Newsom

Annemarie Conroy lands on her feet … again

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You might remember local political cog Annemarie Conroy from such films as The Career Hack and How to Get Inexplicably Bigger Job Titles in San Francisco Without Real Credentials. After disappearing for a while, she’s back. Joe Russoniello, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, just announced that Conroy is his new “law enforcement coordinator.”

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Her primary responsibilities will be to “maximize the use of federal resources to meet crime abatement objectives,” be a “chief liaison to local law enforcement officials” and direct the district’s “Project Safe Neighborhood and Weed and Seed programs.” Despite the confusing title, that last program there involves taking on drug activity and gangs with the feds, which she’s no doubt suited to do.

Some of you might recall the trajectory of Conroy’s career. Dan Noyes at ABC 7 pointed out in 2005 that when Newsom appointed her to head San Francisco’s Office of Emergency Services, she had no experience in disaster management, but she did have political connections, just like Michael Brown, head of FEMA when Katrina struck. A retired Navy admiral who held the job before Conroy went public and declared that Newsom should remove her for being ill-prepared, and behind the scenes, the fire department wasn’t happy about her post either. She finally resigned in January of 2007.

Peaker plan afloat

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› amanda@sfbg.com

A proposal to build two natural gas–fired power plants is still floating through the city’s planning process, set for approval by the Board of Supervisors as soon as May, but no one seems truly comfortable with the deal.

"It’s not my first choice or my second choice, but it’s the choice I have," Board president Aaron Peskin told the Guardian. The choice seems to be either the city builds newer, potentially cleaner power plants — known as "peakers" because they would be used mainly during times of peak energy demand — or does nothing to shut down the super-polluting Mirant Potrero power plant.

The combination gas- and diesel-burning power plant spews a cocktail of toxins from its stack every year and draws 226 million gallons of water a day from the bay to cool its generators yet it’s mandated by the state to keep operating. The discharge flows back into the bay significantly altered, with microorganisms and fish larvae replaced by mercury, dioxins, and PCBs.

The California Independent System Operator (CAL-ISO), the state agency that oversees electricity reliability, said it would break the Mirant contract if the peakers came online. The city-owned plants would use recycled water and more up-to-date air quality controls, making for cleaner facilities at the two proposed sites — the airport and the intersection of 25th and Maryland in the Bayview.

They also would be city-operated, giving a little more leg to the local public power movement. But they still burn fossil fuel, and at a time when the climate is in crisis and natural gas prices are only rising, many say this isn’t the direction a trend-setting city like San Francisco should be heading.

"This isn’t the progressive way to go," said Sup. Chris Daly. "We need to be more forcefully installing renewables that are municipally owned."

Daly, along with supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Michela Alioto-Pier and the city’s current power provider Pacific Gas and Electric Co., have lined up against building the peakers in what Mirkarimi calls an "unholy alliance."

PG&E, lobbying under the guise of the "Close It! Coalition," states that the peakers "further San Francisco’s reliance on fossil fuels and add to global warming." The $12 billion utility company currently gets 40 percent of its power the same way and is in the process of constructing several similar plants throughout the state. Nevertheless, the company has submitted detailed proposals to the city and state outlining demand response measures and transmission upgrades that would mitigate the need for more energy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera support building the peakers in order to close the Mirant plant, and Sups. Sophie Maxwell, Bevan Dufty, and Jake McGoldrick are carrying the legislation that would seal the contract with Cleveland, Ohio-based Industrial Construction Company to start the $252 million project.

That legislation points out that Mirant’s water permit is set to expire Dec. 31, and the Regional Water Quality Board has indicated it has no plans to renew it unless Mirant upgrades to best practices. This has been suggested as an alternative way to close the plant. When asked whether Cal-ISO’s reliability demands trump the Water Board’s requirements, Cal-ISO’s Gregg Fishman wrote in an e-mail, "What happens if the Potrero unit’s water permits expire? Simply put — we’re not sure."

Beyond that, a number of questions remain: Should the requirement for a full feasibility study for city contracts more than $25 million really have been waived for this project? Is it fair to put the new power plant in the neighborhood that has always endured the lion’s share of the city’s pollution? What if they were on movable barges instead? And has the city been forceful enough with CAL-ISO when it comes to planning the city’s energy future?

Alioto-Pier has introduced two resolutions addressing a couple of these issues. One calls for a straight-up feasibility study — which supporters of the peakers have waived. "The city has a policy of conducting a full fiscal analysis of capital projects over $25 million," Alioto-Pier said in a press release. "This should be no exception." Her other resolution asks for an independent analysis of the whole thing and a revised 2008 Energy Action Plan for the city.

For several years, Cal-ISO has said Mirant could stop operating if San Francisco can provide an alternate "firm" power source in its Energy Action Plan. In 2004, San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission proffered the peakers, and that became the city’s power plan before adopting the CCA (community choice aggregation) plan for the city to develop an energy portfolio of at least 51 percent renewables.

Though the SFPUC has continuously asked Cal-ISO if the 2004 Action Plan is still the way to go now that the Trans Bay Cable and other line improvements have come into play, Josh Arce, a lawyer for Brightline Defense, which sued to stop the peaker plan, says they’ve been framing the question all wrong: "The PUC has essentially been saying, ‘Does the Action Plan include all four combustion turbines?’ And Cal-ISO has said, ‘Yes, it includes all four.’ Instead, the PUC needs to come up with a new Action Plan and give it to Cal-ISO and say we’re doing this instead."

Alioto-Pier’s resolution, if passed, could prompt a fresh response from Cal-ISO about what the city really needs — one, two, or three peakers, or maybe none at all. Maxwell’s resolution includes a caveat that the city must determine if needs could be met by building smaller plants with fewer than the four turbines currently proposed.

Peskin, who chairs the city’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee and will hear both Alioto-Pier resolutions on May 5, as well as the Maxwell plan to move to build the peakers, told us, "This is one of the toughest decisions that’s been before me in the eight years that I’ve been on the Board of Supervisors."

No one, it seems, really wants to build two fossil fuel–burning power plants on San Francisco soil. But what if they weren’t on our soil? What if they were floating on barges?

Another resolution pending in the Land Use Committee, brought by Mirkarimi, proposes putting the two power plants on barges, which could be moored alongside the city when needed and dispatched elsewhere when they’re not. What if, a few years from now, citizens are able to cut down their power needs, CCA brings more renewables online, and the city finds it no longer needs the 200 megawatts generated by natural gas power plants?

Proponents say it’s an option worth considering if the city really intends to eventually close the plants. Dismantling a facility if the city decides to sell leaches away 20 to 30 percent of its overall cost. But if it’s on a barge, the natural gas, electricity, and mooring lines are simply cast off. A barge would be steadier in an earthquake and continue to float if the sea level rises — a climate change scenario that could swamp both current bayside power plant sites. Barges also can be dispatched to emergencies, leased down the river to other cities in the Bay Area, or sold for a profit. They’ve been in use around the world since the 1940s and have been called a more regional approach to energy planning.

"It’s 145 MW of portable energy," said Rick Galbreath, Mirkarimi’s aide. "You can pull it up, plug it in, and you’re on the grid. It’s really a dynamic solution."

Paul Fenn, the brain behind the city’s CCA plan, points out that if CAL-ISO still insists the peakers are needed now but not in the future, a power barge is the kind of flexible solution that could pay off in the long run. "It’s making a temporary measure for an urgent situation," he said, adding that such a temporary solution should reflect the city’s long-term goals. "If the city is planning to replace them with renewables, it’s important to get the city to make that commitment. This is one of those strategic decisions that’s going to impact the future."

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission generally opposes building anything in the bay if it can be built on land first. "The proponents would have to do an analysis and convince our commission that this is really a good idea for the region," said Will Travis, a BCDC spokesperson.

But Dave Nickerson, owner of Houston-based Power Barge Corporation, said he’s looked at the city’s peaker plans and thinks it would cost about $100 million to build a three-CT barge. "We would probably build the plant here and ship it up," he said, pointing out that the city’s turbines are already in storage down in Texas and it’s cheaper to build it in a shipyard. To claims of environmental degradation, he says, "It would have the environmental footprint of a state of the art land-based plant."

He also pointed out that there’s a scarcity of these particular turbines now, which are worth about $1 million more every year. This year it’s around $16.5 million apiece, with $18 million as the projected 2008 price.

Emma Lierley contributed to this story.

Newsom’s missing trees

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OPINION During his 2003 mayoral campaign, Gavin Newsom circulated a beautifully presented eight-page "policy brief" for "A Green and Clean San Francisco." The first four pages were devoted to a pledge to "grow our urban canopy" — a subject near and dear to my heart.

Newsom announced: "As mayor of San Francisco, I will lead the city government and community organizations to make San Francisco a city we can take pride in — a city with green [emphasis mine], clean, and livable neighborhoods." As his first action, he said, "I will grow our urban canopy by placing a priority on tree planting and care."

For good measure, he tantalized us with some goodies: "Visualize 19th Avenue as a welcoming beautiful gateway to the city, lined with trees and planters." He promised to improve the lack of coordination among city agencies and departments involved in street tree planting, care, and planning by using new technologies such as CitiStat. And, most important, he committed himself to addressing the massive underfunding of the expansion and maintenance of the urban canopy.

These promises were made in the context of the long-standing critical state of the city’s urban forest. The candidate put it this way: San Francisco lags behind other communities in providing a vital, vibrant, and ecologically sustainable urban canopy, as well as open space, in the city. San Francisco has an estimated 90,000 street trees. By comparison, San Jose boasts 231,000 street trees. Our urban canopy is full of holes: Friends of the Urban Forest estimates we have only 75 street trees per mile, compared to the national average of 120 trees per mile. That means San Francisco has a little more than half the street trees of similarly sized cities.

Today, after more four years in office, the mayor’s promises are still just that. Nothing close to what he committed to do has been accomplished or implemented. Instead the mayor has relied on press releases, disinformation, and a newly staffed position with a yet-to-be-defined role to publicize his claimed achievements.

As I speak, the mayor has seven full–time press officers polishing his image, which, coincidentally, is the same number — seven — of filled managerial/administrative positions in the Department of Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry, the division responsible for managing all the street trees in the city. The Department of the Environment has only two-thirds of one position (out of some 65 full-time positions) devoted to urban trees.

The Office of Greening, established in 2005, has had three directors, with no announced action from the latest one since she took over in February. The Greening Vision Council, chaired by the greening director, has been dormant for more than two years. The April 2006 Urban Forest Plan died in the Planning Department. And no one in the Controller’s Office has any direct knowledge of that new technology, CitiStat.

The mayor’s spinning was at its most inventive when he used creative accounting to claim on Arbor Day last year that more than 15,000 trees were added to the city in the years 2004 to 2006, when actual total was closer to 4,800 trees.

So much for "green and clean."

Allen Grossman

Allen Grossman is executive director of the SF Urban Forest Coalition.

Promises and reality

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› sarah@sfbg.com

The Lennar-financed "Yes on G" fliers jammed into mailboxes all across San Francisco this month depict a dark-skinned family strolling along a shoreline trail against a backdrop of blue sky, grassy parkland, a smattering of low-rise buildings, and the vague hint of a nearly transparent high-rise condo tower in the corner.

"After 34 years of neglect, it’s time to clean up the Shipyard for tomorrow," states one flier, which promises to create up to 10,000 new homes, "with as many as 25 percent being entry-level affordable units"; 300 acres of new parks; and 8,000 permanent jobs in the city’s sun-soaked southeast sector.

Add to that the green tech research park, a new 49ers stadium, a permanent home for shipyard artists, and a total rebuild of the dilapidated Alice Griffith public housing project, and the whole project looks and sounds simply idyllic. But as with many big-money political campaigns, the reality is quite different from the sales pitch.

What Proposition G’s glossy fliers don’t tell you is that this initiative would make it possible for a controversial Florida-based megadeveloper to build luxury condos on a California state park, take over federal responsibility for the cleanup of toxic sites, construct a bridge over a slough restoration project, and build a new road so Candlestick Point residents won’t have to venture into the Bayview District.

Nor do these shiny images reveal that Prop. G is actually vaguely-worded, open-ended legislation whose final terms won’t be driven by the jobs, housing, or open-space needs of the low-income and predominantly African American Bayview-Hunters Point community, but by the bottom line of the financially troubled Lennar.

And nowhere does it mention that Lennar already broke trust with the BVHP, failing to control asbestos at its Parcel A shipyard development and reneging on promises to build needed rental units at its Parcel A 1,500-unit condo complex (see "Question of intent," 11/28/07).

The campaign is supported by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and District 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell, as well as the Republican and the Democratic parties of San Francisco. But it is funded almost exclusively by Lennar Homes, a statewide independent expenditure committee that typically pours cash into conservative causes like fighting tax hikes and environmental regulations.

In the past six months, Lennar Homes has thrown down more than $1 million to hire Newsom’s chief political strategist, Eric Jaye, and a full spectrum of top lawyers and consultants, from generally progressive campaign manager Jim Stearns to high-powered spinmeister Sam Singer, who recently ran the smear campaign blaming the victims of a fatal Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo.

Together, this political dream team cooked up what it hopes will be an unstoppable campaign full of catchy slogans and irresistible images, distributed by a deep-pocketed corporation that stands to make many millions of dollars off the deal.

But the question for voters is whether this project is good for San Francisco — particularly for residents of the southeast who have been subjected to generations worth of broken promises — or whether it amounts to a risky giveaway of the city’s final frontier for new development.

Standing in front of the Lennar bandwagon is a coalition of community, environmental, and housing activists who this spring launched a last minute, volunteer-based signature-gathering drive that successfully became Proposition F. It would require that 50 percent of the housing built in the BVHP/Candlestick Point project be affordable to those making less than the area median income of $68,000 for a family of four.

Critics such as Lennar executive Kofi Bonner and Michael Cohen of the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development have called Prop. F a "poison pill" that would doom the Lennar project. But its supporters say the massive scope and vague wording of Prop. G would have exacerbated the city’s affordable housing shortfalls.

Prop. F is endorsed by the Sierra Club, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, the League of Conservation Voters, the Chinese Progressive Association, St. Peter’s Housing Committee, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, the Grace Tabernacle Community Church, Green Action, Nation of Islam Bay Area, the African Orthodox Church, Jim Queen, and Supervisor Chris Daly.

Cohen criticized the coalition for failing to study whether the 50 percent affordability threshold is feasible. But the fact is that neither measure has been exposed to the same rigors that a measure going through the normal city approval process would undergo. Nonetheless, the Guardian unearthed an evaluation on the impact of Prop. F that Lennar consultant CB Richard Ellis prepared for the mayor’s office.

The document, which contains data not included in the Prop. G ballot initiative, helps illuminate the financial assumptions that underpin the public-private partnership the city is contemputf8g with Lennar, ostensibly in an effort to win community benefits for the BVHP.

CBRE’s analysis states that Lennar’s Prop. G calls for "slightly over 9,500 units," with nearly 2,400 affordable units (12 percent at 80 percent of area median income and 8 percent at 50 percent AMI), and with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency "utilizing additional funding to drive these affordability levels even lower."

Noting that Prop. G. yields a "minimally acceptable return" of 17 to 18 percent in profit, CBRE estimates that Prop. F would means "a loss of $500 million in land sales revenue" thanks to the loss of 2,400 market-rate units from the equation. With subsidies of $125,000 allegedly needed to complete each affordable unit, CBRE predicts there would be a further cost of "$300 million to $400 million" to develop the 2,400 additional units of affordable housing prescribed under Prop. F.

Factoring in an additional $500 million loss in tax increments and Mello-Roos bond financing money, CBRE concludes, "the overall impact from [the Prop. F initiative] is a $1.1 to $1.2 billion loss of project revenues … the very same revenues necessary to fund infrastructure and community improvements."

Yet critics of the Lennar project say that just because it pencils out for the developer doesn’t mean it’s good for the community, which would be fundamentally and permanently changed by a project of this magnitude. Coleman’s Advocates’ organizing director Tom Jackson told us his group decided to oppose Prop. G "because we looked at who is living in Bayview-Hunters Point and their income levels.

"Our primary concern isn’t Lennar’s bottom line," Jackson continued. "Could Prop. F cut into Lennar’s profit margin? Yes, absolutely. But our primary concern is the people who already live in the Bayview."

Data from the 2000 US census shows that BVHP has the highest percentage of African Americans compared to the rest of the city — and that African Americans are three times more likely to leave San Francisco than other ethnic groups, a displacement that critics of the Lennar project say it would exacerbate.

The Bayview also has the third-highest population of children, at a time when San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major US city and is struggling to both maintain enrollment and keep its schools open. Add to that the emergence of Latino and Chinese immigrant populations in the Bayview, and Jackson says its clear that it’s the city’s last affordable frontier for low-income folks.

The problem gets even more pronounced when one delves into the definition of the word "affordable" and applies it to the socioeconomic status of southeast San Francisco.

In white households, the annual median income was $65,000 in 2000, compared to $29,000 in black households — with black per capita income at $15,000 and with 14 percent of BVHP residents earning even less than $15,000.

The average two-bedroom apartment rents in San Francisco for $1,821, meaning households need an annual AMI of $74,000 to stay in the game. The average condo sells for $700,000, which means that households need $143,000 per year to even enter the market.

In other words, there’s a strong case for building higher percentages of affordable housing in BVHP (where 94 percent of residents are minorities and 21 percent experience significant poverty) than in most other parts of San Francisco. Yet the needs of southeastern residents appear to be clashing with the area’s potential to become the city’s epicenter for new construction.

San Francisco Republican Party chair Howard Epstein told the Guardian that his group opposed Prop. F, believing it will kill all BVHP redevelopment, and supported Prop. G, believing that it has been in the making for a decade and to have been "vetted up and down."

While a BVHP redevelopment plan has been in the works for a decade, the vaguely defined conceptual framework that helped give birth to Prop. G this year was first discussed in public only last year. In reality, it was hastily cobbled together in the wake of the 49ers surprise November 2006 news that it was rejecting Lennar’s plan to build a new stadium at Monster Park and considering moving to Santa Clara.

As the door slammed shut on one opportunity, Lennar tried to swing open another. As an embarrassed Newsom joined forces with Feinstein to find a last-ditch solution to keep the 49ers in town, Lennar suggested a new stadium on the Hunters Point Shipyard, surrounded by a dual use parking lot perfect for tailgating and lots of new housing on Candlestick Point to pay for it all.

There was just one problem: part of the land around the stadium at Candlestick is a state park. Hence the need for Prop. G, which seeks to authorize this land swap along with a repeal of bonds authorized in 1997 for a stadium rebuild. As Cohen told the Guardian, "The only legal reason we are going to the voters is Monster Park."

As it happens, voters still won’t know whether the 49ers are staying or leaving when they vote on Props. F and G this June, since the team is waiting until November to find out if Santa Clara County voters will support the financing of a new 49er stadium near Great America.

Either way, Patrick Rump of Literacy for Environmental Justice has serious environmental concerns about Prop. G’s proposed land swap.

"Lennar’s schematic, which builds a bridge over the Yosemite Slough, would destroy a major restoration effort we’re in the process of embarking on with the state Parks [and Recreation Department]," Rump said. "The integrity of the state park would easily be compromised, because of extra people and roads. And a lot of the proposed replacement parks, the pocket parks … don’t provide adequate habitat."

Rump also expressed doubts about the wisdom of trading parcels of state park for land on the shipyard, especially Parcel E-2, which contains the landfill. Overall, Rump said, "We think Lennar and the city need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more environmentally sound."

John Rizzo of the Sierra Club believes Prop. G does nothing to clean up the shipyard — which city officials are seeking to take over before the federal government finishes its cleanup work — and notes that the initiative is full of vague and noncommittal words like "encourages" that make it unclear what benefits city residents will actually receive.

"Prop. G’s supporters are pushing the misleading notion that if we don’t give away all this land — including a state park — to Lennar, then we won’t get any money for the cleanup," Rizzo said. "But you don’t build first and then get federal dollars for clean up! That’s a really backwards statement."

The "Yes on G" campaign claims its initiative will create "thousands of construction jobs," "offer a new economic engine for the Bayview," and "provide new momentum to win additional federal help to clean up the toxins on the shipyard."

Michael Theriault, head of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades, said his union endorsed the measure and has an agreement with Lennar to have "hire goals," with priority given to union contracts in three local zip codes: 94107, 94124, and 94134.

"There will be a great many construction jobs," Theriault said, though he was less sure about Prop. G’s promise of "8,000 permanent jobs following the completion of the project."

"We endorsed primarily from the jobs aspect," Theriault said. The question of whether the project helps the cleanup effort or turns it into a rush job is also an open question. Even the San Francisco Chronicle, in a January editorial, criticized Newsom, Feinstein, and Pelosi for neglecting the cleanup until "when it seemed likely that the city was about to lose the 49ers."

All three denounced the Chronicle‘s claims, but the truth is that the lion’s share of the $82 million federal allocation would be dedicated to cleaning the 27-acre footprint proposed for the stadium. Meanwhile, the US Navy says it needs at least $500 million to clean the entire shipyard.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said the city should wait for a full cleanup and criticized the Prop. G plan to simply cap contaminated areas on the shipyard, rather than excavate and remove the toxins from the site.

"That’s like putting a sarcophagus over a toxic wasteland," Mirkarimi told us. "It would be San Francisco’s version of a concrete bunker around Chernobyl."

Cohen of the Mayor’s Office downplays the contamination at the site, telling us that on a scale of one to 10 among the nation’s contaminated Superfund sites, the shipyard "is a three." He said, "the city would assume responsibility for completing the remaining environmental remediation, which would be financed through the Navy."

But those who have watched the city and Lennar bungle development of the asbestos-laden Parcel A (see The corporation that ate San Francisco, 3/14/07) don’t have much confidence in their ability to safely manage a much larger project.

"Who is going to take the liability for any shoddy work and negligence once the project is completed?" Mirkarimi asked.

Lennar has yet to settle with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District over asbestos dust violations at Parcel A, which could add up to $28 million in fines, and investors have been asking questions about the corporation’s mortgage lending operations as the company’s stock value and bond rating have plummeted.

To secure its numerous San Francisco investments, including projects at Hunters and Candlestick points and Treasure Island, Lennar recently got letters of intent from Scala Real Estate Partners, an Irvine-based investment and development group.

Founded by former executives of the Perot Group’s real estate division, Scala plans to invest up to $200 million — and have equal ownership interests — in the projects, which could total at least 17,000 housing units, 700,000 square feet of retail and entertainment, 350 acres of open space, and a new football stadium if the 49ers decide to stay.

Bonner said that, if completed, the agreement satisfies a city requirement that Lennar secure a partner with the financial wherewithal to ensure the estimated $1.4 billion Candlestick Point project moves forward even if the company’s current problems worsen.

Meanwhile, Cohen has cast the vagaries of Prop. G as a positive, referring to its spreadsheet as "a living document, a moving target." Cohen pointed out that if Lennar had to buy the BVHP land, they’d get it with only a 15 percent affordable housing requirement.

"Our objective is to drive the land value to zero by imposing upon the developer as great a burden as possible," Cohen said. "This developer had to invest $500 million of cash, plus financing, and is required to pay for affordable housing, parks, jobs, etc. — the core benefits — without any risk to the city."

But Cohen said the Prop. F alternative means "nothing will be built — until F is repealed." He also refutes claims that without the 49ers stadium, 50 percent affordability is doable.

"Prop G makes it easier to make public funds available by repealing the Prop D bond measure," Cohen explained. "But Prop. G also provides that there will be no general fund financial backing for the stadium, and that the tax increments generated by the development will be used for affordable housing, jobs, and parks."

But for Lennar critics like the Rev. Christopher Mohammad, who has battled the company since the Islamic school he runs was subjected to toxic dust, even the most ambitious promises won’t overcome his distrust for the entity at the center of Prop. G: Lennar.

In a fiery recent sermon at the Grace Tabernacle Community Church, Mohammad recalled the political will that enabled the building of BART in the 1970s. "But when it comes to poor people, you can’t build 50 percent affordable. That will kill the deal," Mohammad observed.

"Lennar is getting 700 prime waterfront acres for free, and then there’ll be tax increment dollars they’ll tap into for the rebuild," he continued. "But you mean you can’t take some of those millions, after all the damages you’ve done? It would be a way to correct the wrong."

The floating peakers

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EDITORIAL The political fight over siting four city-owned power plants is heating up, and creating strange alliances. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to put three of the plants — which are small natural-gas-fired turbines — in the southeast part of the city, adjacent to the pollution-belching Mirant power plant at the foot of Potrero Hill. The commission argues that the city-owned plants would run only at peak hours (thus the term "peaker plants") and would generate lower carbon emissions and noxious fumes than Mirant does. Supporters of the plants argue that the state’s Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), which controls the electricity grid, won’t allow Mirant to shut down unless the peakers are in place.

Sup. Aaron Peskin says the peakers will not only reduce emissions, but will give public power a kickstart. But Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, who normally supports Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plans, opposes the plants on environmental grounds, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly, who say the southeast has been a toxic dumping ground for years, appear to be siding with her. Add to this the cost of building a structure to house the turbines, which has varied from as high as $500 million to as low as about $250 million, and you have a confusing mess.

But as Amanda Witherell reports in this issue, there’s another solution, one Mirkarimi floated several months ago: why not put the peakers on barges and site them offshore?

It’s a fascinating idea. Floating power plants are common all over the world; Manhattan alone has more than 30. Putting the plants on a barge would, by some estimates, cost half as much as building a home for them on land — and they could be moved around so no one neighborhood has to suffer all the impacts. (The plants, for example, could spend some time in the Marina, maybe upwind of Mayor Newsom’s house, so the southeast doesn’t have to take all the emissions.) If the city follows its own plans and builds enough renewable energy to obviate the peakers in a few years, they could easily be shipped off and sold elsewhere. Or the city could lease them to other communities (bringing in some nice cash) when they aren’t needed here. And floating plants won’t face the serious seismic issues that plants on the unstable southern San Francisco shoreline do.

There are, of course, other issues with this, including the obvious problem of putting barges in the bay, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission would probably object to. And where, exactly, would they go? This might not be the best idea in the end.

But given the lack of good options here, this is at least worth a second look. Mirkarimi needs to push his resolution calling on the city to review that option. It’s well worth a full study. In fact, the board ought to put all final consideration of the combustion turbines on hold until the SFPUC looks at the barge proposal.

Green dreams

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As we celebrate Earth Day in this era of all things green, it’s worth contemplating whether our enviro-guilt has gotten the better of our skepticism and critical thinking. Is “Green=Good” our sole metric these days, making us susceptible to self-serving spin from our politicians and corporations? After all, our Governator seems to have gone from bad to good simply by donning verdant armor and signing a landmark global warming measure that he long fought and watered down.
Closer to home, PG&E’s has been trying to greenwash away our knowledge of their penchant for polluting technologies and political corruption, a quest that our lazy but ambitious and ever image conscious Mayor Gavin Newsom has sporadically tried to piggyback on (ie tidal power, sponsored conferences, and solar everything). When Newsom tried to beef up the city solar commitment by robbing a seismic upgrade fund for renters and then the city’s own bank for building municipal solar panels, it was understandable that the Board of Supervisors balked.
But in today’s Chron, SPUR policy wonk Egon Terplan and righteous activist Van Jones whack the move and decry city plans for more fossil fuel generation. It’s not a bad point, although it is an oversimplistic one, like too many of our either-or green political debates these days. Indeed, we seem to lose the ability to see shades of gray when we talk green, and we too often forget that money is the other form of green in the equation.
As we’ve reported, San Francisco’s solar problems are complicated, just like our power generation problems (see our story in tomorrow’s paper for a more nuanced look at the peaker plant issue). To solve the problems, we need honest leaders speaking candidly to us and each other, rather than all the spin, self-interest, and political gamesmanship that has sullied San Francisco’s political dialogue in recent years.
Green can be good, or it can be the equivalent of snake oil or the IPO for a overhyped tech company that will never make any money. As an excellent recent cover story in Harper’s Magazine noted, the green economy could be the next great bubble after the housing and dot-com crashes, something that desperate capitalists and their political partners are eagerly trying to make so.
Maybe that will be a good thing, but let’s learn our lessons from the last couple bubbles and don’t simply assume that the green label is some kind of stamp of public interest approval.

I’m back

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me at waynapicchu.jpg
After an epic five-week trip to Bolivia and Peru, I’m back manning the news desk here at the Guardian and trying to catch up on what’s happening. And it seems the biggest things that have changed in my absence are my perspective and energy levels.
The Republicans in Sacramento and Mayor Gavin Newsom here in San Francisco are continuing to push draconian cuts to government services rather than having the courage to challenge the mindless “no new taxes” mantra and have the wealthy pay their fair share. And neither the Democrats in Sacramento or Washington D.C., nor the Board of Supervisors here, seem to be doing much to challenge this race to the bottom. It’s not that they don’t understand. In the last two days, we’ve had Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and Assembly member Loni Hancock in for endorsement interviews, and they powerfully sound the message that something needs to change and they’re willing to work for it. But with the labor unions distracted by infighting, Democratic politicians battling one another (such as Carole Migden and Mark Leno, who we have the unfortunate task of deciding between for our endorsements that come out April 30), the mainstream media both smaller and more trivial, and many other factors stacked against our species finally getting wise to the problems we face, it looks like an uphill battle.
Does all this make me want to flee back to South America? No, it makes me want to renew the fight for truth and justice. How about you?

Newsom’s wind shifts Obamaward?

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This morning I attended the grand opening ceremony of the pretty incredible-looking Hotel Essex, an 84-unit rehab completed by Community Housing Partnership and Mercy Housing that now houses 84 formerly homeless people in their own apartments (complete with kitchenettes!), with on-site counselling, recovery, and job-training services available. (Full disclosure: My bf works for CHP and helped put this all together.)

essex.jpg

The Essex was rehabbed with $22+ million dollars of city, state, and federal grants and loans — $1.1 million of which was federal, and very grudgingly contributed by an eviscerated HUD at the behest of Nancy Pelosi, who apparently can actually get some things done. Good for her!

This is the first homeless housing project completed under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration (stuff takes time, folks) and naturally Newsie was there himself to make some remarks. I must say, despite his odious record on homelessness, Gavin was actually quite gracious to all involved and even acknowledged that he had been on the wrong side of many of the disagreements he’d with the progenitors of the project. But, of course, he’s charming like that.

And then came a very weird moment. With cautious enunciation and in the wake the whole Obama-elitism-San Francisco-oh my! panic, Newsom, a supposedly staunch Hillary supporter, said:

“We’re turning this problem around — or, as Barack Obama says: We’re turning the page, bringing real change — on homelessness.”

Hmm. Quoting Obama, really? Right now? Either this was a very misguided attempt to pull a Hillary and tar Obama with any reference to scandal possible — keeping the smear ball in play, as it were — or perhaps Mr. Newsom knows something we don’t about the way the superdelegate winds are blowing, and is waving around a little penance. Either way, many confused looks were shot across the room.

Back to the actual issue at hand: Darryl, one of the Essex’s residents, who unfortunately spoke last, well after Newsom had slipped out the back, was the most eloquent speaker, talking about how the Essex was giving him and others a chance at real community and about the power of a little faith and empowerment to help change lives.

C.W. Nevius was not present.

Leno on Newsom’s budget cuts

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Assemblymember Mark Leno, who is challenging state Sen. Carole Migden in the June primary, responded this afternoon to our editorial on Newsom’s budget cuts.

Migden responded earlier today.

Here’s Leno’s statement:

Dear Bay Guardian Editors,

You are absolutely right to assert that the Federal Government has turned its back on urban America and the Governor’s repeal of the Vehicle License Fee (VLF) has left our City in extremely challenged fiscal health. I agree with you, Tim, that new revenue is needed for the City. Current state law gives local government few options.

For that reason I have and am presently authoring legislation to bring more local control to our revenue streams, so that we can guarantee that San Francisco’s budget is not balanced on the backs of those who can least afford it.

In 2005, I authored AB 799, co-sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, SF Labor Council, Board of Supervisors and the Mayor, which would have allowed San Francisco voters to restore their own VLF which would have brought approximately 70 million new dollars to San Francisco. Unfortunately the Governor vetoed the bill.

I brought the bill back in 2007 as AB 1590. Unfortunately, it got held up in the Senate. I am working with all four co-sponsors to shake it loose this year.

Back in 2003, when cities and counties were faced with huge cuts, I authored AB 1690 to bring more revenue to the local level. The measure would have allowed voters to decide to levy a local income tax, which could have eased our way and pre-empted painful cuts to our local budget. That measure, though passed through the Assembly, was also held up in the Senate.

The Mayor and Board of Supervisors have a great challenge on their hands. The fiscal crisis we face is nothing short of tragic. I will continue to use my voice to argue that the cuts considered must be equitable, and those with the least should suffer the least.

I continue to argue that we have a revenue problem, not a spending problem. To forestall mean spirited cuts, we need to be as creative as possible to create new revenue streams. Otherwise, we will be continually faced with Sophie’s Choices.

Sincerely,
Mark Leno

And thanks to Mark for sending that, and for pushing for state legislation that would give cities more ways to raise revenue. I have always been impressed by his willingness to do that and his creative approaches.

I will note, for the record, that Leno declined to say anything critical of Gavin Newsom and his budget decisions.

Migden on Newsom’s cuts

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Our editorial this week calls on the two candidates for state Senate, Carole Migden and Mark Leno, to speak out against the Newsom budget cuts. I haven’t heard from Leno, but I got the following message from Migden this morning:

“I completely agree with your take that Mayor Newsom’s budget cuts are cruel and will take from those who have little or nothing to give. I have stood and spoken out with SEIU 1021 at two protests this year against these cuts to vital social services. Moreover I have stood with the California Nurses Association as we try to save St. Lukes and enforce staff to patient ratios. What is most vexing about the Mayor’s move to cut $18 million in healthcare for the City’s poorest residents, is that there seems to be no willingness to reach out and ask more from those who live in this CIty and can afford to pitch in extra. There is no question that the City and the State is in dire economic straits. Yet San Francisco also has a population of incredibly wealthy individuals (including our Mayor) and we must explore all options and pull in extra resources to make the City whole. Cutting is the quick and frankly the easier option; hard work and leadership is what is required to save vital services.

-State Senator Carole Migden”

So, go Carole. Mark?

Dark days

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› amanda@sfbg.com

› sarah@sfbg.com

Like a lot of San Franciscans, John Murphy wants to put solar panels on his roof. He’s worried about the environment, but it’s also about money: “I want it to pay for all my electricity,” he said one recent evening as we chatted in front of his house.

Murphy pays top dollar for power from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., every month hitting the highest tier of energy use and getting spanked 34 cents a kilowatt hour for it. He’s tried to cut costs by switching to energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs with motion sensors — with little incentive from PG&E’s billing department.

Murphy thought installing solar panels would be worth the up-front cost, especially if federal and state rebates made it more feasible. His roof — sturdy and pitched toward the south, unshaded by trees or other buildings, and located in the fogless hollow of the Mission District — seemed perfectly suited for solar energy.

So last fall he invited a representative from a local solar installation company to the house for a free consultation. He was told his roof could only fit a 2.8 kilowatt system, which would cover about 60 percent of his energy needs — and cost about $25,000.

Murphy is apoplectic about the results. “What’s 60 percent? That’s like going out with her for three-quarters of the night. I want to take her home,” he said.

While the federal incentive shaves $2,000 off the cost, the state rebate program — in place since January 2007 — is a set allocation that declines over time: the later you apply, the less you get. Today Murphy can get about $1.90 per watt back from the state, whereas at the start of the program it was $2.50 per watt. To him, the upfront costs are still too steep and the results won’t cover his monthly PG&E bill.

“The snake oil salesmen of yesterday are the solar panel installers of today,” Murphy said.

But Murphy still wants to install panels — and he’s not alone. The desire for clean, green energy runs deeply through San Francisco and the state as a whole. After the launch of the California Solar Initiative, the number of solar megawatts, represented by applications to the state, doubled what they’d been over the last 26 years. Almost 90 percent of the installations were on homes, indicating that citizens are jumping at the chance to decrease their carbon output.

Yet in San Francisco, where environmental sentiment and high energy costs ought to be driving a major solar boom, there’s very little action.

Back in 2000, then-mayor Willie Brown announced a citywide goal of 10,000 solar roofs by 2010. That would add up to a lowly 5 percent of the 200,000 property lots within the city of San Francisco.

But even that weak goal seems beyond reach: it’s now 2008, and the number of solar roofs in San Francisco stands at a grand total of 618 installations by the end of 2007. In terms of kilowatts per capita, the city ranks last in the Bay Area. The city’s total electricity demand runs about 950 megawatts; only 5 megawatts is currently supplied by solar.

 

WHAT’S WRONG?

Well, it’s not the weather. While heavy cloud cover can hinder panels, fog permits enough ambient light to keep panels productive. San Francisco’s thermostat isn’t much of a factor either — panels prefer cooler temperate zones, not blazing desert heat.

It’s also not for a lack of political ideas — Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing a major solar proposal and several others are floating around, too.

But Newsom is clashing with the supervisors over the philosophy and direction of his plan. It’s complicated, but in essence, the mayor and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting put together a task force that included representatives of solar installers and PG&E — but nobody from the environmental community and no public-power supporters.

The plan they hatched gives cash incentives to private property owners, takes money away from city-owned solar installments, and does nothing to help the city’s move to public power.

While all this plays out, the solar panels so many San Franciscans want aren’t getting installed.

 

SUN AND SUBSIDY

What makes solar work, according to local solar activists, is a combination of sun and subsidies. “Almost every area in the United States has better sun exposure than Germany, and Germany is leading the solar market worldwide today,” said Lyndon Rive, CEO of Solar City, a Foster City-based solar installer.

The price per kilowatt hour, with current state and federal subsides, is about 13 cents for solar, just two cents more than PG&E’s base rate for energy produced mostly by nuclear power and natural gas.

Still, the average installation for the average home hovers between $20,000 and $30,000. For many, that kind of cash isn’t available.

“The biggest reason for lack of adoption [of solar energy] is that the cost to install in San Francisco is higher than neighboring cities,” Rive said. It’s about 10 percent more than the rest of the Bay Area, according to a December 2007 report of the San Francisco Solar Task Force.

Why? According to Rive, system sizes are smaller. Solar City’s average Bay Area customer buys a 4.4 kilowatt system, but the average San Franciscan — with a smaller house and smaller roof — usually gets a 3.1 kilowatt installation. The smaller the system, the more the markup for retailers amortizing certain fixed costs such as material and labor. On top of that, San Francisco’s old Victorians can have issues — weak rafters need reinforcement; steep roofs require more scaffolding; wires and conduits have to cover longer distances. It adds up.

“There’s an extra cost to doing business in San Francisco,” said Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Akeena Solar and a member of the SF Solar Task Force. “I can expect $100 in parking tickets for every job I do.”

That was the motivation for Ting to establish the Solar Task Force in 2007, with the goal of creating financial incentives, including loans and rebates, to bring down the costs of San Francisco solar. The 11-member task force came up with an ambitious program that involved a one-stop shop for permits, a plan to give property owners as much as $5,000 in cash subsidies, and a system to lend money to homeowners who can’t afford the up-front costs.

The task force said installing 55 megawatts of solar would combat global warming, improve air quality by reducing pollution caused by electricity generation, and add 1,800 green collar jobs to the local economy.

The streamlined permit program is in place. None of the rest has happened.

 

THE MAYOR’S MONEY

The first obstacle was the loan fund. Newsom and Ting wanted to take $50 million currently sitting unspent in a bond fund for seismic upgrades on local buildings. Sup. Jake McGoldrick wanted to know why the money wasn’t being used to upgrade low-income housing; the city attorney wasn’t sure seismic safety money could be redirected to solar loans.

Then Newsom decided to take $3 million from the Mayor’s Energy Conservation Fund to pay for the first round of rebates. Over the next 10 years, that could add up to $50 million. McGoldrick balked again. That money, he said, was supposed to be used on public facilities (like solar panels at Moscone Center and Muni facilities and new refrigerators for public housing projects). Why should it be diverted to private property owners?

There’s a larger issue behind all this: should the city be using scarce resources to help the private sector — or devoting its money to city-owned electricity generation? “In 10 years, there could be $50 million in the fund,” McGoldrick said. “That’s a lot of money, and it’s power the city could own.”

Sup. Chris Daly agrees. “I would support this program if we were running out of municipal [solar] projects,” he said. “But we’re not.”

In addition, the progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, who have all advocated a citywide sustainable energy policy known as community choice aggregation, or CCA, weren’t represented on the Solar Task Force.

The fund Newsom wanted to tap for his project is also the source of funding for the community choice aggregation program, which the progressive supervisors see as the city’s energy plan, which in turn constitutes a far more comprehensive response to climate change, with a goal of relying on 51 percent renewable energy by 2017.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval is working on a loan program that would allow residents to borrow money from the city for renewable energy and efficiency upgrades for their homes and pay it back at a relatively low interest rate folded into their monthly tax bills. (See “Solar Solutions,” 11/14/07.) Sandoval’s plan would enable loans of $20,000 to $40,000 at 3 percent interest to people who voluntarily put solar on their homes.

The city of Berkeley is pursuing a similar plan. But the task force never consulted Sandoval — in fact, he told us that he had no idea Ting’s task force was meeting until a few months ago.

The supervisors’ Budget and Finance Committee is slated to review Newsom’s plan April 16.

Solar installers aren’t happy about the delays: “I’m on the disappointed receiving end of that start and stop,” Cinnamon said.

While city officials duke out where the money should come from and who gets it, San Franciscans interested in purchasing panels are left in limbo. Jennifer Jachym, a sales rep from Solar City who used to handle residential contracts in San Francisco, said, “I have worked all over the Bay Area and I’d have to say it seems that the delta between interest and actual purchase is highest here.

“It was hard to get people to pull the trigger,” she continued. “What the San Francisco incentive program basically did was bring the cost incentives here to where they are everywhere else.”

The holdup has dispirited customers and solar companies. Cinnamon said he wasted 10,000 advertising door hangers because of the delay. Solar City also put on hold a handshake deal with the Port of San Francisco to rent a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in the Bayview District for a solar training academy that could turn out 20 new workers a month.

“As a San Francisco resident, I really want to see it happen there, but as a business, I have to think about it differently,” said Peter Rive, chief operating officer of the company. “Almost every city in the Bay Area is aggressively trying to get us to build a training academy in their city.”

 

TENANTS AND LANDLORDS

Another reason we don’t see more panels on San Francisco roofs is that most San Franciscans are renting and have no control over their roofs. “The landlord doesn’t care. They don’t pay the electric bill,” Cinnamon said. When asked if there were any inroads to be made there, he said, “Nope. That’s not a market I see at all.”

In spite of that, solar companies still are eager to do business here, which means there’s either enough of a market — or enough of a markup.

Rive wouldn’t tell us their exact markup for panels, but said, “The average solar company adds 15 to 25 percent gross margin to the installation. Our gross margin is in line with that.”

Rive’s company has another option for cash-poor San Franciscans, a new “solar lease.” In this scenario, Solar City owns the panels and leases them to homeowners for 15 years. The property owner pays a low up-front cost of a couple of thousand dollars and a monthly lease fee that increases 3.5 percent per year.

For Murphy, the price would be $2,754 down and $88 a month. The panels would still cover only 64 percent of his energy needs, so he would owe PG&E about $70 a month. Because he would be using less energy, PG&E would charge a lower rate, which is something Solar City typically tries to achieve with a solar system.

However, people can’t make money off their solar systems. “People ask about it all the time,” Jachym said. “Especially people in San Francisco. They say ‘I have a house in Sonoma with tons of space. Can I put panels there and offset my energy here?'”

The answer, unfortunately, is no, which means San Franciscans have no incentive to put up more panels than they need and recoup their costs by selling the energy to the grid. Unlike Germany, for example, where people are paid for the excess solar energy they make, California’s net metering laws favor utility companies. If you make more power than you use, you’re donating it to the grid. PG&E sells it to someone else.

If the law was changed — which could be a feature of CCA — citizens could help the city generate more solar energy to sell to customers who don’t have panels, helping the city to meet its overall goal of 51 percent renewable by 2017.

Under Solar City’s lease program, the company gets the federal and state rebates. If Murphy leased for 15 years he’d have an option to buy the used panels, upgrade to new ones, and end or continue the lease. If San Francisco launches the incentive program, the $3,000 from the city could cover the up-front cost and he could get the whole thing rolling for almost no cash. It sounds like a sweet deal.

Except it’s not going to work. Solar City only leases systems of 3.2 kilowatts or more, and only 2.8 could be squeezed onto Murphy’s roof. “I think it’s Murphy’s Law,” Jachym says wryly. “If you have a house that wants solar, a whole row of houses on the street nearby are better suited for it.”

She says the 3.2 cutoff has to do with the company’s bottom line. “If it’s any less than 3.2 the company is losing money.” Ironically, she tells me, “the average system size in San Francisco is even smaller” — usually less than 3.1. Solar City has set the bar high in a place where many people like Murphy are prevented from leasing.

He tells us he isn’t interested in a lease anyway: “I don’t own that.” He’s now more interested in a do-it-yourself situation and wishes the city would put some energy toward that. “If they were serious they would have a city solar store,” he said, imagining a kind of Home Depot for solar, where one could buy panels and wiring, talk with advisors, contract with installers, or just fill out the necessary paperwork for the rebates.

Some people are going ahead anyway, without city support. Nan Foster, a San Francisco homeowner now installing photovoltaic panels and solar water heating, says her middle-class family borrowed money to do these projects, “because we want to do the right thing about the environment and reduce our carbon footprint. It would be a great help to get these rebates from the city.

“The public money for the project would increase the spending of individuals to install solar — so the public funds would leverage much more investment in solar on the part of individuals and businesses,” Foster argued.

There’s another approach that isn’t on the table yet. Eric Brooks, cofounder of the Community Choice Energy Alliance, told us that the city, through CCA, could buy its own panels to place on private homes and businesses, giving those homes and businesses a way to go solar — free.

“Clearly there would be a much higher demand for free solar panels over discounted ones that are still very expensive,” he said. “And because the panels would be owned by the city, all of the savings and revenue could be put right back into building more renewables and efficiency projects, instead of going into the pockets of private property owners.”

Proponents of the mayor’s plan argue that the city can build more solar panels — faster — by diverting public funds to the private sector. “While on its face this is technically true, it is actually a dead-end path,” Brooks said. “Yes, a little more solar would be built a little more quickly. However, once those private panels are built the city will get nothing from them.”

Full disclosure: Murphy is Amanda Witherell’s landlord.

 

Nickels and dimes

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We get a lot of press releases announcing that San Francisco has made it to the top of another "greenest" list. Popular Science named SF the second-greenest city in the nation last February. Sustainlane.com called this place the second-greenest city in 2006. Reader’s Digest added honors for the fifth-cleanest city in 2005, the same year San Francisco hosted the UN’s World Environment Day.

The city’s ban on plastic grocery bags is spreading, and last year Mayor Gavin Newsom won a Green Cross Award from Global Green USA alongside Irmelin DiCaprio, the mother of film star Leonardo DiCaprio.

But none of that adds up to what the city really needs: cash.

Then the US Department of Energy in late March designated three more California cities — Sacramento, San Jose, and Santa Rosa — as new "Solar American Cities" — and this award came with money attached. And the DOE has dough: the agency requested $25 billion from Congress this year.

The solar grant was worth $2.4 million. The money was divided among 12 cities nationwide, leaving each municipality with just $200,000. And that was supposed to cover a two-year period.

Berkeley, San Francisco, and San Diego made the "Solar American Cities" list in 2007. San Francisco’s Department of the Environment received the money, and a conciliatory Johanna Partin, the renewable energy program manager there, said it was the only grant from Bush’s Solar America Initiative her office had actually applied for.

San Francisco at least will able to use the money to help the owners of large buildings assess what it would take to install solar technology. We’ve already digitally mapped the city’s grandest roofs.

Margie Bates, a project manager for the DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Program in Golden, Colo., told us that the grant includes $200,000 in additional credit for hiring local experts to advise building owners on the technology or retain the expertise of DOE officials themselves.

"The funding is allowing us to do some pieces of our solar program that we didn’t otherwise have funding for. So in that sense it’s good," she said. "But, you know, $200,000 over two years is not a lot of money."

A solar plan that works

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EDITORIAL Solar energy makes so much sense in San Francisco that it’s crazy this city didn’t figure out years ago how to get at least a quarter or more of its power from the sun. And it’s crazy that now, with the financial benefits of solar power improving, the technology improving, and the environmental mandate getting more profound by the day, the city still doesn’t have an effective citywide solar program.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wants to be known as a green mayor, has a solar proposal on the table that environmental groups like the Sierra Club are reluctantly supporting. But a lot of the supervisors have serious questions — and so do we. At its most basic, Newsom’s plan is a shift of solar resources from the public sector to the private sector and does little to promote a sustainable long-term energy policy.

There’s a way to do solar right in San Francisco, and we can outline a basic blueprint.

1. Start with all the interested parties. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, with Newsom’s support, created a Solar Task Force in San Francisco — but none of the supervisors were invited. The Sierra Club wasn’t invited. None of the public power advocates were invited. Instead, it was dominated by solar industry people, with Pacific Gas and Electric Company along for the ride, guaranteeing that the proposals would run into political static.

2. Make it work as part of a public power plan. The future of San Francisco’s energy policy has to start and end with the notion that PG&E won’t be the long-term supplier of commercial electricity. The city has a community-choice aggregation (CCA) plan, and any solar programs should be designed to enhance and work with that plan.

3. Don’t shortchange public generation. Newsom is asking the city to take money away from a public-sector plan, which pays for solar panels on city-owned buildings, and shift it to a private-sector program, which would subsidize homeowners and commercial landlords who want to install solar panels. We’re all for encouraging solar on homes and office buildings, and we recognize that current state and federal law are skewed toward private projects. But the city has a huge interest in building its own generation capacity: city buildings now use Hetch Hetchy hydropower, and every kilowatt that can be replaced with solar frees up Hetch Hetchy power for retail sales to local homes and businesses and increases the financial rewards of public power.

4. Use the Berkeley model for private parties. The city of Berkeley is pursuing an excellent program. Homeowners and businesses would be able to borrow money from the city at very low interest (a city can raise capital at around 3 percent these days) to install solar panels and would pay the money back over 20 or 30 years through increased property taxes. This would cost the city nothing, encourages solar installations — and still leaves room for subsidies if they turn out to be necessary.

5. Look at using CCA to buy solar panels in bulk and install them free. Eric Brooks, a public power advocate, suggests this idea, and it’s a good one. A city power agency could buy panels and offer them free to property owners, with the energy going into the city grid. The residents and businesses would see their power bills drop, and the city would see environmental and financial benefits.

6. Demand two-way meters. PG&E doesn’t allow property owners to bank power that they generate beyond what they use. That means the owner of a solar system that’s actually generating surplus money is giving power free to PG&E. The city ought to be pushing for a change in state law to demand two-way electric meters. And as part of a public power plan, San Francisco could allow homeowners and commercial landlords not only to cut their power bills to zero but also to bring in cash by installing solar-generating systems.

7. Recognize that PG&E is part of the problem, not part of the solution. PG&E doesn’t want public power. The company doesn’t want widespread solar generation. In fact, the giant private utility has no incentive to do anything that keeps it from making money by selling power over its lines. You can almost judge a solar plan by one standard — if PG&E is OK with it, it must be a bad idea.

The supervisors are right to question Newsom’s plan, and in the end, they should reject it — and create a new one that meets the key tests of an effective long-term energy program for San Francisco.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The pope isn’t coming to San Francisco. Too bad; a few of us have a few things to say.

When the last pope, John Paul II, came here in 1987, it felt kind of like a circus. The dude loved theater, and there was plenty of it to go around — he made a point, for example, of meeting with Clint Eastwood, who was then the mayor of Carmel, which gave my friend Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven the chance to make up "Monterey Pope Festival" T-shirts. A few enterprising sorts made photos of Eastwood with a gun in his hand telling the Holy Father: "Go ahead, bless my day."

When JPII showed up at the Mission Dolores, some jokers who lived across the street hung a huge banner that read: "The pope is a wanker."

I, of course, didn’t want to miss the show.

It turned out that getting a press pass for the pope’s visit was a little tricky, especially for a reporter for an alternative newsweekly who made no secret of his disdain for the local Catholic hierarchy. But I went to Catholic school and have a good old Irish name, and I wasn’t going to let this one get away.

So I filed my application with the locals, and had it rejected. The day before the pope was due to arrive, I called the archdiocese headquarters to ask who was really in charge of papal press. After a bunch of squirming, they admitted there was a special monsignor in a downtown hotel who made the final decisions. I got his name; I called the hotel and got the suite, where his secretary told me he was seeing nobody, that the deadline had passed, and that, in the vernacular, I was SOL.

But my father taught me well: priests drink bourbon, monsignors drink Scotch. So I picked up a nice single-malt and made my way to the holy press room. I pitched a fit of sadness to the secretary (my poor sainted mother, who was praying for me even now, would be in tears if she thought I’d missed the chance to see His Holiness) and that got me through the door.

The monsignor looked up and told me there was no way anyone was getting credentials the day before the visit and he’d never heard of my newspaper anyway. I pulled out the bottle, and he smiled.

"Bless you, my son," he said. "I think we can do business."

So I got the special Pope press pass, and saw the Popemobile, and saw the big wanker banner, and had a grand old time — and other than the fact that the city tore up all the bushes along the papal route so nobody would plant bombs, the city was pretty quiet.

That would not be the case today.

The new pope isn’t just a wanker — he’s pissing off all sorts of people, including his own believers. Queer groups, women, people who believe in stem cell research, people who believe in sex education for kids, people who think that wiping out family planning and prenatal programs for third-world women to avoid even the slightest mention of abortion … they got a beef with this guy. And they’re more active than ever.

So Benedict, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, won’t make it to SF. Damn. Despite Mayor Newsom’s embarrassing hide-the-ball game, we did a pretty good job on the Olympic torch. And the pope would be too big to hide.

Leno, Migden, and the Newsom cuts

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EDITORIAL The closure this week of the venerable Haight Ashbury Food Program, which for more than a quarter century has served hot meals to hundreds of people a day, is another bitter reminder of what a rotten time it is to be poor in San Francisco.

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s approach to the city’s budget problems is to cut programs that serve the needy: Buster’s Place, the city’s only 24-hour drop-in center for homeless people, is closed. The public health nursing program is shutting down. Frontline city workers are getting laid off, and jobs will go unfilled. And there is no talk in the mayor’s office of any sort of comprehensive plan to raise new revenue to close what has become a structural budget gap of more than $300 million.

Yes, a big part of the fault lies in Washington DC and Sacramento. The federal government has abandoned American cities. The state is wracked with its own paralyzing budget problems (caused in large part by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to eliminate the vehicle license fee). So money that San Francisco used to get without any direct effort — that is, without asking local residents and businesses to pay for it — is gone. And while San Francisco’s representatives in Sacramento have worked hard to win back money for cities and force the governor to moderate his cuts, the fact is that it’s unlikely San Francisco can count on any outside help during the next few years. The ugly budget choices have to be made at home.

That’s why it’s critical that every progressive leader in town be willing to take on the mayor’s brutal budget cuts and push for humane alternatives. That includes the two people running in a highly contested race for state Senate.

Carole Migden and Mark Leno are both seeking progressive support in the June primary. Both have good cases to make based on their records. But we need to see more than just good votes (and good legislation) in the state capital; like a lot of voters, we’re also looking to see which candidate will use the powerful seat and its bully pulpit to promote progressive values in the city.

Both candidates have long connections to the powerful forces that seek to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Migden is close to Don Fisher, the Republican who pours huge gobs of money into regressive local measures and candidates. Leno has been endorsed by Newsom.

But with the election less than two months away, we’d like to hear both of them say, loudly and publicly, that the Newsom cuts are wrong and unacceptable, that the budget pain should be shared by the wealthy, and that the city needs to look at new taxes before it eliminates any more programs for the needy.

The price of the torch

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So Gavin Newsom’s torch episode — which disappointed almost everyone and pissed off a lot of us — cost the city $600,000 plus. That’s at a time when we’re laying off city staff by the hundreds and closing critical services.

Six figures to give China a video postcard. Nicely done, Mr. Mayor.

Newsom’s torch plays SF for fools

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First the route for the Beijing Olympic Torch relay was changed, following a brief opening ceremony.
Then, the closing ceremony was shifted to an undisclosed location.

These last minute changes left all the thousands of people who came to support, protest or simply witness the torch’s historic relay thwarted.

And they meant that China has got some relatively upbeat television footage to show back home, featuring an unencumbered torch being run through the protest-free streets of San Francisco! Talk about a far cry from reality.

“Disgraceful and shameful” said Board of Supervisor President Aaron Peskin of the City’s switch and bait.

‘I have every reason to believe this was a well developed plan by Gavin Newsom and his chief of police in conjunction with the government of China and the US State Department,” Peskin continued. “It was designed to please the government of China and give them the TV footage they want to portray to their people. The bottom line is that Newsom has deceitfully and repeatedly misled the public. Frankly, these are the tactics that the Chinese government uses on its people. It’s a move straight from the Richard Nixon playbook.”

Asked if there was evidence to support the City’s decision to redirect the torch relay and relocate the closing ceremony, Peskin said he’d seen and heard none.

“I went down the route at 11 am, the supporters and protesters were all peaceful. This was a large decoy operation. Only Newsom played the people of San Francisco for fools. I don’t care if you were a supporter or an opponent of the torch, people brought their children, families and friends to San Francisco for a once in a lifetime experience. This was the biggest charade perpetuated by any mayor in anyone’s memory and possibly in the history of this town. The only difference between Newsom and President Hu Jintao is none. Both manipulate, are deceitful and do not run transparent governments.”

The torch, which was variously concealed in a waterfront warehouse, shipped to Van Ness with a Quackers bus in tow, and diverted through the Marina to elude protesters, was taken to SFO for a surprise closing ceremony–presumably so it could be shipped out of SF as fast as possible, away from the whiskey and fandangos–and all those people, inconveniently protesting uncomfortable stuff like China’s abysmal track record of human rights abuses and its support of dictatorship in Burma and genocide in Darfur.

A big step for public services

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EDITORIAL The battle against privatization of public resources took a big step forward this week when Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced a measure to create a Public Services Advisory Board to monitor what he calls the creeping takeover of city government by private outfits.

The new agency would monitor outsourcing of public services and advise the supervisors on whether it makes fiscal and policy sense to turn city programs over to businesses and nonprofits.

It’s also a chance to push forward on public power, the disaster at the zoo, the move to privatize the golf courses and some parks, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts to hand the city’s information technology infrastructure over to private companies, and the Presidio sellout.

The legislation is the first public effort of a new coalition called San Francisco Commons. The group includes labor, public power, neighborhood groups, and environmental activists and was formed to address the growing problem of the loss of public sector services. It’s a crucial new addition to the city’s political scene: the first organization specifically established to protect public services and public property.

The case against privatization is clear. Private entities aren’t required to make their finances public (even if they’re doing public service work with public money). And companies doing work on city contracts are motivated by profits, sometimes at the expense of the public interest. Typically, when private operators take over public services, the prices go up, worker pay goes down, and the quality of the delivery tanks. Just look at the Presidio, a national park that’s been turned into a private real estate development, or the zoo, where privatization has led to misspent funds, poor conditions for animals, and a tragic tiger escape. Or look at Edison School, the failed experiment in education privatization in San Francisco.

San Francisco ought to be in the forefront of the antiprivatization battle nationwide, and this new group and legislation is a good first step. The agenda for the new advisory board is extensive: the panel needs to look at every large and small privatization move at City Hall. It needs to evaluate and report to the supervisors on the flaws in the mayor’s schemes. It also needs to look forward actively at ways the city can bring more essential services under public control. That includes moving forward on community choice aggregation and then developing a plan to create a full-scale, citywide public power system. Public broadband service ought to be on the agenda, too.

The supervisors should approve Mirkarimi’s bill, and the sooner the better, before Newsom finds some more of San Francisco to put on the block.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Everybody knows the Democratic Party’s superdelegate problem: if Barack Obama wins the popular vote, as he probably will, and wins the highest number of elected delegates, as he almost certainly will, and the party leaders turn to Hillary Clinton instead, there will be a revolution in the rank and file that could damage the party for years to come.

But in San Francisco, that happens all the time.

The local Democratic Party is run by the Democratic County Central Committee, and 24 of the members are elected, democratically. But every Democrat who holds an elected office representing San Francisco, and every Democratic nominee for office, automatically gets a seat on the committee, too — so you’ve got another eight or so (it varies) people on the panel who are the local equivalent of superdelegates. US Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the county committee. So is Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and state senator Leland Yee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a seat. Rep. Tom Lantos was on the committee until he died; his replacement, almost certainly Jackie Speier, will take over his slot this week.

Of course, none of those high-powered types ever show up for committee meetings. They send proxies, either trusted advisors or staffers from their local offices. And often — all too often — those superdelegate proxies are the deciding votes on local issues.

See, the committee may not be the highest profile office in the land, but it has a fair amount of local clout. The central committee decides what position the Democratic Party takes on local issues — and that means both influence and money. The party endorsement on ballot measures can be influential, particularly when it comes with a place on the official party slate card.

These days the committee has a majority of elected progressives. But it’s not an overwhelming majority — since half the seats are apportioned by Assembly districts, half the grassroots members are from the west side of town and tend to be more moderate. And not all of the eastsiders are progressives.

So on key endorsements this year — for San Francisco supervisor, for example — the majority of the elected delegates will probably vote for the progressives. But a minority will support the slate backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom — and the superdelegates will mostly go along.

So the Newsom slate at the very least will block the progressives from getting the endorsements. In fact, for a progressive candidate or ballot measure to get the party nod in a contested race requires an almost impossible majority of the elected members.

It can be infuriating.

Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, who often don’t get along, are working together to get a solid progressive slate elected to the DCCC this June. It’s a good idea, and there’s a good chance many of the 24 slate members will win. But the will of the voters won’t matter if the superdelegates can still weigh in and screw up any real reform.

I suppose it’s possible to change to rules to kick the superdelegates off the committee, but that would be a brutal battle. And there’s a much easier solution:

The committee needs to eliminate proxy votes.

Feinstein can’t use a proxy to vote on the Senate floor. Pelosi can’t send a proxy to vote in the House of Representatives. Proxies aren’t allowed in the state Legislature. Why should the DCCC be any different?

If Dianne Feinstein really cares about Gavin Newsom’s slate of supervisorial candidates this fall, then she can show up at the committee meeting and vote. Otherwise the grassroots, elected delegates get to decide. Seems fair to me.

After Home Depot

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EDITORIAL The proposal to build a Home Depot store on Bayshore Boulevard was a textbook example of terrible city planning. The community never asked for a big-box chain store; no city plans ever discussed how big-box retail would help the local economy. Instead, about eight years ago the giant Atlanta-based corporation decided it wanted a store in San Francisco, hired Jack Davis, a political consultant close to then-Mayor Willie Brown, and, after a brutal and unpleasant battle, got permission to build a giant suburban-style outlet of more than 100,000 square feet with a massive parking garage in a city where transit and pedestrian access are considered primary land-use values.

And now that Home Depot has decided, based on its business projections, that the whole thing was a bad idea and is backing out, San Francisco has a chance to turn the big empty lot on Bayshore into something that serves the community. There’s a chance to make this a model for city planning, an example of how to do economic development right for a change. The mayor, city planners, and the supervisors need to insist on a credible process.

From the start, the fight over Home Depot was toxic, pitting small business owners, who feared that the discount chain would destroy local merchants, and Bernal Heights residents, who feared the traffic, noise, and pollution a car-dependent outlet would bring to the area, against Bayview-Hunters Point residents who desperately needed jobs. Home Depot lobbyists did their best to push the divide, arguing that employment opportunities at the store would help spur economic development in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Lost in the rhetoric was the fact that the chain promised only about 200 new jobs, and would offer only a "good-faith effort" to hire half of those people from the neighborhood. In other words, at best, an eight-acre project — one of the biggest retail developments in the city — would lead to 100 new jobs for Bayview residents. That was, to put it mildly, an abysmal deal.

An environmental impact report on the project essentially dismissed all of the neighborhood concerns, even arguing that air-quality impacts from increased car exhaust wouldn’t count as an impact. The report tossed aside the fate of small businesses, particularly hardware stores, by saying that the store owners could simply start selling something else. Still, the supervisors voted to approve the project.

But now, after all that bitterness and expense, Home Depot is walking away, citing a sluggish market for home-improvement products. Mayor Gavin Newsom is begging the company not to abandon the plans altogether; he’s urging Home Depot executives to put the project on hold until the economy improves. That’s tantamount to saying that the Bayshore site should stay vacant for a few more years — which does no good for anybody. Instead of whining and begging a big corporation to bestow its blessings on poor San Francisco, Newsom ought to look at this as an opportunity.

Sup. Tom Ammiano, whose district borders on the site and who led the opposition to Home Depot, is calling for a community planning process that would bring the key stakeholders to the table to talk about how that land should be used. Sup. Sophie Maxwell, a Home Depot supporter whose district includes the site, ought to join with him. The goal ought to be a planning process that starts with the right questions: What sort of development does the community want? What use would create the most jobs that best fit the local labor pool and the employment needs of the area? What would benefit the city’s economy without damaging small business? Should part of the site be used for affordable housing?

There are all sorts of possibilities, but given Newsom’s pledge to be a "green mayor" and the value of new green-collar jobs, one obvious idea might be turning the place into a solar-energy center. Proper zoning, incentives, and public encouragement might attract solar manufacturing, solar installation services, and a solar hardware store with do-it-yourself kits for homeowners.

The city obviously can’t dictate what sorts of businesses would want to move to Bayshore, but planners can set criteria to steer development. That process ought to begin now, openly, with every interested party involved — and it should have a bottom line: no more suburban chain stores in San Francisco.

Protesting the torch

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You have to wonder what Beijing and the International Olympic Committee were thinking.

A country with real human rights problems, involving not only the horrors in Darfur but the immensely popular, mediagenic Dalai Lama and Tibet, hosts the Olympics. The torch goes through several countries where political protests are common and there’s a large population ready to scream about China’s repressive regime. Then it stops in San Francisco, where there’s a large Chinese population and an equally large population of political activists ….

What, you didn’t think there’d be protests?

Now the IOC is actually talking about scrapping the rest of the torch tour, which would be silly. There will still be protests around the Olympics — and there should be.

If China wants the PR boost of hosting the Olympics, it will have to deal with the fact that the news media will also focus on human rights and other issues Bejing would rather ignore. The Olympics are too much of a spectacle these days; there will be too many reporters looking for stories, and protesters around the world ready to offer them.

The protests have been immensely successful so far. They’ve done exactly what they’re designed to do: Focus press attention on China, Tibet and Darfur. Nobody needs to disrupt the Olympic torch in San Francisco; in fact, it’s great that the torch is here. The torch brings media, and the more the better. Mayor Newsom needs to make public the final route in plenty of time for the activists to show up; the protesters need to be peaceful — and visible, and loud.

I love this. It’s the best tradition of this city.

McGoldrick wants Solar funds for low-income housing

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Sup. Jake McGoldrick just had an epiphany: install solar panels on affordable, low-income housing projects, citywide.

That way the City can green San Francisco, create local jobs and business opportunities—and eventually reduce to zero the utility bills of low-income folks.

McGoldrick’s moment of clarity came in face of increasing pressure from local solar businesses and work creation programs to support Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recently announced Solar Energy Incentive Program.

McGoldrick says he supports going green and hiring locally, but he balked at the lack of public discussion about the mayor’s program, which uses tax payer dollars to subsidize solar installation on private property.

Pitched as a pilot project, Newsom’s solar energy incentive program proposes to allocate $3 million between now and the end of June, and $3-5 million in subsequent fiscal years. That adds up to more than $50 million by 2018.

McGoldrick believes these monies would be better used subsidizing installations on public housing and non-profit-owned, low-income projects.

Supporters of Newsom’s proposed Solar Incentive program argue that could better leverage a portion of the SFPUC’s Mayor’s Energy Conservation Account, and get more out of Hetch Hetchy dollars spent in energy efficiency and solar.

But as McGoldrick observes, the Mayor’s current plan fails to address public ownership concerns.

‘That’s why I’m going to try and give these MECA funds to affordable housing projects,” McGoldrick said.. “That way, people get jobs, solar companies come here, the city goes green–and we do power purchase agreements.”

San Francisco only has a 30 percent home ownership rate. But since a portion of that percentage are absentee landlords, the City could only target an ever smaller fraction of the city’s roof tops for solar installation, under theMayor’s current Solar Energy Incentive Program.

‘Tenants can’t jump in and spend $25,000 to replace their roof, and you can’t have the question of jobs be the tail wagging the dog,” McGoldrick said.

Torched?

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How is Mayor Gavin Newsom going to maneuver his way through the controversial Beijing Olympic Torch relay in San Francisco on Wednesday?

Before he read the political writing on the wall, (or listened to the protesters that gathered beneath his window at City Hall each day to chant “Mayor Newsom don’t accept China’s Bloody Torch,) Newsom tried to get Sup. Carmen Chu, his most recent appointee on the Board, to squash Sup. Chris Daly’s recommendation that San Francisco’s top official (Newsom, presumably) accept the torch “with alarm and protest.”

When that attempt backfired–and the Mayor’s Office saw Sup. Chris Daly, not Newsom, swarmed by cameras, the Mayor realized which way the political winds were blowing—and decided to met with some Tibetans.

At that point, US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (Newsom’s aunt by marriage) had already been speaking out against China’s human rights abuses and thoroughly pissed off the Chinese authorities by visiting the Dalai Lama.

And now London has protested, Paris has snuffed the torch, protesters are scaling the Golden Gate Bridge, and Hillary Clinton, who Newsom is stomping for, is calling for Bush to boycott the opening of the Beijing games.

“These events underscore why I believe the Bush administration has been wrong to downplay human rights in its policy towards China,” Clinton said.

So, will Newsom accept the torch “with alarm and protest,” after all? Or hand the job off to a surrogate and head out on vacation? Either way, sounds like Newsom is gonna need a whole lot of extra hair gel to wiggle his way through this one.

Newsom’s Sunshineless Solar

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Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to be known as the Green Mayor. But he could go down in history as the mayor who secretly diverted public money from large municipally owned solar installations to subsidize privately owned solar panels.

Since January, Newsom has tried to kick start two questionably financed solar programs.

The first plan involved raiding $50 million from a seismic safety loan fund. That idea got shelved in the New Year, when the Board of Supervisors asked why these funds couldn’t be used to seismically retrofit affordable housing units, rather than subsidize private solar installations?

The second plan is involved diverting $3 million from the Mayor’s Energy Conservation Account, which was set up in 2001 to increase energy efficiency and reduce cost of energy use.

Since then, $39 million has been allocated to MECA with $10 million allocated in the current fiscal year, 2007-2008.
These monies come from the General Fund and are under the purview of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda says so far all projects funded by MECA have benefited city facilities and PUC facilities.

“These funds have not been used to my knowledge to subsidize or loan funds to privately owned energy conservation projects,” Zmuda told the Guardian.

MECA funded projects include solar panels at Moscone, the replacement of refrigerators at the San Francisco Housing Authority, solar projects at MUNI, a new heating system at the central plant of San Francisco General Hospital, Solar projects at San Francisco Airport, a Solar project at North Point, and Port Energy Efficiency.

But under the Mayor’s Solar Energy Incentive Program, these public monies would be used to help subsidize the installation of solar panels on privately owned buildings and homes.The program places a $10,000 cap on the subsidizing of solar on private property.

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