoing black exodus.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 1940s, the district’s black population exploded when migrants from the south and World War II veterans came to work at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Some moved to Alice Griffith Public Housing complex, or Double Rock, which was built as military housing in 1962. Others relocated to the Bayview when the Redevelopment Agency took over the Fillmore/Western Addition in the ’60s and ’70s as part of a controversial urban renewal effort.

But when the Navy abandoned the shipyard in 1974, unemployment hit the black community hard. Today, hundreds of the city’s lowest income residents live in Alice Griffith’s crumbling units and endure sewage backups, no heat, cloudy drinking water and leaking ceilings, as they wait for the projects to be rebuilt.

“Generations have been trapped in the silo of public housing and cannot get out, because of lack of opportunity and education, so when we legislate, we need to take that into consideration,” said candidate Malia Cohen, whose grandfather came from Texas to work at the shipyard where he met her grandmother, whose family came from New Orleans.

“My grandfather’s father was a longshoreman. He worked with the infamous Leroy King [a commissioner at the city’s Redevelopment Agency] and he has fantastically vivid stories of racism,” said Cohen, who works for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, previously served on the executive staff of Mayor Gavin Newsom, and has already raised over $18,000 in the D10 race and qualified for public matching funds.

“My family came here to work hard, they lived on Navy road in the projects, and then they bought a house here. My parents were born here, and we were all public schooled,” Cohen recalled as she took me on a tour of D10 that ended up in Visitacion Valley, an increasingly Chinese-American neighborhood that reflects a district-wide trend.

Census data show that by 2000, Asians were the largest racial group in the district (30 percent), followed by blacks (29 percent), whites (26 percent), and Latinos (19 percent). By 2003, according to the California Urban Issues project, the trend continued. Asians were the largest racial group (32 percent), followed by blacks (27 percent), whites (21 percent) and Latinos (17 percent) of the population.

This means that D10 candidates will have to garner support from more than one ethnic group to win. Over a dozen candidates have already filed papers in the race, but so far there is no clear front-runner.

Also frustrating the prognosticators is that fact that D10 has had the lowest voter turnout in the city, so the winner will also depend on who goes to the polls.

D10 candidate Geoffrea Morris, who is the grand daughter of longtime Bayview activist Charlie Walker, has been knocking on doors and participating in voter registration drives.

“We need new blood,” Morris said

Getting elected will be a complicated equation. Although Bayview’s population was 50 percent African American at the time of the 2000 census, it didn’t turn out the vote. In the 2006 election, only 14,000 of the district’s 37,000 registered voters went to the ballot, and 50 percent were from whiter, richer, and more Asian neighborhoods.

“It’s very important to the future of the city that the ethnicity diversity of the board be maintained and that the African American community have representation,” former Board President and current Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin told the Guardian.

Maxwell recently told the Guardian that she’s not ready to endorse any D10 candidates yet. “I’m waiting for people to have a better understanding of what this community is, what the common thread running through it is, and how to use rank choice voting,” she told us.

The only candidate who currently holds elected office is BART director Lynette Sweet, who had her answers down pat when we reached her by phone, and even used wording that was eerily similar to Maxwell’s words.

“D10 is a pretty diverse district, but there is only one common thread: the need for economic development,” Sweet told me. “That’s true in Potrero Hill, Portola, Dog Patch and the Bayview. It’s the same mantra: a lot of small businesses need help, and the only way to help them is through economic development. In Potrero Hill it’s about land use. In the Bayview, it’s about the shipyard and better transportation and truancies.”

 

THE COMMON THREAD

District 10 is ground zero for the Lennar’s $2.2 billion plan to develop 10,500 market rate condos at the Shipyard and Candlestick Point. The plan will allegedly create thousands of jobs and new parks, deliver on an historic community benefits agreement that labor groups claim is so “lawyered up” that the developer can’t renege on its promises.

The package is framed as the one and only way to revitalize the southeast’s formerly vibrant economic engine. Indeed, any time anyone tries to slow down the process—to take time to thoroughly read the draft EIR and see if it adequately addresses the impacts of this massive urban reengineering project — a chorus of “no delays” starts up, either from residents of the housing projects desperate to see their homes rebuilt, or the labor contractors who hope to get jobs.

“It’s as if the city is playing checkers, while Lennar is playing three-dimensional chess,” Eric Smith observed.

Lennar has stated that it will contribute $711 million to finance this massive project. The remainder will be leveraged by Mello-Roos bonds, state taxes based on the use and size of a property and intended to raise money for needed services, and tax increment financing, which creates funding for projects by borrowing against future property tax revenues.

The conceptual plan won Maxwell’s backing but environmental groups are critical of the draft EIR.

During DEIR hearing, environmentalists questioned the wisdom and the cost of filling the Bay to build a bridge over Yosemite Slough, and building condos on Candlestick Point state recreation area, the only open major open space in the district.

But the city’s Planning Department also has 20,000-30,000 units of housing in its pipeline. This means that if all these plans get approved in the next decade, they’d account for 80 percent of residential development citywide. And D10’s population could triple, further skewing the district’s already shifting demographics.

In other words, D10 as we know it could become nothing more than a historic relic in a few years, and the next supervisor will play a key role in deciding whether that happens. SFHDC’s Ed Donaldson warns that any supervisor who does not understand the complexity of the city’s largest district can expect a similar recall backlash in future.

“There is no one homogenous voice in the community,” Donaldson said. “The grass-roots organizing that brought about the recall effort was a result of a changing political structure in the area, but is not yet on par with other districts in town. We still allow our politics to be controlled from downtown.”

Fellow candidate Eric Smith warns that the issues—and politics—are complex.

“People were emotional, angry, and desperate because they feel no one listens to them,” Smith said. “That’s part of the problem here; they would rather have a supervisor go down swinging for them, rather than watch one seemingly side with Lennar, PG&E and the mayor on issues contrary to their interests. That’s the terrible irony and one of the biggest problems in District 10. Folks are so mad, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make them feel they have a voice in the outcome, even if it’s potentially worse.”

Smith cited the sequence of events that culminated last year in the Navy dissolving the community-based shipyard Restoration Advisory Board (RAB), which for years has reviewed technical documents and commented on the Navy’s clean-up proposals. But in December, the Navy made its official decision to disband the RAB, citing dysfunctional behavior and off-topic discussions that got in the way.

“Some of the same folks who were frustrated by the process, tried to send a signal to the Navy that they weren’t being heard and for all their well-intentioned efforts got the RAB dissolved,” Smith said. “I truly feel for them, it’s absolutely heartbreaking, but at times, they can be their own worst enemy.”

One of the looming issues about the shipyard is that the land has been polluted and needs to be cleaned. The shipyard contains radioactive debris from ships towed to the shipyard, after a 90-foot wave washed over them during an atomic test gone awry. The Navy burned 610,000 gallons of radioactively contaminated ship fuel at the shipyard, and workers showered on the shipyard, raising concerns that radioactive materials got into the drains and sewers. And questions have been raised about radiological tests on animals at the yard.

 

LEAKS AND FLOODS

It’s not just the shipyard that’s toxic. Even the buildings that were constructed to house workers 50 years ago are a serious mess.

Realtor Diane Wesley Smith, who grew up in public housing projects, took me on a walking tour of Alice Griffith last week to see conditions that tenants will likely have to endure until at least 2014, if the city sticks to its plan to relocate people into a new replacement unit in the same geographical area, if not the exact same site.

What we found was pretty messed up.

“The water sometimes comes out brown and feels like sand. It’s been like that for a year,” one resident said.

“The water is cloudy, the bath tub isn’t working and the sink keeps stopping up,” said another.

A woman named Silvia showed us how the water from the tap in her elderly mother’s kitchen flows out cloudy and then doesn’t settle properly, like foamy beer.

“The roof’s been leaking for years, the sewage backs up, but they just fixed the lights,” Silvia said. A neighbor named Linda was using her oven as a heater.

“The toilet backs up a lot, and my grandson’s been coughing a lot from asthma,” Linda said.

“Roaches is always a problem,” said a woman named Stormi, dressed in black sweats and a black T-shirt that read, “Can’t knock the hustle.”

“They’re trying,” said Stormi, a member of the Alice Griffith Residents Association, as a couple of Housing Authority trucks pulled up to do repairs.

“They promise that you will not have to leave your unit, but if they try to move us down to the waterfront, well, there’s a reason there’s no housing there, and it’s because the land will flood,” Stormi said.

“If we don’t end up at the table, we’ll end up on the menu,” Wesley Smith warned, as she stopped to chat with a group of young men, who were worried they would pushed out of the Alice Griffith rebuild through the criteria being established.

“Fred Blackwell, the executive director of the Redevelopment Agency, assures me that’s not the case, but Alice Griffith is a Housing Authority property, and empty promises have the potential to be great promises provided they are made in writing,” Wesley Smith said as we walked out of the projects and onto the road where a yellow and black sign announced “flooded” next to Candlestick Point park, where Lennar wants to build.

Malia Cohen expressed concern about Hope SF residents, as we drove through the Sunnydale housing project.

“We have to be diligent and mindful that people are not pushed out,” Cohen said, noting the sweeping views at Gleneagles golf course above Sunnydale, and the value of housing for a golf course community. “When public housing gets taken offline, we must work with Redevelopment and the Housing Authority to make sure no one is changing the rules halfway. We have to make sure the talks and walks line up. We need to be equal partners. We cannot be bulldozed by City Hall.”

Geoffrea Morris is a Calworks employee, at the Southeast Community College facility on Oakdale, which was built to mitigate the city’s expansion of the sewage plant in 1987. She cited concerns about the literacy levels of people who live in the 2200 public housing units that cluster D10. “A lot of people in Alice Griffith don’t even know the dates or when it’s going to be reconstructed,” Morris said. “Folks like to be told stuff like that, but the city gives you a stack of papers. Some will read them, but others rely on folks they think are trustworthy. They need stuff in layman’s terms written on one sheet of paper.”

Morris is a fan of the Internet who posted a community survey online, and made sure every housing project got some literature telling people to get informed. She worries about the digital divide in D10:

“A lot of folks don’t have computers and access to important information,” Morris said. “And let’s talk about the way ‘affordable’ is used to trick people.”

Michael Cohen, Newsom’s top economic adviser, recently stated in a memo that over the expected 15-20 year phased build out, Lennar’s Candlestick-Shipyard development would include, “up to 10,500 residential units, about 32 percent of which (3,345) will be offered at below market rates.”

“But 892 units of this ‘affordable category’ will be sold to folks earning $100,000,” Morris said. “So if you subtract 892 units from affordable unit category, you’re back to 25 percent affordable.”

Candidate Kristine Enea, an attorney and a former RAB member, chairs the India Basin Neighborhood Association, which administers a US EPA grant to hire experts to translate the Navy’s cleanup documents into plain English and comment on them She was frustrated by the Navy’s decision to dissolve the RAB.

“The lack of a forum does nothing to bolster the community’s trust in the cleanup or the redevelopment process,” Enea said.

Enea generally supports the Lennar project, but has concerns about whether it will adequately mitigate increased car traffic, or result in commercial development that benefits her neighborhood.

“India basin is a pocket of Hunters Point right along the shoreline,” Enea said. “Right now, we have no shops or restaurants, no ATM, no groceries, nothing beyond one liquor store and a few industrial businesses.

Potrero Boosters president Tony Kelly told us that District 10 residents can think for themselves. “D10 residents don’t need to rely on corporations to solve their problems,” he said.

“Folks in the eastern neighborhoods came up with a better revitalization plan than what the city proposed and community activists managed to close the power plant, after the city said it was impossible,” Kelly recalled.

And there’s no shortage of good ideas.

Kelly suggested that an urban agriculture center could immediately put low-skilled folks to work by erecting greenhouses on unused land. Smith said the industrial zone could be “incredible eco-park made from sustainable sources.

‘D 10 is the dumping ground for everything, including all the city’s waste,” he said. “We could be a shining example, not just for D 10, but the rest of the state.”

The D 10 candidate line up includes Calloway, Cohen, Donaldson, Smith, Enea: civil rights attorney Dewitt Lacy, Morris, Potrero View publisher Steve Moss; District 7 BART director Lynette Sweet, Wesley-Smith. Bill Barnes, who works for Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, and Linda Richardson, who was appointed to the Human Rights Commission in 2007 by Mayor Newsom, have also expressed interest in the race.

In such a huge field, name identification will play a major role. Sweet is in office, but BART Board is not a high-profile job and won’t give her a huge advantage.

Cohen has a slight edge right now in that she’s raised $18,505, including $500 from former Newsom flak Peter Ragone, making her the first D. 10 candidate to qualify for campaign financing. The oldest of five girls, Cohen recalls how her mother got laid off from her city job as a school-based mental health worker and then rehired, as part of the city’s budget cuts.

“We felt that pinch and the frustrating games that are played out between the leadership and the rank and file,” she said.

Cohen who worked for Newsom in his first term as mayor, but has since left his administration , said she is uncomfortable at being framed as Newsom’s candidate.

“Because I’m not, but I am one of the few candidates who has seen how the mayor and the Board work—and don’t work—together,” she said.

Moss sees the city’s southeast as a “district in transition.” Over coffee at Farley’s in Potrero Hill, he told me that the southeastern neighborhoods could be “launching pads for environmentally sustainable growth.”

“The district’s been in a frozen period for 30 years, But despite the problems, people are deeply committed to and in love with their community.

“This district is the future of San Francisco and its social fabric—the diversity, income –and its problems are leftovers from the city’s industrial age.”

 

 

 

DISTRICT 10, BY THE NUMBERS

Total Acres: 5,650

Average household income: $85,000

Population: 73,000

Registered voters: 37,700

Average housing price: $335,000

Ethnicity (2003 figures): Asian 32%, African American, 27%, white 21%, Hispanic 17%

Development status of land: 18% residential, 38% is commercial, 38% undevelopable

All figures the latest available. Sources: SFGIS, Association of Bay Area Governments, U.S. Census, California Urban Issues Project. Ethnicity and income data is from 2003 and almost certainly has changed.

The attack on the SF left

Zelda Bronstein
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The attack on the SF left

If I were a political consultant hired by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the big developers and the landlords and Mayor Newsom, and my job was to launch an effective attack on the progressive movement in the city and undermine progressive control of the Board of Supervisors, here’s what I’d do:


1. I’d attack district elections. See, every time the downtown folks have tried to run candidates in swing districts under the existing system, they’ve lost. That’s in part because the business types can’t seem to find decent candidates, and part because money doesn’t rule in districts, so progressives who can mobilize at the grassroots level have a better chance.


So when you can’t win the game you try to change the rules. You can’t do it too directly, because the polls show that people like having district supervisors, so I’d come up with a “hybrid” plan — say, seven districts and four at-large supervisors. Since anyone who runs at large in this city needs gobs of campaign cash, that would pretty much guarantee that four board members would be accountable to downtown. Then draw the districts to create two moderate-conservative seats, and the progressives have lost control.


I’d launch this by planting stories in the San Francisco Chronicle about a “growing movement” to change the way the supervisors are elected — even thought there is no real grassroots movement.


But that creates the appearance that’s needed to begin raising money and preparing for a ballot initiative. It’s not hard to get the Chron to bit on something like this; C.W. Nevius, the local columnist who lives in the East Bay suburbs, never liked district elections, so he’ll play along and the Chron’s corporate ownership, which is close to the Chamber folks, never liked the system either. You can expect an editorial from the Chronicle Feb. 28th calling for a partial repeal of district elections.


The argument won’t have anything to do with the fact that the Chron doesn’t like the policies this particular board has passed; it will be all about the need for a “citywide perspective.” Now, that’s just horseshit, since the district boards have done an immense amount of work on citywide issues (like mininum wage and health care) that the at-large boards would never do.


But “citywide perspective” is a term that’s been focus-group tested and sounds good.


2. I’d look for a nice wedge issue for the November elections — something that could be used against progressives in swing districts. When Newsom ran for mayor the first time, he used “care Not Cash” — a well-funded attack on homeless people.


And gee, guess what? There’s another nice anti-homeless measure that’s recently been floating around, and it comes from the media-savvy police chief, George Gascon. It’s called a “sit-lie” law — legislation that would criminize the act of sitting on the sidewalk. It’s got a lot of populist zing to is, particularly since Gascon is talking about the need to clean up Haight Street, where some ill-behaved young people have been bothering the merchants and shoppers.


A November ballot initiative on a sit-lie law would allow downtown to raise a lot of money — and attack people like Rafael Mandelman and Debra Walker, candidates for supervisor in districts where a simplistic attack on the homeless might play. 


3. I’d try to split the city’s labor movement and drive labor away from the progressives. The obvious tactic: Construction jobs. I’d get every construction trade union member to campaign in District 10 for a supervisor who will support Lennar Corp.’s redevelopment project, and I’d attack any supervisor or candidate who supports limits on, say, buildings that shadow the parks and call them anti-jobs.


4. I’d launch a quiet effort to raise a big chunk of money to push pro-downtown candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee. The DCCC used to be something of a political backwater, but under progressive control, it’s become a significant force in local elections. The DCCC controls the local Democratic Party endorsements and money — which can be a big factor in district supervisorial races.


Now: I have no evidence that any individual consultant has created any such plan — but it’s sure an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?


What I see right now is a coordinated, orchestrated attack on the left — and I’m getting a little nervous that our current leadership on the Board of Supervisors isn’t doing enough about it.


 

Black History Month in SF kicks off with dancing, future visions

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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By the time I made it to the 2010 Black History Month kickoff ceremony at San Francisco City Hall, on Friday, Feb. 5, California Public Utilities Commissioner Tim Simon was talking about how the African American community can make sure it doesn’t get left on the sidelines in future.

Simon advised folks to know their resources, community and strategy to ensure that people of color are included in the burgeoning Green economy—a topic in keeping with the history-of-black-economic-empowerment theme.

“And I want to encourage all of us to celebrate the month of Black History and teach it to our children, because we could lose this generation,” Smith said, noting that just three blocks away from City Hall in the Western Addition/Filmore, “young men talk about and celebrate it when they reach 25 years old.”

California Public Utilities Commissioner Tim Simon advised folks how not to get left behind in the Green economy.

The community was encouraged to attend the Human Rights Commission’s Feb. 18 meeting in the Bayview and to get involved in the 2010 Census, which will provide temporary, part-time jobs with flexible hours.

Destined to Dance enlivens the corridors of power at San Francisco’s City Hall.

And then dancers with Destined to Dance wowed the audience by infusing the typically staid marble corridors of power with a “Swing low, sweet chariot” inspired blend of energy, grace and light-footed gaiety.

After the main program concluded, a who’s who of San Francisco’s black community lingered for a moment to chat.

Sup. Sophie Maxwell told me that she saw the failed attempt to recall her as “democracy at work.” She also repeated earlier statements that she is not yet ready to endorse any of the candidates vying to replace her when she is termed out in January 2011.

“It’s not just about Bayview Hunters Point,” Maxwell observed. “The common thread is the entire District 10 community.”


D. 10 candidates Eric Smith and Tony Kelly smile for the camera.

Kelly told me that to his mind the common thread is that residents of the district, which is home to the worst toxic hot spots in the city, can’t rely on corporations to solve their problems.

“District 10 can think for itself,” Kelly said. “They don’t have to look outside. But to my mind, up until now, the approach in city hall has been that there is no mess in D. 10 that can’t be fixed by a friendly corporation.”

Kelly observed that folks in the eastern neighborhoods came up with a better revitalization plan than what the city proposed, and that community activists managed to close the power plant, after the city said it was impossible.

“We have the worst schools, transportation and pollution,” Kelly said. “Candidates in the D. 10 race tend to fall into one of two groups: those that are responsive to Lennar and PG&E’s plans, and those who oppose them.”

D. 10 candidate Kristine Enea, who attended the Navy’s Feb. 2 “community involvement plan” meeting at the Bayview YMCA told me that at least the Navy showed some willingness to let the community speak at that meeting,

Chris Jackson San Francisco Community College Board Trustee chats with D. 10 candidates Tony Kelly and Kristine Enea.

“But they need to stop being so defensive,” Enea said, as she questioned why the Navy refuses to speak in public about why it dissolved the Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board.

D 10 candidate Lynette Sweet told me that she thought California PUC commissioner Tim Simon “hit it on the head with his comments,” at the Black History Month kickoff event.

D. 10 candidate Lynette Sweet poses for the camera.

“We’re not the sum of our parts, we’re not murderers and poverty pimps, there is some real leadership and quality people within our community,” Sweet observed.

Recalling Sophie Maxwell

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Written with Adrian Castañeda

maxwell.jpg
Does it make sense to try and recall termed-out D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell?


A group of District 10 residents has turned in 8,008 signatures in an effort to recall Sup. Sophie Maxwell. Election department staff says that 7,529 signatures must be verified for the recall attempt to go forward.

‘We think it’s going to be a little tight,” said an election department worker, who preferred to remain anonymous.

Department of Elections staff have 30 days to count and verify the submitted signatures, but they predict the process could be completed as early as Thursday afternoon (Feb. 4) or Friday morning (Feb. 5).

Meanwhile, Maxwell is termed-out in January 2011–a mere 11 months away. And 15 candidates have already filed to enter the D. 10 race this fall, with a dozen others variously threatening to throw their hats in the ring.

But if the recall effort gets the green light and is placed on the June 8 ballot, and if Maxwell actually gets recalled as a result of that vote, Mayor Gavin Newsom would then get to appoint his choice of successor to her seat. And if that successor happens to be one of the candidates vying for Maxwell’s seat, wouldn’t that person have an enviable edge come the November election?

Bayview activist Daniel Landry insists the recall effort would be effective. 
“We’re sending a message to anyone who wants to be a supervisor of D-10, you must recognize the will of the voters,” Landry said.

D 10 candidate Ed Donaldson warns that any supervisor that does not understand the complexity of the city’s largest district can expect a similar backlash. He says the recall effort is evidence of District 10’s diversity.
“There is no one homogenous voice in the community,” Donaldson said.
He says that the current grass-roots organizing that brought about the recall effort is a result of changing political structure in the area, but is not yet on par with the other districts in town.
“We still allow our politics to be controlled from downtown,” Donaldson observed.

D 10 candidate Espanola Jackson warns that if Newsom appoints someone, that person had better listen to the wishes of the community, or else they will face a similar fate to Maxwell.

“What the mayor needs to understand is that if we can get the signatures in two weeks to recall Sophie, we can get them on whoever he appoints as well,” Jackson said.

But D 10 candidate Eric Smith worries that the recall effort will backfire. He cites a recent community meeting in the Bayview on the Department of Park and Recreation’s budget, as an example of why folks are turning to this seemingly desperate strategy.

“People were emotional, angry and desperate, because they feel no one listens to them,” Smith said. “That’s part of the problem here; they would rather have a supervisor go down swinging for them, rather than watch one seemingly side with Lennar, PG&E and the Mayor on issues contrary to their interests. At the DCCC [Democratic County Central Committee] last week, everyone except Chris Daly voted against the recall in support of Sophie.”

Smith added that Daly’s vote, “likely had more to do with his belief that this was a waste of time and had no chance of actually succeeding, but you’ll have to ask him.”

Daly, for his part, says he doesn’t believe the recall effort will qualify.

“Jake McGoldrick introduced an item in committee when he was a supervisor that the Board then passed that doubles the numbers of signatures required for a recall to qualify,” Daly said, noting that under the old recall rules the current effort would likely have succeeded in getting onto the ballot.

“And I don’t think the DCCC’s resolution against the recall effort was accurate,” Daly added. “It was long on the fact that Sophie isn’t guilty of malfeasance, but the truth is that a recall is a tool of democracy that is available and can be applied in cases where a representative is not being responsible to the needs of their district. So, while I’m not supportive of recalling Sophie, it would be patronizing for me to say that thousands of D. 10 residents don’t know what they are doing. The Democratic Party (with a capital D) is working against democracy (with a small d) in a patronizing way in a district that has a disproportionately high number of low-income folks and people of color. There is a significant level of disgruntlement, if that is a word, in District 10, and its residents have lodged a pretty real and significant complaint.”

Aaron Peskin, who chairs the DCCC’s executive board and is the former President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, also predicts that the effort to recall Maxwell is probably headed nowhere.

“There’s no way they got the numbers,” Peskin said. “You’re lucky if 50 percent of that shit runs.”

Peskin proffers three reasons why recalling Maxwell is against the community’s own interests.
“First, recalls are an instrument to be used when a representative has committed malfeasance, and not because you disagree with the political positions of a person who has been duly elected three times,” Peskin said. “Second, this elected official is in her last eleven months in office. So, it’s a huge waste of time and money. And third, for those not satisfied with their current supervisor, any representative that the mayor might nominate would be far, far worse.”

Smith also worries that the recall effort is akin to the community shooting itself in the foot.

“If Sophie gets recalled, (and that is a very big if), the Mayor will insert someone and we may be right back where we started from, or worse. That’s the terrible irony and one of the biggest problems in District 10. Folks are so mad, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make them feel they have a voice in the outcome, even if it’s potentially worse. The same thing happened with the Navy and the Restoration Advisory Board. Some of the same folks who were frustrated by the process, tried to send a signal to the Navy that they weren’t being heard and for all their well- intentioned efforts, got the RAB dissolved. I truly feel for them, it’s absolutely heartbreaking, but at times, they can be their own worst enemy.”

To Smith’s mind, a recall has the potential for exacerbating the very problems the effort is purported to be about.

“This isn’t about malfeasance, or not showing up for work,” Smith observed. “It’s about being heard, respected and listened to. I don’t think any other Supervisor has ever had the challenges that Sophie has had to face here; the Bayview, the Hunters Point Shipyard’s toxic super-fund site, the homicide rate, unemployment, poor public transportation, dwindling services and community resources have made D10 one of the City’s largest melting pots of discontent. It’s just one of the reasons I’m running. The health, welfare, quality of life issues and the environment are the things I put above everything else out here, particularly above special interests and big money.”

“We will soon know how valid those signatures are; I can tell you that the many of the folks behind it feel very confident about it,” Smith continued. “But Sophie still has a lot friends in D10 who will not vote her out, so even if this makes the ballot, there is no guarantee it will carry. There are many, many folks who still love and support Sophie, so the folks who signed the recall petition will have to overcome the balance of the 37,000 D.10 voters who may not want to see her go and have a vested interest in seeing a fair electoral process in November, untainted by a Mayoral appointee, an appointee that would have implied advantage over any of the candidates in November.”

Smith has asked many folks why they are launching a recall when Maxwell only has 10 months left on the job.

“For them, it’s about making a statement; they want everyone to know that ‘They’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,’” Smith said. “They also want to send a signal to the D10 candidates that this is what you will face if you don’t listen to them. D10 is not for the squeamish, those easily intimidated or the faint of heart.”

On a side note, Smith observed that “we will need the world to come out to defeat Proposition 16″, the PG&E ballot measure in June. “And, depending on the turn out, many of the folks needed to come out for that, may also play a role as it relates to Sophie’s recall.”

Asked what she thought of the effort to recall her, Maxwell characterized it as “strange” and “destabilizing.”

‘It seems to me that this effort is destabilizing the community,” Maxwell said. “When you undercut the leadership, you destabilize a community in transition. At a time when these folks could have something to say about the future, they are looking at the past. It’s about backward thinking. It’s about not having the best interests of the community. It’s about egos. Because if this is for the community, then why not bring something to the table that’s about bringing some direction to the district?”

One of the last straws, in the minds of some recall signature gatherers, was Maxwell’s 2009 vote against a resolution that would have advised the Navy to restore its community-based Restoration Advisory Board. This board, which was established in 1994, had consistent access to the many technical and environmental documents surrounding the proposed clean-up of the heavily polluted Hunters Point Shipyard.

The RAB, whose primary fucntion was to share information on investigations and clean-ups at the shipyard, was also able to vote on the Navy’s proposed solutions and to request more information and/or speakers and experts so its members could educate themselves on related public health and safety issues. But early last year, the Navy announced that it was dissolving the RAB, citing dysfunctional behavior and off-topic discussions that were getting in the way of the RAB’s intended purpose.

The move to dissolve the RAB came just as the Navy was poised to take a series of important decisions on some of the most polluted and radiologically-impacted parcels on the shipyard. And many in the community saw the timing of the RAB’s dissolution as evidence that the Navy was going to ignore their wish to have these parcels dug out and hauled away, and not capped (a wish shared by the 87 percent of voters who supported Prop. P in 2000.)

But despite the outcry that followed the RAB’s 2009 dissolution, Maxwell voted to tell the Navy to either restore the RAB or find other ways to involve the community–thereby giving the Navy the choice, some felt, to ignore the community’s desire to reinstate the RAB.

And last night, the Navy, along with a flotilla of police and special agents, showed up at the Bayview YMCA to share its plan to reformulate the Navy’s original Community Involvement Plan—a plan that angered many meeting goers ( the majority of which were former RAB members,) since it didn’t appear to aim at reinstating the RAB. But to give the Navy credit, once it became clear that meeting attendees were underwhelmed by its plan, Navy officials scrapped their original agenda and allowed the community to speak instead about their wounds from the past and their hopes for the future. It remains to be seen where the Navy will go next, but those interested in tracking these developments can visit the Navy’s website for updates.

Maxwell for her part defended her vote–and pointed the finger at the Navy.

“The Navy has an obligation to get out its plans to the public,” Maxwell said. “People are getting information in many ways, these days, not just by coming to meetings. The Navy has just got another $92 million towards the shipyard clean up, but does anyone know what this means? It means that instead of taking years to clean up groundwater at the shipyard, we can spend that money on it, now. And if folks knew what capping really means, maybe they wouldn’t be against it. Mission Bay is capped. Schlage Lock will be. And all of them are brown fields.”

Maxwell worries that democracy is not currently being well served within her district, but not by her.
“There are folks who are trying to block real information from getting out, and if only your view can get out, that’s not democracy,” Maxwell said.

But so far, she’s not willing to publicly support anyone in the November D. 10 race.
“I’m waiting for people to have a better understanding of what this community is, what the common thread running through it is, and how to use rank choice voting,” she said.

And despite the current recall effort—and the insults regularly hurled her way with a voracity and meanness not generally seen in other supervisorial districts, Maxwell said she has truly enjoyed serving as D. 10 supervisor.

“When people say that it’s an honor to serve as an elected official, I really know what they mean, because I really feel that. Democracy is challenging, it’s messy and it’s invigorating. I think a lot of what’s going on in my district is about people using people. But what has changed for these folks? Their lives have gotten worse, not better. And they are going after me, because I am not part of their group. I have tried to stay focused on the issues.”

 

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