Mayor

New board, old pain

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› sarah@sfbg.com

One of the first tasks awaiting the new Board of Supervisors in January 2009 is to make unprecedented cuts to the city budget as San Francisco seeks to balance a $125 million mid-year shortfall and address a projected $450 million deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2009.

"It’s hard to understand the magnitude of what lays at our doorstep," termed-out board president Aaron Peskin told the incoming supervisors when it became clear that he lacked the votes to enact a proposed package of cuts before his last day in office (see "Sharing the pain," 12/17/08).

"This is going to require a huge amount of selflessness, of sharing the pain among those who can share it the most and the least," warned Peskin, whose last day on the job is Jan. 6.

Newly sworn-in Sup. David Campos cited the magnitude of cuts as one of the reasons he voted not to move Peskin’s legislation out of a committee last week.

"I need more time to understand the proposal", said Campos, who took office in early December, only to find himself confronting "the worst crisis since the Depression," as Mayor Gavin Newsom called it during a visit to the board.

"And this way, the new board gets to weigh in," added Campos, who joins seven returning supervisors — Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Sean Elsbernd, Sophie Maxwell, and Ross Mirkarimi — and three new supervisors: John Avalos, David Chiu, and Eric Mar.

The decision to delay budgetary cuts until 2009 also secured an extra month of grace for community service providers. Peskin and the Mayor’s Office agreed that cuts scheduled for mid-January won’t kick in until Feb. 20.

But, as Daly noted as he urged the board to kill Newsom’s million-dollar, Tenderloin-based Community Justice Court, the 409 pink slips that were recently issued predominantly to front-line city workers have not been rescinded.

"And folks will have to find many more millions to avert terrible community cuts," Daly observed. Peskin warned that the CJC could cost $2 million annually if the federal government isn’t willing to fund it next year.

Daly argued that defunding the CJC was a "no-brainer," citing the project’s lack of community support and the fact that the services it aims to divert people to — substance abuse, mental health, and homeless programs — are up for cuts.

But Daly failed to get a veto-proof super-majority after Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who was elected to the Superior Court in November, recused himself, and Sup. Bevan Dufty, who has his eye on Room 200, voted in favor of the mayor’s project.

"I don’t see this as a new program, but one that tries to tie together what’s already in the community justice system," Dufty said.

With the bad fiscal news expected to snowball in 2009, Daly says he plans to call for hearings to examine the possibility of more cuts to upper-level city managers.

"It’s incumbent upon us to make sure there is not fat left in the city budget, especially when it comes to upper-level managers, as we are trimming the resources available to those who are more vulnerable," Daly explained.

Budget funeral

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› amanda@sfbg.com

Hundreds of people gathered for a funeral among makeshift gravestones buried in the lawn of City Hall on Dec. 11. The tombstones marked some of the essential public health and community services laid to rest by mid-year budget cuts: health care for jail inmates, day services for the homeless, the SRO Collaborative, and the Laguna Honda adult day care center.

Collectively they amount to a $36 million thinning of an already stretched social safety net that is designed to catch the most vulnerable populations in San Francisco. Of the city’s $118 million projected deficit, about 30 percent will be recovered from the Department of Public Health, with cuts to care and counseling for the mentally ill, services for the elderly, and closing some medical respite housing. All these services — and more — have been suggested by the DPH in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s request for deep budget cuts.

But advocates and front-line workers say these cuts will only create a greater cost to the city over time, as people with acute illnesses and mental health and substance abuse problems lose their primary care and end up in the emergency room, potentially in worse condition, receiving more costly care.

"The cuts in services are going to cost," Marykate Connor, director of Caduceus Outreach Services, said at the rally. Cuts to nonprofit organizations that handle much of the city’s drop-in health services mean more ill people will end up at SF General.

But the city’s premier — and only — public hospital is already crunched. "It’s sort of crazy right now. Six to eight months from now if these cuts go through, it will get a lot crazier," said Ed Kinchley, an emergency room social worker.

In a memo to the Health Commission, DPH director Mitch Katz pointed to a higher-than-budgeted census at SF General, which provided a short-term boost in revenue but also stretched resources at the busy hospital and exacerbated its budget situation.

Kinchley, who’s been at General for 24 years (12 of them as a social worker), said part of his job is getting substance abusers and people with mental health out of the ER and into care programs. "It’s already hard for me to get someone in detox in a day," he said.

On a typical Friday afternoon, he’s successful with one in five people. Unfortunately, when someone comes in asking for detox is the time when it can do the most good, if it’s available. "It’s really crucial in that situation to seize the time," Kinchley said. Though they try to keep in touch with clients and get them in as beds become available, there’s high attrition on the waiting list. "They don’t have a hell of a lot of choices except to start drinking again that day."

Martha Hawthorne has spent 23 years as a public health nurse for DPH, working out of the Castro Mission clinic. She does targeted case management for high-risk mothers and their newborn babies — essentially making sure they’re connected with other health care workers who specialize in chronic problems such as diabetes, hypertension, and substance abuse. "I’m one of the people that sees the system from the patient’s point of view," she said.

She’s also able to illuminate how certain cuts can have spillover effects on a newborn baby. "There are five to six specialized, highly skilled RNs being eliminated. One is an expert in diabetes care for pregnant women," Hawthorne explained. If that nurse is cut, "the clinic will still exist, the patient will have five to 10 minutes with the doctor and receive instructions, but there will be very few people to teach her how to use insulin, to follow the instructions, to change her diet…. A woman without this care can have very sick babies. This is one little, little example of a staff cutback that has a direct effect on care."

Furthermore, the way the cuts are being exacted carves deeper into the social safety net than ever before. For example, Progress Foundation contracts with the city to do acute diversion and transitional housing and services for mentally ill people coming out of General’s emergency room. Its annual budget is roughly $14.8 million, mostly funded by Medi-Cal with matching state monies. A smaller amount of city money fills the gaps.

DPH has asked Progress, as well as many other nonprofit providers, for a 5 percent cut — but the cut is based on the entire foundation’s funding, not just what the city gives them. Executive director Steve Fields said that means closing two out of three acute diversion programs or four out of six transitional residential treatment programs.

"It ends up closing about $3 million in programs to save $700,000 [of city money] over the next 12 months," Fields said. "I’m sympathetic to the problem, but it just doesn’t make sense to give up that much [state and federal] money." He pointed out this represents 40 to 50 transitional beds or 20 acute diversion beds in facilities that have been licensed, permitted, received neighborhood approval, and have been functioning at 90 to 95 percent capacity. "Once you lose these beds, you don’t get them back."

And, he said, the real effects are felt on their clients. "However you look at it, the need will be there. They don’t leave town. We end up seeing them somewhere. They’re going to be in a hospital bed or they’re going to be in jail or they’re going to be in a longer-term skilled nursing facility" — all more expensive solutions to a chronic problem. "We may be making decisions that we may regret down the road because we’ve had to react so immediately to the crisis," Fields said.

"This is happening at a time when there’s all this increased need," said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness.

The numbers for families, provided by Compass Community Services, are grim: between 2007 and 2008, the number of families seeking shelter jumped from 75 to 148. At the same time, the city has reduced family shelter beds by 20 percent, and the waiting list is now more than four months long — meaning families are waiting for shelter longer than they can actually stay in it.

"It’s a really brutal time to cut health and human services," said Friedenbach, whose group is advocating for an alternative list of cuts that incorporate some of the suggestions posed by SEIU and the Coalition to Save Public Health. They call for capping city salaries at $150,000 and letting go of all management staff brought in since a 2007 hiring freeze.

Hawthorne pointed out that while these cuts hit the neediest hardest, public health for everyone will suffer, pointing out that the city will be less prepared for a large-scale emergency or epidemic.

"SF General is a trauma center, and anybody who needs top-level trauma care is going to end up there. If it’s crowded with people who don’t need that level of trauma care, their response will be slower," said Hawthorne, adding that all emergency rooms in public and private hospitals are ultimately affected by cuts to clinics and nonprofit services.

"On a hopeful note, there’s huge potential as people realize the depth of these cuts," Hawthorne said. "The public needs to demand the human right to health care."

Conservatism’s last stand?

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As Tom Ammiano moved from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to the California Assembly at the start of the month, he went from the budgetary frying pan right into fiscal fire, a place where the Republican Party’s "no new taxes" pledge has finally turned the political heat up to an unbearable level.

"I think the state’s road is very, very difficult, and the city’s road is very difficult," Ammiano told the Guardian. "There is a failure of leadership on [Gov.] Arnold [Schwarzenegger’s] part. I’m not giving [Mayor Gavin] Newsom an A+, but he at least came to the board."

The difference lies with the anti-tax pledge by the influential right-wing group Americans for Tax Reform that all Republican legislators have signed. Combined with the requirement for two-thirds of the Legislature to approve state budgets, the pledge has made it impossible to close a state budget deficit pegged at $40 billion over the next 18 months, a gap that could shut down state government by March.

"No matter how nice the Republican next to me is, or how gay friendly, they’re doctrinaire and they have everyone by the cojones," Ammiano said.

Senator Mark Leno says now is the time for Democrats to aggressively fight back against an inflexible anti-tax stand that has eroded critical government services for a generation and has now finally reached a crisis point. The conservative crusade has been led largely by ATR head Grover Norquist, who once famously said he wants to shrink government to the level where he can drown it in the bathtub.

"Every Republican has signed a pledge to someone who wants to drown government in a bathtub — Grover Norquist. So nothing will happen until we rip up those pledges," Leno told me, noting that the two-thirds vote margin is just three Republicans each in the Assembly and Senate. "Six human beings are bringing us to our knees."

Even the conservative editorial page writers of the San Francisco Examiner (who endorsed John McCain for president) on Dec. 15 wrote, "the deficit has become so overpowering that — hate it all we want — California cannot continue functioning in 2009 without at least temporary tax raises."

Yet Norquist and the Republican legislators in his thrall haven’t softened their position one bit and instead hope to win deep cuts with this game of brinksmanship. "Now it’s up to the governor to come up with a budget that doesn’t borrow money and doesn’t raise taxes," Norquist told the Guardian.

He said the problem is that California hasn’t adopted a system of making a searchable, detailed list of all government expenditures available to the public, as they have in states like Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alaska.

"Ralph Nader and I have joined in sending three letters to your governor asking them to go transparent," he told us. "To say you’ve cut the budget as much as possible without having 30 million Californians help look at what makes sense and how to cut the budget is not serious. There’s not been a serious effort in California to scrub the budget, period."

Norquist did not return Guardian calls with follow-up questions about the fact that few credible government watchers think the budget gap can be closed with cuts alone or whether the current standoff — which even Schwarzenegger blamed on legislative Republicans — could hasten the demise of conservatism. But for now, conservatives are standing firm.

Senate Republican leader Dave Cogdill put out a statement saying, "Raising taxes doesn’t solve the underlying problem of California’s budget, which is the state spends more than it takes in." His statement may not be true — after all, raising taxes does indeed address that problem — but his caucus is sticking to it for now.

"Republicans remain strong against tax increases and that’s particularly important now when the nation is facing a recession," Sabrina Demayo Lockhart, press secretary for the Senate Republican Caucus, told the Guardian.

Leno called the tax pledge "childish and irresponsible," and akin to Democrats saying they won’t consider any spending cuts. "What kind of honest negotiations can there be when they’ve signed that pledge?" Leno said.

Lockhart countered that, "we’re bargaining in good faith for California taxpayers." Asked about the potentially devastating impact to the economy of shutting down all state spending and projects, Lockhart denied the Republicans were being irresponsible: "The responsible thing to do is project California taxpayers and jobs."

The Legislative Analyst’s Office last year put out a report entitled California’s Tax System: A Primer in which it wrote "California’s tax burden is about average," and in fact less than the industrial states’ average of under $12 for every $100 of personal income. And US tax rates are about 15 percent less than those in the European Union.

Leno has reached out to business leaders to have them try to talk some sense into the Republicans. Ironically, despite the Republicans rationalizing their pledge in the name of not wanting to hurt economic growth, the collapse of the bond market combined with the budget impasse threatens to cut off all state spending and send the already weakened economy into a nose dive.

"I wouldn’t think that anyone with a business mind or business concerns would in any way support the status quo right now," Leno said.

Leno said that even the Chambers of Commerce in San Francisco and Los Angeles are advocating for a reinstatement of the vehicle license fee, something that Schwarzenegger has voiced openness to even though his crusade against it helped sweep him into office five years ago. LAO figures show the lack of a VLF, by the end of the current fiscal year, will have cost the state $43.3 billion since it was repealed.

Leno said the Democrats are planning ballot measures for next year to raise revenue and repeal the two-thirds budget vote requirement, which only California, Rhode Island, and Arkansas have. As the state’s budget crisis devastates state services as well as those at county and city levels, Leno hopes this will be Norquist’s final stand.

"No one expects we can make $40 billion in cuts," said Leno, who hopes that the situation illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the right-wing stance.

"We do know there’s opportunity in crisis," Leno said. "It’s getting really ugly now and everybody knows it."

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s not ready to make $118 million in budget cuts.

I realize the city can’t operate at a deficit, and if payment due exceeds accounts received, something has to be done. But it can wait a few weeks. In fact, the final decisions ought to wait for the new Board of Supervisors to take office in January. The city won’t go broke in the meantime.

But Mayor Gavin Newsom is rushing his cuts through, demanding 400 layoffs and taking a hatchet to the Department of Public Health. There are all sorts of alternatives — our editorial in this issue looks at how the city can bring in more revenue. There’s also a lot more sanity needed as the board and the mayor look at what could be devastating reductions in essential public services.

For example: I like the 311 program. It’s convenient. But I’d rather wait longer for my non-emergency call to be answered than to have public health workers lose their jobs. And the 311 budget hasn’t been touched.

Police and fire are, of course, essential — but it’s insane to give the cops and firefighters, who are among the best-paid city workers, a 7.5 percent pay hike this year while social service workers are getting laid off.

It’s lovely to have more fire stations per square mile than any other big city in California, but there are nowhere near as many fires as there were when the system was designed, and closing some down would save millions.

How come the mayor still has seven people in his press office, most of whom are paid to keep the press from finding out what’s going on?

Why are we talking about cutting the $800,000 Small Business Assistance Center, which actually helps the most important sector of the economy, when there’s $10 million, much of it redundant, in the mayor’s Office of Economic Development?

Why is Dean Macris, the former city planning director, still hanging around and getting paid?

Wouldn’t an across-the-board wage freeze be better than layoffs? What about capping the pay for city employees at $150,000 a year? What about capping police overtime?

What about having all these discussions in public, before the mayor sends out pink slips?

Or would that just make too much sense?

Beyond the bloody cuts

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EDITORIAL There’s actually a bright side to the brutally depressing budget struggles in San Francisco and Sacramento. This could be the year Californians finally start to recognize that they can’t have a functioning state, with the services everyone wants, without paying taxes. It could be the end of the Republican lie that the budget problem is only on the spending side, the end of the famous no-new-taxes pledge — and the end to the requirement that two-thirds of the Legislature pass any budget, an archaic rule that is crippling California.

And with a little leadership from the new supervisors at City Hall, this could be the year San Francisco takes a serious look at how local government is financed.

This is no time for modest, cautious proposals. The budget situation is alarming. California is looking at $40 billion in cuts over the next 18 months — more than a third of the entire state budget. San Francisco is looking at $500 million in red ink — roughly half the discretionary spending from the general fund. Filling those holes with cuts alone would be devastating.

This isn’t your average budget battle, where everyone fights to save a few hundred thousand dollars here and a million there for a crucial program. This is, by all accounts, something of an order that the state and local government haven’t seen since the 1930s.

So small-time, piecemeal fixes aren’t going to work. Here’s what the state and the city need to be talking about.

AT THE STATE LEGISLATURE


The first thing that has to go is the two-thirds rule. It’s become almost a farce — a handful of Republicans, who have sworn never to raise taxes under any circumstances, are holding the world’s sixth-largest economy and a state of more than 37 million people hostage to their failed ideology. Enough talk: the Democrats need to mount a massive signature drive for a special election this summer to repeal that requirement.

There are many fair ways to raise taxes to bring in enough revenue to stave off devastating cuts. Raising the income tax levels on the highest wage earners makes the most sense. Gas prices are way down; raising the state gas tax by a few cents a gallon won’t bring prices even close to last summer’s level. We’re nervous about taxing services (medical care, for example, is a "service"), but a carefully crafted tax that exempts essentials ought to be on the table. California is the only oil-producing state that doesn’t tax oil at the wellhead; that’s a no-brainer. So is restoring the vehicle license fee; Gov. Schwarzenegger’s decision to eliminate that fee has cost the state $40 billion over the past five years.

AT CITY HALL


Step one: the mayor has to recognize that there’s no way to solve a half-billion dollar shortfall with cuts alone. Step two: the mayor needs to back off from the layoffs and cuts for a few weeks until the supervisors and the community stakeholders have a chance to meet, talk, and look at all the options. Step three: some far-reaching changes have to be on the agenda, right now.

We like the idea of a city income tax. Technically, under state law, all the city can do is tax income earned within local borders, meaning that commuters would pay (good) and San Franciscans who work out of town would escape payment (bad). But overall, the concept is better than anything else out there. A local income tax that exempts, say, the first $50,000 (assuring that lower-income people pay nothing) with progressive rates skewed toward charging very high wage-earners the most could bring in significant revenue in the fairest way possible.

We’d like to see a progressive business tax — raise the rates on the biggest companies. We could live with a short-term hike in the local sales tax; frankly, we could live with most short-term revenue increases. The supervisors need to look at what new taxes make the most sense and prepare for a special election in the spring to put a revenue package before the voters. And everyone — including the mayor — needs to campaign hard for it.

The city also needs to look at the rainy-day fund, money set aside for bad economic times. Only a small amount of the close to $100 million now in that fund is available in any one year, but that rule might have to be changed.

This crisis is an opportunity — a chance to examine how the city’s current revenue sources are unfair, unstable, and unwieldy. Why are business taxes flat (big corporations and small businesses pay the same rate)? Why does San Francisco rely so much on property and transfer taxes, which shift radically with economic ups and downs? And of course, a public power system would generate enough money to cover a huge part of the deficit. The supervisors need to find an immediate revenue-based solution, but should also start creating a serious task force to overhaul the entire revenue side of the budget. Today.

Sharing the pain

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› sarah@sfbg.com

When Mayor Gavin Newsom walked across City Hall to the Board of Supervisors Chambers last week to announce that the city is facing a $576 million budget deficit, it looked as if he was putting political differences aside and genuinely inviting the board to "share the challenge" of bridging the 2008-09 budget chasm.

For years, voters and supervisors have urged Newsom to appear before the board for monthly policy discussions. And for as many years, Newsom has refused, claiming such invites were "political theater." Now that he’s finally made the trek, critics say the context makes the gesture more theatrical than substantive.

Within minutes of Newsom’s unannounced Dec. 9 visit to the board, City Hall insiders began to fear that the Newsom was only pretending to walk the unity talk: details of his $118 million in proposed mid-year solutions were not made available before the appearance, giving the two sides little to discuss and raising questions of due process.

"If the mayor was interested in real collaboration with the board, he would introduce his mid-year proposal to the board for our deliberation, just like the annual budget," Sup. Chris Daly told the Guardian. "But after we asked in three different ways, we found that he will be making over $70 million in cuts unilaterally — without the board’s approval. Now we have to figure out how to get the public a seat at the budget table."

Unlike during the normal budget process, the mayor has tremendous power to make cuts mid-year. But with details slow to emerge, the legislators weren’t the only ones left in the dark about the proposal, which includes slashing the Department of Public Health’s budget by 25 percent, cuts that DPH director Mitch Katz told the supervisors is going to require fundamentally changing how government runs.

Several City Hall workers told the Guardian how, in the days after Newsom made his budget deficit announcement, Controller Ben Rosenfield was seen running from department to department, trying to track down the program-level details.

Supervisor-elect John Avalos, who has a deep understanding of the budgetary process from his years as a legislative aide to former Budget Committee chair Daly, confirmed that the mayor’s $118 Million proposal "doesn’t tell you much."

"There is $47 million in increased revenue that has come in that offsets the shortfall, and there’s a higher-than-expected census at San Francisco General Hospital that allows us to recoup some money. But although there are all kinds of service/non-service cuts in Newsom’s proposal, we have no details to work with," Avalos told the Guardian.

Two days after his board appearance, Newsom penned an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle in which he again appeared to be holding out his hand to the board. But Avalos, a candidate for president of the board, observed that Newsom continues to protect his own pet projects, which include the 311 Call Center, the Community Justice Center, and the Small Business Assistance Center.

"The pain needs to be shared and minimized all round," Avalos warned. "The mayor needs to come forward and help us, not simply cut all the programs that the Republicans want to see cut. There is this huge backlash from folks saying, ‘Why do we spend $1 billion on our public health system? Maybe we don’t need public health.’ But our services are there for a reason."

Avalos said he worries that if we cut all these programs now, it will be very hard to get them back down the line. "When revenue is back, the focus will be on things that are important, but not on services that help the most vulnerable folks," Avalos predicted.

Within three days of Newsom’s appearance before the board, Peskin had figured out a mechanism whereby the public could weigh in on Newsom’s cuts: he introduced legislation that combines the mayor’s $118.5 million proposal with an alternative $8.5 million in cuts that Peskin has proposed.

"So, now there’s a de facto collaboration," Peskin told the Guardian. Peskin’s package of alternative cuts — which has since been pared back to $5.5 million because duplication with the mayor’s list was found — includes budget reductions in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Emergency Management Department, Fire Department, Police Department, Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the 311 call center, and city grants to the opera, ballet, and symphony. Peskin is also proposed wage freezes that could save another $35 million.

Peskin’s counter-move allows the public to weigh in on the combined proposals. It requires department heads to publicly defend cuts to programs, services, and personnel — cuts that were developed, per Newsom’s request, behind closed doors. Or as Daly put it: "The mayor’s and the board’s proposals need to be deliberated not through a staff member to the mayor, but in full view of the public."

The board also wants to publicly discuss the layoffs, which Newsom said would total 399, a number that rose to 409 when the list was actually released. Peskin’s legislation also provides an avenue for fired workers or their representatives to publicly air discontent. A list of eliminated positions obtained by the Guardian shortly before press time shows that most of the positions were service providers making less than $70,000. Although union officials have complained that the ranks of highly paid managers has grown sharply since Newsom became mayor (visit sfbg.com for the complete list and more analysis).

SEIU’s Robert Haaland estimates that 75 percent of layoffs targeted line workers in service jobs. "As far as we can tell, the pain is all at the bottom," Haaland told the Guardian.

And while Haaland didn’t openly support Peskin’s counter-proposal — a citywide sliding scale of pay cuts in which the highest earners take a bigger hit and an across-the-board union wage freeze — he acknowledged that at least the proposal targets the powerful Police Officers Association and the Municipal Executives Association, and not just SEIU workers.

Haaland claims that under Newsom’s behind-closed-doors method, "the institutional bias of department heads tends to come into play" in making layoff decisions.

"It’s human nature. No one talks about it, and I don’t know that there’s a grand conspiracy," Haaland said, expressing his belief that it’s easier for managers to cut people they don’t work with than those around them or people at the top. "They also tend to target the union activists, the members who are a pain in the butt, and who they don’t like."

Newsom told the Chronicle in a Dec. 15 article that "labor is going to be a principal part of the solution." Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, told the Guardian that "the SFLC is listening to its affiliates to see if there are any collective strategies." But Haaland observed that the city is "contractually obligated to the unions," which may further complicate ongoing negotiations.

With Sup. Bevan Dufty advocating to restore more than $500,000 in HIV/AIDS funding cuts and Sup. Sophie Maxwell is trying to avoid cuts at the Small Business Center, newly sworn-in Sup. David Campos stressed the need for a meaningful vetting process.

"It’s important for us to have a process that sheds light on the human impacts of the proposed cuts so we have a better sense of what it means to citizens of San Francisco," Campos said at a Dec. 12 board committee hearing.

Campos also made it clear that he is not afraid to target the arts, arguing that deep-pocketed patrons can help ease their pain, even as advocates countered that attacking entertainment will further deplete the city’s coffers by potentially hurting tourism. "As much as we appreciate the need to support the arts, we’re going to have to look at other avenues some of those folks can turn to, to get the funding that is needed," Campos warned. "People who have the greatest needs don’t have those options. "

With repeated rounds of painful cuts predicted in the next six months, Peskin told a Dec. 12 Government Audits and Oversight Committee hearing that it’s critical for the board to express its priorities. "These include keeping Rec and Park facilities open, providing basic mental health services, and preserving public sector jobs," Peskin said. "It’s also important that everyone share the pain, but not necessary that everyone share the pain equally."

Outside the meeting, laid-off worker Allanda Turner described her pain and the devastation she feels at being let go in the midst of a recession. "I’m a parent. I just purchased a home. I’m feeling almost no hope at all," said Turner, who fears she will be applying for the medical services, unemployment, and food stamps that she refers clients to as part of her job with the city’s Human Services Agency.

"The mayor always says he advocates for the poor, but we are the most underpaid," she said. Meanwhile, while her colleagues claim that their department "gave Newsom what he wanted" by adding layoffs to an original list of cuts that included fewer jobs.

"These are unit clerks, employment specialists, eligibility workers, and line workers," said Sin Yee Poon, a DHS contract manager. "Eight of them are child-protection workers."

There will be one last meeting of the current Board of Supervisors in January, and both incoming and outgoing members are already specuutf8g that unless Peskin’s legislation passes with a veto-proof majority, the mayor will veto it and this period of symbolic unity will come to an abrupt end.

"We have the capacity, the ingenuity, and the spirit to solve this," Newsom told the board. "It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here. The mid-year solution — difficult and painful as it is — it’s the easy part. The difficult part comes in the next four months."

But as legislators explore the possibility of adding to their budget tools in the future through charter amendments and special elections, one aide stressed the importance of taking an active role now.

"It’s important for the board to set the stage now for the budget discussions in the spring."

The layoff list

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By Sarah Phelan

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 409 mid-year layoffs mostly target front line staff, who make under $70,000 a year. And that almost 70 percent of these lay-offs (285 positions) are in the Department of Health.

You can read the list here.

(Reader beware! The list is, in itself, fairly impenetrable. So it helps to go online to the City’s compensation manual. Here, you can enter the “class” of job, plus job “class title” to decipher each annual salary. For instance, a 923 Manager 11 makes between $91,000 and $116,000 a year, and we could only find a couple laid off. By contrast, a 1428 unit clerk makes between $45,000 and $55,000 a year–and 49 such clerks got pink slips last week.)

What’s worrisome about the Mayor’s lay-off decisions—aside from the obvious human pain and cost of losing one’s job in the middle of a nationwide recession—is that those left on the job are going to come under increasing physical, mental and employment pressure, as unemployment lines lengthen next year.

That at least was one of the primary concerns that San Francisco General Hospital worker Mike Dingle shared with me last week, outside the first public hearing into the Mayor’s proposed cuts–a hearing only made possible thanks to Board President Aaron Peskin, who folded the Mayor’s $118 million proposal (which up until then had been negotiated exclusively behind closed doors) and his own package of cuts into brand new legislation, so that all the proposed cuts can now be publicly reviewed

Dingle handles bodies, “both the living and dead” as he put it, as part of SFGH’s patient lift team. And from his position in the front line trenches, Dingle is predicting that one of the impacts of Newsom’s layoffs—scheduled to kick in on February 12, 2009– will be increased injuries all around.

Save the Small Business Assistance Center

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As hard times get harder, the small business community is ever more essential to San Francisco

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for this week’s editorials, after the jump)

As the mayor’s drastic package of cuts fall on the Supervisors at their Tuesday meeting,
the questions abound: Why so fast? Why not more discussion and more hearings? Why make the cuts as several supervisors leave the board? Why not wait until the new board is sworn in in January? Why let Mayor Newsom drive the cuts, the agenda, and the timing almost unilaterally?

And there is a key question our editorial points out for Wednesday’s edition:

“Why are we talking about cutting the $800,000 Small Business Assistance Center, which actually helps the most important sector of the economy, when there’s $10 million, much of it redundant, in the mayor’s Office of Economic Development?”

As hard times get harder, the small business community is ever more essential as the city’s economic engine. Small businesses create the most net new jobs in the city, according to major Guardian studies. According to a 2006 study by Economist Kent Sims, Former Mayor Frank Jordan’s economic chieftan, small businesses helped moderate the 2000 to 2004 recession’s negative employment and earnings impact on San Francisco households.

Sims also found that small businesses released less than l0 per cent of their employees during the recession while large businesses released more than 20 per cent of their employees, despite the fact that the two groups of businesses had similar shares of pre-recession private employment. Further, he found that small business layoffs generated about 2l per cent of the negative employment and earnings impacts on San Francisco households in 2003, compared with 79 per cent for large businesses. And of course we all know that it is the small businesses that keep our neighborhoods friendly, vibrant, and economically productive. For example, on the economic point, the Guardian’s Shop Local campaign may put $l00 million into the local economy, immediately. (We are asking our 600,000 or so readers to spend at least $l00 in a locally owned business.)

You get the point. Now more than ever, small business ought to be nourished and protected, not put to the slashers once again at City Hall. The supervisors need to keep the Small Business Assistance Center in the budget and, if necessary, slash the mayor’s $10 million Office of Economic Development. And then the supervisors should take a deep breath, postpone the final vote until the new board comes in, and start considering the realistic progressive agenda advanced in the editorial and stories in the Guardian. B3

Sharing the Budget Pain

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By Sarah Phelan

It wasn’t pretty at Board President Aarom Peskin’s mid-year budget cuts hearing.

(For starters, there wasn’t enough room for all the people who showed up at today’s meeting. Apparently, months ago, long before “Financial Armageddon” was a nationwide buzz word, the California Coastal Commission booked the Board’s Chambers for today. Unfortunately, as a result, only a small percentage of folks managed to squeeze physically into today’s budget hearing, while a huge crowd was left lingering discontentedly outside. This led to chants of “Let us in! Let us in!” until some burly not-to-be-messed-with Sheriff’s Deputies shepherded them to a nearby “spill over” room.)

The meeting itself felt surreal, set yards away from the huge Tree of Hope on CIty Hall’s second floor.
(At various moments throughout the proceedings, as red faced Department heads tried to explain the rationale behind the Mayor’s proposed $118 million package of solutions, or defend themselves against cuts in Peskin’s competing proposal, we could hear angelic voices trilling, as choirs sang carols under the City’s rotunda. )

But for all the social unrest and financial gloom and doom, there were a few positive moments.
Peskin managed to pull off a beautifully finessed legislative move. (By combining the Mayor’s proposal with his own, he was able to introduce a piece of legislation that allows everyone impacted to voice comments publicly.)

This was not true under Newsom’s original proposal, which he introduced during a surprise Dec. 9 Board visit.

“But now there’s a de facto collaboration,” Peskin told me, during a brief recess, after which the hearing was relocated to the Board’s chambers for the remainder of today’s hearing.

Breaking ground

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› steve@sfbg.com

The long-awaited process of rebuilding the Transbay Terminal formally begins Dec. 10 with a groundbreaking ceremony led by Mayor Gavin Newsom. But the agency pushing the project is still a long way from finding the money to build the project’s voter-mandated centerpiece: a high-speed rail and Caltrain station.

Even as the Transbay Joint Powers Authority embarks on the fully funded, $1.2 billion first phase of the project — which includes building a temporary bus station, demolishing the current building, and rebuilding the 1 million-square-foot transit hub by 2014 — the agency still hasn’t included the crucial $300 million "train box" in its plans.

Transportation planners say the train box, which is essentially the shell structure in which the train station would be built during the project’s second phase, is very important both logistically and financially (doing it later could be very expensive and disruptive to the station’s operation), particularly since the TJPA has secured little of the $3 billion needed for phase two.

"It would be a misuse of taxpayer money not to build the train box now," Dave Snyder, transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, told the Guardian. "The most urgent thing now is to make sure the train box is built as part of phase one."

"We are working hard to identify the funding for the train box in phase one," TJPA executive director Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan told the Guardian. "It’s more expensive to build it later."

But that source must be found by spring to be included in construction contracts.

Critics have questioned whether the trains will ever arrive at Transbay Terminal’s downtown location, and those doubts grew in recent weeks after Judge Quentin Kopp, the California High Speed Rail Authority chair, publicly suggested that the existing Caltrain station at Fourth and Townsend streets would be a fine high-speed rail terminus and that tunneling the final 1.4 miles to Transbay might not be worth the money (see "High speed derailment?", SFBG Politics blog, 11/18/08).

Kopp’s comments were prompted by premature TJPA efforts to secure funding guarantees from the $10 billion in high-speed rail bond money approved by voters Nov. 4 and by his concerns about how the project is being managed by Ayerdi-Kaplan and the high-priced public relations firm she relies on, Singer & Associates.

That rift, its lingering aftermath, and the failure of the TJPA to identify funding for Transbay Terminal’s rail components have rattled those who see the project as the linchpin for the region’s transportation system.

"I don’t think it works with the rail terminal at the current Caltrain station at Fourth and Townsend," Snyder said. "The access to downtown just isn’t good enough. The trains have to come downtown."

The Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 as the truly multimodal facility that supporters want it to become again. It received both buses and the commuter trains that traveled along the lower deck of the Bay Bridge until the bridge was converted to handle cars alone in 1959. At its peak at the end of World War II, 26 million passengers used the station annually, but those numbers dropped off precipitously as private automobile use increased.

The neighborhood around the terminal at First and Mission streets deteriorated and became a redevelopment district full of dormant public land, which the state turned over to facilitate development activity that includes the terminal rebuild (with a rooftop park), a neighborhood of 2,600 new homes (35 percent of which are required to be affordable), and a series of towering office buildings (including the tallest one on the West Coast).

Land sales expected to total $429 million are the single biggest funding source for phase one of the Transbay Terminal project, with the rest coming from state and federal funds, participating transit agencies such as AC Transit, a loan that will be repaid by increased property taxes, and increases in the sales tax and bridge tolls that were dedicated to the project by past ballot measures.

The prospects of bringing trains into the terminal seemed to rely on the high-speed rail project, which Kopp instigated as a legislator in the mid-’90s. Since then, the project has been studied and certified, with its documents explicitly spelling out how trains will travel from Transbay Terminal to Los Angeles Union Station in about two hours and 38 minutes.

After years of delays in bringing the $9.9 billion high-speed rail bond measure to the ballot, Proposition 1A was narrowly approved by voters Nov. 4. The TJPA immediately asked CHSRA for priority funding and was rebuffed by Kopp, who on Nov. 13 wrote, "Please do not attempt to secure California High Speed Rail Project funds to defray the enormous cost of the 1.4 mile ‘downtown rail extension.’ Such effort will not be welcomed by me."

In comments to both the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle, Kopp raised questions about wasteful spending at TJPA, the leadership of Ayerdi-Kaplan (who has met with Kopp and CHSRA director Mehdi Morshed just once), and the TJPA’s use of Singer and Associates, whose multiyear contract of up to $900,000 calls for paying the TJPA’s main contact, Adam Alberti, $350 per hour. "We don’t have a PR person deflecting media inquiries," Kopp said of his agency.

Ayerdi-Kaplan, who had little transit or executive experience before being appointed to the post at the urging of then–mayor Willie Brown, met with the Guardian editorial board last week and glossed over her past inaccessibility and conflicts with Kopp, saying the project is on track, she’s engaged with it, and she’s confident of its success.

"We have raised over $2 billion for the project and have a fully funded phase one. We’re still working on identifying the funding for the rail," Ayerdi-Kaplan said. TJPA has developed a list of possible funding sources, the biggest item being $600 million from the CHSRA.

She admitted that she hasn’t personally tried to contact Kopp about the funding request or worked to develop a good relationship with him or his agency, both of which Kopp has criticized. "At some point, we are going to sit down and talk," Ayerdi-Kaplan said.

She said there’s strong public support for the project. "We take a very positive approach," she told us. "You have to believe in what you’re working on, you have to believe it’s going to happen — as anything in life: you have believe your relationships are going to work, that your business is going to work, that your project is going to happen — or you have no business doing it," she said. Ayerdi-Kaplan said the project is fully certified and just waiting for funding, which should make it attractive to increased infrastructure spending proposed by President-elect Barack Obama. "There’s a lot of things that are in the works immediately with his economic stimulus package," she said.

Alberti said he has reached out to Morshed and received assurances that the CHSRA is still planning to use Transbay Terminal, something Morshed also confirmed for the Guardian — but with some hedging.

"Transbay Terminal is our terminal station in San Francisco as of now, based on our environmental documents," Morshed told the Guardian. Yet he said the authority is beginning more project-specific environmental studies, "and part of the requirements of environmental analysis is we need to look at all options."

Kopp said it’s unlikely that the Transbay Terminal — or any other project — will get a commitment for bond money soon: "We’re not going to be spending money or making funding commitments for years."

7.5 better ways to balance the budget

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OPINION In Mayor Gavin Newsom’s seven-and-a-half-hour YouTube series on the state of our city, he spends barely 30 seconds addressing the budget deficit.

Newsom’s mid-year budget cut plan is completely out of touch with the fundamental priorities of our city. At a time when residents are feeling the impact of the recession in their daily lives, the mayor’s plan guts our public health safety net by slashing programs that serve seniors on fixed incomes and by reducing frontline healthcare workers.

What’s more, the mayor’s mid year cuts leave untouched his bloated senior staff and protects management-heavy departments around City Hall.

So, in response to the effort to balance the budget by slashing tens of millions in health services for the city’s neediest, a coalition of health workers, health providers, and patients are putting forward alternative ways to address the city’s budget problem that are worth our time and thought.

Among the ideas offered by the Coalition to Save Public Health are the following:

1. Start at the top, not at the bottom. Since the mayor first took office, the number of highly paid managers has skyrocketed while the number of employees providing basic city services has stagnated. It’s time to tighten our belt at the management level and eliminate all but the most essential positions that pay more than $100,000 per year.

2. Practice what you preach. In November 2007, the mayor announced a non-essential hiring freeze to deal with the budget crunch. Newsom then promptly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring new senior staff including highly paid and duplicative special assistants for climate control initiatives, "neighborhood empowerment," and a new greening czar. All new staff hired since November 2007 who are paid more than $100,000 should be cut.

3. Cut duplicative programs. The city spends more than $10 million per year on small business outreach and economic development. The Mayor’s Small Business Assistance Center duplicates those services and costs nearly $800,000 every year.

4. Listen to the voters — cut the Community Justice Court. Proposition L was rejected by more than 57 percent of the San Francisco electorate. It’s time to listen to the voters and preserve revenue by cutting current-year funding for the CJC.

5. Save on spin, spend on substance. A recent controller’s report found that the city spent more than $10 million in salaries for public relations and public information staff, including funding for seven people in the Mayor’s Office of Communications last year. The mayor should cut all unnecessary PR staff and reduce his spin operation to two people.

6. Cut the fat, not the bone. Both police and fire unions are due for 7 percent pay increases. As the city cuts salaries or lays off staff across the board, the mayor should work with the board to reopen fire and police contracts.

7. Eliminate unnecessary drivers. For years, the Fire Department’s battalion chiefs have relied on "chief’s aides" to chauffer them around the city. The estimated cost for these positions is more than $2 million.

7.5 Cut in half the city’s contribution to the opera and symphony. In the current year, the city is contributing close to $4 million in General Fund revenue to the operation of the opera, symphony, and ballet. We can’t afford to subsidize organizations with enormous endowments while we slash services for people in need.

Aaron Peskin is president of the Board of Supervisors.

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

Muni is heading for a hiring freeze and delaying system improvements at the same time that Mayor Gavin Newsom says this is "not a time to raise fees and taxes on business." The head of the California High-Speed Rail Authority is fighting with the head of the Transbay Terminal project over money to extend train tracks downtown. The United States of America is bailing out car companies that have been fighting for years against tougher emissions standards and still can’t seem to make fuel-efficient vehicles. And we’re all worried about global warming and a deepening recession.

I’m not getting this.

Historians and economists can argue forever about the causes of the Great Depression, but most people agree about what brought it to an end: massive, over-the-top levels of public spending. Huge investments in infrastructure. Huge investments in employment programs.

Tax cuts didn’t end the Depression. Government layoffs and belt-tightening didn’t end the Depression. Under President Roosevelt, the government taxed and spent, borrowed and spent — and spent and spent and spent — starting with the New Deal and continuing through the gigantic reindustrialization of America known as World War II. And money went into things that actually created jobs — in many cases, public-sector jobs.

So now we’re in a period where San Francisco, California, and the nation desperately need new infrastructure . We need to shift, fairly radically, away from a car-based transportation system to one based on energy-efficient transit, particularly trains. We need to profoundly shift the electricity grid, away from nuclear and fossil fuels (and away from private control). All these things create jobs. It’s kind of a no-brainer.

California just approved $9.9 billion in bonds for a high-speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles. But even that money isn’t going to be enough, and progress is going to be slow. Take 1/10th of the $800 billion the federal government is putting into propping up big banks and spend it on an emergency plan to build high-speed rail all the way from Seattle to San Diego, and imagine how many jobs that would produce. Jobs for planners, engineers, accountants, office-support people, steel fabrication, construction work, heavy equipment operators … jobs for college grads, jobs for high school grads, union jobs, steady jobs, jobs that train people for other jobs –tens of thousands of them.

Take another 10 percent of that and spend it building solar panels on every public building on the West Coast. Again: jobs of every sort, at every level. Mandate that all the work gets done in America, and you’ll develop an entire new industry or two (we don’t build trains in this country much, but we could, and we already have auto workers and factories that are about to be idled).

I hear some talk about this from the Obama administration, but I also hear some caution and some discussion about budget deficits and keeping the financial sector happy. Fact: the financial sector will be happy when a few million more people are working and spending money. That’s where the economy starts.

I just watched all 34 minutes of the economic segment of Newsom’s state-of-the-city YouTube extravaganza. In and around the rhetoric, he devoted a few moments to the city’s budget deficit and how he was going to institute a hiring freeze, lay off workers and consolidate departments. All wrong.

In fact, this is an excellent time to raise taxes and fees — on the rich, the well-off commuters, the big businesses, the billionaires … Shifting wealth from the top to the bottom, creating public sector jobs in the process, is an fine recipe for economic stimulus. At every level of government.

Cut half the general fund?

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by Tim Redmond

I’m not kidding. That’s what the numbers right now suggest. San Francisco over the next year could face a budget deficit of $576 million — almost half of the entire discretionary money that the city has to spend.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, frankly, is entirely missing in action on this one. He’s been hiding out, doing his budget discussions in secret, playing Where’s Waldo (even showing up that the board meeting without a budget plan) and leaving City Hall and thousands of city workers, nonprofits and activists wondering what the hell is going on. The lack of leadership is mind boggling.

In the vacuum, the Coalition to Save Public Health has proposed a series of alternative cuts, and Sup. Aaron Peskin, writing in tomorrow’s Bay Guardian, suggests that the board consider them. The proposals include eliminating unnecessary jobs that pay more than $100,000 a year, cutting back the mayor’s seven-person PR staff, cutting the money the city gives to the Opera and Symphony and re-opening the police and fire contracts. These are all good ideas — and they might, in the best of all circumstances, add up to ten or 20 percent of the deficit.

The reality is that the mayor is going to be making some brutal cuts now — and it will be much worse in a few months, when the supervisors have to deal with the next fiscal year’s budget. You can’t cut half a billion dollars out of San Francisco city government without eliminating a lot of essential programs. Public health? Decimated. Parks and Rec? A wreck. Muni? Service will get way worse, fares may go up, and the city’s commitment to public transit will be at risk. What’s the city do for you? Get ready to give it up.

And you think the job market is bad now and the recession starting to hit the city hard? Imagine when a few thousand city employees join the unemployment lines.

So what are we supposed to do? Let me make a suggestion.

The worst thing a government agency can do in a recession is cut spending. The feds can borrow money and keep spending, but the city can’t. So we simply need to face the fact that this is an emergency, a crisis, the worst situation since the 1930s – and we need to look for new revenue.

We can’t mess around with half steps, either. We need big money, right now – and the best, most fair and progressive way to get that is with an income tax.

Now, the city can’t just impose an income tax on residents, the way New York City and Philadelphia do. The California Constitution pre-empts that. But the city CAN levy a tax on all income earned within the city. So the commuters pay, too (although residents who live here and work somewhere else don’t; it’s an imperfect world). Oakland passed a tax on income earned in the city in the 1970s, and the issue went all the way to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in Weekes v. City of Oakland that the tax was perfectly legal (the City Council dropped the tax anyway). Here’s an opinion on it.

The nice thing about income taxes is that they hit the rich harder than the poor. In fact, San Francisco could exempt, say, the first $100.000 of income, then use a progressive scale to make sure that only well-off people paid anything, and the richest paid the most. Even in a recession, there are rich people in this town, people who have done very well under the Bush tax cuts – and shifting money from the rich to the poor during a recession is excellent economics.

And an income tax could actually bring in enough cash to make a real difference.

Of course, the rich people who pay it can deduct the local tax from their state and federal returns – so a lot of the money actually comes to SF from Washington and Sacramento.

Passing something like this would be a huge political challenge – it would have to go on the ballot, and nobody wants new taxes, and the Chamber of Commerce types would howl and raise huge sums to defeat it. It could only work if the entire City Hall establishment, starting with the mayor, was willing to go out and campaign, hard, for the measure. Make it temporary – the tax would expire in two years. Make it progressive – nobody who is hurting financially would pay a heavy burden. And tell the voters: We tax the rich, or we close libraries, and eliminate Muni lines, and take cops off the streets, and close fire stations, and let sick people die because they can’t see doctors – and watch the local economy fall even deeper into recession as city spending plummets.

Because that’s what we’re talking about here. These are the choices.

There’s a good chance the state will have a special election in the spring – a tax measure could go on the ballot then. Or the city could hold its own special election. And if the city income tax doesn’t fly, I’m open to something – anything – else. But is has to be big, and we have to move on it now.

Any takers?

Newsom’s shocking Board appearance

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WTF?! Mayor Gavin Newsom shocks everyone by making a surprise “Bad News” visit to the Board.

Photos by Luke Thomas
Text by Sarah Phelan

For years, voters have been asking Mayor Gavin Newsom appear before the Board of Supervisors for monthly policy discussions. And for years, MGN has refused, claiming that such invites were “political theater.”

So, eyeballs understandably popped and jaws dropped when Newsom showed up at today’s Board meeting.
What could have possibly got the Mayor to come and talk to the Board?

A $576 million budget deficit, as it turns out. That’s almost half the City’s $1.2 billion in discretionary funds.

“That arguably makes it the most daunting crisis since the Great Depression,” Newsom observed.

But while the Mayor claimed he had come to the Board to “share the challenge”, he did not share copies of his proposed solution, until hours later at a press conference he did not attend. In other words, no one could ask the Mayor hard questions about his proposed plan in real time. And that was a tad frustrating.

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The media try to make sense of the Mayor’s proposal as Dr. Mitch Katz talks about what it means for the City’s Public Health Department.

Instead, Newsom did what he seems to do best: he stood there, hair and nails immaculate, spouting numbers, percentages, and statistics about his package which he dubbed, ” $118 million in proposed mid-year solutions.”

Somehow,he didn’t get to the part about the 399 pink slips that will be sent to City workers on Friday, or the 313 vacant positions that will also be eliminated.

Those details were left to Controller Ben Rosenfield and Budget Director Nani Coloretti to share with the press, as we stood in the International Room, surrounded by glass cases filled with signed memorabilia from the likes of “Their Royal Highnesses” Prince Charles and his wife Camilla.

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The Mayor’s “dream team” address media questions in the International Room,

It also fell lto the Mayor’s financial team to spell out that this mid-year proposal only addresses $100 million of the problem, meaning 2009-2010 will likely look four times worse.

Meanwhile, some supervisors were left wondering of there will there be any meaningful collaboration between Newsom and the Board, or whether it will take the form of the usual feral faction versus manicured tribe?
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Sup. Chris Daly wonders aloud about “real collaboration.”

“We have the capacity, the ingenuity and the spirit to solve this,” Newsom told the Board, looking painfully alone as he stood in their chambers this afternoon.”It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here..The mid-year solution–difficult and painful as it is–its he easy part. The difficult part comes in the next four months.”
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His appearance was a good first step, but will he follow it up with regular monthly visits, so that the Board can engage him in policy discussions, as per their voters’ requests?

It looks as if the Board isn’t banking on it: Peskin and his fellow supervisors have put together their own package of solutions–an ordinance deappropriating $8.5 million in alternative cuts from the General Fund.

As one aide told me, “It’s important for the Board to set the stage now for the budget discussions in the Spring.”

But it would be great if there was a silver lining to the global crisis-in which the SF Board and Mayor started acting as equal partners in their efforts to save what they can from the economic wreckage.
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Ammiano, O.J. Simpson, and the mayor

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Ammiano is back: Today’s Ammianoliner:

O.J. Simpson finally has enough time to watch Mayor Newsom’s seven and a half hour speech.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano (whoops, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano) on Dec. 8, 2008.)

And so the pressing question of the day remains: Will Sacramento change Tom Ammiano and his San Francisco sense of humor? B3
Let us watch closely. B3

Newsom swears in Campos

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By Steven T. Jones

A day after appointing David Campos to fill the Board of Supervisors seat vacated by new Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (which Campos won in last month’s election), Mayor Gavin Newsom marveled at the huge and enthusiastic crowd that showed up at City Hall for Campos’s swearing in ceremony.

camposswearin1208.jpg

“Thanks for coming here on remarkably short notice,” Newsom said. “I’m impressed with his ability to raise a crowd, which is a cautious warning as well.”

Indeed, after an election in which progressives such as Campos consolidated their legislative power, Newsom does have something to fear if he continues with his autocratic attacks on progressive priorities, as we could see more of tomorrow when he is scheduled to announce a package of mid-year budget cuts.

But for today, they were just one big city family, a tone strongly set by Campos, who pledged to work well with Newsom, fellow supervisors, and those who supported other candidates in his race. And he singled out Ammiano for special praise, telling him, “I’m going to do my best to make you proud.”

Hank Plante busts the mayor!

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Why did Mayor Newsom buy a $51,000 Chevy car in Colma when the only Chevy dealership in San Francisco is going out of business? Scroll down for the KPIX video showing how Hank Plante busts the mayor.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

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Photo by Paula Connelly

Newsom’s driver and new Chevy Hybrid Tahoe SUV vehicle, parked in front of the Ark toy store on 24th Street, during a press conference launching the Shop Local–Get More campaign. The city bought the car from a dealership in Colma for $51,000.

It was marvelous. Simply marvelous. Hank Plante busts the mayor.

Let me set the scene: The reporters and small business leaders on Wednesday (Dec. 5) were packed in the Ark, a toyshop on 24th Street, for a press conference to launch formally the “Shop Local–Get More” campaign aimed at getting San Franciscans and everyone else to shop local in San Francisco this holiday season.

Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, laid out the chamber’s extensive program for its members to give substantial discounts to customers. Gerald Johnson, owner of the Ark, explained how his store would give 10 per cent off your next purchase with a purchase of more than $100. Mayor Newsom, who rolled in late in his city car, gave a zippy little talk about the values of shopping local and helping out the merchants and business community during tough times.

Newsom is at his best at these informal occasions, a little pep talk here, a genial smile and gesture there, lots of jutting jaw, no tough questions please. Then came time for questions and Newsom visibly relaxed for what he hoped would be some Noe Valley soft balls.

Hank Plante, the savvy political editor of KPIX Television (Channel 5), was positioned in the front of the crowd with his television cameraman and his camera was whirring away. He led off with a timely question.

“Mr. Mayor, you want people to shop in San Francisco. You know the car dealerships are in trouble. Can you tell us why you didn’t buy your new official city car here in the city?”

Newsom replied testily, “Uh, I have no idea. Thanks for the Gotcha question and I don’t have a clue. I didn’t have anything to do with the purchase of that car.” He said he would find out what happened and get back with the answer.

Plante reported the exchange in the KPIX newscast that night. He said, “We’re losing our last Chevy dealership” in San Francisco. He said that the new car was a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV that cost $51,000 at a dealership in Colma. He pointed out that the Chevy was one of the “most visible purchases the mayor made this year.” Marie Brooks, from Ellis Brooks Chevy dealership on Van Ness Avenue, told Plante, “I think it’s wrong for one of our city officials to buy anything outside the city.” Ellis Brooks is a family-owned car dealership and one of the oldest and most famous local names in selling cars in Northern California.

Plante reported that Newsom kept ducking the question and later refused to allow the press corps to take a picture of him leaving the press conference in his gleaming black hybrid car parked in front of the toy store (see pic above.) KPIX showed video footage of Newsom not getting into the car and walking down 24th street.

Plante had nailed a point that has been agitating the small (and big) business community for years. Scott Hauge, a prominent small business leader and founder and president of Small Business California, was at the press conference and picked up on the point immediately. In his followup email to small business people in the city, Hauge noted he had attended the press conference “where the mayor was promoting a shop SF campaign.

“I applaud the mayor and others like the SF Chamber, Bay Guardian, Small Business Commission and Hotel Council for their efforts. What I didn’t hear was anything the city will do to require SF City agencies to buy from SF companies located in SF.”

Then Hauge zeroed in. “SF government does not have a very good track record in this area. In fact the mayor was asked why he did not purchase his hybrid vehicle in SF and he said he didn’t know why. Now is the time to push this issue. SF businesses have a higher cost of doing business because of mandates imposed on us. It seems to me that the least the city can do is buy from SF businesses.” I think he’s spot on.

And so Plante, Hauge, the Guardian, and small (and big) business in San Francisco are waiting anxiously for Newsom’s explanation why he bought a $51,000 city Chevy vehicle in Colma and not in San Francisco where our last Chevy dealership is on hard times and going out of business. And we are all waiting even more anxiously to hear what the mayor plans to do to correct this Shop- outside -San Francisco-syndrome and get the city working to spend its tens of millions of dollars of city tax dollars on businesses and services in San Francisco.

P.S. Full disclosure: the Guardian is a sponsor of the Shop Local campaign. And we sent a delegation to the press conference: Sales and Marketing Director Jennifer Lachman, Vice President of Operations Daniel B. Brugmann, Online and Print Advertising Coordinator Rebecca Frank, Assistant to the Publisher Paula Connelly who took the press conference photos, and myself. We are happy to pitch in on this critical and timely endeavor to put as much instant cash as possible into our local businesses and our community.

Our contribution, as a locally owned, independent newsweekly, is our own Shop Local campaign featuring a key marketing line derived from an analysis provided by the Business Alliance of Local Living Economies (BALLE), using a formula created by the consulting firm Civic Economics. This data is dramatic. It shows that if our 600,000 or so Guardian readers would spend $l00 with locally owned, independent businesses in San Francisco during the holiday season, that would inject $99 million into the San Francisco economy. Immediately.

That’s nearly $15 million more dollars than the city would see if that money were spent on chain stores that send their revenues back to headquarters. That’s because money spent at local businesses tends to stay and circulate in the community and create more local jobs and economic activity and of course more tax dollars for the city. The Guardian is also leading a national Shop Local campaign among alternative papers that would put several billion dollars in total into local economies all over the country. As Guardian Executive editor Tim Redmond puts it, “A sustainable community needs a sustainable economy, and that starts with locally owned, independent businesses.”

Unsolicited advice for the mayor and anybody else at City Hall who keeps sending our money outside of town: check the policy of the San Francisco International Airport that mandates locally owned small businesses get most of the juicy airport franchises. That policy works and works well. When I go through the airport, I always stop to get something to eat at Klein’s Deli. Klein’s was named after Deborah Klein, a Guardian circulation manager in the mid- 1970s who became a restaurant entrepreneur in San Francisco. For many years, she ran Klein’s Deli on 20th Street atop Potrero Hill. B3

Click here to watch yesterday’s KPIX newscast.

Click here to see Guardian photo coverage of the press conference.

Shop Local, get more

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By Paula Connelly

Today Mayor Newsom held a press conference to announce the ‘Shop SF. Get More’, an economic promotion campaign for December / January. This promotion is a collaboration between SF Economic & Workforce Development, SF Office of Small Business, SF Convention and Visitor Bureau, SF Chamber of Commerce, Hotel Council, MTA, MUNI, DPT, BART, Chronicle, Examiner, Business Times and Bay Guardian to encourage people throughout the nine county Bay Area to shop in San Francisco. The Bay Guardian has been promoting small business and sustainable economic programs for years and this holiday season is urging its readers to spend $100 of their holiday money at locally owned, independent businesses – a move that would pump nearly $100 million into the city’s recession-plagued economy.

The press conference was held Wednesday, December 3, 11:45am, at the Ark Toy Store, which is located at 3845 24th St (near Sanchez), in Noe Valley San Francisco.

Visit the San Francisco Visitor and Conventions Bureau’s website: www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com to lean about Shop Local offers from participating businesses or visit www.sfbg.com/local to find out how to win $500 in the Guardian’s Shop Local Reader’s Contest.

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Ark Toy Storefront in Noe Valley

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Gavin Newsom kicks off the Shop Local campaign
http://cbs5.com/video/?id=42754@kpix.dayport.com

Transforming traffic analysis

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY A court injunction against new bicycle projects in San Francisco (see "Stationary biking," 5/16/07) could get lifted next year, thanks to environmental studies released Nov. 26 and headed to the Board of Supervisors next month. But it’s a subtle, technical change in how city officials analyze traffic impacts that could have a more far-reaching implications.

It’s called Level of Service Reform and it would change the triggering mechanism for when projects need to conduct full-blown environmental impact reports, an expensive and time-consuming requirement that led to the three-year bike project injunction. And LOS reform has been rattling around the city bureaucracy long before the Guardian wrote about it two-and-a-half years ago ("The slow lane," 5/17/06).

"It’s either wonderful that I started working on this in 2002, or it’s embarrassing," Rachel Hiatt of the San Francisco Transportation Authority told a Nov. 19 meeting of TransForm (formerly the Transportation and Land Use Coalition) on the subject.

The California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 requires EIRs for projects with potentially significant environmental impacts, as is the case when the level of service (LOS) at an intersection could be changed. LOS is measured by the amount of time it takes a car to pass through a given area. The time consumed by the car is often referred to as control delay. Measured by grades A through F, control delay per motor vehicle times of up to 30 seconds (E grade) are acceptable in San Francisco.

Designating sections of certain busy streets to accommodate a bike lane would affect the control delay, thereby earning the area a lower LOS grade. Since cars now essentially have priority over alternative forms of transportation, many potential bike lanes have been stranded by the LOS standard.

City officials are working to replace the LOS measure with a new one based on auto trips generated (ATG), using 1 ATG as the threshold for an EIR. Projects that generate no car trips will not be seen as having any environmental impact, thereby moving through the approval process quicker and cheaper.

"LOS needs to be taken out of the picture," Hiatt said.

The argument for LOS replacement is not solely about the need to accommodate other transit modes, but about lowering costs and making government more efficient. Hiatt outlined other problems with the current measure as the failure to accurately gauge environmental impact, failure to reflect the city’s "transit-first" policy priorities, and an inefficient CEQA review process.

Development advisor Mike Yarne of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development said that if the city wants to topple LOS, the Transit Authority has a case to make. "What the TA needs to show is that ATG is a more effective proxy to calculate environmental harm," Yarne said.

The city is also considering instituting a mitigation fee to be paid by project sponsors to compensate for environmental impact. Proceeds from the fee will be used to enhance all existing modes of transit, pedestrian safety, and could even include planting trees.

"The fee will go toward making people move faster," Yarne said.

Yarne admits that it could be a little difficult to make both changes at once. San Francisco will be the first city in California to create a mitigation fee, so other cities are taking notes.

"It would be quite an accomplishment if we could make it happen. It’s never been done," explained Yarne, noting that most cities have come to recognize that CEQA does not work well in urban areas. "The irony of ironies is the stopping of the bike plan."

Last week the TA released a Draft Environmental Impact Report for the San Francisco Bicycle Plan. With almost 900 days since the last new bike lane was constructed, the new bike plan will allow a roughly 75 percent increase to the current network..

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum expressed hope in the potential of the new EIR, slated to be approved this spring, after which the plan will be finalized and the city can go back to court to try to get the injunction lifted.

"The draft EIR is definitely a big step toward completion, but more needs to be done," she said. "The ridiculous exercise of slowing the bike plan down is a great case for why we need environmental review reform."

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was out of town the day Tom Ammiano appeared at his final meeting as a San Francisco supervisor. Too bad; I would have gone, no matter how busy I was, just to be a part of history.

I know that sounds silly. The Barack Obama inauguration will be part of history. The election of Harvey Milk was part of history. Ammiano’s last day? Hey, the guy’s moving on to Sacramento. Take a bow, everyone says thanks, and another local politician takes another political job. History?

Well, yeah, actually. Because when the history of progressive politics is written in this town (and I hope some other poor sucker takes on that job so I don’t have to) Tom Ammiano will go down as a central figure in the movement that turned San Francisco around.

It’s worth noting that the movie Milk, celebrating the life of the gay pioneer, opened around the same time Ammiano was clearing out his City Hall office. The connection goes deeper than the fact that they were both queer men fighting for basic human rights and dignity at a time when that was a huge uphill struggle.

Milk was part of an urban movement that came out of the 1960s and came of age in the 1970s that sought to wrest control of San Francisco from a cadre of military and big business leaders who had been running it since World War II. The agenda of the crew that we collectively refer to as "downtown" was turning the sleepy port city of the 1930s into the financial headquarters for Pacific Rim trade. They wanted San Francisco to be another Manhattan; they laid plans, they put the machinery in place — and they never asked the people who lived here whether that was the future we wanted.

Because all that downtown development meant higher rents, more evictions, gentrification, budget deficits, too many cars, the death of small businesses … and by the mid-1970s, the activists had figured out how to fight back. It started with electing supervisors by district so that big money didn’t always carry the day.

Milk was elected supervisor as part of the progressive push that put George Moscone in the Mayor’s Office. And if Moscone and Milk had lived, it’s possible that the tide could have turned right then. But the assassinations derailed district elections, turned the city back over to downtown, and sentenced the San Francisco left to more than 20 years of tough political dark ages.

Ammiano got elected in that era, when the developers called all the shots, when tenants and environmentalists and neighborhood people were lucky to get two or three votes on the Board of Supervisors. His pro-tenant and anti-development proposals never even reached the desks of mayors who would have vetoed them anyway.

But he didn’t give up, and in 1999, in the bleak days of the dot-com boom, he took on a long-shot campaign for mayor that, in one six-week period, reenergized the San Francisco left. With his help, district elections came back; and with his leadership, a decidedly progressive board took office in 2001. Living wage, sick pay, universal health care, bike plans, real estate transfer taxes, tenant protections … these are all products of that change.

Ammiano was an odd sort of leader, someone with a sense of humor who didn’t take himself anywhere near seriously enough. He would be the first to credit the movement, not the man — and he’d be right. But when we needed him, he was there.

Decongest me

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› sarah@sfbg.com

San Francisco could raise $35 million to $65 million for public transit improvements annually by charging drivers $3 to cross specific downtown zones during peak travel hours, according to a San Francisco County Transportation Authority congestion pricing study.

The aim of those fees, SFCTA staffers say, is to reduce congestion, making trips faster and more reliable, neighborhoods cleaner, and vehicle emissions lower, all while raising money to improve local and regional public transit and make the city more livable and walkable — improvements they hope will get even more folks out of their cars.

London, Rome, and Stockholm already have congestion pricing schemes, but plans to charge congestion fees in New York got shelved this July, reportedly in large part because of New Jersey officials’ fears that low-income suburban commuters would end up carrying a disproportionate burden of these fees.

As a result of New York’s unanticipated pressing of the pause button, San Francisco now stands poised to become the first city in the United States to introduce congestion pricing. But the plan requires approval from both local officials as well and the state legislature.

As SFCTA executive director Jose Luis Moscovich told the Guardian last week, "The state has control over passage of goods and people. Therefore, if we want to restrict that in any way, e.g. charging a congestion fee, [we] have to get the state’s permission."

If a congestion pricing plan is to go forward, it will need the support of Mayor Gavin Newsom. Wade Crowfoot, the mayor’s climate change advisor, told us, "It’s obvious that the mayor embraces the concept, as he laid out in his 2008 inaugural address."

But Newsom isn’t signing the dotted line just yet. "The mayor wants to make sure that there are no negative impacts that would make people not want to come to San Francisco, or would harm low-income people who live in areas that are not served by public transit and have no other choice but to drive," Crowfoot said.

"We are encouraging the [Transportation Authority] to do vigorous public outreach so that no one feels blindsided," Crowfoot added.

But as SFCTA executive director Jose Luis Moscovich explained Nov. 25 to the supervisors, who also constitute the transportation authority board, even if San Francisco gets the legislative green light, it could take two to three years to implement a congestion pricing plan.

"We’re not making a proposal," Moscovich said. "We’re just showing the initial results of our analysis."

That said, it’s clear Moscovich believes congestion pricing is feasible and would contribute to local, regional, and statewide transit goals.

TOO MANY PEOPLE


With San Francisco planning to accommodate 150,000 new residents and 230,000 new jobs over the next 25 years, Moscovich’s principal transportation planner, Zabe Bent, outlined four scenarios last week that would mitigate impacts in already congested areas.

These scenarios involve a small downtown cordon, a gateway fee with increased parking pricing downtown, a double ring that combines gateway crossings with additional fees downtown, and a cordon that imposes fees on crossings into the city’s northeast corner. (See www.sfmobility.org for details, including maps of the four possible zone scenarios.)

It seems likely the SFCTA will pursue the double ring or northeast cordon option.

As Bent told the board, "If the zone is too small, people will drive around it. And drivers within the zone could end up driving more, thereby eroding anticipated congestion benefits."

But all four scenarios aim to alleviate an additional 382,000 daily trips and 30 percent extra time lost to traffic congestion that would otherwise occur by 2030, according to SFCTA studies.

"We won’t reach environmental goals through clean technology alone," Bent explained. "Even if everyone converted to a Prius, the roads would still be congested."

Observing that it already costs at least $4 to get into the city by car — on top of $2 per gallon for gas and high parking fees — Bent argued that congestion, which cost the city $2 billion in 2005, reduces San Francisco’s competitiveness and quality of life.

Stockholm raised $50 million a year and reduced congestion by 22 percent with congestion fees, while London raised $200 million a year and reduced congestion by 30 percent.

In San Francisco, the SFCTA used computer models to determine that by charging $3 per trip at peak hours, the region would get maximum benefits and minimum impacts.

Discounts would be available for commercial fleets, rentals, car shares, and zone residents, Bent said, with toll payers getting a $1 "fee-bate" and taxis completely exempt.

As Moscovich noted, "Taxis are viewed as an extension of the public transit system."

BIG BUSINESS GRUMBLES


With concerted public outreach scheduled for the next two months, and business groups already grumbling about even talking about any increases to the cost of shopping and commuting with the economy in meltdown, Moscovich warned the supervisors not to wait until after the next economic boom hits, before planning to deal with congestion.

"Now is the right time to study it, but not implement it yet," Moscovich said.

Kathryn Phillips of the Sacramento-based Environmental Defense Fund told the Board that in Stockholm, public support grew to 67 percent once a congestion fee was in place.

"People saw that it reduced congestion, provided more public transit services, and made the city more livable and walkable," Phillips said.

BART director and Livable City executive director Tom Radulovich believes that free downtown transit would make the fees more palatable. "Fares could be collected when you get off the train if you travel outside of the zone," Radulovich said.

Noting that BART is approaching its limits, Muni Metro needs investments, and parking fees are an effective tool for managing congestion, Radulovich added. "Congestion pricing’s main criteria should not be to make traffic move faster. I don’t want to create more dangerous streets, but generally speaking, I think that plan is on the right track."

As for fears that San Francisco’s plans could tank at the state level because of concerns about working-class drivers being unfairly burdened, Radulovich noted that SFCTA studies at Doyle Drive determined that only 6 percent of peak hour drivers are low-income.

"The vast majority are earning more than $50,000 a year," Radulovich said. "And since the number of low-income drivers is very small, they could be given discounts. The real environmental justice issue here is what current congestion levels are doing to people living downtown, who are mostly low-income. They put up with inhumane levels of traffic and congestion, which affects the health and livability of their neighborhoods."

Dave Synder, transportation policy director for SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association), said he believes the regressive tax argument is a misleading attack.

"The truth is, that without the revenues this program will bring, the MTA will have to cut service for poor people, not increase service to meet increased demand for people who can no longer afford to drive," Synder told us.

But several local business groups are claiming that San Francisco doesn’t have a congestion problem compared to European cities.

Ken Cleveland of San Francisco’s Building Owners and Managers Association, said he believes that reports of congestion in San Francisco "are more hype than reality.

"We have no problem compared to London, Rome, and Stockholm," Cleveland said. "Congestion fees may work when you have a huge city with millions of people crammed in, like in London, Manhattan, Rome, but not in San Francisco."

Cleveland urged a hard look at what this increase means for people who drive now. " Fees of $160 a month would be "a real hit" on the middle and working classes, he said.

Jim Lazarus of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce said he opposed a local cordon, but supports a regional congestion pricing program. "Look out the window at 10.45 a.m., and you’ll see that there is no congestion on Montgomery and Pine," Lazarus told us, noting that unlike London, which covers 600 square miles, San Francisco only has a 49-square-mile footprint.

"If you decide not to go into downtown London, the odds are your taxes, jobs, and revenues will still go into London’s coffers," he said. "That’s not the case in San Francisco. So from a small business point of view, it doesn’t make sense."

Bent says the SFCTA’s study provides numbers that are irrefutable, in terms of showing how travel times are impacted by congestion, during peak hours. "We’re talking about modest improvements in speed, but significant improvements in travel time," Bent said.

The proposed fees won’t affect shoppers, museum-goers, or those going out at night, but would benefit all users of the public transit system, Moscovich said.

"We’re not designing for London, we’re designing for San Francisco," Moscovich told the Guardian. "And this is not an anti-automobile program. This is an effort to achieve a balanced transportation system."

With the congestion fee revenue reinvested in transportation infrastructure, Moscovich adds, public transit will be less crowded, and provide more frequent, faster service.

"It all makes perfect internal sense: folks with the least resources are likely to benefit the most," said Moscovich, who predicts that San Francisco will agree on some form of congestion pricing.

"The mayor wants to be seen as a leader in initiating climate change commitment, and transportation is one of the first ways to achieve this," he said. "Especially since 50 percent of San Francisco’s greenhouse emissions occur during peak hour travel."

"We’re trying to change behavior, not just engineering. We don’t want people in cars. … For every pollution-free Prius, you have diesel buses and older cars sitting in traffic idling, essentially eroding any benefits. The best way to optimize results is to get some cars out of the peak hour."

Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who is president of the SFCTA board and has supported the congestion fee-pricing system since it was implemented in London, said that "business will have to step up [and] make a willing suspension of disbelief to see that enhanced mobility will enhance business opportunities.

"There will be no need to get mauled at the mall," McGoldrick predicts. "San Francisco has wonderful things to offer, not just a sterile, homogenous, single-purpose environment. You can’t match museums and cultural amenities out at the malls. San Francisco is a cultural center, not just a strip mall."

McGoldrick, who is termed out in January, said that the new Board "will lean very positively toward doing this." He added that state representatives, including Sens. Leland Yee and Mark Leno and Assembly Members Fiona Ma and Tom Ammiano "will see the benefits.

"They should be willing to carry the banner because of the long term benefits for their grandchildren," McGoldrick said.

(The Board will consider the congestion pricing scenarios and impacts Dec. 16. See www.sfmobility.org for details of public workshops and meetings.)

Cue the clowns

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› steve@sfbg.com

The circus doesn’t come to San Francisco, but its performers do, sexy and talented dreamers who bring a creative energy that has transformed the city’s nightlife and counterculture. Spinning aerialists and dancing clowns now proliferate at clubs and parties, and their number has more than doubled in recent years.

They come from towns across the country — often via Burning Man, where they discover their inner performers, dying to burst out, and other kindred spirits — to a city with a rich circus tradition, which they tweak and twist into something new, a hybrid of the arts and punk sideshow weirdness. It’s the ever-evolving world of Indie Circus.

One of the biggest banners these performers now dance and play under is Bohemian Carnival, which draws together some of the city’s best indie circus acts, including Vau de Vire Society, the clown band Gooferman, and Fou Fou Ha, acts that fluidly mix with one another and the audience.

Last Saturday, as families across the country shopped and shared Thanksgiving leftovers, this extended family of performers rehearsed for that night’s Bohemian Carnival. Fou Fou Ha was in the Garage, a SoMa performance space, working on a new number celebrating beer with founder/choreographer Maya Culbertson, a.k.a. MamaFou, pushing for eight-count precision.

"Do it again," she tells her eight high-energy charges, who look alternatively sexy and zany even without the colorful and slightly grotesque clown costumes they don for shows. I watch from the wings as they drill through the number again and again, struck by how the improvised comedy at the song’s end changes every time, someone’s new shtick catching my eye and making me smile.

"That’s what we love the most, the improv element to it," Culbertson tells me. "We see how far you can take it and not break character."

As Fou Fou Ha wrapped up and headed home to get ready for the show, Gooferman and Vau de Vire were just starting to rehearse and set up over at the party venue, DNA Lounge. Reggie Ballard was up a tall ladder setting the rigging, the dancers stretched, Vau de Vire co-founder Mike Gaines attended to a multitude of details, and Gooferman frontmen Vegas and Boenobo the Klown played the fools.

"I feel like I’m on acid," Vegas said evenly, his long Mohawk standing tall.

"Are you?" Boenobo said, perhaps a little jealous.

"No, I wish," Vegas replied. "But that’s why it’s weird."

"Huh," Boenobo deadpanned. "Weird."

Fucking clowns. I decide to chat up a dancer, Rachel Strickland, the newest member of Vau de Vire, who stretched and unabashedly changed into her rehearsal clothes as she told me about why she moved here from North Carolina in July 2007.

"I waited a long time for this. I always knew I wanted to come to San Francisco and work on the stage, doing something in the line of Moulin Rouge, with the costumes and that kind of decadence and debauchery," Strickland said, oozing passion for her craft and the life she’s chosen, one she said has met her expectations. "I danced as much as I could my whole life and I have an overactive imagination, so it’s hard to shock me."

Not that Vau de Vire hasn’t tried. Shocking people out of their workaday selves is what the performers try to do, whether through vaudeville acts, dance routines, feats of skill, or just sheer sensual outlandishness. Vau de Vire choreographer Shannon Gaines (Mike’s wife of 19 years) also teaches at the local indie circus school Acrosports and, with beatboxer and performance artist Tim Barsky, directs its City Circus youth program, which combines hip hop and other urban art forms with circus.

Gaines has been a gymnast and dancer all her life, skills that she’s honed into circus performances she does through five different agencies, often doing corporate events "that involve wearing a few more clothes" and other more conventional performances.

"The other seems like work to me. But this," she said, a wry smile coming to her lips, "is like dessert. This is what excites me."

She’s not the only one. With their growing popularity, San Francisco’s indie circus freaks are juggling an increasingly busy schedule and developing even bigger plans for the new year, including a national tour and an extravaganza called Metropolus that would reinforce San Francisco’s reputation as the best Big Top in the country.

As Boenobo told me, "It’s a moment in time when there’s something big developing in San Francisco."

MIMES AND PICKLES


The circus arts are ancient, but San Francisco’s unique role in morphing and perpetuating them trace back to the 1970s when Make-a-Circus arrived here from Europe — where circus traditions are strong — and the local, organic Pickle Family Circus was born.

Wendy Parkman, now a board member at San Francisco Circus Center, the circus school she helped develop in conjunction with the Pickles and legendary performer Judy Finelli, worked for both circuses and described how they derived from San Francisco’s vibrant arts scene and its history of grassroots activism.

"It was just a wonderful, spontaneous bubble, a renaissance of circus activity," Parkman told the Guardian. "It was an outgrowth of the fabulous ’60s and the involvement of people with community and politics and art."

Parkman and many others trace the local lineage of a renaissance that came to be known as New Circus back to the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which in 1959 started doing political theater that incorporated comedy (or more specifically, Commedia dell’Arte), music, farce, melodrama, and other aspects of clowning.

"It really started with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and it flourishes here because of the rich arts culture that we’ve always had here," Jeff Raz, a longtime performer with both original SF troupes who started the San Francisco Clown Conservatory and recently had the title role in Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, told the Guardian.

"San Francisco felt like a place where things could happen that were socially and politically relevant," Parkman said. "Circus has always been a people’s art form. It’s a great way of getting a lot of people involved because it takes a lot of people to put on a show."

Perhaps even more relevant to the current indie circus resurgence, both Make-a-Circus and the Pickle Family Circus reached out to working class neighborhoods in San Francisco, where they would do parades and other events to entertain the people and generate interest in the circus.

"It was happy, healthy, and accessible to people of all ages, classes, and backgrounds," said Parkman said, who noted that things began to change in the 1980s as funding for the arts dried up and Pickle hit hard times.

"The Pickle Family Circus was a grassroots circus that was part of a real renaissance. Unfortunately, it didn’t go very far," Dominique Jando, a noted circus historian who has written five books on the circus and whose wife teaches trapeze at the Circus Center, told the Guardian.

Still, the Pickle legacy lives on in the Circus Center and Acrosports, making San Francisco and Montreal (birthplace of Cirque du Soleil, whose influence has also propelled the indie circus movement) the two major hubs of circus in North America. Unlike Europe, Russia, and China, where circus training is deeply rooted and often a family affair passed from generation to generation, Jando said, Americans don’t have a strong circus tradition.

"We are really the poor children of the circus world. There is not the same tradition of circus here that there is in Europe," said Jando, a native to France who now lives in San Francisco. "Learning circus is like ballet, and it’s not really in the American psyche to work and train for seven years for a job that offers modest pay."

Homegrown spectacles like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus commercialized the circus and transformed it into the three-ring form that sacrificed intimacy and the emphasis on artistry and narrative flow. Traditionally in Europe, the clowns and music structured a circus performance, with the punctuation and interludes provided by the acrobats and other performers of the circus arts.

"It’s the superhuman and the supremely human, who are the clowns," is how Raz defines circus. "Clowns are becoming more central to the circus, the supremely human part, and that has a lot to do with our times."

Raz, Jando, and Parkman all pointed to the sterile excesses of the televised, digitized, Twittering, 24/7 world we live in as feeding the resurgence of circus. "It points to a demand by the audience to see something more down to earth and real," Jando said. "There is a need to go back to basics."

"It’s a response to the overly technological world we’re living in. People want to go back to what the human body can do and be in the same place as the performers," Parkman said. "One of the concepts of the Pickles was that it was drawing on the European model. I’d say what’s going on now in San Francisco is an offshoot of what the Pickles did."

Raz said the rise of Indie Circus and its influence on the local arts scene is consistent with his own experiences as an actor and clown. He used to keep two resumes, but performers today are often expected to be steeped in both disciplines, letting one inform the other and opening up new forms of creative expression.

"That melding that you’re looking at, from the club scene to Burning Man, is seeping into a lot of the world," Raz said. "Circus is very much a living art form."

Somehow," Jando said, "it has become a sort of counterculture on the West Coast."

INDIE, THE NEW NEW CIRCUS


Boenobo and Vegas haven’t done any real training to become clowns. They’re performers who use the clown shtick to build a fun and fantastical world off their solid musical base.

"There has to be whimsy. People take themselves so seriously," Boenobo said, noting that it was in response to the serious-minded Winter Music Conference in 2001 where he had the idea of having the members of his new band, Gooferman, dress as clowns. It was a lark, but it was fun and it stuck, and they’ve been clowns ever since.

"The clown thing floats my boat. It is a persona I really dig. And the band kicks ass. We’re all just super tight. The Bohemian Carnival is just a bunch of friends, like a family ejected out of different wombs," he said.

The band does kick ass. Setting aside the clown thing, their tunes are original and fun, evoking Oingo Boingo at its early best, particularly since the summer, when Boenobo and Vegas brought in a strong new rhythm section. But it’s the collaboration with Vau de Vire and the other groups that round out Bohemian Carnival and really bring it to life.

"People say it just blew my mind, and that is the immortality of it," Boenobo said. "It’s super-fucking gratifying, really. It’s just stupid."

They performed last month at the Hillbilly Hoedown inside a giant maze made of hay bales in Half Moon Bay, with the clowns and circus performers creating a fantastical new world for the partygoers. As Gooferman played, Shannon broke the rules and danced atop a hay bale wall behind the band, conveying pure danger and backwoods sex appeal.

"The Gooferman character is called Bruiser or Shenanigans," Shannon said of her performer alter egos. "She does the things that you’d get kicked out of a party for, but I can get away with it."

She considers herself more of a "fluffer" than a dancer, and while Gooferman plays, she gets the band and crowd charged up by pushing the limits of silliness and composure herself and seeing if they’ll follow. "So they’re thinking, wow, if she can do that, I can do all kinds of things."

Their world not only includes practitioners of circus arts (contortionists, aerialists, trapeze artists, clowns, and the like), but also the fashion scene (including outlandish local designers such as Anastasia), painters, sculptors, dancers, actors, fire artists, and DJs like Smoove who bring a certain zany flair to the dance parties.

"It’s hybridized. So it’s not just circus arts with some musical backing," Boenobo said. Instead, it creates a fun and whimsical scene that makes attendees feel like they’re part of something unusual, fun, and liberating. "Immersion is very important."

That’s why the Bohemian Carnival and its many offshoots try to break down the wall between the performers and the audience, who often show up in circus or Burning Man styles, further blurring the borders.

"When you break down that big third wall, there’s no pretense," Mike Gaines said. "It’s really about the party and the community."

Clowns circulate in the crowd, interacting with the audience while aerialists suddenly start performing on ropes or rings suspended over the dance floor. It draws the audience in, opens them up, makes them feel like they’re part of something.

"All of the sudden, people get to realize the dream of running away with the circus, but they get to leave it at the end of the night," Boenobo said with a wink, "which they generally like."

"The line of where circus starts and ends has been blurred," said kSea Flux (a.k.a. Kasey Porter), an indie circus performer who earlier this year started Big Top Magazine (www.bigtopmagazine.com) to chronicle the growing culture. "I love the old-school circus, but as with everything, it needs to be able to evolve to continue to grow."

When he joined the indie circus movement five years ago, performing with the Dresden Dolls, Flux said it transformed his life. He quit his corporate job and started developing his art and trying to make a living in the circus arts, including promoting the culture through the magazine.

"I found the circus and was completely filled with a new life," Flux said, noting that it was through his long involvement with Burning Man that he was exposed to the circus scene. "I think Burning Man gives a platform for it. People get stuck in their jobs and there’s this great week when you can let go and be what you want to be."

That’s also how the talented aerialist and hooper who calls herself Shredder got into this world, which she’s now explored in both the traditional circus and the indie variety, preferring the latter.

"I didn’t even know it was possible, but I just love it," said Shredder, who worked as a firefighter, EMT, and environmental educator before getting into performing through Burning Man, where Boenobo set up the Red Nose District in 2006 for all the many offshoots of the indie circus world that attend the event.

Shredder developed hula hoop and aerial routines, training hard to improve her skills and eventually was hired by the Cole Brothers Circus in 2006 to do aerial acrobatics and hooping. Founded in 1882, Cole is a full-blown circus in the Ringling Bros. tradition, with a ringleader, animals, and trained acrobats. Shredder toured 92 cities in 10 months until she felt the creativity and joy being snuffed out by the rote repetition of the performances.

"We did the exact same show everyday. It was like Groundhog Day but worse; same show, different parking lot," said Shredder, who later that Saturday night did a performance with more than a dozen hula hoops at once. "Then I heard about Vau de Vire through some fellow performers and I just heard they were doing really well and I wanted to be with a group like that … I was just so happy that they were willing to help me design my vision as an artist."

COMING TOGETHER


The Bohemian Carnival name and concept was actually an import from Fort Collins, Colo., where Mike and Shannon Gaines created the Vau de Vire Society as part of the performance and party space they operated there in a 100-year-old church that they purchased.

Mike’s background was in film; Shannon was a dancer; and the world they created for themselves was decidedly counterculture. So was their space, the Rose Window Experimental Theater and Art House, which they operated from 1997 to 2001 and lived in with 20 of their bohemian friends.

"It allowed us to really get to know ourselves. We had all day to just rig up any kind of performance we could imagine," she said. "If you had a crazy idea, you could just come on over at 3 a.m. and do it."

Their signature events were themed parties that would open with performances of about 30 minutes, usually combining music, dance, and performance art, followed by a dance party that was essentially an all-night rave. Initially the performances just drew off of the creativity of their friends, including those Shannon danced with. The themes were often risqué and sometimes included nudity.

The performances evolved over time, bringing in talent such as Angelo Moore of the band Fishbone, who is still a regular part of their crew. They were all attracted to the freaky side of performance art, which drew them toward sideshow, vaudeville, and circus themes and expanding what was technically possible. "We ended up getting a rigger in and just flying around the theater," Mike said.

In 2000, they did their first Bohemian Carnival event. "That’s when we started dabbling in the circus," Mike said.

While the events gained regional acclaim in newspapers and were supported by notables figures, including the town’s mayor, there was a backlash among local conservatives, including some who objected to how a traditional church was being used for raves by these bohemian freaks.

In 2001 they decided to search for a new home. "We looked around for the place that would be most accepting of what we were doing," Mike said.

San Francisco was known to be accepting of their kind, and there were groups here that were edging toward similar kinds of parties, including Infinite Kaos and Xeno (and its predecessor, Awd), as well as the band Idiot Flesh, not to mention the more serious circus being done at the Circus Center and Teatro Zinzanni.

"San Francisco, in this country, is a real hotbed for circus. So we were like, ‘Now we can bring in legitimate circus performers," Mike said. Shannon got a job teaching at Acrosports, allowing her to be immersed full-time in her art and to help grow her community.

Serendipitously, in August 2001, indie rocker Boenobo of the band Chub — a funky ska outfit whose members would wear different costumes to each of their performances — formed Gooferman, which wasn’t originally the clown band it is today: "The idea was you had to be in a costume and you had to be stoned." They morphed into a full-blown clown band, and began collaborating with circus performers.

"But it never coalesced until recently," Boenobo says.

That process probably began around Halloween 2004 at the Vegoose Festival in Las Vegas, when Vau de Vire Society was asked to fill eight hours’ worth of programming and turned to their San Francisco brethren for help, Mike said. They drove or flew about 100 people to the event.

It was also the year Boenobo staged the GoofBall in San Francisco, drawing together a variety of entertainment that helped change the nature of the traditional dance party. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the year that reviled President George W. Bush won a second term and when longtime Burning Man artists staged their ill-fated revolt against the event (see "State of the art," 12/10/04).

"When people get too serious, they need this shit even more," Boenobo said of the increasingly irreverent, naughty, and participatory parties he was throwing.

Meanwhile Fou Fou Ha was developing its act. Culbertson and Raymond Meyer were waiting tables at Rose Pistola in 2000 and decided to put their big personalities to work for them, bringing in other performers such as Slim Avocado and setting up routines to perform at CellSpace and other venues.

"We’re sort of like the children of Cirque du Soleil in a way, but we wanted to give it an edge," Culbertson said. "It’s sort of like the second wave vaudeville … now with more of a rock edge."

Fou Fou Ha’s shows play off the dark and surreal kind of performance that is more European than American, a style Culbertson was exposed to while studying choreography during her Fulbright scholarship in Holland in the late 1990s. When she returned to the United States in 2000, "I wanted to form a [dance] company." But she wanted it to be fun. "People really like the idea of serious dance combined with comedy, where you can fall out of your pirouette," she said.

"We’re kind of like guerilla circus," Slim, a trained ballerina, said. "It’s a whole new movement. It’s like ’30s cabaret, but edgier."

Boenobo started the Red Nose District on the playa at Burning Man in 2006, drawing together his Bohemian Carnival friends, a local group of stilt- walkers known as Enhightned Beings of Leisure, installation artist Michael Christian’s crew from the East Bay, the Cirque Berserk folks from Los Angeles, and others from the growing circus world.

"It’s a safe environment to be and do what you want," Gaines said of Burning Man, noting how those breakthroughs on the playa then come back home to the city. And that ethos carries into Vau de Vire, which is truly a collective of like-minded friends, one that eschews hiring outside performers for their shows. "They’re all just part of it," he said.

What they’re all part of — Vau de Vire, Gooferman, Fou Fou Ha, and the rest of the Indie Circus folk — has begun to make a strong imprint on San Francisco nightlife and counterculture. From a performer’s perspective, Boenobo said, it feels good. "Our local family is super comfortable with one another," he said, something he’s never felt before after 25 years as a indie rocker. "It’s rare to not have a lot of ego to deal with, and it’s super rare with this kind of high-quality performance."

But they want more. As Flux said, "We want to take over the world."

WHAT’S NEXT


Slowly, the circus collective members are moving toward becoming full-time freaks. Already, Mike Gaines said most of the 12 to 15 regular Vau de Vire performers practice their art full-time, subsidizing their performances by being instructors in dance or the circus arts.

That’s not to say the parties, with their large number of performers, are lucrative. "With circus, you get a million more people on your guest list, so circus is complicated from a promoter’s perspective," Joegh Bullock of Anon Salon, which incorporates circus acts into its parties, including the upcoming Sea of Dream party New Year’s Eve. "But we love it and wouldn’t do a show without it."

To pay the bills, "we also do a lot of corporate gigs," Gaines says, not proudly. Fou Fou Ha does as well, including performing at the Westfield San Francisco Centre this holiday season. They’re all dying to take their show on the road, but that, too, takes money. "Sponsorship is the key if we’re going to tour with 60 people," said Mike, who’s been working hard on a deal and said he feels close.

Boenobo’s latest plan is Metropolus, a circus-style extravaganza he’s planning (along with Bullogh and Gaines) for next Halloween, hoping to ferry guests (using buses or perhaps even art cars from Burning Man) among several venues in town (such as Mighty, 1015, Temple, and DNA Lounge) and a huge circus tent he wants to erect in Golden Gate Park.

In addition to circus-style entertainment drawn from across the country, he wants to precede the Saturday night finale with three days and nights of workshops and smaller-scale performances. His goal is for Metropolus to because a signature event for San Francisco and the indie circus scene, the equivalent of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas; the Winter Music Festival in Miami; or the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The time seems right, with the current financial meltdown creating opportunities even as it makes funding their world domination plans difficult. "Each time you have a crisis like we’re having now, it’s a ripe time for circus," Jando said, noting that circus boomed during the Great Depression and after each of the two World Wars.

And after going through years of pure absurdity in Washington, DC, and on Wall Street, Raz said the clowns of the world — from Stephen Colbert’s conservative television character (who Raz says employs clown techniques in his comedy) to a singer named Boenobo — now have a special resonance with people. As he said, "One of the things clowns do is they live the folly large."

———–

CLOWN’S EYE VIEW

I’ve been following Indie Circus for years, intending to add it to the profiles of various Burning Man subcultures (see www.steventjones.com/burningman.html) that I’ve written for the Guardian, but my reporting on this story began in May. And at the suggestion of Gooferman frontman Boenobo the Klown, I decided to start from the inside and let him turn me into a clown.

As makeup artist Sharon Rose transformed me into a happy clown backstage at DNA Lounge, I asked Boenobo what I should do (besides interview people). We just needed to clown around, keep the drunks from crowding the performers, help clear the stage between acts — whatever needed doing. "We’re the scrubs," he told me, clown-to-clown.

As we spoke, the acrobats stretched, a corpse bride goofed off as she prepared for her aria, members of the Extra Action Marching Band started to slink in, clowns applied their makeup, and female performers occasionally came back from the stage and whipped off their tops.

When Gooferman went on, I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, so I stood next to the stage, watched, and awkwardly tried to be a little goofy in my dancing. A tall, beautiful blond woman stood next to me, catching my eye. She was apparently alone, so after a couple songs, during a lull, I asked her, "So, do you like clowns?"

"I am a clown," she said with a grin.

"Really?" I said. "You don’t look like a clown."

"But I am," she said. "I even do clown porn."

She turned out to be 27-year-old porn star Hollie Stevens, who told me she "grew up as a clown" in the Midwest before moving to California and getting into porn seven years ago. She even starred in the film Clown Porn and still sometimes dons the red nose and face paint for her public appearances, usually just for her own amusement. Stevens once appeared on the Jerry Springer Show as a clown, even getting into the requisite fight on stage with a friend.

"Clowns, you either love them or you hate them," she said, and she loves them.

I asked why she was there and she said that she’d come to see Boenobo. They had talked but never met, and shared a sort of mutual admiration. It was a clown thing. Clowns … they get all the hot chicks.

While we talked, an acrobat worked the pole on the stage, followed by an aerialist performing above the dance floor, one scene woven seamlessly into the other. The clowns of Gooferman puttered around the stage, removing equipment to get ready for the next act, flirting with the girls, trying to scam more drink tickets, or simply entertaining others and themselves.

The life of a clown is rarely dull.

————

UPCOMING INDIE CIRCUS EVENTS

DEC. 5–6


Acrosports Winter Cabaret

639 Frederick, SF

8 p.m., $5–$15

www.citycircus.org

DEC. 12


Auditions for Acrosports’ City Circus

Call (415) 665-2276, ext. 103 for appointment

DEC. 12-14


Frolic: CircusDragBurlesque Festival

Featuring Fou Fou Ha, Anna Conda, and more

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

8 p.m., $100

www.counterpulse.org

1-800-838-3006

DEC. 20


Open House and Holiday Carnival

San Francisco Circus Center

755 Frederick, SF

10 a.m.–4 p.m., free

Pratfalls and Rising Stars

7 p.m., $12 adults, $8 children

San Francisco Circus Center

Tickets and info at www.circuscenter.org

DEC. 20


Storytime Festival, featuring Vau de Vire Society

4–7 p.m., "Tales of Enchantment," (G-rated show) 8–11 p.m., "Storytime for the Inner Child," (R-rated show)

$30–$50

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

www.storytimefestival.org

————

>>More: Read Marke B.’s club review of Bohemian Carnival

Comrade Newsom slices and dices

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By Steven T. Jones

After watching Mayor Gavin Newsom’s virtual State of the City speeches (delivered on You Tube rather than the traditional venue of City Hall) – and reading the criticism of them today in both the Chronicle and the Examiner, even from Newsom’s two BFF columnists – I’m torn between two metaphors.

In the first few minutes, Newsom seemed like a salesman in a late night infomercial, telling me how I could get a complete set of Ginsu knives for just $19.99. “But wait, there’s more,” Newsom seems to say, if I order now then he’ll throw in a comprehensive climate change plan, absolutely free, the first city in the country to make an offer like this. Operators are standing by.

But then it just went on and on and on (there are almost eight hours of this stuff being rolled out this week) until Newsom seemed to morph into Fidel Castro or some other Soviet Bloc dictator, just droning on endlessly about the glories of the State (or in this case, The City) with the self-assuredness and lack of self-censorship that flow from feeling omnipotent and beloved by subservient subjects.

And to add to the surreal nature of this strange exercise in over-inflated egoism, Newsom flacks Nathan Ballard and Eric Jaye (apparently the brainchildren – so to speak – behind this fiasco) are trying to cast this cyber-lecture as facilitating a dialogue with the community (even though they turned off the comments section on the You Tube posting).

We’ve long argued that Newsom is overdue for some real dialogue, particularly with progressives and the city’s legislative branch, which was why the city charter called for an annual State of the City address in the first place. So if Newsom now prefers the online world to the real one, please use our comments section to place your orders or offer dear leader some healthy feedback.

Chevron not guilty

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0

by Amanda Witherell

Chevwrong12.1.08.png
The jury didn’t think so.
Image courtesy of Justice in Nigeria Now

A federal court jury in San Francisco has found Chevron not guilty in a case alleging the corporation was complicit in the shootings, killings, and torture of protesters on a Chevron oil platform off the Niger Delta in 1998.

Plaintiffs in the case, who include Larry Bowoto, injured when Nigerian police opened fire on the unarmed protesters, have announced they will appeal the decision to the 9th Circuit, the most liberal appeals courts in the country.

“The fact that Bowoto v. Chevron made it this far in the process is a victory in and of itself, because it means that we have demonstrated that there is a clear pathway in the US court system for holding corporations accountable to the rule of law,” said Laura Livoti, founder of the group Justice in Nigeria Now, in a press release after the verdict. “This is the first time a case against a company for aiding and abetting human rights violations overseas has even gone before a jury.”

The case was filed under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law that allows foreign victims of human rights crimes inflicted by US-based corporations to sue them in US courts, and a ‘guilty’ verdict would have been a first – similar cases settled out of court in the past.

So, this is a victory for Chevron, which has been spending a lot of cash on its image lately and was dealt a losing hand from voters on Election Day with the passage of Measure T, a business tax reform measure that will cost the billion-dollar corporation $26 million. The money will go to Richmond city coffers and Green Party Mayor Gayle McLaughlin has said funds will be allocated for projects through an open public process, according to a story in today’s Chronicle.

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