News

Homeless in transit

Michael Redmond
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25
Homeless in transit

joe@sfbg.com

For most people, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system’s stations are just that: transitory. Walk into Powell Station, zip down the escalator and glide out on a train, destination somewhere. But for homeless people drawn to BART stations, the agency is a place to be stationary, a home and safe haven from the elements, muggings, and other hazards of sleeping on streets.

But now, BART intends to reclaim the T in its name. It wants the homeless to be transitory and get out of the stations.

Last week, the agency announced new enforcement of existing safety regulations that ensure people can evacuate a BART station in an emergency. BART argues homeless people sleeping or sitting in BART station hallways are in the way of a swift evacuation.

This legal interpretation gave BART carte blanche to scoop the homeless up and out. On the first day of the new rules, 17 homeless people were removed from Powell Station, which the agency justified to news media by repeatedly showing a video of a smokey accident that sent passengers fleeing.

“We had places where a big puff of smoke would fill the station very quickly,” Jeffrey Jennings, BART Police’s deputy chief, told the Guardian. “People were running not knowing what happened, very fearful. Other people were lying down, tripping folks. We could have had significant injuries occur because of that.”

First time offenders get a verbal warning, the second offense garners a citation, and the third offense jail time, all in the name of safety.

But the idea that homeless sleepers in all parts of a BART station may be trampled seems a little silly. Sure, there are sections of BART that are narrow and should be kept clear, but a walk through Powell Station shows 20-foot wide hallways throughout. This is where the homeless often sleep and sit.

At 8pm on a Wednesday, Powell Station is quiet and mostly empty, except for Charles T. He’s sitting in a chair right by the Powell Street entrance, strumming a guitar (skillfully), singing Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay.”

His voice is a dead ringer for Redding’s: “Sitting on the dock of the Bay, wasting my good time… I have nothing to live for, looks like nothing’s going to come my way. So I’m just going to sit on the dock of the Bay.”

Some still sat in Powell Station that night, flouting the new ban. A woman in baggy clothes sat by the Fourth and Market streets stairwell, cuddling her very big, very droopy-faced Rottweiler. A bald man in soiled gray pants sat along the hallway to the next exit. Slightly past him lay a man with long black hair snoring next to the wall. And at the end of that hallway, two men stayed in each other’s orbit: a slender one in a red jacket and blue jeans slept with his dirt-caked hands folded over his stomach, while a portly man sat nearby on cardboard boxes, tapping his fingers to a silent tune.

The last man we saw sat with his feet pulled under his knees by the entrance to the Westfield Centre, studiously reading his Bible as he underlined passages from Revelations. The would-be scholar, Henry Terry, 59, greeted us with a smile.

Terry was born in Los Angeles, a child of Watts who was a kid during the violent 1965 riots when 34 people died, over 1,000 people were injured, and the neighborhood burned. Terry’s mother sent him to Alabama with his father.

Terry fondly recalls growing corn, peas, watermelon, okra, squash, and sugar cane. That’s food he doesn’t have ready access to nowadays.

After bouts with the bottle and drugs, Terry cleaned himself up and got a place to live at the Hotel Essex, part of the city’s Community Housing Partnership. But alcohol lured Terry back. While in rehab, he missed an important court date, and he was evicted.

Now he spends his nights holding his Bible sitting in a BART station, seeking guidance and shelter. “The only thing getting me back to functioning is reading God’s word,” he said.

Terry’s already been ousted due to BART’s new rules. But on this day, some of the officers were more lenient. “[The officer] told me to cross my legs the entire time I’m here,” he said, “so people walking don’t trip over you.”

They also asked him to leave the commuters be. “I don’t ask for food or money,” Terry said. He just wants shelter until he can appeal his eviction.

Counterintuitively, BART Police officers who already threw Terry out once are the reason he stays there. He said the streets are dangerous, and muggings by other homeless people are common. The gates to the station go down at 12:30am, and Terry sleeps next to them because he knows the BART police will keep the muggers away.

BART argues the new rule is about safety of the passengers. California Building Code 433.3.2.2 states, “There shall be sufficient means of exit to evacuate the station occupant load from the station platforms in four minutes or less.”

Though Terry was glad the officers left him alone to sit, the Guardian saw BART police apply the law to other homeless people: usually the ones mumbling to themselves, or, frankly, the dirtiest ones.

The two men in each other’s orbit were ousted. One tall and broad-shouldered officer woke the man sleeping in the red jacket.

“Excuse me sir, excuse me. Do you know about the new rules at BART?” he asked. After explaining the ban, he said “This is the first time, so I’ll give you a warning, the second time I will cite you. The third time, you go to jail.”

The officer recommended services they could call, together. He spoke kindly, even sweetly, but the result was the same as if he had been cruel: The man in the red jacket picked up his cardboard and went out into the streets.

We told Deputy Chief Jennings about the apparent selective enforcement, questioning the law had anything to do with safety. From our four hours of observation at Powell Station, it seemed to be applied only to the dirtiest or rowdiest people, or the ones specifically sleeping, we told him.

“Our policy is someone needs to be conscious, awake, and aware of their surroundings,” Jennings told us. “There’s no selective enforcement. We only have so many officers, so officers will be drawn more to someone who is not being quiet, or having a problem.”

He also told us they had never enforced the building code before because no one had ever thought to, until the idea occurred to a newly promoted sergeant.

To its credit, BART is making inroads to help the homeless. First, transit officials went to Bevan Dufty, the director of the Mayor’s Office on Homelessness.

“I was honest and said we don’t have on demand resources and our shelters are full,” Dufty told us. The Homeless Outreach Team is stretched to the limit. Dufty suggested BART hire its own help, which it did.

Its first full time Crisis Intervention Training Coordinator, Armando Sandoval, helps pair the homeless at BART stations with housing and other services. He targets his efforts on what BART calls its 40/40 list, which tracks the 40 homeless people that generate the most service calls to BART police. A BART press release said it placed 22 people with services within the last year.

“[Sandoval] hunts them down to see if he can work his magic with these folks,” Jennings said.

Supervisor Jane Kim is working with Dufty’s office to revamp BART’s new policy. “They clearly stretched safety concerns,” Kim told us. “It’s one thing to offer services, but another to force people out.”

BART’s Quality of Life service calls doubled from 2013 to 2014, according to a BART quarterly report, generated by complaints like public urination and disturbing the peace.

A BART police officer, who did not want to be named, told us he thinks BART has a hard choice: to let riders feel harassed and unsafe, or to oust people clearly in need of compassion. He said he saw the homeless population in the station swell with “the weather and the economy.”

“We have to do what we have to do,” he told us. But on the other hand, he said, “It’s not against the law to stink.”

He’s half right. Though being homeless and dirty may not be illegal, it may get you thrown out of a BART station.

Exposing PG&E’s other “cozy relationship,” with Mayor Ed Lee

Erica Hanna
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32
Exposing PG&E’s other “cozy relationship,” with Mayor Ed Lee

News outlets from Sacramento to Los Angeles are crowing about Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s alleged “cozy relationship” with the utlity that oversees it, the California Public Utilities Commission.

At least 41 emails obtained by the city of San Bruno reveal an intimate, friendly arrangement between the monopolistic power company and the regulators that are supposed to keep them in line. Where the public would expect a separation as hard and fast as church and state, the emails reveal a buddy-buddy relationship.

This is of no surprise to long-time Guardianistas, who may remember Rebecca Bowe’s cover story three years ago “The secret life of Michael Peevey, [5/11]” chronicling the CPUC president’s extravagant trips to Madrid, Spain and Germany with top energy officials, as well as other activities that may seem strange for an official who’s supposed to be a watchdog against PG&E malfeasance.

But if world-trekking trips to pricey hotels aren’t enough to raise eyebrows about the relationship between PG&E and its regulators, now we have suspicious emails to add to the pile.

As the San Jose Mercury News revealed:

In an April 2013 email, Carol Brown, chief of staff for Commissioner Peevey, wrote to PG&E executive [Laura] Doll and offered advice about how to handle one of the proceedings related to the San Bruno explosion. In the email, Brown said she had talked to one of the PUC administrative law judges about the matter.

“Send back a sweet note” to the PUC about the matter “and then wait for them to throw a fit” was part of Brown’s advice. Brown also said she was “happy to chat” about the matter with PG&E to help guide company officials through the PUC process.

Doll replied to Brown, “Love you. Thanks.”

Even Peevey himself emailed PG&E, offering them public relations advice. It’s like an umpire sneaking around between innings to coach a first-baseman — unseemly, and totally strange.

All of this should ring alarm bells in The City. The city of San Bruno obtained the emails through settlement of a lawsuit, which are now revealing potential corruption at top levels of the CPUC. But here in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee flouts public records laws and, as we revealed, drafted a policy allowing him to delete his own emails.

There’s no way we can check what Lee is saying to PG&E in emails, making exposing any alleged “cozy relationship” much more difficult than PG&E’s alleged romance with the CPUC.

And the consequences for The City are very real, as well as potentially fatal. As we’ve covered before, there are PG&E pipelines aplenty in San Francisco (including one right along Bernal Hill). When San Bruno’s pipeline exploded, eight lives were lost and many more homes destroyed.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last month (and as we’ve said for years), Lee already has suspiciously close ties with PG&E.

From the Chronicle:

However, multiple city officials say that Lee’s administration has consistently, and quietly, raised objections about legislation and policies that PG&E opposes. They also point to the utility’s charitable giving to the city and some of Lee’s pet projects as an example of how PG&E tries to exert its influence.

…

Critics of Lee’s relationship with PG&E extend from the political left to at least five current and former high-level city officials. In some cases, several of the sources said, that relationship appeared to be inappropriate. PG&E officials regularly went to the mayor’s office when they were unhappy with city staff members, said the sources, who requested anonymity because of their relationship with the mayor.

“They were in his office all the time, meeting with either the mayor or his staff, and seemed to directly intervene in city decisions,” said one official. “It isn’t normal for most businesses in the city to always have meetings with the mayor.”

Lee, in several interviews, dismissed the idea that he was doing PG&E’s bidding as “a little off base.”

“I look at PG&E like any other company in the city,” Lee said. “I don’t think I have any special relationship with them.”

But in the case of the mayor, we may never know how close he is with the utility, as long as his off-kilter public record laws allow him to delete any paper trail. The CPUC is discovering what Lee long ago learned from former-Mayor Willie Brown: The “E” in e-mail stands for “evidence.”

tearing up emails

Guardian Intelligence: July 23 – 29, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

J-POP ROCKED

The annual J-Pop Summit in Japantown drew a lively crowd of anime and other Japanese pop culture treasures to Japantown last weekend (including Shin, pictured). This year’s festivities included a Ramen Festival portion, featuring noodle cooks from around the world — and lines up to two hours long to sample their rich, brothy creations. PHOTO BY REBECCA BOWE

DA LOBBYIST

Former San Francisco Mayor and current Chronicle columnist Willie Brown, often just called Da Mayor, is widely acknowledged to be one of the most politically influential individuals in San Francisco. But until recently, he’d never registered as a lobbyist with city government. Now it’s official: Brown has been tapped as a for-real lobbyist representing Boston Properties, a high-powered real-estate investment firm that owns the Salesforce Tower. News outlets (including the Bay Guardian) have pointed out for years that despite having received payments for high-profile clients, Brown has never formally registered, leaving city officials and the public in the dark. Da Mayor, in turn, has seemed unfazed.

GAZA PROTEST

On July 20, marked as the deadliest day yet in the Israeli-Gaza conflict, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in San Francisco to march against the ongoing violence. Waving flags, participants chanted “Free, free Palestine!” and progressed from the Ferry Building to City Hall. It was just one of hundreds of protests staged worldwide in response to the bloodshed. As of July 21, the Palestinian death toll had risen to about 500, while 25 Israeli soldiers were killed. PHOTO BY STEPHANY JOY ASHLEY

PET CAUSE

Last year, the SF SPCA (www.sfspca.org) assisted with over 5,000 cat and dog adoptions. With its new adoption center near Bryant and 16th Streets, which opened June 13, it aims to increase capacity by 20 percent — saving 1,000 more furry lives in the process. The new facility features improved condo-style enclosures rather than cages, a small indoor dog park, and SF-themed climbing structures for cats. (So far, there’s a Golden Gate Bridge, a Transamerica Pyramid, a cable car, the Sutro Tower, and the SF Giants logo; a Castro Theatre design is in the works.) These improvements make the shelter life more comfortable for the animals, but they also help entice visitors, making the adoption process “a fun, happy experience,” says SF SPCA media relations associate Krista Maloney. See more kitties and puppies at the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com. PHOTO BY CHERY EDDY

MIX IT UP

The quarterly SF Mixtape Society event brings together people of all, er, mixes with one thing in common: a love of the personally curated playlist. This time around (Sun/27, 4pm-6pm, free. The MakeOut Room, 3225 24th St, SF. www.sfmixtapesociety.com) the theme is “Animal Instinct.” You can bring a mixtape in any format to participate — CD, USB, etc. (although anyone who brings an actual cassette will “nab a free beer and respect from peers.”) Awards will be given in the following categories: best overall mixtape, audience choice, and best packaging. Hit that rewind!

CODERS FOR KOCH

This week San Francisco plays host to the Libertarian conference/slumber-party Reboot 2014, aimed at — you guessed it — tech workers. Conservatives and government-decrying libertarians are natural allies, wrote Grover Norquist, scion of the anti-tax movement, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Uber swerves around transportation regulations, Airbnb slinks under housing regulations. It’s no wonder politically marginalized libertarians are frothing at the mouth to ally with Silicon Valley’s ascendant billionaires. Reboot 2014 speaker Rand Paul’s recent meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, and Peter Thiel should have liberals all worried.

BART CLEANSING

BART announced via a press release they’d begin “ensuring safe evacuation” of downtown BART stations. By this they mean they’ll start sweeping out anyone sitting or laying down in the stations, clearly targeting the homeless. Deflecting those accusations, BART said they are one of the few transportation agencies with a dedicated outreach and crisis intervention coordinator, as if that gives them a pass.

CLIFF JUMPING

At 66, Jimmy Cliff put on one of the most energetic live shows we’ve ever seen on Saturday, July 19 at the Fillmore, high-kicking through newer songs, like “Afghanistan,” an updated version of eternal protest song “Vietnam,” as well as the classics: “The Harder They Come,” “Many Rivers to Cross,” etc. Check the Noise blog at www.sfbg.com for a full review.

 

Last chapters?

Michael Redmond
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27
Last chapters?

news@sfbg.com

The tale of the threatened independent bookstore, quivering under the might of Amazon, is nothing new.

It’s only been two months since Marcus Books was evicted from its Fillmore District location. Both Adobe and Forest bookstores fled the Mission’s 16thh Street last year. But ebook sales growth is shrinking, and sales for many of San Francisco bookstores are up.

Instead, the tale of the struggling indie bookstore has become less about Amazon and more about a different monster: gentrification. San Francisco’s rising rents, demand for commercial space by deep-pocketed chains, and lack of commercial rent control are putting the squeeze on the city’s remaining bookstores.

Take Bibliohead, for instance. Its owner has recently been forced to relocate in spite of her bookstore’s success. Bibliohead is an easily navigable, highly curated, and tiny book jungle — more like a carefully manicured garden, really. The whole store can be explored in minutes, and there’s a gumball machine that dispenses poetry out in front once the book-happy are satisfied.

Its size has served it well. Sales at Bibliohead — Hayes Valley’s only bookstore — have risen solidly 7 percent each year since the store opened 10 years ago.

“We’re small, but mighty,” Melissa Richmond, Bibliohead’s owner, told the Guardian. “Although recently we haven’t been feeling so mighty. I’m kind of a wreck.”

In May, Richmond learned that she has until January 2015 to leave her store for four months while her building undergoes mandatory earthquake retrofitting. The landlord will double Richmond’s rent after the retrofitting, and has asked Richmond to pay for further renovations to the building when she returns.

“It’s off the table that I can stay here,” Richmond said. “I will not be offered a new lease. I don’t hate landlords, but I want a landlord who will contribute to the spirit and creativity of San Francisco.”

On June 22, Richmond launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the $60,000 she’ll need to move and attract new customers. So far, with a little less than a month to go, she’s raised almost $3,000.

“What really breaks my heart is when a new customer walks in,” Richmond said. “They ask you how you’re doing after they’ve fallen in love with the place a little bit. Then you have to break their hearts by saying you don’t know what’s in store for your future right now.”

 

DISPLACEMENT TREND

Richmond is not the only bookseller in San Francisco forced to relocate. Last year, Adobe Books and Forest Books were forced out of 16th Street within three months of each other when their rents increased. Forest Books slipped quietly off to Japantown, and has since experienced an increase in sales. Adobe Books’ anticipated closure was met with an invigorating Kickstarter campaign that raised $60,000. It was enough to keep the store alive, but not on gentrifying 16th Street.

Nowadays, Adobe is re-branded as Adobe Books and Art Cooperative at its 24th Street location. The original Adobe’s charming, lackadaisical, and no- structured structure has been traded for alphabetized and carefully curated books. There are only two staff members, and its used books are selling far faster than in the old location, despite its shrunken size.

“It’s strange. A lot of the times I was not sure if it would work at all, and now here we are in this shop,” Brett Lockspeiser, a member of the Adobe Books and Art Cooperative, told us. “Things are running differently, but it’s still Adobe.”

Adobe will soon be celebrating its first anniversary in the new spot. The store might not be making any profits, according to Lockspeiser, but the cause for celebration is that it’s survived.

There has been discussion among the collective members about whether or not Adobe should try to sell eReading devices, like Green Apple Books has done without much success for almost two years with the Kobo eReader. Adobe’s collective voted against Kobo, preferring not to use the same weapons as its competitor.

“I’m pretty technology positive, but I think some people in the group thought it was an ‘us or them’ kind of thing,” said Lockspeiser. “Like either you’re a book reader or you’re a techie who reads on a Kindle.”

Besides, it seems that ebooks’ incredible growth rate has finally simmered down. According to the Association of American Publishers, ebooks accounted for 27 percent of all adult trade sales in 2013. While that was up from 23 percent in 2012, it marked the first year ebook growth was down to the single digits. In January, a Pew study reported that among adults who read at least one book in the past year, just 5 percent said they read only an ebook.

Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, reports that book sales throughout San Francisco bookstores have increased overall in the past two years. Green Apple Books, an expanding bookstore with an growing collection of books and records, is even poised to open another location in the Sunset below beloved video rental store Le Video on Aug. 1.

Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, said he recently got a call from Bibliohead’s owner asking for advice on potential neighborhoods and techniques for negotiating with landlords. But he can’t always explain his own store’s success.

“Some of it is just the economy. All that money floating around South of Market is maybe trickling over here,” he told us. “Or maybe the waiters are getting better tips. I don’t know what it is, but things have been better for us.”

The growth of bookstore sales, Landon said, is mainly because Barnes & Noble has been cast out of San Francisco. Last year, Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, reported that its revenue decreased by 8 percent in the final quarter. The company’s Nook division, meanwhile, slid down 32 percent.

Yet Joe Marchione, who owns Mission Street’s Valhalla Books, still places the blame for his diminishing foot traffic on Amazon, which has made his hard-to-find books pretty easy to locate online. In 1998, when his store opened, 90 percent of Valhalla’s business came from people browsing through his odd and unique assortment of rare and used books. Now, 95 percent of his business is online.

“People forgot the joy of browsing,” Marchione told us.

As soon as his landlord makes him commit to a lease, he says he’s going to have to leave the business. “When we first opened, we were smug. We said there was no way trendy was ever going to come to Mission between 17th and 18th [streets]. Get real!” he said. “But trendy creeps in closer by the week. There’s no problem with that, except it’s forcing us out.”

 

“TRENDY CREEPS IN”

It’s even forcing successful booksellers, like Bibliohead’s owner, to worry. Her faith in the printed word remains strong. “I find that there’s a whole core of people who are relieved to feel something in their hands, to flip the pages of really cool, beautiful books and kind of remember with their bodies what reading is like,” Richmond said.

When Kate Rosenberger opened a fourth bookstore in 2011 — Alleycat Books on 24th Street — many questioned her sanity, the owner said. The store has only recently been able to pay its own bills, having been relying on Rosenberger’s other store, Dog Eared Books, for survival. But the rent at Dog Eared Books is set to increase, and that means trouble.

“You can talk about e-readers, and people being distracted. You can talk about people slipping out since the Gutenberg press was invented, and all that’s true, sure,” Rosenberger told us. “But when you get hit with a huge increase in your rent, how do you deal with that? When the lease is up, you can pretty much figure you’re gone.”

These days, you deal with it by setting up a crowdsourcing campaign, and crossing your fingers that people with money like you. Or maybe you transform into an art cooperative. Or you just go somewhere else. But Richmond doesn’t want to leave San Francisco.

“I would like to preserve the culture of the city,” Richmond said. “I still think there’s something really special here.”

Barnes & Noble might be gone, ebook sales might have stabilized, and the printed word might just still be alive — but for San Francisco’s booksellers, that no longer means anyone in the book business is safe.

SF bankers now exporting tenant-displacing TIC loans

Sasha Cuttler
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15
SF bankers now exporting tenant-displacing TIC loans

Fractional mortgage loans used to convert apartments into owner-occupied tenancies-in-common have fed the eviction and displacement crisis in San Francisco, where the median home price just surpassed $1 million for the first time. Now, some of the same San Francisco banks that pioneered fractional loans here have started offered them in the East Bay and on the Peninsula.

TIC housing is an ownership model for multi-unit buildings, where each unit is independently owned. This option appeals to would-be homeowners because it’s cheaper than a condominium, but less fraught than a traditional loan shared by various owners in a TIC building, which does not allow for independent ownership of each unit.

TICs local have grown in popularity in San Francisco as housing prices continue to skyrocket, since they help homeowners find something affordable, although that benefit usually comes at the cost of evicting all the tenants in the building, often including seniors, those with disabilities, and low-income people in rent-controlled units.

Previously, fractional TIC loans were only accessible in SF. Now, as people seek affordable housing outside of expensive San Francisco, the demand for fractional TIC loans has grown. And San Francisco bankers have stepped up to meet that demand, according to a recent article in the San Francisco Business Times (“High-priced SF housing market exports fractional tenants-in-common loans,” June 28).

Sterling Bank & Trust has become well-known for providing fractional TIC loans (more than $480 million worth so far, according to the Business Times), and is the first company to offer the loans outside of San Francisco. “We’re helping the firefighter and school teacher, or what I like to call the ‘non-tech’ buyer, purchase a home,” Stephen Adams, senior vice president of Sterling Bank & Trust, told the Business Times.

Adams is also president of the San Francisco Small Business Commission, presiding over what critics say is a shift in that commission toward rubber-stamping initiatives from the Mayor’s Office rather than defending small business interests. When we contacted Adams to ask about the evictions and displacement caused by fractional loans, he told he had “no comment to make at this time.”

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, the director of counseling programs at the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said that he doesn’t know how the TIC loans might affect those in the East Bay. But he does know they’re bad news for San Francisco, where there’s now a 10-year moratorium on new condo conversions but few controls on the creation of new TICs.

“They’re scary,” Avicolli Mecca told us. “It’s a disaster for San Francisco. Basically, if you’re buying a tenancy in common, you don’t need to condo convert. It used to be that you wanted a condo conversion so you could have a separate mortgage on what you own. With a fractional loan, you have your own mortgage from the start.”

He added that the loans make it easier for sellers to convert buildings into any size that they can market to home buyers. With the loans, combined with the state Ellis Act allowing owners to remove apartments from the rental market, evicting tenants becomes even more profitable.

The Bank of San Francisco confirmed that it also offers TIC loans in the East Bay. The bank will be making them more attractive with interest-only payments, fractional financing for buildings with more than 12 units, and loans up to $2 million.

Dylan Desai, a spokesman for the Bank of San Francisco, told us that the bankers “do not extend financing to buildings where there has been an eviction” and, to their knowledge, they never have. “We’re sensitive to tenant rights.”

Hopefully the other banks offering these loans will be just as sensitive as they branch out into communities in the region that have already been absorbing an influx of working class former San Franciscans.

Treasure Island development plans moving forward after lawsuit rejected

Sasha Cuttler
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22
Treasure Island development plans moving forward after lawsuit rejected

Construction on the first 1,000 of up to 8,000 new homes planned for Treasure Island could begin as soon as next year after the State Appeals Court this week rejected a challenge of the project’s environmental impact report by Citizens for a Sustainable Treasure Island, a grassroots group led by former supervisor Aaron Peskin.

The group challenged the project’s unanimous 2006 approval by the Board of Supervisors after its terms were modified the next year by the developers, Wilson Meany and Lennar Urban, to increase the number of homes and decrease their affordability. The project Peskin helped approve was 6,000 homes, 30 percent of them affordable, but now it’s up to 8,000 homes, 25 percent affordable.

More recently, stories by the Center for Investigative Reporting/Bay Citizen, San Francisco Chronicle, and others have also found evidence of lingering radiological contamination on the island from its days as a US Navy base, something that Peskin told us should raise concerns about the project.

“Obviously, we are disappointed in the court ruling and are very concerned it ignores the now widely reported news that Treasure Island is much more contaminated, by radiologically contamination, than we knew,” Peskin told us. As for whether his group intends to appeal the case to the California Supreme Court, he said, “We are assessing our options.”

Wilson Meany principle Chris Meany didn’t immediately return Guardian calls for comment (we’ll update this post if and when we hear back), but in a press release, he said, “After several years of unnecessary and costly litigation, we can finally begin building more homes for people who want to live in San Francisco.”

In addition to the homes, the project includes up to 500 hotel rooms, 450,000 square feet of retail space, 100,000 square feet of office space, and 300 acres of open space. To compensate for projections that rising seas caused by global warming would inundate the artificial island by the end of the century, its height will be raised substantially, with the EIR noting there will be about 100,000 trucks of landfill coming over the Bay Bridge during construction.

Traffic generated by the project has been a major concern of transportation officials from the beginning. San Francisco Transportation Authority Executive Director Tilly Chang said the challenge was, “How do you keep the Bay Bridge flowing and not muck up traffic?”

The plan calls for expanded bus and shuttle service to Treasure Island, new ferry service from the Ferry Building, and both expensive parking on the island for non-residents and a toll for driving onto the island, most likely set at $5, Chang said. The ferry service is set to launch around when the first phase of housing construction is complete, probably in 2018.

Meanwhile, work has already begun on a project to replace and improve the freeway ramps at adjacent Yerba Buena Island and the bridge that connects them to Treasure Island. SFTA Deputy Director for Capital Projects Lee Sage said the ramps will give much more time for cars to slow down or accelerate as they enter or exit the freeway there.

“It’s going to be very complicated, but we’re on target,” he said, estimating the eastside ramps will be done in 2016 and the westside ones a few years later.

Just last month, the Board of Supervisors approved terms accepting Treasure Island from the US Navy. Later this month  assuming that the issue of radiological contamination doesn’t derail the transfer — the city and project developers are scheduled to pay the Navy $55 million for Treasure Island and complete the deal.

But Peskin’s group and its attorney Keith Wagner, objected to the transfer in a June 25 letter to the Navy, calling for more studies on the substantially increased density of development on the island and more thorough testing and cleanup of contamination.

Wagner wrote, “In summary, the Navy’s 2003 EIS, on its own terms, did not evaluate the true nature of the City’s far more expansive contemporaneous development plans/proposals, let alone the even more expansive development plans that were ultimately devised and approved by the City in 2011; in the decade since the 2003 EIS was finalized, the Navy has developed significant and substantial new information indicating the nature, scope and severity of radiological and hazardous materials across NSTI that could impact the City’s 2011 development plans.”

Garbage game

Michael Redmond
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8
Garbage game

San Francisco elected officials frequently celebrate the ambitious citywide goal of sending zero waste to the landfill by 2020, an environmental feat widely viewed as attainable since the current waste diversion rate stands at a stellar 80 percent.

Official city numbers — based on reporting by Recology, a company that has a monopoly on trash collection and curbside recycling in San Francisco — demonstrate that only 20 percent of all city dwellers’ trash ends up in a landfill, that unenlightened dead end for matter discarded from our lives, never to be reprocessed.

Yet a lawsuit against Recology exposed some inconsistencies in the company’s record keeping. It also shed light on how some material counted as “diverted” is routinely sent to a landfill anyway, a practice that muddies the concept of the city’s Zero Waste program but is nevertheless legal under state law.

On June 17, a San Francisco jury determined that Recology misrepresented the amount of waste diverted from the landfill in 2008, enabling it to collect an incentive payment of $1.36 million for meeting the goal. The verdict compels Recology to pay the money back to the city, since it was obtained after submitting a false claim.

The outcome of this lawsuit — brought by a former manager of the Tunnel Road recycling Buy Back facility, who also claims he was retaliated against for trying to expose fraud — highlights some larger questions. Was this inaccuracy unique to 2008, or are Recology’s numbers always a little fuzzy? Are there adequate safeguards in place to prevent the company from fudging the numbers, particularly when both company and city officials have an incentive to exaggerate the diversion rate? And if what’s on paper doesn’t quite square with reality, is San Francisco really keeping as much garbage out of the landfill as the city’s Department of the Environment says it is?

Attorney David Anton, who represented the former Recology employee, Brian McVeigh, said he found it odd that San Francisco officials didn’t show much interest in collaborating to recover the bonus money, even though millions of dollars was potentially at stake. Since damages are trebled under the False Claims Act, cited in the lawsuit, Recology could ultimately be made to fork over the incentive payment three times over.

“The city’s representative in the Department of the Environment actually testified that he hoped this lawsuit would be unsuccessful,” Anton recounted. He guessed that officials remained on the sidelines because in San Francisco’s political power centers, “relationships with Recology are so close and tight. It was a very strange thing,” he went on, “to be pursuing this lawsuit, trying to get money to the city, and the city’s representatives are saying, ‘we don’t want it.'”

Recology has filed post-trial motions in a bid to have the penalty reduced, “asking the court to decide whether there was any evidence at trial that there were public funds in the Diversion Incentive Account, and if so, how much,” explained Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner. “We expect a ruling this summer.”

Department of the Environment spokesperson Guillermo Rodriguez told the Guardian that Robert Haley, manager of the department’s Zero Waste team, was unavailable for comment before press time. With regard to the lawsuit, Rodriguez noted, “The city has been following the trial closely and is awaiting the judge’s ruling on post-trial motions before determining any reaction.”

 

FALSE CLAIMS

The False Claims Act is designed to recover damages to government when false statements are made to obtain money or avoid making payments. It has a provision allowing whistleblowers, such as McVeigh, to lead the charge on seeking civil enforcement action. The whistleblower may be eligible to receive a share of recovery.

Under the bonus incentive program, Recology sets aside extra cash — collected from garbage customers’ payments — in a segregated account. But it cannot withdraw funds from that account unless it hits the city’s established waste-reduction targets. Recology submitted paperwork to the city in 2008 showing that it met the diversion goals, so it was allowed to withdraw the money.

But the lawsuit demonstrated that Recology actually fell short of those goals — and apparently, nobody in city government ever followed up to check whether the reporting was accurate.

A key reason the jury ruled against Recology on this particular claim, according to Anton, was that it was found to have misclassified some construction and demolition waste as “diverted” material. Under state law, when ground-up construction debris is used to cover the top of a landfill — to prevent pests, fires, and odors, for example — it’s counted as “alternative daily cover.” Trash in this category winds up in a landfill, just like any other trash. But state law allows garbage companies to count it as “diverted,” just as if it were an aluminum can tossed into the blue bin.

The lawsuit claimed that Recology tried to count a great many tons of construction and demolition waste as “alternative daily cover” when in reality, it should have been counted as just plain trash.

Solano County records show that a landfill inspector had flagged an “area of concern” after discovering solid waste mixed in with construction debris Recology shipped to a landfill for use as that top layer. “It looks like they didn’t do a good enough job of cleaning out that material,” CalRecycle spokesperson Mark Oldfield noted as he pulled up the report from 2008 at the Guardian’s request.

Had the material gone to the landfill as just plain garbage, instead of “alternative daily cover,” Recology would have had to count it as waste sent to the landfill, instead of waste diverted from the landfill. That would have meant falling short of the waste diversion goal, hence losing out on the $1.36 million.

“Recology kept this completely secret from San Francisco,” according to Anton.

Potashner said it was actually a bit more complicated — the company challenged the inspector’s findings, he said. “The local enforcement agency in Solano County had questions about that material,” but Recology never received a cease-and-desist order, he added. “When we had talked to jurors after the fact, that was the issue that seemed to sway them. In 2008 we didn’t make that bonus by that much. They thought we shouldn’t have been able to count that as diversion because of this issue.”

Either way, the incident exposes a strange reality: When San Francisco city officials trumpet the citywide success of “diverting” 80 percent of all waste from the landfill, some portion of that 80 percent actually winds up in a landfill anyhow. Whether the construction debris counted as “alternative daily cover” has trash mixed into it or not, it’s still destined to wind up in a big, environmentally unfriendly trash heap.

 

CONCRETE NUMBERS

The lawsuit highlighted a few other red flags, too, raising more questions about the city’s true diversion numbers. For instance, the suit claimed that Recology was involved in a system of digging up concrete from its own parking lots, to be handed over to concrete recyclers as “diverted” waste.

“Recology facilities have large areas of concrete pads,” the complaint noted. “Management of Recology … directed Recology work crews in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 to cut out sections of concrete pads and deliver the removed concrete to concrete recyclers, to falsely inflate the diversion incentive reported to SF.”

The waste management company then “solicited cement companies to deliver and dispose of excess and rejected concrete loads to Recology, to fill in the removed concrete pad sections,” according to the complaint. Those shipments were brought in on trucks that weren’t weighed at entry, and then placed in the concrete pads. Management then had work crews remove the same concrete that had been delivered, shipped it to the concrete recyclers, and reported it “as diverted from being disposed in a landfill,” the complaint noted.

This account was corroborated by a Guardian source unrelated the lawsuit, but nonetheless familiar with the inner workings of the company. “They would take the concrete across the road — right across the street,” this person confirmed.

Asked to provide an explanation for this, Recology’s Potashner said, “it is clear, and wasn’t even challenged by the plaintiff at trial, that recycled concrete is diverted, whether it had been from Recology’s lots or anywhere else.”

McVeigh’s case stemmed from his realization, while working as a manager at Recology’s Tunnel Road recycling buyback facility, that employees there were routinely marking up the weights of recyclable materials brought in, in order to pay out certain customers more than they were actually owed. The suit suggests that these routinely inflated California redemption value (CRV) tags contributed to Recology missing its waste-diversion targets, but the jury ultimately sided against the plaintiff on this question since it amounted to a financial loss for Recology, not the city.

The complaint included tag numbers and logs of scale weights that didn’t match up, showing a pattern of fraudulent dealings at the buyback center. In November 2007, for example, “ticket reports showed that 23.4 tons of aluminum CRV cans were purchased at the Bayshore Buyback Center, yet only 16.56 tons existed and were shipped.”

Asked about these claims, Potashner acknowledged that there may have been some “knuckleheads” involved in messing with the scales at the buyback center, but asserted that such activity had since been addressed. He added, “If there were any staffing issues around theft, that was actually affecting Recology’s books,” not the public.

Oldfield, the CalRecycle spokesperson, noted that a long list of paperwork violations had been recorded in 2010, but he said the company appeared to have been in compliance since then — based on logs from inspectors’ visits once a year.

Another problem uncovered in the trial, Anton said, had to do with Recology misrepresenting tons of garbage from out of county, so that it would be counted outside the parameters of the waste diversion program. Potashner said that had been corrected, adding, “the out-of-county waste is really a small volume.”

But he confirmed that yet another practice brought to light in this lawsuit is ongoing, revealing a surprising end for some of the stuff that gets tossed into the green compost bins.

 

MANY SHADES OF GREEN

According to every colorful flier sent out by Recology, the stuff that goes into the green bin gets composted. The green bin is for compost. The blue bin is for recycling. The black bin is for trash that goes to the landfill. This is the fundamental basis of Recology’s waste collection operation and, taking the company and the Department of the Environment at face value, one would assume that 80 percent of all waste was being processed through the blue and green waste streams.

Instead, some of what gets tossed into green bins makes its way to a landfill.

The green-bin waste is shipped to a Recology facility where it’s turned into compost, a process that involves sifting through giant screens. But some of what gets processed, known as “overs” because it isn’t fine enough to drop through the screens, is routinely transferred to a nearby landfill, where it’s spread atop the trash pile. Once again, this six-inch topper of neutralizing material is known as “alternative daily cover.”

Although Recology could convert 100 percent of its green-bin waste into soil-nourishing compost, the practice of using partially processed green-bin waste for “alternative daily cover” is cheap — and it’s perfectly legal under California law. Roughly 10 percent of what gets tossed into the compost bins is used in this way, Recology confirmed.

“There are some people who will say using green waste isn’t really diversion,” acknowledged Jeff Danzinger, a spokesperson with CalRecycle, which oversees recycling programs in California counties. “There’s some people who say we should stop that practice because that just incentivizes a landfill solution for green waste. But if somebody’s saying green waste shouldn’t go into a landfill and get counted as diversion, it’s an opinion.”

Nor is it something the city objects to. The Department of the Environment is aware of this practice, Recology’s Potashner told the Bay Guardian. Yet the city agency has never raised formal concerns about it, despite a mandate under its composting program agreement that the company use green-bin waste for the highest and best possible use.

But there’s no incentive for anyone in city government to complain: Recology may legally count this discarded material as “diverted” in official reporting, thus edging it closer to an annual bonus payment. San Francisco, meanwhile, may count it as part of the 80 percent that was successfully diverted — thus edging it closer to the ambitious Zero Waste program goal.

“It’s great PR to say you’re the highest recycling,” noted the person who was familiar with the company, but wasn’t part of the lawsuit. “It’s almost a movement more than reality. But who’s really watching for the public on these numbers? There’s no watchdog. It’s all about bragging rights.”

 

Recology is “a political business”

Recology’s political connections in San Francisco run deep. Years ago, when former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown served as speaker of the California Assembly, he also worked as a lawyer for Recology, which was then known as Norcal Waste Systems.

Campaign finance archives show that when Brown ran for mayor in 1995, he received multiple campaign contributions from Norcal employees in what appeared to be a coordinated fashion.

Brown continues to be influential in the city’s political landscape due to his close relationship with Mayor Ed Lee, who himself came under scrutiny in his capacity as head of the Department of Public Works in 1999 when he was accused of granting Norcal a major rate increase as a reward for political donations to Brown.

In 2010, when Recology submitted a bid for a lucrative waste-disposal contract proposing to haul waste to its Yuba County landfill, Lee reviewed its proposal in his then-capacity as city administrator. As the Guardian reported (see “Trash talk,” 3/30/10), Lee recommended far higher scores for Recology than his counterparts on the contract review team, a key to the company winning the landfill contract over competitor Waste Management Inc. Before Lee declared his mayoral candidacy in 2011, news reports indicated that powerful Chinatown consultant Rose Pak had worked in tandem with Recology executives on a campaign effort, “Run Ed Run,” organized to urge Lee to launch a mayoral bid. Company employees had also been instructed to help gather signatures to petition Lee to run for mayor, news reports indicated, but Pak publicly denied her role coordinating this effort. David Anton, the attorney for Brian McVeigh, emphasized that Recology’s close ties to powerful city officials might have something to do with the city’s lack of interest in targeting the company for the improperly received incentive payments. Yet Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner called this assertion “completely untrue. Recology meets with the various city departments and regulators weekly. We are constantly improving our controls and practices for handling the city’s ever-changing waste stream; often at the behest of city regulators.” Recology and its predecessor companies have maintained the exclusive right to collect commercial and residential refuse in San Francisco since 1932, and rates are routinely raised for city garbage customers, based on the company’s own reporting that its costs are increasing. “I can tell you today, there will be another significant increase on July 21, 2016” — five years after the last rate increase — “because they have a monopoly,” said neighborhood activist and District 10 supervisorial candidate Tony Kelly, who previously worked on a ballot measure that sought to have the city’s refuse collection contract go out for a competitive bid. “When you have a closed system … then it’s entirely a black box. It’ll all be self-reported. It’s too powerful of an incentive.” An industry insider familiar with Recology echoed this point, adding that cozy relationships with local officials make it easier for the self-reporting to escape scrutiny. “It’s a political business,” this person said. “In San Francisco, they’re really a political organization.” Since the rate is guaranteed, this person added, the mentality is that there’s plenty of wiggle room for financial losses and expenditures such as generous political contributions. “If you’re losing any money, you just ask for it back when you do your next rate increase. The city doesn’t have any objection. The ratepayers just get stuck with it.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Google Bus sewers

Michael Redmond
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131
Google Bus sewers

STREET FIGHT With most city officials supporting the accommodation of private transit in some form, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is now vetting where tech workers should board and egress the private corporate commuter buses that ply the 101 and I-280 between San Francisco and Silicon Valley suburbs. A list of proposed bus stops was circulated in June, and the first round of bus stop proposals is set for approval in August.

Short of a proper environmental study, which is the subject of ongoing litigation, the list deserves more scrutiny and deliberation because certain areas of the city — such as Hayes Street in the Western Addition and 18th Street in the Mission — might be effectively made into Google Bus sewers.

I hope SFMTA is open to reconsidering some of these proposed bus stops.

Rather than jamming oversized interstate highway-scale coaches on human-scaled, walkable, and bikeable streets with important Muni routes, SFMTA ought to steer them where they are more appropriate: on the wider, car-oriented streets that bifurcate the city.

For example, the current proposal for private commuter buses in the Western Addition is to have these mammoth and incongruent buses running on Hayes Street using Muni stops at Clayton, Steiner, Laguna, and Buchanan.

This is bad news for passengers on the 21-Hayes, a key neighborhood-serving electric trolley bus that has gotten short shrift in the city planning process. With 12,500 boardings daily, the 21-Hayes is often at capacity every morning before it crosses Van Ness.

Just last week, I was on a packed 21 that was blocked (illegally) by a huge corporate bus on Hayes. With an already dense and slow traffic situation, this added at least 30 seconds to the trip before the 21 could access its stop. Repeat that multiple times in the morning and afternoon and you can see that this will be a mess. It’s not worth the dollar the SFMTA collects for such stops, that’s for sure.

Concentrating the private buses on the 21 line (or the 33 in the Mission) will block Muni where Muni is already slow, unreliable, and overcrowded. It will also diminish walkability and bicycle safety on Hayes and other streets identified in the current list (including the commercial corridors on Divisadero and 18th Street in the Mission.)

Rather than streets such as Hayes, SFTMA should redirect the private buses to the multilane, one-way couplet on Fell and Oak streets, only one block south. Along the corridor, SFMTA could collaborate with the private systems to establish new bus stops (red paint) at Clayton, Masonic, Divisadaro, Fillmore, and near Octavia. This scheme would limit clunky turn movements onto neighborhood streets by oversized buses and contribute to traffic calming.

In the mornings, the buses would pick up passengers on Oak Street, starting along the Panhandle, then travel towards Octavia Boulevard before swinging onto the freeway southbound. In the evenings the buses would exit the freeway at Octavia, and stop at drop-off hubs on Fell, between Octavia and Laguna, and then stop incrementally toward Golden Gate Park.

Additionally, the city needs to consider a space for the underpaid, nonunionized drivers to pull over and rest before and after long segments of freeway driving. We want these buses to be safe.

Similar arrangements should be made to spare 18th Street in the Mission from reverting to a Google bus sewer, with emphasis on private corporate bus stops on South Van Ness or Guerrero-San Jose. Surely there are other examples in other parts of the city.

The urgent affordable housing crisis aside, this could be a win-win from a transportation perspective. Tech workers would no longer get blamed for blocking Muni and they can know that while waiting for their bus, they are contributing to calming erstwhile hazardous streets.

There’s a lot of opportunity to combine these new bus stops with traffic calming at dangerous intersections such as Fell and Masonic or Oak and Octavia, all without mucking up Muni or diminishing the walkable human scale of nearby neighborhood commercial streets. And hey, since this is all a “pilot program,” no pesky and expensive EIR is needed — right?

Thinking long-term, this scheme could be a template to jumpstart making this ridiculous private transit system into a regional public bus system modeled on AC transit or Golden Gate Transit, a service open to all. Our car-centric streets are ripe for express bus service and this would help relieve parallel lines like the N-Judah, while enabling the city to attain its aspiration of 30 percent mode share on transit.

And for Mayor Ed Lee and pro-tech-bus members of the Board of Supervisors, it helps with their “vision zero” rhetoric of increasing pedestrian safety because placing the buses on car-centric one-way couplets can help calm traffic.

With a little cajoling by the mayor, he could get his tech sponsors to underwrite streetscape and beautification at the bus stops along these kinds of streets.

After all, Mayor Lee needs to find the money, because last month he betrayed pedestrian and bicycle safety and Muni when he abandoned support for increasing the Vehicle License Fee locally this fall, all the while misleading the public about the important role of Sunday metering. Perhaps it’s time for a tax or license fee on the ad hoc private transit system?

SLOWING DOWN

Speaking of vision zero, Sup. Eric Mar deserves hearty thanks for proposing to reduce speed limits citywide. This is one of the most effective ideas to come from the progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors in a long time and should be implemented yesterday. Higher speeds maim and kill, and the faster cars go the more voracious the appetite for both fuel and urban space.

With reduced speed, the motorist would still be able to drive, just more slowly, perhaps with less convenience than now. But over time the options of cycling, of walkable shopping, and improved public transit would synchronize more seamlessly as car space is ceded to separated cycletracks and transit lanes.

My suggestion is to make the city navigable by car at no greater than 15 miles per hour, a speed deemed not only to be comfortable on calmed pedestrian streets, but also to minimize injury and fatalities when there are collisions. Ultimately, our efforts to curb global warming, reduce injury and death from automobility, and make the city more livable obliges us to slow down, so looking at speeds is a step forward.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco.

Guardian Intelligence: July 2 – 8, 2014

Michael Redmond
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GUARDIAN ON THE MOVE

There were a couple of big changes for the Bay Guardian this week. We and our sister newspapers within San Francisco Media Company — San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly — moved into the Westfield Mall. Yes, the mall, but in the fifth floor business offices formerly occupied by the San Francisco State University School of Business extension program. The company, owned by Black Press in Canada and Oahu Publications in Hawaii, also named Glenn Zuehls as the new publisher and Cliff Chandler, who worked for the Examiner for years, as the senior vice president of advertising. Zuehls, who comes from Oahu Publications, replaces Todd Vogt as the head of SFMC. Zuehls and Chandler told the staff of all three papers that their primary goal is to grow the company’s revenues.

QUEER SPIRIT ROILS PRIDE

Even as an awareness of the ever-growing commercialization of SF Pride dawned on younger participants, a spirit of activism also took flight. Community grand marshal Tommi Avicolli Mecca led a fiery parade contingent (above) of housing activists in Sunday’s parade, protesting skyrocketing evictions in San Francisco. The anti-eviction brigade staged a die-in in front of the official parade observation area. Friday’s Trans March was the biggest so far, and Saturday’s Dyke March featured a huge contingent marching under the banner “Dykes Against Landlords.” Meanwhile, hundreds of protestors targeted a Kink.com prison-themed party, saying it glorified a prison-industrial complex, which “destroys the lives of millions of people.” Seven of the protestors were arrested, and charges of police brutality are being investigated.

LESBIANS BASHED AT PRIDE

While there were some disturbing anecdotal reports of homophobic slurs and queer bashing at Pride this year (including one of a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and her husband being attacked at Pink Saturday), San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Albie Esparza said police are only investigating one incident so far as an actual hate crime. It occurred on June 28 around 5:30pm near the intersection of Mission and Ninth streets when two young lesbians were subjected to homophobic taunts and then severely beaten by five young male suspects, all of whom remain at large. They’re described at 16 to 20 years old, two black, three Hispanic. Esparza said hate crimes are defined as attacks based solely on being a protected classes, so that doesn’t include robbery or assaults in which racism or homophobic slurs are used, if that doesn’t seem to be the motivation for the attacks.

LIFE’S A STAGE

Hark! It must be summer, because all the companies dedicated to outdoor theater are opening new productions in parks across the Bay Area. Aside from the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Ripple Effect (see feature in this issue; www.sfmt.org), Marin Shakespeare is presenting As You Like It in San Rafael (pictured), with Romeo and Juliet opening later in July (www.marinshakespeare.org); Free Shakespeare in the Park brings The Taming of the Shrew to Pleasanton and beyond (www.sfshakes.org); and Actors Ensemble of Berkeley goes stone-cold Austen with Pride and Prejudice in John Hinkel Park (www.aeofberkeley). AS YOU LIKE IT PHOTO BY STEVEN UNDERWOOD

TEN YEAR GRIND

Kids and pro skaters from One Love boards tore up “the island” — between the Ferry Building and the Embarcadero — with flips, kick tricks and plants June 29, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the much loved skate spot. Local Hunters Point pro skater Larry Redmon sat watching the new generation of skaters and offering pointers. Sure downtown has more grind blockers then it did a decade ago, but as Redmon says, “We out here.” PHOTO BY PAUL INGRAM

THE WILLIE CONNECTION

Muni’s workers and the SFMTA reached a final labor deal over the final weekend of June, but Mayor Ed Lee is telling news outlets the real dealmaker was former mayor Willie Brown. “He’s someone who understands the city, understands labor, the underlying interests,” SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin told various news outlets. Reports say Brown went unpaid by the city for the deed. That’s hard to believe: Anyone who knows Slick Willie knows he seldom does anything for free.

WAXING NOSTALGIC

The new Madame Tussauds wax museum attraction opened June 26 at Fisherman’s wharf — and includes SF-specific figure replicas like Mark Zuckerberg, Harvey Milk, and, of course, our real mayor, Nicolas Cage (pictured). See the Pixel Vision blog at SFBG.com for more creepy-ish pics and a review.

SHARON SELLS OUT (THE INDEPENDENT)

Despite her catalog full of confessional songs about nasty breakups and other dark subject matter, Sharon Van Etten was all smiles during two sold-out shows at the Independent June 29 and June 30. Leaning heavily on songs from her new album, Are We There, Van Etten and her four-piece band even led the adoring crowd in a cheerful sing-along at one point. On her next pass through town, we expect to be seeing her on a much bigger stage.

UNION PROUD

If BBQ and black-market fireworks aren’t your idea of showing civic pride, make your way over to the Mission’s Redstone Building (2940 16th St. at Capp) for a street fair Sat/5 with local musicians, poets, visual artists, and more, to mark the 100th anniversary of the SF Labor Temple and call attention to current labor issues like the fight for a $15 minimum wage. Built by the city’s Labor Council in 1914, the building formerly housed SF’s biggest labor unions and was the planning center for the famous 1934 General Strike. This celebration is part of Labor Fest, now in its 20th year, which runs throughout July around the Bay Area — for more: www.laborfest.net

 

A benefit series aims to keep the unique Meridian Gallery afloat

Sue Vaughan
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In 2001, interns at Powell Street’s Meridian Gallery planned and painted a 13×48 foot mural on the wall of the SRO Hartland Hotel, a few blocks away in the Tenderloin. The mural, a colorful and sunny street scene showcasing the multiculturalism of the neighborhood, was revered by residents and and left untouched for 10 years until it was vandalized by graffiti. In response, former interns who had worked on the project came back together and, alongside the current kids in the program, repainted the piece. The artists’ lasting willingness to help Meridian in times of need reemerges in a broader sense this week, which marks the climax of the gallery’s June Benefit Series (tonight’s entry: “16 Years of Meridian Music,” a diverse program of new music). 

Meridian Gallery, whose name comes from its mission to focus on hemispheric and cross-cultural interactions, is facing eviction. As rent around Union Square has skyrocketed, from $400 per square foot in 2007 to up to $3,000 today (according to retail consultant Helen Bulwik, quoted in a KQED report), many galleries have been forced to close their doors. The stately Perine Mansion, the three-story French Second Empire brick building where Meridian makes its home, is an especially attractive and lucrative piece of property. Instead of throwing in the towel, Anne Brodzsky, the dynamic co-founder of the gallery who has overseen its operations for over 25 years, has reached out to her friends. 

The original eviction notice was handed down in April. Some close to the gallery are convinced that despite any efforts, the rent will be impossible to pay. Others, Brodzky chief among them, think that the response to the bad news suggests a potential long-term rally from Meridian. Her optimism is fueled by two forces. First, on May 13, the SF Board of Supervisors beefed up affordability programs, including supplemental displacement funds and health benefits, for struggling art non-profits in the city. “I’m amazed by how they’ve managed to come together to help arts programs,” Brodzky exclaimed. 

More effective and instantly helpful than any bureaucratic assistance, however, have been the programs put together by artists affiliated with Meridian. Around the time of the Supervisors’ decision, Brodzky asked her gallery-mates if they were willing to stage an auction. The response was staggering; over 60 artists put up works. More astonishing to Brodzky, though, was the kind of excitement many of the participants exhibited for further events. “Bob Marsh, among many others, approached me and asked if they could stage fundraisers.” 

 Tonight, Marsh is one of the main attractions at the “16 Years of Meridian Music” showcase. An avant-garde visual artist and musician, Marsh discovered Meridian shortly after his arrival in San Francisco 14 years ago. “I started visiting galleries and found that Meridian had a wonderful monthly music series,” he says.

Marsh was inspired by the political sharpness of the organization. “I thought early on, ‘They’re not purveyors of bourgeois wallpaper,’ like so many galleries can be.” For Marsh’s offering, “The Visitor,” he’ll don his Sonic Suit #9, a wearable sculpture made from empty water bottles and other modern detritus, and engage in narrative movement to a musical accompaniment.

“He’s a visitor from another dimension,” Marsh says. “He arrives here, looks around, and has different reactions to the confusing environment that is our world.” Marsh debuted the ever-changing character at the Meridian and feels that its a fitting tribute to the openness and experimentation that the gallery fosters. 

Despite his excitement about the benefit, Marsh turns somber when discussing its necessity. “They have given so much with such passion,” he says. “It’s sad to see them persecuted by blind greed … I don’t think its personal, but everyone just wants a lot of money. Everybody thinks that’s some kind of virtue.”

Neither Brodzky, Marsh, nor other performers and Meridian affiliates with whom I talked  were quick to link the gallery’s financial troubles to a larger ill in San Francisco. They seemingly eschew that brand of macrocosmic victimhood and instead zoom in on what they can do to stay open, one step at a time. Their optimism may be healthier, but it does not mask the sad fact that rising rents are making grassroots galleries a thing of the past. If the artists continue to come together with the intensity of the mural renovation, auction, and benefit series, however, Meridian may just buck the trend.  

 

16 Years of Meridian Music: Composers in Performance

With Bob Marsh, Andrea Williams, Bryan Day, Phillip Greenlief and Jon Raskin’s 1+1, David Samas, Tom Bickley, and the Cornelius Cardew Choir

Thu/26, 7-10pm, $35

Meridian Gallery

535 Powell, SF

meridiangallery.org


‘Purple Rain’ at 30

Steven T. Jones
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‘Purple Rain’ at 30

Just over a year ago, Adam Tod Brown wrote a great article for Cracked called “4 Classic Albums That Get More Praise Than They Deserve.” Though it contained as much Yoko Ono-bashing as you’d expect from a website as frequently fratty as Cracked, it made a great argument for Ringo’s self-titled as the best solo ’70s Beatles album and contributed substantially to the recent critical revival of Neil Young’s On The Beach. The thing that interested me most, however, was Brown’s citation of Prince’s Purple Rain as a “flawless album” that gets as much press as it deserves, “no matter how many other great Prince albums there are.”

I instantly disagreed with the implication that his 1984 soundtrack to the film of the same name was Prince’s greatest album, but his article didn’t elicit a cynical “nahh” from me as much as a bolt of surprise. Sure, Purple Rain is the Prince album random people on the street will be most likely to name. But I’d been raised alongside 1999 and Sign O’ The Times as well — albums that both get well-deserved five-star ratings  but still don’t place quite as highly on critical lists as Purple Rain. I always presumed these albums were just as famous, and I wasn’t sure why this meek 9-track album was getting all the praise.

I still agree it’s not Prince’s best. But it’s his most solid — meaning the fewest indulgences, the highest masterpiece-to-crap ratio, the most content per its running time. Dirty Mind is two-thirds as long and lacks a single bad song, but its structure is a bit uneven; in my opinion, this adds to its carefree appeal, but it’s still an imperfection. Meanwhile, 1999 contains some of the most ambitious and daring pop music made during the 1980s, but a lot of its songs are about twice as long as they need to be — though not necessarily as they should be.

Purple Rain takes everything Prince does best and puts it together into a cohesive whole that’s easy to listen to front to back. All of the contradictions in Prince’s personality show up here side by side.  We see the conflicted Christian Prince (“Let’s Go Crazy”) alongside the hypersexual Prince (“Darling Nikki”), then the pop-visionary Prince (“When Doves Cry”) alongside the pop-conservative Prince (“Take Me With U”). There’s Prince the introverted studio whiz (“I Would Die 4 U,” “Computer Blue”) and Prince as the all-devouring, mic stand-humping frontman (“Baby I’m A Star”).

prince

And then there’s “The Beautiful Ones,” the ultimate workout for what might be the best vocal sound in all of music — Prince’s scream, a throat-shredding release of ecstasy that its owner wields with the same control of any of the many instruments he’s mastered. It’s as simultaneously sexy and disturbing as…well, Prince’s whole persona. It’s the thing that cemented my obsession with Prince, and only on Purple Rain does it have its own song.

Elsewhere on the album we see Prince fleshing out some of his later obsessions. “I Would Die 4 U” and “Purple Rain” both find Prince using his trademark Linn LM-1 drum machine to create that very ’80s sense of retro-futuristic isolation exemplified by Blade Runner; Sign O’ The Times would expand on this mood for the duration of a 78-minute opus. Because of how much of Prince’s personality we get on this album, it’s tempting to single Purple Rain out as the best introduction to Prince.

But it’s also the one least likely to blow a newcomer’s mind. As bold and stylistically diverse an album as it is, it’s one of the least interesting of Prince’s major albums, and the least representative of his aesthetic. It’s his least eccentric major album, its most meticulously produced, and the most in line with the “rock” ideal — perhaps a reason why the guitar-obsessed Rolling Stone staffers praised it and continue to praise it so much more highly than anything else in the man’s oeuvre.

If you took out the vocals and the awesomely detuned synth, there wouldn’t be much in “Let’s Go Crazy” to signify it as a Prince song. The production is too meticulous, too arena-rock to really be representative of the eccentricity that makes Prince so endlessly fascinating. “Purple Rain” suffers from the opposite problem. There are a million slow-burning ballads like it, and that plaintive Linn drum is the only thing really tying it to his aesthetic.

This is Prince working in a pop setting. It is worth remembering Purple Rain is first and foremost the soundtrack to a film, and much like the Beatles’ film albums, it’s an artist being as creative as possible within the medium of a stocking-stuffer item designed chiefly to promote another work of art and make some extra cash from it. Prince is one of those artists who usually scores hits on his own terms, who makes no compromises but just happens to make audacious music that people really like. Here, it’s the other way around — the desire to make something people will like is the box in which Prince’s creativity freely bounces around.

It is perhaps for this reason that “Take Me With U” is the most effective song here. Prince’s co-star Apollonia guests on this song; her vocals fit so well into the song that her presence merges with that of Prince until it’s unclear whose song it really is. Prince takes into account all the hallmarks of a great lovebird duet — playfulness, chemistry, and above all else, romance. This song isn’t explicitly sexual, but it’s incredibly sensual. Both vocal performances are bursting with excitement beneath the functional cool required of pop vocals, and by the time they reach the ecstatic bridge (“I don’t care if we spend the night in your mansion”), they’re barely able to control themselves.  It’s brilliant.

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain, and in mentioning this, most news outlets have inevitably mentioned the massive amount of praise this album has received. As such, people who have not previously heard Prince will be drawn to that album. But as undeniably fantastic as it is, I’d maintain that Purple Rain is not the album most likely to convince a newcomer of Prince’s genius — Sign O’ The Times is more eclectic, 1999 more diverse, Dirty Mind more did-he-just-say-that sexual, The Black Album more bizarre. If you know Prince first and foremost as that skinny pop star with the high voice and need convincing of his genius, any of those albums would work better.

Which is not to say you should overlook Purple Rain by any means. Though I would argue it’s not his most essential work, it’s the album that does the best job of proving he’s capable of just about anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ShT9k4lzM

[Ed. note: Prince makes it notoriously difficult to find his music online, so here’s a recent interview instead. But really, if you don’t own a Prince album by now, there are worse things you could spend money on.]

Nob Hill neighbors seek to block mental-health clinic relocation

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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33
Nob Hill neighbors seek to block mental-health clinic relocation

A San Francisco mental-health clinic that has been in operation since 1975 is in danger of shutting down if it can’t find a new place to operate. But its possible relocation to medical offices on Hyde Street, subject to city approval, has prompted neighbors to organize in opposition.

Cindy Gyori, executive director of Hyde Street Community Services, has been scrambling to find a new home for her organization since being hit with the news of a pending rent increase. Its Tenderloin Mental Health Clinic serves about 1,200 clients per year, making it the third-largest outpatient clinic in the city.

Rent in its current space, on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, is about to increase to almost double, Gyori said. Larkin Street Youth Services, another service provider in the process of consolidating to a single location, is lined up to rent the entire building. That means the clinic must relocate by Sept. 15, Gyori said.

When she first began the search, “It was impossible to find an adequate space,” she explained. Several possibilities would have required months of renovation, impossible to accomplish given the time constraint. But 815 Hyde Street, a medical office building connected to St. Francis Memorial Hospital, seemed viable. “We’ve really been focusing on moving there,” she said. Negotiations have been underway for several months.

The clinic serves individuals dealing with mental illness, past exposure to trauma, or substance abuse problems, making it just the sort of facility that’s needed to stabilize a population that’s at risk of homelessness, or in recovery from life on the streets.

But neighborhood resistance to the clinic’s planned move is proving to be problematic. “We’re getting pushback from some individuals in the community, who are concerned about our clients, and their behavior, and whether it would be disruptive to the community,” she said. The new facility would be at the Nob Hill intersection of Hyde and Bush streets. A boutique hotel is located nearby, and the area is regularly saturated with tourists.

Hyde Street Community Services is contracted with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to provide care for Central City residents. That means the Health Commission must sign off on any relocation proposal. But at a June 17 committee meeting, health commissioners opted to delay approval in the face of vociferous neighborhood opposition. They directed the nonprofit to hold community meetings about the planned relocation, tabling the vote till July 15.

Robert Garcia, president of Save Our Streets, is organizing neighborhood opposition. “This area, lower Nob Hill, is an historic hotel and apartment district,” he said in an interview. “There are a lot of tourists here.”

He described Save Our Streets as a “not-for-profit neighborhood group” that for years has engaged in “fighting crime, and [fighting] a lot of prostitution.” He added, “We live here. This is our neighborhood. We’re not asking for anything, just trying to protect what belongs to us – and that’s our neighborhood.”

“We just don’t need any more problems here,” Garcia went on. “When they’re bringing in people with behavioral problems, that says something.”

The delay has left Gyori in a bit of limbo. “The time crunch is really problematic,” she said, emphasizing that if the move to 815 Hyde Street does not go as planned, and the clinic cannot find any other options, then it could be forced to shut its doors.

“We want to respond to the community as best we can,” she added. “People said they were afraid they would see streams of shopping carts headed up Hyde Street,” she noted, but sees this notion as a misinformed reaction to the people who congregate on the sidewalk on Golden Gate. “We have to convince the neighborhood people that the people on the street in the Tenderloin aren’t the same as our clients,” she said. “The number one complaint from our clients, mostly, is that they have to run the gauntlet to get through the door,” she added. 

The first of the community meetings will be held tomorrow, June 26, at the Hotel Carlton, 1075 Sutter, from 6:30 to 8pm.

Dirty, sweet, and far from down low

Steven T. Jones
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0
Dirty, sweet, and far from down low

esilvers@sfbg.com

LEFT OF THE DIAL/QUEER ISSUE Take the sexual braggadocio of Lil Kim, the rapid-fire flow of Twista, and a fashion sense that combines Nicki Minaj with, depending on the day, Bjork, Ma$e, or, say, the board game Candyland, and you have a close approximation of Cakes da Killa. The Brooklyn-based, baby-faced musician is both a rising star and, unfortunately, something of an oddity, just by virtue of being a gay man and a rapper.

His participation in one of the most homophobic quadrants of pop culture as an out gay guy aside, however, Cakes — born Rashard Bradshaw — doesn’t see what’s so shocking about some of his lyrics, even when he’s rapping matter-of-factly about how he’s going to fuck your boyfriend (actual song title: “Fuck Ya Boifriend”).

After making a name for himself with two mix tapes in 2011 and 2013 (Easy Bake Oven and The Eulogy, respectively, with the latter receiving a positive mention from Pitchfork), his latest EP, Hunger Pangs, reveals a darker, harder sound. He’s still X-rated and super funny, but he also sounds like he’s ready to fight.

We caught up over the phone ahead of Cakes’ appearance at Public Works Sat/28, as part of the club’s “House of Babes” Dyke March after-party.

SF Bay Guardian You grew up in Jersey. How did you start rapping?

Cakes da Killa I always wrote when I was young, whether it was poetry or something else. But I started rapping as a joke in high school, because I saw a bunch of straight guys doing it and getting lots of attention. And me being an attention whore, it was “I can do that.” In college I started making videos of me rapping over instrumentals on YouTube, and after people saw those videos I started getting asked to record on projects.

SFBG How did the straight guys respond to it when you were younger? Did you get any backlash for being an out gay kid, trying to get into something that’s so associated with straight, heteronormative culture, or did they just notice how good you were? 

CK You know, they noticed. I came out in the third grade, and I’ve always been the gay boy that was so comfortable in myself I didn’t make straight people insecure or uncomfortable. I think I’m still that way.

SFBG The mixtape before this, when you started getting noticed, was called The Eulogy. Why’s that?

CK Honestly, I thought it was going to be my last project. I just didn’t see the longevity in rapping — it’s weird to think of yourself as a rapper, because I’m so not that. Not even just because I’m gay, but also I don’t have a rapper’s ego.

SFBG I think maybe the ego comes after you make a ton of money? 

CK Yeah, but then my friends would all hate me. I just want to do it until it’s not fun anymore. So far, though, it’s still fun.

SFBG You’re so young, though. You’re, what, 22? Didn’t you just graduate from college? 

CK I’m 23. And in gay years. We age like dinosaurs, so I’m basically a fossil. I graduated last May, and I moved out of my mother’s house. I’m living in Bushwick now; I’m a fully realized member of society.

SFBG You have a pretty big fan base in Europe. Where have you toured? How are audiences over there different from stateside? 

CK I’ve been to Europe three times on kind of mini-tours. Mostly Berlin, Paris. I’ve been to Australia twice too. I think I have a bigger fan base overseas because it’s just harder to break [out] in the States; the way the music business works, it’s just harder to get attention here.

When I do a show overseas, I think the main difference is Europeans think, “If we’re gonna pay five euros to see you, you better be on stage for two hours.” In the States we pay way more to see someone for a few minutes, then it’s back to the bar, or a DJ or something…we have ADD here. When I tour overseas, I have to some cardio before the show.

SFBG You’re known for some pretty filthy lyrics. Does that come naturally to you? 

CK You know, I didn’t realize the fact of me being filthy until people started saying that — it’s just that the things I talk about aren’t talked about. I grew up with my mom, and I came out in the third grade; we talked about sex pretty openly in my house. When I make a song about giving blowjobs, I’m not thinking “Let’s make a song about giving blowjobs.” This isn’t breaking news. Everyone likes blowjobs. It’s just not really filthy to me; people have sex. I am conscious now though of, you know, not becoming “the blowjob rapper.”

SFBG Do you see homophobia in the rap world getting better? What is it going to take for the culture to change? 

CK I think it’s going to take an openly gay person who can really sell in the black media, do a world tour. But people that run black media right now clearly don’t see it as a marketable thing. And it’s all about money. That’s the fucked up thing about the situation, it’s not about how talented the person is, it’s ‘How can we sell this situation?’ And if you’re not marketable and a bunch of people can’t make money off you, you’re just gonna be, you know, living in Bushwick.

SFBG Musically, do you see yourself heading in any particular direction with Hunger Pangs?

CK Yeah, if I compare myself to the boy who was rapping in high school in the cafeteria, I’m definitely not the same person. I make music off of touring, experiencing things. I’m having a butch moment right now. And for my next project, I think I’m making more depressing songs.

SFBG Did that come out of anything in particular? 

CK Living life. Dealing with dumb boys. Instead of being all sad about it, I’m like, let’s write an album about it. At least make some money!

CAKES DA KILLA

With Junglepussy and Lisa Delux

The House of Babes Presents the Dyke March After-Party

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

Pride and prejudice

Michael Redmond
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7
Pride and prejudice

joe@sfbg.com

As Pride celebrations across the country unfurl their rainbow flags this month, teacher tenure in California suffered a stunning blow from a Los Angeles Superior Court, undermining protections that have shielded the LGBT community from discrimination.

Although the decision will likely be appealed, Judge Rolf M. Treu’s ruling galvanized teachers unions and evoked memories of conservative attacks on gay teachers in the 1970s, including the unsuccessful Briggs Initiative that was a rallying point for then-Sup. Harvey Milk and a new generation of LGBT political leaders.

“To jeopardize any of the protections we have now, it’s a thinly veiled attempt to demoralize teachers, and it’s an attack on public education,” Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, the San Francisco Democrat who began his political career as an openly gay teacher campaigning against the Briggs Initiative, told the Guardian.

LGBT rights and teacher tenure may seem to have little in common, but a peek at the movers and shakers in the LGBT and teachers’ rights movements show an interconnected relationship of protections and the players who fight for them. Loss of tenure can threaten the protection of minority groups, academic freedom, and unpopular political speech, despite employment rights gained in recent years.

“We’ve beaten back that thinking,” Ammiano said, “but it’s still lurking.”

In California, K-12 teachers are shielded by legal protections often referred to commonly as tenure. Permanent status is the backbone of these protections, offering an arbitration process for teachers who administrators intend to fire. Also struck down by the judge was the First In, First Out law, which protects veteran teachers from layoffs by letting go of recent hires first.

In his ruling, Treu said these policies created an environment where students were burdened by ineffective teachers who were difficult to fire, disproportionately detracting from minority students’ education quality in the most troubled schools.

“The evidence is compelling,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “indeed, it shocks the conscience.”

Many education advocates vehemently disagreed with that ruling, and the veracity of the evidence will be further weighed in upcoming appeals. But along the way to pursuing equality for students, the equality of teachers may find itself eroded by an unlikely new hero of the LGBT movement: A conservative attorney who fought against marriage discrimination, but also litigated against the legacy of an LGBT legend.

 

HERO OF MARRIAGE EQUALITY

The morning last year when the US Supreme Court ruled to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, San Franciscans gathered inside City Hall by the grand staircase. Men held men, women held women, and families held the their children tight.

When the court’s decision finally hit the news, the outcry of happiness and surprise at City Hall was deafening. The expressions on the faces of those there was that of joy with many understandably streaked by tears. Attorney Theodore Olson helped litigate against Prop. 8 and won, and as he fought for gay rights, his face was often streaked with tears as well, LGBT rights activist Cleve Jones told us.

“There was a part of that trial when the plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier described their love for each other,” Jones said. “I was sitting with their family in [US District Court Judge] Vaughn Walker’s court. When we broke, Ted Olson went to embrace them and there were tears on his face.”

But Olson is not a poster child for most politics considered the realm of liberals and Democrats. Olson and fellow Prop. 8 litigator Attorney David Boies were on opposing sides of the Bush v. Gore case that Olson won, handing George W. Bush the presidency in 2000. Olson was then appointed solicitor general of the United States, often leading conservative causes.

 

Olson and Boies will talk about their new book Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality at the LGBT center on June 25 (joined by Supervisor Scott Wiener), but Olson gave us a glimmer of those motivations.

Olson, a Los Altos native who attended UC Berkeley School of Law, told the Guardian in a phone interview that his stand on gay rights was based on conservative principles: “I think of conservatives as including people who are libertarians and respect individual liberty.”

 

A trailer for “The Case Against 8,” which features Ted Olson heavily.

He said the right to marry the person of one’s choosing should be an individual right that government has no business banning. That belief in individual liberty is at the core of his political principles. “It affects me in absolutely the deepest personal way,” he told us.

Whatever his ideological motivations, Olson became a hero in the LGBT community. But this year, he was one of the attorneys who convinced Judge Treu of the evils of teacher tenure. In the trial, Olson claimed one Oakland teacher was harming elementary students’ educational outcomes: “The principal couldn’t remove that teacher. These stories are so awful, sometimes you feel people are exaggerating.”

Yet the problems afflicting Oakland schools and its children, the unions argued, are not due to teacher tenure. In a city with high violence rates, students’ broken homes, low teacher pay, and difficult working conditions, critics say Olson oversimplified and misrepresented a complex problem.

“We all know there are problems in our schools,” Jones, who works with unions, told us. “But there’s never of course discussion about poverty, or students growing up in single families, or class sizes.”

These were all arguments the union made against Olson, unsuccessfully. The decision to remove protections for teachers may send ripples into other states and spur increased attacks on teacher protections.

And unlike California, which has strong anti-discrimination protections, that campaign may allow teachers of other states to be fired or dismissed for coming out of the closet, an issue that helped elevate Harvey Milk into such an iconic leader.

 

ECHOES OF BRIGGS

Jones and Ammiano fought alongside Milk against Proposition 6 in 1978, known as the Briggs Initiative, which would have made it illegal for openly gay people to teach. Then-Sen. John Briggs and his allies associated gay teachers with child molesters and frequently said they may influence children to become gay.

“I was born of heterosexual parents, taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society,” Milk said in a speech at the time. “Then why am I homosexual if I’m affected by role models? I should’ve been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there’d be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.”

This fight may be history, but Ammiano said such biases are still with us today, such as with how some see the transgender community. “We’re holding people at bay around LGB issues, but the T part now is the crossroads for the right wing [activists] who are rolling back protections,” he said.

Only 30 US states offer employment protections for sexual orientation, and some of those only cover government employees, according to a study by Center for American Progress. Only 23 states protect against firing for gender identity.

Vulnerable teachers lacking protections granted by tenure or equal employment laws are still being fired in California and across the country. In April, a transgender Texas substitute teacher was fired for making children “uncomfortable,” according to news reports. In Glendora, California, a teacher was fired from a religious private school after a photo of he and his husband kissing on their wedding day made the local newspaper.

This month, President Barack Obama announced an Executive Order mandating federal contractors enact policies protecting workers from dismissal due to sexual orientation or gender identity. Many speculate this was announced to press Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect private employees from discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

briggs

“This is only round one,” stated Senator John Briggs to the press about the defeat of Proposition 6, Nov. 7, 1978, at a Costa Mesa hotel. Proposition 6, called the Briggs Initiative, prohibits gay teachers from working in California public schools. AP file photo by Doug Pizac

But ENDA has stalled for years, despite the best efforts of advocacy groups nationwide. And as the country awaits equality, many teachers’ last hope against unlawful dismissal is tenure. In fact, tenure laws were first drafted after the Red Scare and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt for communists, California Federation of Teachers spokesperson Fred Glass told us.

Yet Olson recoils at linking LGBT rights to teacher protections. “I support wholly protections for people for who they are, for heaven’s sakes,” he told us, mentioning that Milk “was very much an inspiration and very important to us.”

And Jones still thinks of Olson as a hero, saying that life and politics are complex.

“Irony abounds,” Jones said. “I don’t square it. You can’t square it. It’s there. But my respect for Ted Olson is based on his very genuine support for our community on the issue of marriage. For LGBT people to win equalit,y it’s important there’s a national consensus, it can’t just be from the left. Ted Olson was incredibly important with that effort and will be remembered generations for now. You don’t have to like everything about Ted Olson or President Obama to acknowledge they had a profound effect.”

SF school board to consider minimum wage proposal tonight amid union battles UPDATED

Erica Hanna
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25
SF school board to consider minimum wage proposal tonight amid union battles UPDATED

Update [6/25]: The minimum wage proposal won, and is now part of SFUSD’s approved budget. “There will be a larger conversation in August when I introduce the new minimum wage policy,” Matt Haney, of the Board of Education said. Read the article to get some context on SFUSD’s minimum wage struggles.

Hundreds of San Francisco Unified School District employees stand to finally be paid San Francisco’s minimum wage, in a new proposal expected for tonight’s Board of Education meeting.

Matt Haney, a board commissioner, plans to propose requiring SFUSD to pay San Francisco’s minimum wage. He said it’s a practical move that also carries a message.

“It’s a relatively small amount of people, but a dollar fifty or two dollars more an hour is not pocket change for them,” he told the Guardian. “It’s really a step towards aligning the school district towards paying everyone a living wage.”

As a state entity, the SFUSD need only adhere to the state minimum wage of $9 an hour, which will be the state’s new minimum wage starting July 1. For now, San Francisco’s minimum wage is $10.74 an hour, though that may change under a new November ballot measure to as much as $15 an hour by 2018.

Haney is considering introducing a new resolution in August to match the City’s $15 minimum wage hike, as well.

Over 800 SFUSD workers earn below San Francisco’s minimum wage. These employees are mostly unrepresented by unions, Haney told us, and though they serve in a variety of positions, most are yard monitors who oversee recess in the city’s over 100 schools.

Haney’s minimum wage proposal is part of the overall SFUSD proposed 2014-15 budget, which the school board will vote on tonight. As Governor Jerry Brown’s new funding mechanism, the Local Control Funding Formula, drives extra dollars into disadvantaged school districts, the unions and schools are expected to put on the pressure for the district to offer raises for teachers and paraprofessionals.

“There should be some fireworks, I imagine,” Haney said.

Negotiations between the school district and the unions are at a standstill, sources tell us. The district said it is proposing a 8.5 percent increase over three years, which amounts to an approximate $1.83 an hour raise for paraprofessionals. This offer infuriated the United Educators of San Francisco, who allege that is still not a living wage.

“They’re coming to us and saying ‘this is almost the best we can offer,'” Dennis Kelly, president of UESF told the Guardian. “What the hell does that mean?”

Paraprofessionals often work in special education or early childhood education, and some are security aides. There are between 1,350 and 1,500 of those employees at any given time in the district, Kelly told us, noting they’re also a group made up largely of minorities and women.

In a statement to the press, SFUSD Superintendent Richard Carranza said the district made the best offer it could under the circumstances.

“We are committed to providing salary increases this year and in the future as long as the revenues from the state continue to grow,” Carranza wrote. “Unfortunately the state’s forecast for school budgets just got a lot worse. Governor Brown just said that he is now expecting districts to pay a bill, in the amount of several billion dollars, to cover the State’s unfunded pension liabilities as soon as next school year and every year after for the foreseeable future. This expenditure will spend a significant amount of the very same revenues we are counting on to provide services for our students and salary increases for our employees.”

As the district struggles with its bills, the paraprofessionals are facing the very real rising costs of living in San Francisco. The average pay for a paraprofessional is $25,000, Kelly told us, adding “you’re employing 1,000 of these people at poverty wages.”

The UESF will take a vote to authorize a strike vote in August, and the negotiations between the UESF and the school district is expected to be mediated soon.

In the meantime, for 800 or so employees at least, Haney’s minimum wage increase should bring some much-needed good news to a school district beleaguered with money woes. Though the raise would only bump employees a dollar fifty or two dollars an hour more, Haney said, “it’s a symbolic in some ways, but important.”

And as a school district that mostly serves poor and disadvantaged students, Haney added, “if anyone should know about poverty in schools, it’s us.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccuately cited the district’s wage offer. The Guardian apologizes for the error.

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