Rent Control

Dense in the west

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
Dense in the west

rebeccab@sfbg.com

A marathon special meeting of the San Francisco Planning Commission on Feb. 10 demonstrated a clear split over Parkmerced, a $1.2 billion private development project that will rebuild an entire existing neighborhood on the west side of San Francisco.

While some expressed strong enthusiasm for moving forward with the ambitious plan, many residents turned out to voice vehement opposition, citing concerns about traffic congestion, noise, dust, and the demolition of affordable apartments that some Parkmerced tenants have occupied for decades.

The votes to certify the project’s environmental analysis and send the plan onto the Board of Supervisors with a commission endorsement were split 4-3, with Commissioners Christina Olague, Hisashi Sugaya, and Kathrin Moore dissenting.

Those who voted no were appointees of the Board of Supervisors, while the four commissioners who voted in favor were appointees of former Mayor Gavin Newsom, suggesting a break along clear political lines. State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano also submitted a letter urging commissioners not to approve the project.

While Parkmerced Investors LLC, the project sponsor, eagerly awaits groundbreaking, spokesperson P.J. Johnston noted that they weren’t there yet. “First,” he said, “we have to break ground at the Board of Supervisors.”

 

IS IT GREEN?

The Parkmerced redesign has been touted as an ecological and sustainable beacon for urban development and, indeed, some features of the grand plan read as if they were plucked from a checklist from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-neighborhood standards.

Walkable, bikeable streets with proximity to transit? Check. Water-efficient landscaping? Check. Energy-efficient dwellings? Check. Project sponsors claim that through dramatic reductions in per capita resource consumption, three times as many residents would consume the same amount of water and electricity as Parkmerced’s current population does today.

Johnston emphasized how adding new units to the west side of the city also helped contribute to “density equality,” since most new projects tend to be concentrated in the eastern neighborhoods.

Johnston was particularly jazzed about an innovative storm-water discharge system envisioned for the plan, which he described as a design that could “regenerate and repair the environment.” It would recirculate rainwater through a naturally filtrating system of ponds and bioswales to recharge Lake Merced, a water body that has been slowly shrinking due to being choked off from its natural watershed by a concrete urban barrier.

Green points might be awarded for plans for an on-site organic garden, but Commissioner Michael Antonini, who said he lives less than a mile from Parkmerced, cautioned that developers shouldn’t get too attached to that idea. After all, he said, many kinds of vegetables won’t thrive in that part of the city.

Meanwhile, the wholesale destruction of existing units is decidedly not eco-chic. The Green Building Council’s LEED neighborhood standards insist that “historic resource preservation and adaptive reuse” is always preferable in a green development — and that’s the point that Aaron Goodman, an architect who previously lived at Parkmerced, has been driving at for more than a year. Proponents maintain that Parkmerced’s wartime construction meant it was built with inferior materials, and that property owners have battled dry rot and other infrastructure problems.

Another not-so-green Parkmerced project feature has also raised eyebrows: parking. While proponents portray the redesign as a switch from a suburban, love-affair-with-the-automobile style to an enlightened departure from car-centrism, plans nonetheless include a parking space for every single unit.

That creates the potential for more than 6,000 new cars on the road in that area, and the 19th Avenue corridor is already notorious for traffic snarls. According to calculations by the Environmental Protection Agency, the typical American motorist generates more than five metric tons of carbon dioxide by driving in a given year.

 

REPLACING WHAT’S THERE

Before the Planning Commission meeting, residents from the Parkmerced Action Coalition — a relatively new residents’ group formed to oppose the redevelopment and a wholly different entity from the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization — made a public show of their dissatisfaction outside City Hall. Holding signs with slogans such as “Don’t Bulldoze Our Homes,” residents sang protest songs and chanted, “We are Parkmerced!”

With the dramatic makeover, Parkmerced would expand to around 8,900 units, tripling the number of residents who could be accommodated. Existing 1940’s-era garden apartments would be razed to make way for higher, denser housing. The plan comes at a time when neighboring San Francisco State University is undergoing its own phase of expansion.

“This project in its current state is a vision that is not in harmony with the people, place, or the environment,” charged Cathy Lentz, an organizer with the Parkmerced Action Coalition, in a vociferous plea to the commissioners. “It is a narrow vision, a corporate vision … a true vision would be inclusive of present dwellings, inclusive of animals, trees, and present environment.”

One resident lamented the pending loss of his garden courtyard, noting how much his children had enjoyed the green space growing up and listing the different kinds of birds that would surely be driven away by heavy-duty construction and tree removal. For many, the point was not so much what developers intended to build, but what would be lost to make way for it. One speaker dismissed the plan as “architectural clear-cutting.”

Commissioner Moore, an architect, sounded a similar note when she rejected the notion that the Parkmerced redevelopment should be hailed as infill, a desirable development concept that curbs sprawl by utilizing space efficiently. “Urban infill housing is defined as infill on vacant sites,” Moore said, “not sites that have become vacant by demolition.” She added that she believed the environmental impact review “fails to sufficiently examine why housing demolition is even necessary.”

In Moore’s view, “the only reasonable alternative is a significantly redesigned … project.”

 

WORKING-CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD

Unlike a luxury condominium development, the Parkmerced plan emphasizes built-in economic diversity — yet critics point out that as it stands, the housing complex is already inclusive of many lower-income, working-class residents.

The plan will incorporate several hundred below-market rate units, in accordance with the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance. Commissioner Antonini also emphasized the boost to city coffers from tax revenue associated with the project.

Meanwhile, questions are still arising on the issue of rent control. “We do not believe it is appropriate for the City and County of San Francisco to be displacing rent-controlled residents,” noted Michael Yarne, a mayoral development advisor. A binding agreement between Parkmerced Investors LLC and the city of San Francisco, which will be linked to the land, promises that new units will be made available to rent-controlled tenants at the same monthly rate they now pay, with rent control intact (See “Weighing a Landlord’s Promise,” Dec. 21, 2010).

Yet Polly Marshall, a commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board, noted that she still didn’t believe tenant protections were adequate. She also spoke to the pitfalls of tearing down and redoing an entire neighborhood.

“The proposed Parkmerced development is the kind of development that I normally would support. It’s the kind of thing I work on in my profession,” noted Marshall, an attorney who has worked on redevelopment projects. “What’s different about this project is that it involves an existing community. It requires devastation of that community. It reminds me of the old-style redevelopment projects that went on in the Fillmore that destroyed existing neighborhoods. Look around that area now … there’s high density housing there, but that’s about all. The community — the networks of the people — was destroyed decades ago.”

Marshall took it a step further, offering her analysis on why Parkmerced was targeted. “It’s because it’s a working-class neighborhood of renters,” she said. “That’s why we’re going to destroy Parkmerced.”

John Ross dies at 72

Zelda Bronstein
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21
John Ross dies at 72

When John Ross left Terminal Island, the federal prison in Los Angeles, after serving a couple of years for refusing the Vietnam draft, the warden shook his head and said: “Ross, you never learned how to be a prisoner.”


I’m not writing the epitaph for whatever gravestone he has or doesn’t have, wherever it might be in the world, but that’s what I’d put on it: “John Ross, 1938-2011. Never learned how to be a prisoner.”


John, who died over the weekend, was a poet, author, activist, agitator and uncontrollable shit disturber, utterly and sometimes insanely fearless, pure of heart and devoted to the cause of social justice so deeply that he could never let up, even for a minute. He was also my friend.


John was a tenant organizer in San Francisco in the 1960s. He ran for supervisor once on a platform of rent control and ending the war; he was kicked off the ballot on the basis that he was a convicted felon. He never got his filing fee back.


After a while, he headed north for Arcata, back to the land, so to speak, and became something of a farmer. He wrote poetry, self-published maybe half a dozen books, most of which I have, some of which are probably lost forever. He wrote freelance for the Guardian, but he had no phone; you’d call him at a bar in Arcata (he swore later that Thomas Pynchon was one of his barmates), leave a message and he’d check in when he got it.


Then in 1984, he showed up at our office in San Francisco, fleeing the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, which had raided his plot, trashed his house, thrown his typewriter out the window and missed capturing him by a few minutes. He sold the last of the crop in the city, found a room and started writing for us regularly.


He was one of the single most talented writers I’ve ever met — and a reporter willing to go anywhere for a story. He was also an absolute pain in the ass to work with. Every John Ross story I ever edited was a nightmare. He hated editors, almost as a matter of religion; every single word was sacred, and anytime I tried to mess with what he’d created he’d threaten to quit. “Take my name off the masthead; I’m never working for you again” was almost a mantra with us. It got to the point where I had to say: No, John. You can’t quit. You’re part of this operation forever, like it or not. And he always came around.


But it’s not a surprise that he never held down a real job for long.


Sandy Close at Pacific News Service sent him to Mexico City after the big earthquake in 1985, and he wound up at the Hotel Isabel, where he lived for the next 25 years. He took on stories nobody else would do or could do; he’d go places nobody else would dare. “Tim,” he’d always tell me, “you have to go where the story is.”


When the Zapatistas began their rebellion, he hitched a ride south from Mexico City, then hiked into the hills in Chiapas with a bag of granola and a couple of bottles of water, found the rebels in a little hamlet, met Subcommander Marcos and got interviews and information that left the rest of the media in the dust. In the first story he sent me, he described seeing a couple of reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle zipping by in a fancy rented jeep, with about $1,000 worth of camera gear, totally befuddled. They were out of their league; John was right at home.


He called me once, late at night, to ask if I knew any doctors in town. Turns out he’d been beaten pretty badly by the Mexican authorities just before getting on a plane to SF. I asked him how it happened, and he told me that he’d decided, on his own, to stand in the Mexico City airport and make a speech denouncing the government. The cops didn’t respond kindly.


He went to Iraq before the war to serve as a human shield in Baghdad (his emails were all signed “John Ross, humanshield”), left after having some clashes (imagine that) with his Iraqi government minders, travelled all over the world writing and selling his books, sent me pieces from everywhere, lost his eye to an old injury from fighting with the SFPD (his email signature became “Juan Eye”), won and refused an award from the City of San Francisco, wrote a major investigative piece on the death of journalist Brad Will and kept writing until the very end. When he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, he started signing his emails “John Ross, not dead yet.”


The last message I got was on Nov. 4. After complaining some more about the cops, he wrote:


“it appears ive written my last articles for the bay guardian — the doctors have given me six months on the outside and then its goodbye this cruel world — we raised some hell when i was here.” It’s signed: “insolidarity johnross enroute.”


Yes, John: We raised some some hell when you were here. Good luck enroute. And I will miss you forever.


John Ross leaves a son, Dante A. Ross, a daughter, Carla Ross-Allen, and a granddaughter, Zoe Ross-Allen, as well as a stepdaughter, Dylan Melbourne and her daugther Honore, as well as a sister, Susan Gardner. Memorial info is pending; I’ll keep you posted.


You can read some of John’s recent articles here and here and a lot more here.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Former Mayor Willie Brown says that choosing a person of color for a leadership position should be a progressive value. Board of Supervisors President David Chiu says the new mayor, Ed Lee, is a progressive. Several supervisors and other political observers say the six-vote progressive majority on the board is gone.

And nobody really talks about what that word means.

Progressive is a term with a long political vintage, but it’s changed (as has the political context) since the 1920s. (Progressives these days aren’t into Prohibition.) So I’m going to take a few minutes to try to sort this out.

I used to tell John Burton, the former state senator, that a progressive was a liberal who didn’t like real estate developers. But that was in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party in town was funded by Walter Shorenstein and other developers who were happy to be part of the party of Dianne Feinstein, happy to be liberals on some social issues (Shorenstein insisted that the Chamber of Commerce hire and promote more women), and happy to promote liberal candidates like John and Phil Burton for state and national office — as long as they didn’t mess with the gargantuan money machine that was high-rise office development in San Francisco.

But these days it’s not all about real estate; it’s that the level of economic inequality in the United States has risen to levels unseen since the late 1920s. So I sat down on a Saturday night when the kids went to bed(yeah, this is my social life) and made a list of what I think represent the core values of a modern American progressive. It’s a short list, and I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left off, but it seems like a place to start.

This isn’t a litmus test list (we’ve endorsed plenty of people who don’t agree with everything on it). It’s not a purity test, it’s not a dogma, it’s not the rules of entry into any political party … it’s just a definition. My personal definition.

Because words don’t mean anything if they don’t mean anything, and progressive has become so much of a part of the San Francisco political dialogue that it’s starting to mean nothing.

For the record: when I use the word "progressive," I’m talking about people who believe:
1. That civil rights and civil liberties need to be protected for everyone, even the most unpopular people in the world. We’re for same-sex marriage, of course, and for sanctuary city and protections for immigrants who may not have documentation. We’re also in favor of basic rights for prisoners, we’re against the death penalty, and we think that even suspected terrorists should have the right to due process of law.
2. That essential public services — water, electricity, health care, broadband — should be controlled by the public, not by private corporations. That means public power and single-payer government run health insurance.
3. That the most central problem facing the city, the state, and the nation today is the dramatic upward shift of wealth and income and the resulting economic inequality. We believe that government at every level — including local government right here in San Francisco — should do everything possible to reduce that inequality. That means taxing high incomes, redistributing wealth, and using that money for public services (education, for example) that tend to help people achieve a stable middle-class lifestyle. We believe that San Francisco is a rich city, with a lot of rich people, and that if the state and federal government won’t try to tax them to pay for local services, the city should.
4. That private money has no place in elections or public policy. We support a total ban on private campaign contributions, for politicians and ballot measures, and support public financing for all elections. Corruption — even the appearance of corruption — taints the entire public sector and helps the fans of privatization, and progressives especially need to understand that.
5. That the right to private property needs to be tempered by the needs of society. That means you can’t just put up a highrise building anywhere you want in San Francisco, of course, but it also means that the rights of tenants to have stable places for themselves and their families to live is more important than the rights of landlords to maximize return on their property. That’s why we support strict environmental protections, even when they hurt private interests, and why be believe in rent control, including rent control on vacant property, and eviction protections and restrictions on condo conversions. We think community matters more than wealth, and that poor people have a place in San Francisco too — and if the wealthier classes have to have less so the city can have socioeconomic diversity, that’s a small price to pay. We believe that public space belongs to the public and shouldn’t be handed over to private interests. We believe that everyone, including homeless people, has the right to use public space.
6. That there are almost no circumstances where the government should do anything in secret.
7. That progressive elected officials should use their resources and political capital to help elect other progressives — and should recognize that sometimes the movement is more important that personal ambitions.

I don’t know if Ed Lee fits my definition of a progressive. He hasn’t taken a public position on any major issues in 20 years. We won’t know until we see his budget plans and learn whether he thinks the city should follow Gavin Newsom’s approach of avoiding tax increases and simply cutting services again. We won’t know until he decides what to tell the new police chief about enforcing the sit-lie law. We won’t know until we see whether he keeps Newsom’s staff in place or brings in some senior people with progressive values.
I agree that having an Asian mayor in San Francisco is a very big deal, a historic moment — and as Lee takes over, I will be waiting, and hoping, to be surprised.

What progressive means

Zelda Bronstein
-
85
What progressive means

Willie Brown says that choosing a person of color for a leadership position should be a “progressive” value. David Chiu says Ed Lee is a progressive. Several supervisors, and other political observers, say the six-vote progressive majority on the board is gone.

And nobody really talks about what that word means.

Progressive is a term with an excellent political vintage, but it’s changed (as has the political context) since the 1920s. (Progressives these days aren’t into prohibition.) So I’m going to take a few minutes to try to sort this out.

I used to tell John Burton that a progressive was a liberal who didn’t like real estate developers, but that was in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party in town was funded by Walter Shorenstein and other developers, who were happy to be part of the party of Dianne Feinstein, happy to be liberals on some social issues (Shorenstein insisted that the Chamber of Commerce hire and promote more women) and happy to promote liberal candidates like John and his brother Phil for national office – as long as they didn’t mess with the gargantuan money machine that was highrise office development in San Francisco.
Arguing that Shorenstein’s economic agenda was driving up housing prices, destroying low-income neighborhoods and displacing tenants was a waste of time; the liberals like Burton (who also represented real estate developers as a private attorney) weren’t interested.

But these days it’s not all about real estate; it’s about the fact that the level of economic inequality in the United States has risen to levels unseen since the late 1920s, and the impacts are all around us. And it’s about (Democratic) politicians in San Francisco blaming Sacramento, and (Democratic) politicians in Sacramento blaming Washington, and the Democratic Party in the United States abandoning economic equality as a guiding principle.

So I sat down on a Saturday night when the kids went to be (yeah, this is my social life) and made a list of what I think represent the core values of a modern American progressive. It’s a short list, and I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left off, but it seems like a place to start.

For all the people who are going to blast me in the comments, let me say very clearly: This isn’t a litmus-test list (we’ve endorsed plenty of people who don’t agree with everything on it). It’s not a purity test, it’s not a dogma, it’s not the rules of entry into any political party … it’s just a definition. My personal definition.

Because words don’t mean anything if they don’t mean anything, and progressive has become so much of a part of the San Francisco political dialogue that it’s starting to mean nothing.
For the record: When I use the word “progressive,” I’m talking about people who believe:

1. That civil rights and civil liberties need to be protected for everyone, even the most unpopular people in the world. We’re for same-sex marriage, of course, and for Sanctuary City and protections for immigrants who may not have documentation. We’re also in favor of basic rights for prisoners, we’re against the death penalty, and we think that even suspected terrorists should have the right to due process of law.

2. That essential public services – water, electricity, health care, broadband – should be controlled by the public and not by private corporations. That means public power and single-payer government run health insurance.

3. That the most central problem facing the city, the state and the nation today is the dramatic upward shift of wealth and income and the resulting economic inequality. We believe that government at every level – including local government, right here in San Francisco – should do everything possible to reduce that inequality; that means taxing high incomes, redistributing wealth and using that money for public services (education, for example) that tend to help people achieve a stable middle-class lifestyle. We believe that San Francisco is a rich city, with a lot of rich people, and that if the state and federal government won’t try to tax them to pay for local services, the city should.

4. That private money has no place in elections or public policy. We support a total ban on private campaign contributions, for both politicians and ballot measures, and support public financing for all elections.

5. That the right to private property needs to be tempered by the needs of society. That means you can’t just put up a highrise building anywhere you want in San Francisco, of course, but it also means that the rights of tenants to have stable places for themselves and their families to live is more important than the rights of landlords to maximize return on their property. That’s why we support strict environmental protections, even when they hurt private interests, and why be believe in rent control, including rent control on vacant property, and eviction protections and restrictions on condo conversions. We think community matters more than wealth and that poor people have a place in San Francisco too — and if the wealthier classes have to have less so that the city can have socio-economic diversity, that’s a small price to pay. We believe that public space belongs to the public, and shouldn’t be handed over to private interests; we believe that everyone, including homeless people, has the right to use public space.

6. That there are almost no circumstances where the government should do anything in secret.

7. That progressive elected officials should use their resources and political capital to help elect other progressives – and should recognize that sometimes the movement is more important that their own personal ambitions.

I could add a lot more, but I think those six factors are at the heart of what I mean when I talk about progressives. We support a lot of other things; I put the right of workers to unionize under Number 3, since unions (along with public schools and subsidized higher education) are one of the major forces behind a stable middle class and a more equal society. We think racism and homophobia are never acceptable, and we support affirmative action, but that goes under Number 1.

This is not a socialist manifesto; I never mentioned worker control of the means of production. Progressives don’t oppose private enterprise; they just think that some things essential for the good of society don’t belong in the private sector, and that the private sector should be regulated for the good of all of us. We trust and support small businesses much more than big corporations – and we think their interests are not the same.

I don’t know if Ed Lee fits my definition of a progressive. We won’t know until we see his budget plans, and learn whether he thinks the city should follow Gavin Newsom’s approach of avoiding tax increases and simply cutting services again. We won’t know until he decides what the tell the new police chief about enforcing the sit-lie law. We won’t know until we see whether he keeps Newsom’s staff in place or brings in some senior people with progressive values. We know that the people who pushed him to take the job aren’t progressives by any definition, but you never know. I agree that having an Asian mayor in San Francisco is a very big deal, an historic moment — and when Lee takes office, I will be waiting, and hoping, to be surprised.

Elsbernd defends Lee (but ducks the Tapas)

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Elsbernd defends Lee (but ducks the Tapas)

Well, Sean didn’t stop by for tapas at Que Syrah last night, but he did take the time to send me a long letter answering my questions about why he “mysteriously”  nominated CAO Ed Lee for interim mayor in Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

I appreciate the letter and it’s to Sean’s credit that this is his modus operandi with the Guardian (and others) in answering questions, even pesky ones.

I am printing his letter in full below and offering him the opportunity to continue this illuminating conversation since his letter raises even more questions about his nomination of Lee.

For example, the Bay Citizen section of today’s New York Times, on the morning of the followup supervisors’ meeting this afternoon, laid out a detailed story by Gerry Shih  of how former Mayor Willie Brown, Rose Pak, a powerful Chinatown political operative, and Mayor Newsom orchestrated the Lee nomination to keep the mayor’s office safe for PG&E, the downtown gang, and Willie/Pak’s clients and allies.

The headline: “Behind-the-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of a Mayor,” with  pictures of Newsom, Willie, and Pak. The motivation for the orchestration, according to the story, was that on Sunday afternoon “Word had  trickled out that the main contenders for the job were Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Mayor Art Agnos and former board chairman Aaron Peskin” and the three were “deemed too liberal” by Pak, Brown and Newsom.

Then, the story said that over the next 48 hours, Pak, Brown and the Newsom administration “engaged in an extraordinary political power play, forging a consensus” on the board, “outflanking the board’s progressive wing” and persuading Lee at the last moment  shortly before he boarded  a plane to  Taiwan to agree “to become San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, even though he had told officials for months that he had no interest in the job.”

The story noted that Pak was “in a boastful mood the next day, several hours before she planned to have celebratory drinks with Brown at the Chinese Hilton,” (Willie, last time I checked, was on an annual PG&E retainer of $200,000 plus.) The story ended with a telling quote from Pak: “Now you know why they say I play politics like a blood sport.”

So the new questions I have for Sean (and other supervisors who voted for Lee) is what did they know and when did they know it? Or were they even informed about the deal and how it came down? Is this the West Portal supervisor’s idea of how to choose a mayor?

P.S. Sean and his fellow Lee supporters may not think it’s important for the Guardian (or other media or citizens) to be able to ask questions of Lee or other candidates  before making him mayor.

Well, I think  it’s important and I have some basic questions: What is Lee’s position on rent control? On progressive taxation to help solve the crushing budget crisis? On rubberstamping Newsom/Pak/Brown policies as mayor? And on community choice aggregation and public power and kicking PG&E out of the mayor’s office?  The last question on PG&E  is critical, because this is the key litmus test in political San Francisco.  Any politician, elected or appointed or emerging,  who supports PG&E and opposes public power/CCA is not to be trusted.  Did anybody get to ask Lee any of these questions or any others? Let’s lay out the questions and Lee’s answers before making him the reluctant mayor.

Here’s Elsbernds letter to me:

Bruce,

Good to hear from you.  As always, I enjoy the conversation, particularly
with those District 7 constituents who so often and consistently advocate
positions contrary to the vast majority of residents in District 7 (e.g.
the Guardian’s endorsement against Proposition G, which received over 70%
of the vote in District 7), but every now and then, present a fresh
perspective worth analysis.

 

I believe Ed Lee will make an outstanding Interim Mayor. You asked me the
following questions to justify this.  Let me give it my best shot.

Why did I nominate Ed Lee for Interim Mayor when he was out of town?  His
presence was immaterial to me.  I had the opportunity to discuss his
interest in the position with him prior to the vote, and I have worked with
him for nearly 10 years, and know where he stands on various positions.  I
did not need him in the room on Tuesday evening to answer questions as I
had done my homework before showing up to class.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he was not publicly “out there” or “in
public discussion” as a candidate or even known by the Supervisors to be a
legitimate candidate?  Whether or not Ed Lee’s name was known to you, your
readers, or other Supervisors, is not a fact to which I can speak.  After
all, I do not fit any one of those 3 criteria.  Ed was always a candidate
to me, and, most importantly, the qualities of an Interim Mayor were “in
public discussion.”  These qualities, which I heard from residents in
district 7 and throughout the City, were that the individual be someone not
wanting to run for re-election, someone, who had a demonstrated ability to
appeal to all cross sections of the political spectrum, someone who knows
the City (both how it functions as a government as well as its many
neighborhoods), and, someone with demonstrated experience in a variety of
areas of public policy.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he has not publicly stated his views on any
of the major issues coming before the Mayor?  Yes, it’s true he has not
filled out a Bay Guardian questionnaire, or been grilled by your editorial
Board.  However, an astute observer of Ed’s career can decipher well his
positions.  Moreover, Ed was most recently confirmed unanimously to serve
as CAO of the City and County, for the second time.  During that
confirmation process, I had the opportunity, as did every other member of
the Board and the public to present issues to Ed for his analysis.  The
tough issues facing the Mayor, are the same tough issues facing the CAO,
the Supervisors, and everyone else charged with the duty of serving the
public.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he was not available for questioning by the
Board when the discussion and vote came down?  Yes, Ed was not present.
However, as I stated earlier, Ed had always been available to talk prior to
his departure.  I was able to ask my questions before he left.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he is not as qualified for this tough post
in these tough times as the other public candidates?  Well, this question
implies a bit of a comparison to the other candidates.  I respect the other
candidates too much to say anything negative about them.  Simply put, I
believe Ed is the lone candidate with the sufficient breadth, most
relevant, and most timely experience across City government, and the one
who had the greatest ability to bring all sides of the political spectrum
together.

 

Why did I nominate Ed Lee when he was obviously part of a backroom deal
orchestrated by Mayor Newsom and his downtown allies?  I love questions
based on evidence and fact.  This question, however, is merely a question
based on your opinion.  I disagree with that opinion.  Ed Lee was elected
Interim Mayor because he is the most qualified candidate.

 

Finally, thanks for the invitation to Que Syrah this evening.
Unfortunately, as a working parent, my weeknight evenings do not belong to
me – they belong to my son.  I’ll be with him tonight.  I hope you’re still
able to enjoy yourself without me.

 

All the best,
Sean

 

P.S.  It’s the “Village Grill,” not the “Village Inn .”  Perhaps you need
to get out on West Portal a bit more and learn the name of the
establishments along the street.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weighing a landlord’s promise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
8
Weighing a landlord’s promise

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Emotions ran high at meetings held by the San Francisco Planning Commission about a massive overhaul of Parkmerced, a housing complex located next to San Francisco State University that is a neighborhood unto itself.

The plan envisions tearing down 1940s-era garden apartments and townhomes to make way for new low-rises and high-rises that would contain a mix of rental housing and for-sale units. Over the course of a construction project spanning three decades, Parkmerced would expand to 8,900 units — enough to triple the number of residents who can now be accommodated. Final approval for the project is expected in March at the earliest.

Some 150 residents turned out at a Dec. 9 special meeting held near Parkmerced to make it more accessible for seniors and people with limited mobility. Although commissioners had planned to open with a staff presentation, residents protested and demanded to speak first, and their request was granted. After listening to residents comment for hours, commissioners continued the discussion until the Dec. 16 meeting, which drew a smaller turnout.

While some residents were pleased by the plans, the majority who attended the first meeting expressed alarm and anxiety. People aired concerns about the long construction timeline, increased density, traffic congestion, and the impact the plan would have on a well-established, multigenerational community. Many of the speakers had been born at Parkmerced or raised families there. The comments portrayed an economically diverse neighborhood supporting close-knit circles of friends and family.

One question that seemed to have residents rattled most was whether they could trust the developer’s promise that their rent control would be preserved, even after their existing apartments have been torn down.

Among them was octogenarian Robert Pender, a founding member of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, who hobbled from his wheelchair to the podium to deliver his statement for the public record. “Parkmerced is my home, and I’m not going to be evicted because some landlord wants to make some more money,” he announced. After making his comments, Pender turned to face the audience, lifted his cane in the air, and issued a rally cry that captured the sentiment of the evening: “fight!”

Under the development plan, 1,500 apartments would be razed to make way for new residential units. The midcentury garden apartments open out to shared courtyards and patios. Many house tenants who’ve lived at Parkmerced for decades. For elderly residents or those who have disabilities, the exceptionally low rent makes it possible for them to stay in San Francisco despite limited income.

From the outset, Parkmerced Investors LLC and Stellar Management have promised existing tenants that they will be relocated to replacement units with roughly the same square footage, where they’ll continue to pay the same monthly rates and keep their rent control. The developer has even promised to keep the existing apartments intact until the new units are available so that none of the residents will have to move twice.

“Our promise to our residents is that we will preserve the rent control,” said P.J. Johnston, a spokesperson for the developer. “Our attorneys believe that the rent-control protections are absolutely ironclad.”

Johnston emphasized the big picture: “For decades, progressive San Francisco has been talking about the need for developing large chunks of affordable housing, for increasing density on the west side, and for creating more housing around transit. Here we finally have the opportunity to do all that while introducing major transit improvements and extending rent control.”

The landlord’s promise of continued rent control is written into a development agreement, a contract between the developer and the city that would be filed along with permits and entitlements for the property. Any subsequent owner would also have to adhere to the terms of the agreement.

Despite those assurances, tenant advocates speaking at the Dec. 9 meeting sounded the alarm that the guarantee could be called into question in court if the developer or a new owner ever sought to challenge it. The Costa-Hawkins Act, passed in 1995, prohibits rent control on newly constructed units, and San Francisco’s rent ordinance guarantees rent control only for units built before 1979.

“It is disingenuous for the Parkmerced landlord and for city staff to assure tenants that they will have rent-controlled replacement units after their units are demolished,” noted Polly Marshall, a tenant commissioner on the San Francisco Rent Board who spoke as an individual before the Planning Commission. “We simply don’t know if this will be the case.”

Marshall said the agreement could be susceptible to a legal challenge, given recent court rulings in Los Angeles and Santa Monica finding that the Ellis Act and the Costa-Hawkins Act preempted any contracts brokered with the municipalities. In each case, signed agreements between a developer and a city were dissolved in California courts.

“There’s nothing in state law that says that when you demolish rent-controlled housing, it has to be replaced with rent-controlled housing,” said Dean Preston, director of Tenants Together, a statewide tenant advocacy group. “I don’t think the city or the developer can make those guarantees.”

Preston added that the problem would be intensified if the property is conveyed to a new owner who didn’t make the same commitments, and acknowledged that he didn’t perceive a surefire way to guarantee enforceability. “It’s not the developer’s fault, and it’s not the city’s fault,” Preston added. “Ultimately this needs to be addressed In Sacramento.”

City staff and the developer seemed responsive to the concerns. In comments submitted to commissioners Dec. 9, Marshall said the development agreement should be amended to specify that the developer agreed to waive any rights to challenge the requirements of the agreement. The following week, at the Dec. 16 meeting, planning staff distributed revised copies of the agreement that had been changed to include that language.

During a staff presentation at the Dec. 16 meeting, mayoral development advisor Michael Yarne addressed the rent-control question in a detailed presentation. “The city wants to protect existing tenants,” Yarne told commissioners. “It is not the city’s intent to leave existing tenants vulnerable.”

Under Costa-Hawkins, Yarne said, exceptions to the rent-control prohibition apply in cases where a municipality has made a valuable contribution to a developer for a residential project in exchange for the waiver of rights under Costa-Hawkins.

Yarne ticked off a slew of contributions he believed would pass muster in a court of law as enough to qualify for the exception. Among other perks, maximum density controls for the site would be eliminated; the height and bulk for new buildings would be increased beyond what’s normally allowed; the city would not assess impact fees for the replacement units; the amount of permitted commercial mixed-use development for Parkmerced’s zoning category would be substantially increased; and the development rights would be frozen for 30 years with no required milestones.

“We believe this satisfies the public-assistance exception,” Yarne said. He noted that the document was drafted with feedback from City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

Tenant rights activist Calvin Welch, who had not yet seen the latest draft of the development agreement when the Guardian caught up with him, said “we’re agnostic” on the rent-control provision until having had a chance to carefully vet the final agreement. Yet he said the tenants were “absolutely right to be concerned,” given the recent legal precedent.

Sup. Sean Elsbernd, whose District 7 includes Parkmerced, said he tuned into the hearings though he did not attend. Elsbernd said he would feel comfortable moving forward with the plan as long as he had assurance from the City Attorney’s Office that the agreement was enforceable. “I don’t want to see that project go forward without certainty,” he said.

Christina Olague, vice president of the Planning Commission, acknowledged the strong concerns voiced by residents about the coming changes to the property. “We have to be sensitive to the emotions that we witnessed that day,” Olague said. “We have to balance out a lot of different needs.”

At the Dec. 16 meeting, more residents made comments echoing the furious opposition expressed on Dec. 9. At the same time, a small contingent of residents who favored the plan turned out to urge commissioners to approve it.

“I have witnessed consistent honesty from one source — the owner of Parkmerced, Rob Rosania,” Daniel Phillips, who identified himself as president of the Board of Directors of the Parkmerced Residents’ Organization, noted in written comments submitted to commissioners. “As long as I have known Rob Rosania and Stellar Management, they have made promises and kept them.”

Yet it was clear that many other tenants were not convinced, and on Dec. 9, several lamented the idea that their homes would be knocked down and their longstanding community impacted by the new development.

Residents who oppose the development recently formed a new residents organization called the Parkmerced Action Coalition. Members of that group are opposed to the wholesale demolition of the 1,500 garden apartments and would rather see them retrofitted and preserved.

“We are living in panic,” a woman who had lived in Parkmerced for many years told commissioners. “I am completely opposed to the tear-down of our community.”

Class of 2010: Mark Farrell

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Class of 2010: Mark Farrell

steve@sfbg.com

Mark Farrell is a 36-year-old venture capitalist and political newcomer who will represent the wealthy neighborhoods of District 2 (Pacific Heights, Sea Cliff, and the Marina) after narrowly beating Janet Reilly, whose extensive political endorsements ranged from the Guardian and local Democratic Party Chair Aaron Peskin to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinsein and Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Challenging the city’s political power structure is why Farrell said he ran for office, playing up his outsider status and investment banking experience. He told visitors to his campaign website, “I am running for the Board of Supervisors to bring common sense back to City Hall” and railed against “career politicians who run for office again and again.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Farrell said he was motivated to make his first foray into politics by the dysfunction he has heard about at City Hall. “I’ve been frustrated with City Hall over the last few years, from the personal antics to the policies that have come out,” Farrell told us. “I humbly believe I have something different to bring to the table.”

Farrell calls himself a fiscal conservative who believes “our city government has gotten too large and we need to look at that,” a task he thinks he’s well-suited for given his background in finance. Yet when asked what government functions he would eliminate or cut deeply to help close a projected $700 million budget deficit over the next two years, Farrell said he can’t offer any specifics yet, saying only, “We need to make tough decisions.”

Would Farrell be open to new taxes or other revenue-side budget solutions? He told us that he won’t completely reject the idea of new taxes, but that he generally opposes them. “I don’t believe in raising taxes. We can’t raise enough revenue to get out of this problem,” Farrell said. “We need to learn to live within our means.”

Although he opposed Prop. B in this election, Farrell said public employee pension reform needs to be a part of the city’s budget solution, as well as scaling back how much the city gives to nonprofit groups, which provide many of the social services the city supports.

Farrell was born and raised in San Francisco — except for his college years, he’s spent his whole life in D2, where his parents still live — and has been friends with Sup. Sean Elsbernd since high school. Politically, Farrell also identifies with Elsbernd and fellow fiscally conservative Sups. Carmen Chu and Michela Alioto-Pier (who endorsed Farrell to replace her in D2), but he says that he doesn’t want to be politically pigeon-holed.

“I’m very much my own person and I look forward to working with everyone,” Farrell said. Indeed, part of Farrell’s frustration with City Hall politics has been the divisive relationship between the progressives and moderates, which he sees as a hindrance to finding “common sense solutions.”

“The progressive and moderate labels have been relatively destructive to San Francisco,” Farrell said. “We need to get beyond that to focus on issues.”

Yet people’s political values and worldview determine what issues they care about and the solutions they favor. For example, progressives decry the dearth of affordable being built for San Franciscans and cite city studies showing that deficit will get worse as developers build ever-more market rate housing (see “Dollars or sense?” Sept. 28), particularly in a city that is two-thirds renters.

Farrell said he supports rent control (saying he was unfairly attacked during the campaign as anti renter) and sees the dwindling rental stock and lack of new affordable units being constructed as problems, but he doesn’t have a solution to those problems. In fact, Farrell supports allowing more condo conversions, which would make the problem worse, telling us, “I believe home ownership is something we should promote.”

He was also vague about how he will approach land use issues and how tough he’ll be with developers in having them meet city design guidelines and provide affordable housing and other community benefits, saying only, “We need to have sustainable development in the city.”

Yet the issues that do animate Farrell are those typically focused on by conservative D2 voters. Farrell lists his top priorities as seeing to his district’s needs, promoting private sector job creation (“I think a lot of lip service has been paid to it, but not a lot of action by City Hall,” he said), public safety, and quality-of-life issues (he supported Prop. L, the sit-lie ordinance, calling it “very reasonable”). Generally Farrell sees San Francisco as a city in he midst of a serious fiscal crisis, “and I want to create a San Francisco that is secure for the future over the long haul.”

The biggest fish

Andrew Lam
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The biggest fish

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Shortly after Larry Ellison, the billionaire CEO of Oracle Corp. and owner of the BMW Oracle Racing Team, won the 33rd America’s Cup off the coast of Valencia, Spain, in February 2010, a reception was held in his honor in the rotunda at San Francisco City Hall.

The event drew members of Ellison’s sailing crew, business and political heavyweights such as former Secretary of State George Schultz, and other VIPs. Attendees posed for photographs with the tall, glittering silver trophy at the base of the grand staircase.

As part of the celebration, Ellison helped Mayor Gavin Newsom into an official BMW Oracle Racing Team jacket, and Newsom granted Ellison a key to the city, a symbolic honor usually reserved for heads of state and the San Francisco Giants after they won the World Series. Shortly after, the mayor and the guest of honor, whom Forbes magazine ranked as the sixth-richest person in the world, sat down for a face-to-face.

That meeting marked the beginning of the city’s bid to host the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco in 2013. Since securing the Cup, Ellison has made no secret of his desire to stage the 159-year-old sailing match against the iconic backdrop of the San Francisco Bay, a natural amphitheater that could be ringed with spectators gathered ashore while media images of the stunningly expensive yachts are broadcast internationally.

Newsom and other elected officials have feverishly championed the idea, touting it as an opportunity for a boost to the region’s anemic economy. The city’s Budget & Legislative Analyst projects roughly $1.2 billion in economic activity associated with the event — the real prize, as far as business interests are concerned. It would also create the equivalent of 8,840 jobs, mostly in the form of overtime for city workers and short-term gigs for the private sector.

While the idea has won preliminary support from most members of the Board of Supervisors, serious questions are beginning to arise as the finer details of the agreement emerge and the date for a final decision draws near.

Ellison and the race organizers would be granted control of 35 acres of prime waterfront property in exchange for selecting San Francisco as the venue for the Cup and investing $150 million into Port of San Francisco infrastructure. But the event would result in a negative net impact to city coffers.

Hosting the event and meeting Ellison’s demands for property would cost the city about $128 million, according the Budget & Legislative Analyst, just as city leaders grapple with closing a projected $712 million deficit in the budget cycle spanning 2011 and 2012.

Part of the impact is an estimated $86 million in lost revenue associated with rent-free leases the city would enter into with Ellison’s LLC, the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA). In exchange for selecting San Francisco as a venue and investing in port infrastructure, ACEA would win long-term control of Piers 30-32, Pier 50, and Seawall Lot 330 — waterfront real estate owned by the Port of San Francisco, with development rights included. Seawall Lot 330, a 2.5-acre triangular parcel bordered by the Embarcadero at the base of Bryant Street, would either be leased long-term or transferred outright to ACEA.

The most vociferous opponent of the America’s Cup plan is Sup. Chris Daly, who has voiced scathing criticism of the notion that the city would subsidize a billionaire’s yacht race at a time of fiscal instability. “The question is whether or not the package that San Francisco’s putting together is good or bad for the city,” Daly told the Guardian, “and whether or not it’s the best deal the city can get.”

 

THE CREW

According to a Forbes calculation from September 2010, Ellison’s net worth is $27 billion, making him several times wealthier than the City and County of San Francisco, which has a total annual budget of about $6 billion. Ellison reportedly spent $100 million and a decade pursuing the Cup.

As soon as Ellison expressed interest in bringing the Cup to San Francisco, Newsom began charting a course. Park Merced architect and Newsom campaign contributor Craig Hartman of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was tapped to reimagine the piers south of the Bay Bridge as the central hub for the event, and soon Hartman’s vision for a viewing area beneath a whimsical sail-like canopy was forwarded to the media.

The mayor also issued letters of invitation to form the America’s Cup Organizing Committee (ACOC), a group that would be tasked with soliciting corporate funding for the event. ACOC was convened as a nonprofit corporation, and it’s a powerhouse of wealthy, politically connected, and influential members.

Hollywood mogul Steve Bing, who’s donated millions to the Democratic Party and funded former President Bill Clinton’s 2009 trip to North Korea to rescue two imprisoned American journalists, is on the committee. So is Tom Perkins, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, billionaire, and former mega-yacht owner who was once dubbed “the Captain of Capitalism” by 60 Minutes. George Schultz and his wife, Charlotte, are members. Thomas J. Coates, a powerful San Francisco real estate investor who dumped $1 million into a 2008 California ballot initiative to eliminate rent control, also has a seat. Coates resurfaced in the November 2010 election when he poured $200,000 into local anti-progressive ballot measures and the campaigns of economically conservative supervisorial candidates.

Billionaire Warren Hellman, San Francisco socialite Dede Wilsey, and former Newsom press secretary Peter Ragone are also on ACOC. There are representatives from Wells Fargo, AT&T, and United Airlines. One ACOC member directs a real estate firm that generated $2.5 billion in revenue in 2009. Another is Martin Koffel, CEO of URS Corp., an energy industry heavyweight that made $9.2 billion in revenue in 2009. There’s Richard Kramlich, a cofounder of a Menlo Park venture capital firm that controls $11 billion in “committed capital.” And then there’s Mike Latham, CEO of iShares, which traffics in pooled investment funds worth about $509 billion, according to a BusinessWeek article.

There’s also an honorary branch of ACOC composed of elected officials including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and others. Their role is to help the Cup interface with various governmental agencies to control air space, secure areas of the bay exclusively for the event, set up international broadcasts, and bring foreign crew members and fancy sailboats into the United States without a hassle from immigration authorities.

ACOC is expected to raise $270 million in corporate sponsorships for the America’s Cup. That money will be funneled into the budget for ACEA. It’s unclear whether the $150 million ACEA is required to invest in city piers will be derived from ACOC’s fund drive.

The city also anticipates that ACOC would raise $32 million to help defray municipal costs. “However,” the Budget & Legislative Analyst report cautions, “there is no guarantee that any of the anticipated $32 million in private contributions will be raised.”

A seven-member board, chaired by sports management executive Richard Worth, will direct the ACEA, according to Newsom’s economic advisors, but the other six seats have yet to be filled. ACEA’s newly minted CEO is Craig Thompson, a native Californian who previously worked with a governing body for the Olympics and has helped coordinate major sporting events internationally. In an interview with sports blog Valencia Sailing, Thompson provided some insight on why major corporations might be inspired to donate to the cause. Basically, the Cup is the holy grail of networking events.

“It’s a very difficult economic situation we are going through, and it’s not the best time to be looking for sponsors for a major event,” Thompson acknowledged. “On the other hand, the America’s Cup is one of the very few activities … that offer access to really top-level individuals in terms of education or economic situation. The America’s Cup is a unique platform for a lot of companies that want access to those individuals that are very difficult to reach under normal circumstances. I can tell you for example that Oracle is very pleased with the marketing opportunity the America’s Cup has presented to them. They invite their best customers and are very successful in turning the America’s Cup into a platform for generating business. The same thing can be true for a lot of different companies that need access to wealthy individuals.”

But should San Francisco taxpayers really be subsidizing a networking event for the some of the business world’s richest and most powerful players?

 

TRANSFORMING THE WATERFRONT

Over the past four months, Newsom’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) has been negotiating with race organizers to hash out a Host City Agreement outlining the terms of bringing the America’s Cup to San Francisco.

The proposal will go before the Board of Supervisor’s Budget & Finance Committee on Dec. 8, and to the full board Dec. 14. A final decision on whether San Francisco will host the race is expected by Dec. 31. ACEA and ACOC will each sign onto the agreement with the City and County of San Francisco.

From the beginning, the event was envisioned as “the twin transformation,” according to OEWD — the America’s Cup would be transformed by attracting greater crowds and heightened commercial interest while San Francisco’s crumbling piers would be revitalized through ACEA’s $150 million investment in port infrastructure.

The plan paints downtown San Francisco as the “America’s Cup Village” during the sailing events, and a study produced by Beacon Economics estimates that the financial boost would come primarily from hordes of visitors flocking to the event — more than 500,000 are expected to attend. The city expects a minimum of 45 race days, including one pre regatta in 2011 and one in 2012 (or two in 2012 if the one in 2011 doesn’t happen), a challenger series in 2013, and a final match in 2013.

The transformation of the city’s waterfront would be dramatic. In addition to the rent-free leases for Piers 30-32, 50, and Seawall Lot 330, ACEA would be granted exclusive use of much of the central waterfront, water, and piers around Mission Bay, and water and land near Islais Creek during the course of the event. Under the Host City Agreement, race organizers would have use of water space spanning Piers 14 to 22 ½; Piers 28, 38, 40, 48, and 54, a portion of Seawall Lot 337, and Pier 80, where a temporary heliport would be sited.

Seawall Lot 330, a 2.5-acre parcel valued by the Port at $33 million, lies at the base of Bryant Street along the Embarcadero and has a nice unimpeded view of the bay. Piers 30-32 span 12.5 acres, and Pier 50 is 20 acres.

The Budget & Legislative Analyst’s study predicts that the ACEA could opt to build a 250-unit condo high-rise on Seawall Lot 330, deemed the most lucrative use. Under the Host City Agreement, the city would be obligated to remove Tidelands Trust provisions from Seawall Lot 330, which guarantee under state law that waterfront property is used for maritime functions or public benefit. Tweaking the law for a single deal would require approval from the State Lands Commission, but Newsom, in his new capacity as lieutenant governor, would cast one of the three votes on that body.

The combination of construction, demolition, lost rent revenue, police and transit, environmental analysis, and other event costs would hit the city with a bill totaling around $64 million, according to the Budget & Legislative Analyst study. Since city government would recoup around $22 million in revenue from hosting the Cup, the net impact would be around $42 million. That doesn’t include the potential $32 million assistance from ACOC.

At the same time, the city would stand to lose another $86.2 million by granting long-term development rights to 35 acres of Port property for 66 to 75 years without charging rent, bringing the total cost to $128 million. OEWD representatives played down that loss in potential revenue, saying past attempts to redevelop piers hadn’t been successful because none could handle the upfront investment to revitalize the crumbling piers.

The Host City Agreement has raised skepticism among Port staff and the Budget Analyst that tempered initial enthusiasm for the event. “The terms of the Host City Agreement will require significant city capital investment and will result in substantial lost revenue to the Port,” a Port study determined. Faith in that plan seems to be eroding and it may be scrapped for an alternative plan that’s cheaper for the city.

The Northern Waterfront alternative substitutes Piers 19-29 as the primary location for the event and eliminates the Mission Bay piers from the equation. Under this scenario, ACEA would invest an estimated $55 million, instead of $150 million. In exchange, it would receive long-term development rights to Piers 30-32 and Seawall 330 on “commercially reasonable terms,” according to a Port staff report.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu requested that the Port explore that second option more fully, and the Port report notes that it would reduce the strain on Port revenue. The Northern Waterfront plan would cost the Port a total of $15.8 million, instead of $43 million, the report notes. Port staff recommended in its report that both the original agreement and the alternative be forwarded to the full board for consideration.

 

PHANTOM BIDS?

Under the competition’s official protocol, Ellison, as defender of the Cup, has unilateral power to decide where the next regatta will be held. Race organizers have said it’s a toss-up between San Francisco and an unnamed port in Italy — though it’s anyone’s guess how seriously a European site is being considered by a team headquartered at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, a stone’s throw from the Golden Gate Bridge.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle article published in early September, Newsom issued a memo stating that San Francisco was competing against Spain and Italy to become the chosen venue. Valencia was said to be offering a “generous financial bid,” and a group in Rome was rumored to have offered some $645 million to bring the Cup to Italian shores, the memo noted. It was a call for the city to present Ellison with the most attractive deal possible to compel him to pick San Francisco.

Speaking at an Oct. 4 Land Use Committee hearing, OEWD director Jennifer Matz told supervisors: “San Francisco was designated the only city under consideration back in July. Now we are competing against the prime minister of Italy and the king of Spain.”

However, the veracity of those claims came into question in mid-November. Daly, incensed that the Mayor’s Office never communicated with him about the Cup despite wanting to hold it in his sixth supervisorial district, launched his own personal investigation. He fired off an e-mail to Team Alinghi, a prior America’s Cup winner, and began communicating with other European contacts until he got in touch with someone in Valencia’s municipal government.

“I got a call back from a representative who basically said I should know something,” Daly recounted. Valencia, his source said, never submitted a bid to host the Cup. At a Nov. 13 press conference, Valencia’s mayor Rita Barbera confirmed this claim, according to a Spanish press report, expressing disappointment that the city had been eliminated from consideration as a host venue. “There was no formal bidding process,” she charged. She also denied reports that any money had been offered.

Meanwhile, the Budget Analyst was unable to find any concrete evidence that other host city bids had been submitted. “We have nothing to confirm that other offers have been made,” Fred Brousseau of the Budget Analyst’s office told the Guardian.

In response to Guardian queries about whether the Mayor’s Office had evidence that Italy had indeed submitted a bid, Project Manager Kyri McClellan of the OEWD forwarded a one-page resolution from the Italian prime minister assuring race organizers that there would be tax breaks, accelerated approvals, and other perks guaranteed if the Cup came to Italy. However, an Italian journalist who looked over the resolution told the Guardian that the document didn’t appear to be a formal bid, merely a response to a query from race organizers.

Daly has his doubts that either Valencia or the Italian port were ever seriously considered. “I think they were phantom bids,” he said, “created by either Larry Ellison or the Newsom administration … to place pressure on the Board of Supervisors.”

A representative from OEWD told the Guardian that officials have no reason to doubt that the European bids, and accompanying offers of money, were real. However, the city wasn’t privy to race organizer’s discussions about possible European venues. A final decision is expected before the end of the year.

Daly hasn’t held back in voicing opposition to the America’s Cup and blasted it at an Oct. 5 Board meeting. “This tacking around Sup. Daly will not get you in calmer waters,” Daly said. “I told myself I was not going to make a yachting reference. But I will bring a white squall onto this race and onto this Cup, and I will do everything in my power starting on Jan. 8 to make sure these boats never see that water.”

 

WIND IN WHOSE SAILS?

The America’s Cup would undoubtedly bring economic benefit to the area and create work at a time when jobs are scarce. Police officers would get overtime. Restaurant servers would be scrambling to keep up with demand. Construction workers seeking temporary employment would get gigs. Hotels would rake it in. Pier 39 would be booming. However, the Budget Analyst report cautioned: “It is unlikely that any labor benefits would remain in the years after the America’s Cup event is completed.”

Certain small businesses would catch a windfall. John Caine, owner the Hi Dive bar at Pier 28, didn’t hesitate when asked about his opinion on the city hosting the Cup. “Please come fix our piers. It’s a shout-out to Larry Ellison,” he said. Caine said he supports the America’s Cup bid 100 percent, and is excited about the boost it could give his business. The Hi Dive would not be required to relocate under the proposal, he added.

At the same time, other small business would be negatively affected, particularly those among the 87 Port tenants who would be forced to relocate to make way for the America’s Cup. The Budget Analyst’s report also notes that retail businesses in the area whose services had no appeal to race-goers might suffer from reduced access to their stores, since crowding and street closures would shut out their customers.

The sailing community has rallied in support of the Cup, and Newsom has received hundreds of e-mails from yachting enthusiasts from as far away as Hawaii and Florida promising to travel to San Francisco with all their sailing friends to watch the world-famous vessels compete.

Ariane Paul, commodore of a classic wooden boat club called the Master Mariners Benevolent Association, told the Guardian that she was excited about the opportunity for the America’s Cup to showcase sailing on the bay. “In the long term, it’s a win-win,” Paul said. “It would be great to have that boost.” As for the financial terms of the deal, she remained confident, saying, “I don’t think that the city is going to let Larry Ellison walk all over them.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is often politically aligned with Daly, but not when it comes to the issue of the America’s Cup. As a kid growing up on the island of Jamestown, a tiny blue-collar community located off the coast of Rhode Island, Mirkarimi learned to sail and occasionally spent summers working as a deckhand. Every few years, the America’s Cup would come to nearby Newport, transforming the area into a bustling hub and bringing the locals into contact with famous sailors. It left an everlasting impression. When the BMW Oracle Racing Team secured the 33rd Cup off the coast of Valencia, Mirkarimi did a double-take when he saw a photograph of the winning team — his childhood friend from Rhode Island was on the crew.

Mirkarimi told the Guardian he supports bringing the Cup to San Francisco because of the economic boost the area will receive — if the Cup continues to return to San Francisco as it did for 53 years in Newport, he said, the city could look forward to a free gift in improved revenue associated with the event, and that could help quiet the tired annual debates over painful budget cuts.

At the same time, he acknowledged that the Budget Analyst report had prompted what he called healthy skepticism. “I think the onus is on the city and Cup organizers to make sure the benefits far, far outweigh the investment,” Mirkarimi said. “This effort is not just about making one of the wealthiest men in the United States that much more wealthy … That can’t be the case,” he said. “It has to be about what will the Cup do in order to be a win-win for the people of San Francisco.” Mirkarimi said he expected scrutiny of the details of the agreement at the Dec. 8 Budget and Finance Committee hearing: “Naturally, in this time of economic downturn … people want to know, what’s the outlay of cost, and what are we going to get in return?” 

The. Rent. Is. Too. Damn. High!

Andrew Lam
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The. Rent. Is. Too. Damn. High!

 

As continued reports of unprecedented, record-breaking amounts of cash from corporate real estate developers and big landlords flood the Board of Supervisor races, the damaging impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is becoming more and more clear. But even worse, Thomas J. Coates, a far-right extremist Republican real estate developer and landlord, is trying to buy the Board of Supervisors so that he can end rent control. Last week, Coates made the largest donation to supervisors races in the 150-year history of San Francisco.

Who is Coates? He spent more than $1 million on Proposition 98 in 2008 trying to repeal rent control statewide. He was the largest single contributor to that campaign, which was so extreme that even Gov. Schwarzenegger and former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson opposed it. Coates gave the maximum contribution allowed by law to George Bush and Dick Cheney’s campaign and funded GOP candidates across the country. Now he’s spending more than $200,000 to elect anti rent control San Francisco supervisors: Mark Ferrell in District 2, Theresa Sparks in District 6, Scott Wiener in District 8, and Steve Moss in District 10.

With this one donation, the stakes in this election for every San Franciscan — especially renters and progressives — became even higher. By spending his fortune here, Thomas Coates hopes to erode San Francisco’s strong rent control laws by electing supervisors who are less sympathetic to renters. Through influencing the election of the supervisors, he also influences the selection of the interim mayor (since the supervisors will choose the next mayor by a majority vote if Gavin Newsom is elected lieutenant governor), which would result in an anti rent control mayor.

To make matters worse, workers and their families are already on the defense fighting Jeff Adachi’s anti-labor ballot initiative proposal (Proposition B), which would make city workers pay huge increases in their health care coverage. Adachi is mischaracterizing his initiative as pension reform even though the bulk of the cuts will come from forcing low-wage workers to pay for their children’s health care.

Wall Street speculators crashed the stock market, causing workers’ pension funds to lose billions and wiping out retirement savings. The losses require local and state governments to spend more to keep the funds solvent. So who do Gov. Schwarzenegger, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, and Adachi blame? The victims: the workers.

Renters and city workers aren’t the only ones under attack. Newsom’s cynical sit/lie initiative (Proposition L) demonizes young homeless kids. Many of these youth are queers who ran away to San Francisco because it is a queer haven, and others are abused kids who left home because it wasn’t safe. If Prop. L passes, for 12 hours a day these kids will be criminalized if they sit or lie on the sidewalk.

All this in one of the most progressive cities in America? If we are under attack from conservatives in San Francisco on some of the most fundamental issues of our city, it’s no wonder the Tea Party is raging in the rest of the country.

Now more than ever we need labor, progressives, and renters to come together to fight back by voting Tuesday, Nov. 2. Harvey Milk once said, “Give ’em hope.” Show us that hope on Election Day by voting for progressive supervisors, rejecting Adachi’s so-called pension reform, and opposing the so-called sit/lie ordinance. Remember to vote and vote for Debra Walker in District 6, Rafael Mandelman in District 8, No on B, No on K, No on L, and Yes on J and N.

Gabriel Haaland is a local queer labor activist.

 

 

Cash not care

Andrew Lam
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5
Cash not care

sarah@sfbg.com

With the general election just days away, campaign disclosure reports show that downtown interests are spending huge amounts of money to create a more conservative San Francisco Board of Supervisors and to pass Proposition B, Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s effort to make city workers pay more for their pensions and health insurance.

Much of the spending is coming from sources hostile to programs designed to protect tenants in the city, including rent control and limits on the conversion on rental housing units to condominiums. An ideological flip of the board, which currently has a progressive majority, could also have big implications on who becomes the next mayor if Gavin Newsom wins his race for lieutenant governor.

At press time, downtown groups were far outspending their progressive counterparts through a series of independent expenditure committees, most of which are controlled by notorious local campaign attorney Jim Sutton (see “The political puppeteer,” 2/4/04) in support of supervisorial candidates Mark Farrell in District 2, Theresa Sparks in District 6, Scott Wiener in District 8, and Steve Moss in District 10.

Prop. B has also been a big recipient of downtown’s cash, although labor groups have pushed back strongly with their own spending to try to kill the measure, which is their main target in this election.

But the biggest spender in this election appears to be Thomas J. Coates, 56, a major investor in apartments and mobile homes and a demonstrated enemy of rent control. He alarmed progressive groups by giving at least $250,000 to groups that support Farrell, Sparks, Wiener, Moss, and Prop. G, legislation that Sup. Sean Elsbernd placed on the ballot to cut transit operator wages and change Muni work rules.

Although Coates declines to identify with a political party on his voter registration, he donated $2,000 to President George W. Bush in 2004. More significantly, he was the biggest individual donor in California’s November 2008 election, when he contributed $1 million to Prop. 98, which sought to repeal rent control in California and limit the government’s right to acquire private property by eminent domain.

Coates, who is also a yachting enthusiast and sits on San Francisco’s America’s Cup Organizing Committee (ACOC), donated $100,000 on Oct. 20 for Farrell, $45,000 for Sparks, $45,000 for Moss, and $10,000 for Wiener through third-party independent expenditure committees such as the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth.

The group has already received thousands of dollars in soft money from the San Francisco Police Officer’s Association, the Building Operators and Managers Association, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers, which supports a high-end hospital and housing complex on Cathedral Hill.

Those downtown groups have spent close to $200,000 on English and Chinese language mailers and robo calls in support of Sparks, Wiener, and Moss in hopes of securing a right-wing shift on the board.

Progressive groups including California Nurses Association, the San Francisco Tenants Union, and the SF Labor Council have tried to fight back in the supervisorial races. While downtown groups spent more than $100,000 promoting Sparks in D6, labor and progressive groups spent $13,000 opposing Sparks and $72,000 supporting progressive D6 candidate Debra Walker.

In D8, progressive groups that include teachers, nurses, and transit riders have outspent the downtown crowd, plunking down $40,000 to oppose Wiener and $90,000 to support progressive candidate Rafael Mandelman. So far, downtown groups have spent about $100,000 to support Wiener.

But in D10, the district with the biggest concentration of low-income families and communities of color, downtown interests spent $52,000 supporting Moss and $5,000 on Lynette Sweet while the Tenants Union was only able to summon $4,000 against Moss. The SF Building and Construction Trades Council spent $4,000 on Malia Cohen.

But that’s small potatoes compared to what downtown’s heavy-hitters are spending. The so-called Coalition for Sensible Government, which got a $100,000 donation from the San Francisco Association of Realtors, has already collectively spent $96,000 in support of Sparks, Wiener, Moss, Sweet, Rebecca Prozan in D8, Prop. G and Prop. L (sit-lie) and to oppose Prop. M (the progressive plan for police foot patrols) and Prop. N (a transfer tax on properties worth more than $5 million).

The Coalition for Responsible Growth, founded by Anthony Guilfoyle, the father of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle (who now works as a Fox News personality), has received $85,000 from the Committee on Jobs, $60,000 from the Realtors, and $35,000 from SF Forward. It has focused on spending in support of Prop. G and producing a voter guide for Plan C, the conservative group that supports Sparks, Wiener, Sweet, and Moss

Coates’ donations raise questions about his preferred slate’s views on tenant and landlord rights. A principal in Jackson Square Properties, which specializes in apartments and mobile homes, Coates is the founding partner of Arroya & Coates, a commercial real estate firm whose clients include Walgreens, Circuit City, and J.P. Morgan Investment Management. In 2008, when he backed Prop. 98, Coates told the San Francisco Chronicle that rent control “doesn’t work.”

Ted Gullicksen, director of the SF Tenants Union (SFTU), which has collectively spent $30,000 opposing Sparks, Wiener, and Moss, is disturbed that Coates spent so much in support of this trio.

“Coates was the main funder of Prop. 98,” Gullicksen explained. “His property is in Southern California. He’s pumping a lot of money into supervisors. And he clearly has an agenda that we fear Moss, Sparks, and Wiener share — which is to make the existence of rent control an issue they will take up in the future if elected to the board.”

That threat got progressive and labor groups to organize an Oct. 26 protest outside Coates’ San Francisco law office, with invitations to the event warning, “Be there or be evicted!”

Sparks, Moss, and Wiener all claim to support rent control, despite their support by someone who seeks to abolish it. “I answered such on my questionnaire to the SFTU, which chose to ignore it,” Sparks told the Guardian via text message. “In addition, I’ve been put out of apartments twice in SF, once due to the Ellis Act. They ignore that fact as well.”

Records show that in May 2009, Moss — who bought a rent-controlled apartment building near Dolores Park in D8 for $1.6 million and he lived there from the end of 2007 to the 2010, when he decided to run for office in D10 — served a “notice to quit or cure” on a tenant who complained about the noise from Moss’ apartment. Ultimately, Moss settled without actually evicting his tenant.

“I read about Coats’ [sic] contribution in Bay Citizen,” Moss wrote in an e-mail to the Guardian. “This donation was made to an independent expenditure committee over which I have no control and almost no knowledge. I have stated throughout the campaign, and directly to the Tenants Union, that I believe current rent control policy should remain unmolested.”

But Moss is with downtown on other key issues. He supports Newsom’s sit-lie legislation and the rabidly anti-tenant Small Property Owners Association, whose endorsement he previously called a “mistake.”

Yet Moss, who sold a condo on Potrero Hill in 2007 for the same price he paid for the entire building in 2001, seems to voice more sympathy for property owners than renters, who make up about two-thirds of city residents. He told us, “Landlords feel that they are responsible for maintaining costly older buildings and that they are not provided with ways to upgrade their units in ways that share costs with tenants.”

Another realm where downtown seems to be trying to flip the Board of Supervisors on a significant agenda item is on health care, particularly the California Pacific Medical Center proposal to build a high-end hospital and housing project on Cathedral Hill in exchange for rebuilding St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission.

The project has divided local labor unions. UHW supports the project and a slate of candidates that its parent union, Service Employees International Union, is opposing through SEIU Local 1021, which is supporting more progressive candidates. The California Nurses Association also opposes the project and candidates such as Wiener who back it.

“A recent mailer by CNA falsely says that CPMC is closing St. Luke’s and Davies,” CPMC CEO Warren Browner recently complained in a letter to the Board of Supervisors. “We are not. We are committed to building a state-of-the-art, high-quality replacement hospital at St. Luke’s and continuing to upgrade Davies.”

But the CPMC rebuild is contingent on the board approving the Cathedral Hill project. So the CNA mailer focused on what could happen if the city rejects the CPMC project: “We could lose two San Francisco hospitals if Scott Wiener is elected supervisor.”

SEIU-UHW’s alliance with downtown groups and its use of member dues to attack progressive candidates places it at odds with SEIU Local 1021 and the SF Labor Council, which has endorsed Janet Reilly in D2, Walker in D6, Mandelman in D8, and Cohen (first choice) and Chris Jackson (second choice) in D10.

“We’re really disappointed that there are labor organizations that feel they have to team up with Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which is against health care [it challenged the city’s Healthy San Francisco program all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court], and with CPMC, which is working to keep nurses from joining a union,” Labor Council Director Tim Paulson said. “This alliance does not reflect what the San Francisco labor movement is about.”

Paulson said that the Labor Council values “sharing the wealth … So we don’t want Measure B [Jeff Adachi’s pension reform] or K [Newsom’s hotel tax loophole closure, which has a poison pill that would kill Prop. J, the hotel tax increase pushed by labor] or L [Newsom’s sit-lie legislation],” Paulson said.

CPMC’s plan is headed to the board in the next couple months, although Sup. David Campos is proposing that the city create a health services master plan that would determine what city residents actually need. Hospital projects would then be considered based on that health needs assessment, rather than making it simply a land use decision as it is now.

Moss told the Guardian that UHW endorsed him because of his positions on politicians and unions. “I agreed that politicians should get not involved in union politics,” Moss said. “The United Healthcare Workers seem to be a worthy group,” he added. “All they said was that they wanted to make sure that they had access.”

But CNA member Eileen Prendiville, who has been a registered nurse for 33 years, says she was horrified to see UHW members recently oppose Campos’ healthcare legislation. “I was shocked that they were siding with management,” she said.

Prendiville believes UHW is obliged to support CPMC’s Cathedral Hill plan, which is why it is meddling in local politics. In his letter to the board, Browner noted that his company and its parent company, Sutter Health, can’t legally do so directly. “The fact is that CPMC and Sutter Health are 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, nonpartisan organizations, and we neither endorse nor contribute to candidates,” Browner wrote.

“When UHW settled its contract with its members [as part of its fight with the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers], they had to publicly lobby for Cathedral Hill,” Prendiville claimed.

SEIU 1021 member Ed Kinchley, who works in the emergency room at SF General Hospital, is also furious that UHW is pouring money into downtown’s candidates and measures. “UHW isn’t participating in the Labor Council, it’s doing its own thing,” he said.

Kinchley said UHW, which is currently in trusteeship after a power struggle with its former elected leaders, is being controlled by SEIU’s national leaders, not its local membership, which explains why it’s aligned with downtown groups that have long been the enemy of labor.

“Sutter wants a monopoly on private healthcare and people like Rafael Mandelman and Debra Walker have been strong supporters of public healthcare,” Kinchley said. “I want someone who can straight-up say, here’s what’s important for families in San Francisco, especially something as important as healthcare. But it sounds like UHW is teaming up with the Chamber and supporting people who are not progressive.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Moss: the big duck

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68
Steve Moss: the big duck

WORKING DOGGEDLY TO PIN DOWN THE EDITOR OF THE POTRERO VIEW WHO IS ALSO A CANDIDATE FOR SUPERVISOR FROM DISTRICT 10

We’ve been trying to pin Steve Moss down on some key questions.  Over the weekend, I sent him some questions by email.  He responded, but ducked or ignored the real points and never gave us any straight answers.

Here’s our exchange, my questions and his answers — unedited,  followed by some comments from me as we doggedly try to make sense of where Steve Moss really stands on key issues in the district.

 

Dear Steve,

In your October, pre-election issue of the Potrero View, your signed column
compares the Guardian with Fox News and states that we are both  “advocacy groups disguised as news purveyors” who “whip mostly anonymous commentators on their websites to call political candidates ‘weasle, lying, doucebags’ and worse.” You also state that “these same outlets barely take the time to edit–much less fact check–their stories.”

As you know, our reporter Sarah Phelan has done factual reporting on you and your campaign (http://www.sfbg.com/2010/09/14/five-things-you-should-know-about-steve-moss) and she and I have both checked with you to respond to our points before publication.  We will continue our policy by submitting these email questions to you in advance of publication. Our deadline is 5 p.m. on Monday

l. What specific facts do you find inaccurate in our previous reporting on you and your campaign? (You mixed up a comment on a blog with Phelan’s actual story and reporting. Was this intentional?)

2. How much money have you and your various profit and nonprofit enterprises accepted from PG&E during this past year?

How much money have you accepted in total from PG&E during your many years of operating  your profit and nonprofit enterprises? Why did you change the pro-public power View of Ruth Passen to a PG&E-friendly View under your ownership?  (For example, Passen always supported public power but you as the new owner  refused to support the last public power initiative and said it was “too contentious.”)

3. Campaign finance records show that Thomas Coates, a Republican who spent $l million trying to overturn rent control in California in 2008, has just dumped
$45,000 into the so-called Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth in support of your candidacy.  Public records also show that you served a cure or quit notice
to a tenant in your rent-controlled building in District 8. Would you comment on this? And would you state whether you support or oppose rent control?

4.  On the front page of the October View, your lead story reported on the troubles of the Neighborhood House under the headline, “NABE Reeling Under City Budget Cuts.” Your story noted that the Nabe had lost “nearly $400,000 in funding from the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families” and that individual donations had dropped by 75 per cent. The result, your story noted, was that the NABE “has been forced to eliminate teen-focused programming, reduce elementary school offerings by 25 per cent, lay-off staff and impose pay cuts.”

Each year, the NABE sponsors the Potrero Hill festival as a benefit to raise much-needed funds. This year the benefit was more critical than ever to reduce its  crippling deficit. Just as the View was going to press earlier this month,  I got a call at the Guardian from a representative of the festival with a startling bit of information. I was told that you, as the owner and editor-publisher of the View, and a candidate for supervisor from our district, were  refusing to run a full page ad for the festival, a key piece of the NABE’s promotion on the hill,if the ad contained the logo of the Guardian as a festival sponsor. 

The representative was concerned that, if you wouldn’t run the NABE ad, that the Guardian as a media sponsor wouldn’t run a NABE ad in the Guardian.
(I told him not to worry, do what he had to do to get the ad in the View, and that the Guardian would run the ad and double up on its promotion for the festival. The Guardian logo did not appear on the Nabe ad in the View but did appear on all other NABE promotions.)

Why did you make this threat to the NABE and its festival benefit? Were you serious?

5. You said in your endorsement interview at the Guardian that, if you were elected supervisor, you would give up the View. Do you still plan to do that, if elected? If so, how would you do that?

 
 Steve Moss responds:

1.  The entire way you’ve covered the District 10 election has been slanted towards the candidate you prefer, and against the candidates you dislike.  From this perspective the Guardian is not serving the role of a newspaper, but rather is acting as an independent expenditure committee on behalf of its chosen candidates and causes.  I’d be happy to select a panel of five independent journalists — you pick two, I’ll pick two, and the four can pick one — to render an opinion about how you’ve run the Guardian during this election cycle, and how I’ve run the View.

2.  In 2010 I believe SF Power has received less than $25,000 in payments related to the small business demand-response program it operates, as sanctioned by the California Public Utility Commission.  I’ve already provided you and your reporter with multiple responses to your requests about SF Power’s successfull advocacy related to CPUC orders requiring PG&E to fund programs focusing on working families and small businesses, all of which, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, are a matter of public record.

The View has published several articles about community-based energy systems, and effective ways to achieve local control over the power grid, during my tenure as publisher. They are available on our website.

3.  I read about Coats’ contribution in Bay Citizen.  As you know, this donation was made to an independent expenditure committee over which I have no control and almost no knowledge.  I have stated throughout the campaign, and directly to the Tenants Union, that I believe current rent control policy should remain unmolested.

4.  I made no threat to the NABE.  In fact, the festival was featured on the front page of the November issue, with a story inside, and a full page ad.

5.  Yes.  A new editor will be found to run the View if I’m elected to office.

 

Okay, You aren’t responsive.   Let me try again, point by point:

l. I am not running for office. You are.  Please tell me where we are factually wrong in any of our reporting on you and your campaign.

As you know, we have contacted you in advance of publication for comment. And you have written us twice with generalities but no specifics on inaccurate reporting.

2. You defend your PG&E payments on the basis that it’s actually money from the California Public Utilities Commission that PG&E is required by law to put up for energy efficiency projects. However, Loretta Lynch, former president of the CPUC, told me that PG&E decides who gets the money and that fund recipients that “cross PG&E” are in danger of getting their funds cut off.

In other words, if  you  want to continue to fund your organization with upwards of more than $l million over three years, you must avoid angering the utility.  This may explain why the Potrero View under your ownership has switched from its historic position supporting public power under former owner Ruth Passen to going easy on PG&E and ducking a position on the most recent public power initiative (Proposition H).

The background: Your  non profit collected  $1,290,000 from the CPUC for energy efficiency projects over the past three years, according to SF Power’s annual revenues and estimated budgets from 2008 to 2010 as provided on its website.

The breakdown: $500,000 in 2008, $440,000 in 2009, $350,000 in 2010.

You  also got $150,000 from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in 2008 and $125,000 in 2009.  Your  non profit also got $50,000 chunks each year from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman fund, where his wife Debbie Findling works.   The Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund kicked in $5,000 in 2008 and 2009.  The  Potrero View contributed $5,000 in 2008, $4,500 in 2009, and $5,000 in 2010.  A footnote stated that SF Power “is also informally negotiating with the California Air Resources Board, San Francisco’s Office of the Mayor, Mirant Corporation, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company, among others, for project funding support.”  Did you get any additional money from Mirant, PG&E,  the Mayor, or anybody else? Are you still negotiating? If not, when did you stop?

Lynch explained that “all energy efficiency programs in California are funded by ratepayer dollars that are collected by the utilities as part of each ratepayer’s utility bill.  Thus, California ratepayers, big and small, pay for all energy efficiency programs and each and every program is funded by ratepayers, not utilities.”

She said that the CPUC “sets broad parameters for each utility concerning the amount of overall energy efficiency savings to be achieved and in what customer classes (residential, small business, large business,etc.). But the utilities choose the program providers. The CPUC simply reviews the overall package provided by the utilities to check to see whether the energy efficiency savings targets are met.”

Thus, PG&E each year decides  the amount of money going to SF Community Power. Lynch noted that  some non profit people told her, when she was a commissioner, that “if you crossed PG&E, they would stop the funding.”
 
Lynch mentioned a meeting with you  that showed  PG&E’s influence on you, your non profit and the View. .
She said that, shortly after she was termed out as a CPUC  commissioner in 2009, you  asked her to meet with  him at Farleys coffee shop and asked her to serve on the board of his nonprofit. “I thanked him and said that he should consider my relationship with PG&E before making that offer if he was funded through PG&E, as PG&E and I have a very contentious relationship,  and that they would not be happy if I were on the board. He thanked me for telling him and agreed that I should not serve on the board.”  Lynch lives on Potrero Hill.

3. I followed up my rent control question:  “If state law were amended to allow it, would you support extending rent control to vacant apartments?”  No answer.

4. I got a call from Keith Goldstein, president of the Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses and co-chair of the festival. He had gotten an email from you  that read: “Please have the festival’s pr agent remove the Guardian’s logo from any complimentary ad the View is providing the festival in this month’s paper.” Why did you make  such an unprofessional move?   Would you have backed out of sponsoring this event if the Guardian logo had remained? Is that how you would behave as a supervisor?

5. If elected, do you plan to sell the View?  Will you continue to operate your non profit and take chunks of money from PG&E? If elected, would your income from PG&E disquality you from voting on PG&E and energy issues? At what point would you sever your relations, if at all,  with your non profit and PG&E?

6. If  you lose, will you (as your wife suggested in an email to friends) move back to your house on Liberty St in Distict 8?

We anxiously  await your response. B3

Republican who wants to overturn rent control pumps $200,000 into district elections

Mary Magee
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25
Republican who wants to overturn rent control pumps $200,000 into district elections

Thomas J, Coates, a big time investor in apartments and mobile homes, has dropped a total of $225,000 into five independent expenditure committees that are trying to push conservative-friendly candidates and measures over the victory line this fall.

Coates, a 56-year-old Republican (he donated $2,000 to George Bush in the 2004 presidential election) and yacht racing enthusiast, was the biggest single spender in the November 2008 election, when he contributed nearly $1 million to Prop. 98, a statewide measure that sought to repeal rent control in California and limit government’s right to seize private property by eminent domain.

And with only 11 days until the election, Coates has given local Republican war chests an enormous last-minute boost: He plunked $100,000 into Common Sense Voters, a committee in support of Mark Farrell in D2. He plunked $10,000 into the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth’s committee in support of Scott Wiener in D8. He plunked $45,000 into the Alliance’s committee in support of Theresa Sparks in D6. He dropped $45,000 into the Alliance’s committee in support of Steve Moss in D10. And he dropped another $25,000 into San Franciscans for a Better Muni, a committee in support of Measure G, which attempts to reform Muni by focusing on transit operator wages.

As the Guardian previously reported, this Alliance has received thousands from the SF Police Officer’s Association, the Building Operators and Managers Association, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers, which supports a mega-hospital on Cathedral Hill.

But Coates’ donation raises questions about his choices’ commitment to rent control. As Coates told the Chronicle in an interview in 2008, “There is a reason why 35 of 50 states expressly prohibit rent control by law – and the reason is it doesn’t work.”

Coates, who is a principal in Jackson Square Properties, which specializes in apartments and mobile homes, is also the founding partner of Arroya & Coates, a commercial real estate brokerage and investment firm whose clients include Walgreens, Circuit City, and J.P. Morgan Investment Management. And as campaign disclosures show, he’s dumped a large part of his money into the same conservative alliance that has already collectively spent almost $170,000 on Moss, Sparks and Wiener.

So far, labor has countered the Republican money by spending $70,000 in support of Debra Walker in D6 and $90,000 on Mandelman in D8, and the SF Tenants Union has spent a total of $20,000 on mailers opposing Moss, Sparks and Wiener. But collectively the downtown money, which is also being funnelled into several other independent expenditure committees, continues to massively outweigh the progressive bucks.

Coates’ phone line continues to register a “busy” signal, making it impossible to leave him a message, but I’d be happy to include his comments here, if and when I talk to him.

But Gullicksen said he was disturbed by Coates’ heavy spending on the supervisors’ races.

“Coates is the main funder of Prop. 98, his property is in Southern California, he’s pumping a lot of money into supervisors and he clearly has an agenda that we fear Moss, Sparks and Wiener share, which is to make the existence of rent control an issue the Board will take up, if those supervisors are elected.”

It will be interesting to see if Moss, Sparks and Wiener are prepared to pledge that they have no intention to attack rent control….so, stay tuned.

Meanwhile, labor is organizing a protest outside Coates office at 500 Washington Street at 5 p.m on Tuesday, Oct. 26.

“Be there or be evicted!” labor warned.

 

The soul of the city

Andrew Lam
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23
The soul of the city

tredmond@sfbg.com

44th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL We all arrived in San Francisco broke: Paulo and me in the ’73 Capri, crawling over Donner Pass with a blown valve and three cylinders firing; Tracy and Craig in the back of a VW van, behind in the payments and on the run from the repo men; Tom and Sharon hitching across the Southwest after Tom, who could bullshit with the best, talked himself out a jail cell in New Orleans. Moak showed up in a rusty Datsun with the wheels falling off. Jane and Danny came on the old hippie bus, the Green Tortoise, $69 across the country.

But we all had a friend who knew a friend where you could crash for a little while. And in the early 1980s you got food stamps the first day and it only took a couple of weeks to get a job waiting tables or canvassing or selling trinkets on the Wharf. And once you’d scraped together a couple hundred dollars — maybe two weeks’ work — you could get a place to live. My first room in a flat in the Western Addition was $120 a month.

We did art and politics and writing and music. After a while, some of us went to law school, some of us became journalists, some of us went into government and education. A few of us fled, and Paulo died in the plague (dammit). But in the end, a lot of us were — and are — San Franciscans, part of a city that welcomed us and gave us a chance.

It was a very different time to be young in San Francisco.

I’m not here to get all nostalgic, really I’m not. There were serious problems in 1982 — raging gentrification was creating clashes in the Mission and the Haight and south of Market that were more violent than anything going on today. And frankly, broke as we were, most of my friends were from middle class homes and were college educated and had a leg up. We weren’t going to starve; we didn’t have to make really ugly choices to eat.

Most of the stories in this special anniversary issue are about marginalized youth — young people trying to survive and make their way against all odds in an increasingly hostile city and a bitter, harsh economy.

But there’s an important difference about San Francisco today, something earlier generations of immigrants didn’t face. The cost of housing, always high, has so outstripped the entry-level and nonprofit wage scale that it’s almost impossible for young people to survive in this town — much less have the time to add to its artistic and creative culture.

I met the 21-year-old daughter of a college friend the other day. She’s as idealistic as we all were. She wants to move to San Francisco for the same reasons we did and you did — except maybe she won’t. Because she felt as if she had to come visit first, to use her dad’s network, see if she could line up a job and figure out if her likely earnings would cover the cost of living. When I mentioned that I’d just up and left the East Coast and headed west, planning to figure it out when I got here, she gave me a look that was part amazement and part sadness. You just can’t do that anymore.

The odds are pretty good that San Francisco won’t get her — her talent and energy will go somewhere else, somewhere that’s not so harsh on young people. I wondered, as I do every once in a while when I’m feeling halfway between an angry political writer and an old curmudgeon: would I come to San Francisco today?

Would Harvey Milk? Would Jello Biafra? Would Dave Eggers? Would you?

If you were born here, would you stay?

Are we squandering this city’s greatest resource — its ability to attract and retain creative people?

The two people who started the Bay Guardian 44 years ago were young arrivals from the Midwest. Bruce Brugmann looked around the city room at the Milwaukee Journal, where he worked as a reporter, and realized there wasn’t any job he wanted there in 10 years. With two young kids and a dream of starting a weekly newspaper in one of the world’s most exciting cities, Bruce and his wife, Jean Dibble, settled in a $130-a-month flat. The Guardian’s first office was a desk in the printers shop. When they paper could finally afford its own space, Bruce and Jean moved the staff into a $60-a-month four-room place on Ninth and Bryant streets.

From the start, the paper was a “preservationist” publication — both in terms of environmental issues like saving the bay and in the larger political sense. The San Francisco Bay Guardian was out to save San Francisco.

The city was under assault — by the developers who were making fast money tossing high-rises into downtown; the speculators making fast money flipping property, ducking taxes, and driving up rents; the unscrupulous landlords who were letting their buildings fall apart while they charged ever higher rent. For the Guardian, fighting this urbicide meant protecting San Francisco values, preserving the best of the city from what Bruce liked to call “the radicals at the Chamber of Commerce.”

For the Guardian, progress wasn’t measured in the number of new buildings constructed, but in the ability of the city to remain a place where artists and writers and community organizers and hell-raisers — and the young people who were always bringing new life to the city — could survive. We supported rent control, and growth limits, and affordable housing policies, and limits on condo conversions, and minimum-wage and sanctuary city laws — and a long list of other things that together amounted to a progressive agenda.

And in 2010, the assault on the young, the poor, the nonconformists, the immigrants, is still on, at full force. The mayor and his allies are pushing a ballot measure that would make it illegal just to sit on the sidewalk. He’s also turning the local juvenile authorities into immigration cops, breaking up families in the process. He’s cut funding for youth services, and wants to make it easier for speculators to evict tenants, take affordable rental housing (especially the flats that young people share to save money) off the market, and create high-priced condos. Virtually all of the new housing he’s pushing is for rich people. He’s shutting down parties and arresting DJs and, in effect, declaring a War on Fun.

What he’s doing — and what the downtown forces want — is the transformation of San Francisco from a welcoming city where the weird is the normal, where the young and the crazy and the brilliant and the broke can be part of (or even drivers of) the culture, to one where profit and property values are all that matter. And that’s a recipe for urban doom.

Richard Florida’s 2004 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class shook up political thinking by pointing out that cities thrive with iconoclasts, not organization people. Everyone likes to talk about that now, even Mayor Gavin Newsom. But the missing piece, from a policy perspective, is that the creative class — particularly the young people who are going to be the next generation of the creative class — needs space to grow. And that means the most important thing a creative city can do is nurture the very people Newsom and his allies want to drive away.

If Prop. L, the “sit-lie” law, passes, if the rental flats in the Mission that have been home to several generations of young artists, writers, musicians and future civic leaders vanish in the name of condo conversions, if 85 percent of all the new housing in San Francisco is affordable only to millionaires, if the money that helps foster kids and runaways and at-risk youth dries up because this rich city won’t raise taxes, if nightlife becomes an annoyance to be stifled…then we’re in danger of losing San Francisco.

Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Rebecca Bowe’s look at ageing out of the foster care system

Get a clue, Randy Shaw

Zelda Bronstein
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Get a clue, Randy Shaw

I read BeyondChron every day, and Randy Shaw, who operates the site, and Paul Hogarth, his managing editor, often have interesting commentary. But I’m constantly annoyed by people who run what by any stretch is a journalistic operation, but don’t follow the basic rules of (even alternative, activist) journalism: When you’re going to say something nasty about somebody, you call that person for comment.


Randy never called me, or Steve Jones, or Bruce Brugmann, before he launched an attack on the Guardian as part of a political machine. If he had — or if he’d done any reporting work and called around town — he might have learned something.


Randy’s argument is that the “machine” — including the Bay Guardian — is trying to block Jane Kim’s election as D6 supervisor. Let’s examine that for a minute.


There are plenty of people in San Francisco who would love to have a political machine. But it’s just not happening. The very fact that Jane Kim has the support of so many progressives — including the Board president, David Chiu, and Supervisors Eric Mar and John Avalos (all part of what Shaw calls the “machine”) suggests that nobody has to clout — not even me — to tell a candidate whether she can run for office, to control (or cut off) campaign contributions, or to wire an election.


In the days when Willie Brown ran San Francisco, the machine really did keep people from running for office. It really did close off avenues to political advancement. And if the machine was against you, it was really hard to raise money. If Brown were still the boss, and he didn’t want Kim to run, she would have been frozen out of much of the support and money she has today. Instead, Brown was at her campaign kickoff — and nobody’s manged to intimidate her many supporters and campaign contributors.


And guess what? The Guardian — the axis of the machine evil trying to freeze out Kim — endorsed her as our second choice.


I stand by what I said months ago — there’s nobody in San Francisco today — and no cadre or group — with the clout to operate as a political machine.


Nobody can line up six automatic votes on the Board of Supervisors. Even the progressives on the Democratic County Central Committee can’t always seem to get it together (note that Aaron Peskin, the chair and supposed machine honco, supported Tony Kelly for supervisor, and the DCCC didn’t put Kelly on its slate).


Right now, power in this city is fairly diffuse. That’s both a good and a bad thing. Good because machines are exclusionary, bad because it means the progressives can’t always function on a level that gets the right candidates elected and the right legislation through. Good because the left in this city is aggressively, almost happily disorganized and politically diverse, full of characters, voices, interest groups, candidates and elected officials who don’t always agree with each other and take orders from nobody. Bad because when we’re disorganized, we tend to lose.


Jane Kim didn’t get the DCCC endorsement. Nobody talked to me about that; I’m not on the panel and none of the members called to ask my advice. I would have said what the Guardian said in our endorsement package: There are exactly two progressive candidates who are qualified to be the next D6 supervisor, and their names are Debra Walker and Jane Kim. I still don’t understand why Kim entered the race against an established candidate with whom she has no substantial policy disagreements; I think that, before Kim moved to the district and entered the race, Walker was the clear consensus candidate of progressives, and as a matter of strategy, since Kim and Walker are both on the same side on the key issues, it might have made more sense for the left to unite behind one candidate.


But that’s not the issue anymore; Kim had every right to run, and now any cogent, honest ranked-choice voting strategy includes both her and Walker.


That statement alone makes clear that the Guardian’s not exactly in synch with the DCCC or any of Shaw’s other “machine” operations. The DCCC decided that the top candidate in D10 should be DeWitt Lacy, and left Tony Kelly off the slate entirely. We endorsed Tony Kelly as our first choice. The labor activists on the DCCC (and in the “machine”) are dead set against Margaret Brodkin winning a seat on the Board of Education; we endorsed her.


I would have explained our positions to Randy Shaw if he’d called or emailed me; I’m really easy to reach. And slapping people around without talking to them is bad journalism and bad progressive politics. Randy and I have disagreements, but I don’t consider him the enemy; we’re both part of a larger progressive community, and while I love (and thrive on) disputes in that community, we ought to be civil about it.


(I always contact Randy before I write about him. I did that yesterday, and asked him a series of questions, including why he never called me for comment. His non-response: “I write 3-4 articles a week and have published three books. You are free to quote from anything I have written without asking me about it.”)


Herb Caen used to say (somewhat in jest) that if you “check an item, you lose it.” In other words, once you start talking to everyone involved in an issue, you sometimes find out that the story isn’t at all the way you heard it.


That’s what should have happened with Shaw’s completely inaccurate claim about Steve Jones.


BeyondChron says that Jones was trying to get Kim to challenge Carmen Chu in D4 because they’re both Asian-American, ” in effect saying that as an Asian-American Jane should run among ‘her people,’ implying that demographics prevailed over issues and political stands.”


I talked to Steve about it; he did, indeed, talk to Jane Kim when Kim was shopping around for a district to run in. What he told her — and would have told Randy Shaw — was that it would be great for Kim, a school board member with citywide name recognition, to knock off Carmen Chu and expand the progressive majority rather than going after a strong progressive candidate in a solidly progressive seat. Race had nothing to do with it.


In fact, just about everything we’ve written about Kim comes down to the same argument: Sometimes, you have to think about the larger progressive movement, not just about yourself.


I sometimes wish the all the people who say the Bay Guardian is part of a powerful Peskin Machine were right: I’d love to pass a city income tax, hit the wealthy up for about half a billion dollars a year, eliminate the budget deficit without cutting services, municipalize PG&E (and have municipal cable TV and broadband), ban cars on a lot of streets, create 25,000 units of affordable housing … I’ve got a great agenda. And the Guardian’s so powerful that none of it ever happens.


Randy Shaw and I were both around for the tail end of the Burton Machine, and I think he gives the brothers Phil and John Burton too much credit. They were great on national issues, progressive champions in Congress. But they weren’t progressive leaders on local issues.


The Burton Machine was nowhere on the fights against overdevelopment and downtown power. Phil Burton rarely used his clout to support progressive causes and candidates at home. The machine got Harvey Milk fired from a commission appointment when he announced he was going to run for state Assembly against Art Agnos. The machine came together to make sure that Nancy Pelosi, an unknown who had never held office, got elected to Congress instead of Harry Britt, the most progressive elected official in the city at the time. The machine never helped out on public power, the numerous anti-highrise initiatives, rent control, or much of anything else that challenged the real estate interests like Walter Shorenstein, who gave vast sums of money to the Democratic Party.


Yes, George Moscone, a Burton ally, supported district elections, but once he got elected he stopped challenging downtown power.


And, of course, when Willie Brown emerged as heir to the machine throne, he was a disaster for progressives. He also at one point controlled an unshakable majority on the Board of Supervisors; he could call up votes whenever he needed.


The progressives in San Francisco today share an ideology on local issues — tough local issues that involve powerful economic forces at home.


And honestly, Randy: It’s not all about Jane Kim.


 

Endorsements 2010: San Francisco candidates

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Endorsements 2010: San Francisco candidates

SUPERVISOR, DISTRICT 2


JANET REILLY


Frankly, we were a little surprised by the Janet Reilly who came in to give us her pitch as a District 2 supervisorial candidate. The last time we met with her, she was a strong progressive running for state Assembly as an advocate of single-payer health care. She was challenging Fiona Ma from the left, and easily won our endorsement.


Now she’s become a fiscal conservative — somewhat more in synch with her district, perhaps, but not an encouraging sign. Reilly seems to realize that there’s a $500 million budget deficit looming, but she won’t support any of the tax measures on the ballot. She’s against the hotel tax. She’s against the real estate transfer tax on high-end properties. She’s against the local car tax. She opposed Sup. David Chiu’s business tax plan that would have shifted the burden from small to larger businesses (even though it was clear from our interview that she didn’t understand it).


She talked about merging some of the nonprofits that get city money, about consolidating departments, and better management — solutions that might stem a tiny fraction of the red ink. But she wouldn’t even admit that the limited tax burden on the very rich was part of San Francisco’s budget problem.


Her main proposal for creating jobs is more tax credits for biotech, life sciences, and digital media and more public-private partnerships.


It’s too bad, because Reilly’s smart, and she’s far, far better than Mark Farrell, the candidate that the current incumbent, Michela Alioto-Pier, is backing. We wish she’d be realistic about the fiscal nightmare she would inherit as a supervisor.


On the positive side, she’s a strong supporter of public power and she has good connections to the progressive community. Unlike Alioto-Pier, she’d be accessible, open-minded, and willing to work with the progressive majority on the board. That would be a dramatic change, so we’ll give her the nod.


We were also impressed with Abraham Simmons, a federal prosecutor who has spent time researching city finance on the Civil Grand Jury. But he supports sit-lie, Prop. B and Prop. S, and opposes most new tax proposals and needs more political seasoning.


 


DISTRICT 4


NO ENDORSEMENT


We’ve always wanted to like Carmen Chu. She’s friendly, personable, intelligent, and well-spoken. But on the issues, she’s just awful. Indeed, we can’t think of a single significant vote on which she’s been anything but a call-up loyalist for Mayor Newsom. She even opposed the public power measure, Prop. H, that had the support of just about everyone in town except hardcore PG&E allies.


She’s running unopposed, and will be reelected. But we can’t endorse her.


 


DISTRICT 6


1. DEBRA WALKER


2. JANE KIM


3. GLENDON “ANNA CONDA” HYDE


CORRECTION: In our original version of this endorsement, we said that Jim Meko supports the sit-lie ordinance. That was an error, and it’s corrected below.


A year ago, this race was artist and activist Debra Walker’s to lose. Most of the progressive community was united behind her candidacy; she’d been working on district issues for a couple of decades, fighting the loft developers during the dot-com boom years and serving on the Building Inspection Commission. Then School Board member Jane Kim decided to enter the race, leaving the left divided, splitting resources that might have gone to other critical district races — and potentially helping to put the most pro-business downtown candidate, Theresa Sparks, in a better position to win.


Now we’ve got something of a mess — a fragmented and sometimes needlessly divisive progressive base in a district that’s key to holding progressive control of the board. And while neither of the two top progressive candidates is actively pursuing a credible ranked-choice voting strategy (Kim has, unbelievably, endorsed James Keys instead of Walker, and Walker has declined to endorse anyone else), we’re setting aside our concern over Kim’s ill-advised move and suggesting a strategy that is most likely to keep the seat Chris Daly has held for the past 10 years from falling to downtown control.


Walker is far and away our first choice. She understands land use and housing — the clear central issues in the district — and has well thought-out positions and proposals. She says that the current system of inclusionary housing — pressing market-rate developers to include a few units of below-market-rate housing with their high-end condos — simply doesn’t work. She supports an immediate affordable housing bond act and a long-term real estate transfer tax high enough to fund a steady supply of housing for the city’s workforce. She told us the city ought to be looking at planning issues from the perspective of what San Francisco needs, not what developers want to build. She’s in favor of progressive taxes and a push for local hiring. We’re happy to give her our first-place ranking.


Jane Kim has been a great SF School Board member and has always been part of the progressive community. But she only moved into District 6 a year and a half ago — about when she started talking about running for supervisor (and she told us in her endorsement interview that “D6 is a district you can run in without having lived there a long time.”) She still hasn’t been able to explain why she parachuted in to challenge an experienced progressive leader she has no substantive policy disagreements with.


That said, on the issues, Kim is consistently good. She is in favor of indexing affordable housing to market-rate housing and halting new condo development if the mix gets out of line. She’s for an affordable housing bond. She supports all the tax measures on this ballot. She’s a little softer on congestion pricing and extending parking-meter hours, but she’s open to the ideas. She supports police foot patrols not just as a law-enforcement strategy, but to encourage small businesses. She’d be a fine vote on the board. And while we’re sympathetic to the Walker supporters who would prefer that we not give Kim the credibility and exposure of an endorsement, the reality is that she’s one of two leading progressives and would be better on the board than the remaining candidates.


Hyde, a dynamic young drag queen performer, isn’t going to win. But he’s offered some great ideas and injected some fun and energy into the race. Hyde talks about creating safe injection sites for IV drug users to reduce the risk of overdoses and the spread of disease. He points out that a lot of young people age out of the foster-care system and wind up on the streets, and he’s for continuum housing that would let these young people transition to jobs or higher education. He talks about starting a co-op grocery in the Tenderloin. He proposes bus-only lanes throughout the district and wants to charge large vehicles a fee to come into the city. He’s a big advocate of nightlife and the arts. He lacks experience and needs more political seasoning, but we’re giving him the third-place nod to encourage his future involvement.


Progressives are concerned about Theresa Sparks, a transgender activist and former business executive who now runs the city’s Human Rights Commission. She did a (mostly) good job on the Police Commission. She’s experienced in city government and has good financial sense. But she’s just too conservative for what remains a very progressive district. Sparks isn’t a big fan of seeking new revenue for the city telling us that “I disagree that we’ve made all the cuts that we can” — even after four years of brutal, bloody, all-cuts budgets. She doesn’t support the hotel tax and said she couldn’t support Sup. David Chiu’s progressive business tax because it would lead to “replacing private sector jobs with public sector jobs” — even though the city’s own economic analysis shows that’s just not true. She supports Newsom’s sit-lie law.


Sparks is the candidate of the mayor and downtown, and would substantially shift the balance of power on the board. She’s also going to have huge amounts of money behind her. It’s important she be defeated.


Jim Meko, a longtime neighborhood and community activist, has good credentials and some solid ideas. He was a key player in the western SoMa planning project and helped come up with a truly progressive land-use program for the neighborhood. But he supports Prop. B and is awfully cranky about local bars and nightlife.


James Keys, who has the support of Sup. Chris Daly and was an intern in Daly’s office, has some intriguing (if not terribly practical) ideas, like combining the Sheriff’s Department and the Police Department and making Muni free). But in his interview, he demonstrated a lack of understanding of the issues facing the district and the city.


So we’re going with a ranked-choice strategy: Walker first, Kim second, Hyde third. And we hope Kim’s supporters ignore their candidate’s endorsement of Keys, put Walker as their second choice, and ensure that they don’t help elect Sparks.


 


DISTRICT 8


RAFAEL MANDELMAN


This is by far the clearest and most obvious choice on the local ballot. And it’s a critical one, a chance for progressives to reclaim the seat that once belonged to Harvey Milk and Harry Britt.


Mandelman, a former president of the Milk Club, is running as more than a queer candidate. He’s a supporter of tenants rights, immigrants’ rights, and economic and social justice. He also told us he believes “local government matters” — and that there are a lot of problems San Francisco can (and has to) solve on its own, without simply ducking and blaming Sacramento and Washington.


Mandelman argues that the public sector has been starved for years and needs more money. He agrees that there’s still a fair amount of bloat in the city budget — particularly management positions — but that even after cleaning out the waste, the city will still be far short of the money it needs to continue providing pubic services. He’s calling for a top-to-bottom review of how the city gets revenue, with the idea of creating a more progressive tax structure.


He’s an opponent of sit-lie and a supporter of the sanctuary city ordinance. He supports tenants rights and eviction protection. He’s had considerable experience (as a member of the Building Inspection Commission and Board of Appeals and as a lawyer who advises local government agencies) and would make an excellent supervisor.


Neither of the other two contenders make our endorsement cut. Rebecca Prozan is a deputy city attorney who told us she would be able to bring the warring factions on the board together. She has some interesting ideas — she’d like to see the city take over foreclosed properties and turn them into housing for teachers, cops, and firefighters — and she’s opposed to sit-lie. But she’s weak on tenant issues (she told us there’s nothing anyone can do to stop the conversion of rental housing into tenancies-in-common), doesn’t seem to grasp the need for substantial new revenues to prevent service cuts, and doesn’t support splitting the appointments to key commissions between the mayor and the supervisors.


Scott Wiener, a deputy city attorney, is a personable guy who always takes our phone calls and is honest and responsive. He’s done a lot of good work in the district. But he’s on the wrong side of many issues, and on some things would be to the right of the incumbent, Sup. Bevan Dufty.


He doesn’t support public power (which Dufty does). He says that a lot of the city’s budget problems can’t be solved until the state gets its own house in order (“we can’t tax our way out of this”) and favors a budget balanced largely by further cuts. In direct contrast to Mandelman, Wiener said San Franciscans “need to lower our expectations for government.” He wants broad-based reductions in almost all city agencies except Muni, “core” public health services, and public safety. He doesn’t support any further restrictions on condo conversions or TICs. And he has the support of the Small Property Owners Association — perhaps the most virulently anti-tenant and anti-rent control group in town.


This district once gave rise to queer political leaders who saw themselves and their struggles as part of a larger progressive movement. That’s drifted away of late — and with Mandelman, there’s a chance to bring it back.


 


DISTRICT 10


1. TONY KELLY


2. DEWITT LACY


3. CHRIS JACKSON


District 10 is the epicenter of new development in San Francisco, the place where city planners want to site as many as 40,000 new housing units, most of them high-end condos, at a cost of thousands of blue-collar jobs. The developers are salivating at the land-rush opportunities here — and the next supervisor not only needs to be an expert in land-use and development politics, but someone with the background and experience to thwart the bad ideas and direct and encourage the good ones.


There’s no shortage of candidates — 22 people are on the ballot, and at least half a dozen are serious contenders. Two — Steve Moss and Lynette Sweet — are very bad news. And one of the key priorities for progressives is defeating the big-money effort that downtown, the police, and the forces behind the Van Ness Avenue megahospital proposal are dumping into the district to elect Moss.


Our first choice is Tony Kelly, who operates Thick Description Theater and who for more than a decade has been directly involved in all the major neighborhood issues. He has a deep understanding of what the district is facing: 4,100 of the 5,300 acres in D10 have been rezoned or put under the Redevelopment Agency in the past 10 years. Planners envision as many as 100,000 new residents in the next 10 years. And the fees paid by developers will not even begin to cover the cost of the infrastructure and services needed to handle that growth.


And Kelly has solutions: The public sector will have to play a huge role in affordable housing and infrastructure, and that money should come from higher development fees — and from places like the University of California, which has a huge operation in the district and pays no property taxes. Kelly wants to set up a trigger so that if goals for affordable housing aren’t met by a set date, the market-rate development stops. He supports the revenue measures on the ballot but thinks we should go further. He opposes the pension-reform measure, Prop. B, but notes that 75 percent of the city’s pension problems come from police, fire, and management employees. He wants the supervisors to take over the Redevelopment Agency. He’s calling for a major expansion of open space and parkland in the district. And he thinks the city should direct some of the $3 billion in short-term accounts (now all with the Bank of America) to local credit unions or new municipal bank that could invest in affordable housing and small business. He’s a perfect fit for the job.


DeWitt Lacy is a civil-rights lawyer and a relative newcomer to neighborhood politics. He speaks passionately about the need for D10 to get its fair share of the city’s services and about a commitment to working-class people.


Lacy is calling for an immediate pilot program with police foot patrols in the high-crime areas of the district. He’s for increasing the requirements for developers to build affordable housing and wants to cut the payroll tax for local businesses that hire district residents.


Lacy’s vision for the future includes development that has mixed-use commuter hubs with shopping and grocery stores as well as housing. He supports the tax measures on the ballot and would be willing to extend parking meter hours — but not parking fines, which he calls an undue burden on low-income people.


He’s an outspoken foe of sit-lie and of gang injunctions, and with his background handling police abuse lawsuits, he would have a clear understanding of how to approach better law-enforcement without intimidating the community. He lacks Kelly’s history, experience, and knowledge in neighborhood issues, but he’s eminently qualified and would make a fine supervisor.


Chris Jackson, who worked at the San Francisco Labor Council and serves on the Community College Board, is our third choice. While it’s a bit unfortunate that Jackson is running for higher office only two years after getting elected to the college board, he’s got a track record and good positions on the issues. He talks of making sure that blue-collar jobs don’t get pushed out by housing, and suggested that the shipyard be used for ship repair. He wants to see the city mandate that landlords rent to people with Section 8 housing vouchers. He supports the tax measures on the ballot, but also argues that the city has 60 percent more managers than it had in 2000 and wants to bring that number down. He thinks the supervisors should take over Redevelopment, which should become “just a financing agency for affordable housing.” He wants to relocate the stinky sewage treatment plant near Third Street and Evans Avenue onto one of the piers and use the area for a transit hub. He’s still relatively unseasoned, but he has a bright political future.


Eric Smith, a biodiesel activist, is an impressive candidate too. But while his environmental credentials are good, he lacks the breadth of knowledge that our top three choices offer. But we’re glad he’s in the race and hope he stays active in community politics.


Malia Cohen has raised a lot of money and (to our astonishment) was endorsed No. 2 by the Democratic Party, but she’s by no means a progressive, particularly on tenant issues — she told us that limiting condo conversions is an infringement of property rights. And she’s way too vague on other issues.


Moss is the candidate of the big developers and the landlords, and the Chamber of Commerce is dumping tens of thousands of dollars into getting him elected. He’s got some good environmental and energy ideas — he argues that all major new developments should have their own energy distribution systems — but on the major issues, he’s either on the wrong side or (more often) can’t seem to take a stand. He said he is “still mulling over” his stand on sit-lie. He supports Sanctuary City in theory, but not the actual measure Sup. David Campos was pushing to make the policy work. He’s not sure if he likes gang injunctions or not. He only moved back to the district when he decided to run for supervisor. He’s way too conservative for the district and would be terrible on the board.


Lynette Sweet, a BART Board member, has tax problems (and problems explaining them) and wouldn’t even come to our office for an endorsement interview. The last thing D10 needs is a supervisor who’s not accountable and unwilling to talk to constituents and the press.


So we’re going with Kelly, Lacy, and Jackson as the best hope to keep D10 from becoming a district represented by a downtown landlord candidate.


 


SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF EDUCATION


MARGARET BRODKIN


KIM-SHREE MAUFAS


HYDRA MENDOZA


Three seats are up on the School Board, and three people will get elected. And it’s a contested race, and in situations like that, we always try to endorse a full slate.


This fall, it was, to put it mildly, a challenge.


It’s disturbing that we don’t have three strong progressive candidates with experience and qualifications to oversee the San Francisco Unified School District. But it seems to be increasingly difficult to find people who want to — and can afford to — devote the time to what’s really a 40-hour-a-week position that pays $500 a month. The part-time school board is an anachronism, a creature of a very different economic and social era. With the future of the next generation of San Franciscans at stake, it’s time to make the School Board a full-time job and pay the members a decent salary so that more parents and progressive education advocates can get involved in one of the most important political jobs in the city.


That said, we’ve chosen the best of the available candidates. It’s a mixed group, made up of people who don’t support each other and aren’t part of anyone’s slate. But on balance, they offer the best choices for the job.


This is not a time when the board needs radical change. Under Superintendent Carlos Garcia, the local public schools are making huge strides. Test scores are up, enrollment is increasing, and San Francisco is, by any rational measure, the best big-city public school district in California. We give considerable credit for that to the progressives on the board who got rid of the irascible, secretive, and hostile former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and replaced her with Garcia. He’s brought stability and improvement to the district, and is implementing a long-term plan to bring all the schools up to the highest levels and go after the stubborn achievement gap.


Yet any superintendent and any public agency needs effective oversight. One of the problems with the district under Ackerman was the blind support she got from school board members who hired her; it was almost as if her allies on the board were unable to see the damage she was doing and unable to hold her accountable.


Our choices reflect the need for stability — and independence. We are under no illusions — none of our candidates are perfect. But as a group, we believe they can work to preserve what the district is doing right and improve on policies that aren’t working.


Kim-Shree Maufas has been a staunch progressive on the board. She got into a little trouble last year when the San Francisco Chronicle reported that she’d been using a school district credit card for personal expenses. That’s not a great move, but she never actually took public money since she paid back the district. Maufas said she thought she could use the card as long as she reimbursed the district for her own expenses; the rules are now clear and she’s had no problems since. We don’t consider this a significant enough failure in judgment to prevent her from continuing to do what she’s been doing: serving as an advocate on the board for low-income kids and teachers.


Maufas is a big supporter of restorative justice and is working for ways to reduce suspensions and expulsions. She wants to make sure advanced placement and honors classes are open to anyone who can handle the coursework. She supports the new school assignment process (as do all the major candidates), although she acknowledges that there are some potential problems. She told us she thinks the district should go back to the voters for a parcel tax to supplement existing funding for the schools.


Margaret Brodkin is a lightening rod. In fact, much of the discussion around this election seems to focus on Brodkin. Since she entered the race, she’s eclipsed all the other issues, and there’s been a nasty whisper campaign designed to keep her off the board.


We’ve had our issues with Brodkin. When she worked for Mayor Newsom, she was part of a project that brought private nonprofits into city recreation centers to provide services — at a time when unionized public employees of the Recreation and Parks Department were losing their jobs. It struck us as a clear privatization effort by the Newsom administration, and it raised a flag that’s going to become increasingly important in the school district: there’s a coming clash between people who think private nonprofits can provide more services to the schools and union leaders who fear that low-paid nonprofit workers will wind up doing jobs now performed by unionized district staff. And Brodkin’s role in the Newsom administration — and her background in the nonprofit world — is certainly ground for some concern.


But Brodkin is also by far the most qualified person to run for San Francisco school board in years, maybe decades. She’s a political legend in the city, the person who is most responsible for making issues of children and youth a centerpiece of the progressive agenda. In her years as director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, she tirelessly worked to make sure children weren’t overlooked in the budget process and was one of the authors of the initiative that created the Children’s Fund. She’s run a nonprofit, run a city department, and is now working on education issues.


She’s a feisty person who can be brusque and isn’t always conciliatory — but those characteristics aren’t always bad. Sup. Chris Daly used his anger and passion to push for social justice on the Board of Supervisors and, despite some drawbacks, he’s been an effective public official.


And Brodkin is full of good ideas. She talks about framing what a 21st century education looks like, about creating community schools, about aligning after-school and summer programs with the academic curriculum. She wants the next school bond act to include a central kitchen, so local kids can get locally produced meals (the current lunch fare is shipped in frozen from out of state).


Brodkin needs to remember that there’s a difference between being a bare-knuckles advocate and a member of a functioning school board. But given her skills, experience, and lifetime in progressive causes, we’re willing to give her a chance.


We also struggled over endorsing Hydra Mendoza. She works for Mayor Newsom as an education advisor — and that’s an out-front conflict of interest. She’s a fan of Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, whose policies are regressive and dangerous.


On the other hand, she cares deeply about kids and public education. She’s not a big supporter of charter schools (“I’ve yet to see a charter school that offers anything we can’t do ourselves,” she told us) and while she was on the wrong side of a lot of issues (like JROTC) early in her tenure, over the past two years she’s been a good School Board member.


There are several other candidates worth mentioning. Bill Barnes, an aide to Michela Alioto-Pier, is a good guy, a decent progressive — but has no experience in or direct connection to the public schools. Natasha Hoehn is in the education nonprofit world and speaks with all the jargon of the educrat, but her proposals and her stands on issues are vague. Emily Murase is a strong parent advocate with some good ideas, but she struck us as a bit too conservative (particularly on JROTC and charter schools.) Jamie Wolfe teaches at a private school but lacks any real constituency or experience in local politics and the education community.


So given a weak field with limited alternatives, we’re going with Maufas, Brodkin and Mendoza.


 


SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD


JOHN RIZZO


The San Francisco Community College District has been a mess for years, and it’s only now starting to get back on track. That’s the result of the election of a few progressive reformers — Milton Marks, Chris Jackson, and John Rizzo, who now have enough clout on the seven-member board to drag along a fourth vote when they need it.


But the litany of disasters they’ve had to clean up is almost endless. A chancellor (who other incumbent board members supported until the end) is now under indictment. Public money that was supposed to go to the district wound up in a political campaign. An out-of-control semiprivate college foundation has been hiding its finances from the public. The college shifted bond money earmarked for an arts center into a gigantic, expensive gym with a pool that the college can’t even pay to operate, so it’s leased out to a private high school across the street.


And the tragedy is that all three incumbents — two of whom should have stepped down years ago — are running unopposed.


With all the attention on the School Board and district elections, not one progressive — in fact, not one candidate of any sort — has stepped forward to challenge Anita Grier and Lawrence Wong. So they’ll get another term, and the reformers will have to continue to struggle.


We’re endorsing only Rizzo, a Sierra Club staffer who has been in the lead in the reform bloc. He needs to end up as the top vote-getter, which would put him in position to be the board president. Rizzo has worked to get the district’s finances and foundation under control and he richly deserves reelection.


 


BART BOARD OF DIRECTORS, DISTRICT 8


BERT HILL


It’s about time somebody mounted a serious challenge to James Fang, the only elected Republican in San Francisco and a member of one of the most dysfunctional public agencies in California. The BART Board is a mess, spending a fortune on lines that are hardly ever used and unable to work effectively with other transit agencies or control a police force that has a history of brutality and senseless killing.


Fang supports the suburban extensions and Oakland Airport connector, which make no fiscal or transportation sense. He’s ignored problems with the BART Police for 20 years. It’s time for him to leave office.


Bert Hill is a strong challenger. A professional cost-management executive, he understands that BART is operating on an old paradigm of carrying people from the suburbs into the city. “Before we go on building any more extensions,” he told us, “we should take care of San Francisco.” He wants the agency to work closely with Muni and agrees there’s a need for a BART sunshine policy to make the notoriously secretive agency more open to public scrutiny. We strongly endorse him.


 


ASSESSOR-RECORDER


PHIL TING


San Francisco needs an aggressive assessor who looks for every last penny that big corporations are trying to duck paying — but this is also a job that presents an opportunity for challenging the current property tax laws. Phil Ting’s doing pretty well with the first part — and unlike past assessors, is actually stepping up to the plate on the second. He’s been pushing a statewide coalition to reform Prop. 13 — and while it’s an uphill battle, it’s good to see a tax assessor taking it on. Ting has little opposition and will be reelected easily.


 


PUBLIC DEFENDER


JEFF ADACHI


Adachi’s done a great job of running the office that represents indigent criminal defendants. He’s been outspoken on criminal justice issues. Until this year, he was often mentioned as a potential progressive candidate for mayor.


That’s over now. Because Adachi decided (for reasons we still can’t comprehend) to join the national attack on public employees and put Prop. B on the ballot, he’s lost any hope of getting support for higher office from the left. And since the moderate and conservative forces will never be comfortable with a public defender moving up in the political world, Adachi’s not going anywhere anytime soon.


Which is fine. He’s doing well at his day job. We wish he’d stuck to it and not taken on a divisive, expensive, and ill-conceived crusade to cut health care benefits for city employees.


 


SAN FRANCISCO SUPERIOR COURT


SEAT 15


MICHAEL NAVA


To hear some of the brahmins of the local bench and bar tell it, the stakes in this election are immense — the independence of the judiciary hangs in the balance. If a sitting judge who is considered eminently qualified for the job and has committed no ethical or legal breaches can be challenged by an outsider who is seeking more diversity on the bench, it will open the floodgates to partisan hacks taking on good judges — and force judicial candidates to raise money from lawyers and special interests, thus undermining the credibility of the judiciary.


We are well aware of the problems of judicial elections around the country. In some states, big corporations that want to influence judges raise and spend vast sums on trial and appellate court races — and typically get their way. In Iowa, three judges who were willing to stand on principle and Constitutional law and declare same-sex marriage legal are facing what amounts to a well-funded recall effort. California is not immune — in more conservative counties, liberal judges face getting knocked off the bench by law-and-order types.


It’s a serious issue. It’s worth a series of hearings in the state Legislature, and it might be worth Constitutional change. Maybe trial-court elections should be eliminated. Maybe all judicial elections should have public campaign financing. But right now, it’s an elected office — at least in theory.


In practice, the vast majority of the judicial slots in California are filled by appointment. Judges serve for four-year terms but tend to retire or step down in midterm, allowing the governor to fill the vacancy. Unless someone files specifically to challenge an incumbent, typically appointed judge, that race never even appears on the ballot.


The electoral process is messy and political, and raising money is unseemly for a judicial officer. But the appointment process is hardly pure, either — and governors in California have, over the past 30 years, appointed the vast majority of the judges from the ranks of big corporate law firms and district attorney’s offices.


There are, of course, exceptions, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been better than his predecessor, Democrat Gray Davis. But overall, public interest lawyers, public defenders, and people with small community practices (and, of course, people who have no political strings to pull in Sacramento) have been frustrated. And it’s no surprise that some have sought to run against incumbents.


That’s what’s happening here. Michael Nava, a gay Latino who has been working as a research attorney for California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, was going to run for a rare open seat this year, but the field quickly got crowded. So Nava challenged Richard Ulmer, a corporate lawyer appointed by Schwarzenegger who has been on the bench a little more than a year.


We will stipulate, as the lawyers say: Ulmer has done nothing wrong. From all accounts, he’s a fine judge (and before taking the bench, he did some stellar pro bono work fighting for reforms in the juvenile detention system). So there are two questions here: Should Nava have even filed to run against Ulmer? And since he did, who is the better candidate?


It’s important to understand this isn’t a case of special interests and that big money wanting to oust a judge because of his politics or rulings. Nava isn’t backed by any wealthy interest. There’s no clear parallel to the situations in other areas and other states where the judiciary is being compromised by electoral politics. Nava had every right to run — and has mounted an honest campaign that discusses the need for diversity on the bench.


Ulmer’s supporters note — correctly — that the San Francisco courts have more ethnic and gender diversity than any county in the state. And we’re not going to try to come to a conclusion here about how much diversity is enough.


But we will say that life experience matters, and judges bring to the bench what they’ve lived. Nava, who is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and the first person in his family to go to college, may have a different perspective on how low-income people of color are treated in the courts than a former Republican who spent his professional career in big law firms.


We were impressed by Nava’s background and knowledge — and by his interest in opening up the courts. He supports cameras in the courtrooms and allowing reporters to record court proceedings. He told us the meetings judges hold on court administration should be open to the public.


We’re willing to discuss whether judicial elections make sense. Meanwhile, judges who don’t like the idea of challenges should encourage their colleagues not to retire in midterm. If all the judges left at the end of a four-year term, there would be plenty of open seats and fewer challenges. But for now, there’s nothing in this particular election that makes us fear for the independence of the courts. Vote for Nava.


 


>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

Endorsements 2010: State races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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24
Endorsements 2010: State races

GOVERNOR

EDMUND G. BROWN

We have issues with Jerry Brown. The one-time environmental leader who left an admirable progressive legacy his first time in the governor’s office (including the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the California Conservation Corps, and the liberal Rose Bird Supreme Court) and who is willing to stand up and oppose the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant has become a centrist, tough-on-crime, no-new-taxes candidate. And his only solution to the state budget problems is to bring all the players together early and start talking.

But at least since he’s started to debate Republican Meg Whitman face to face, he’s showing some signs of life — and flashes of the old Jerry. He’s strongly denouncing Whitman’s proposal to wipe out capital gains taxes, reminding voters of the huge hole that would blow in the state budget — and the $5 billion windfall it would give to the rich. He’s talking about suing Wall Street financial firms that cheated Californians. He’s promoting green jobs and standing firm in support of the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions limits.

For all his drawbacks (his insistence, for example, that the Legislature shouldn’t raise any taxes without a statewide vote of the people), Brown is at least part of the reality-based community. He understands that further tax cuts for the rich won’t solve California’s problems. He knows that climate change is real. He’s not great on immigration issues, but at least he’s cognizant that 2 million undocumented immigrants live in California — and the state can’t just arrest and deport them all.

Whitman is more than a conservative Republican. She’s scary. The centerpiece of her economic platform calls for laying off 40,000 state employees — thereby greatly increasing the state’s unemployment rate. Her tax plan would increase the state’s deficit by another $5 billion just so that a tiny number of the richest taxpayers (including her) can keep more of their money. She’s part of the nativist movement that wants to close the borders.

She’s also one of the growing number of candidates who think personal wealth and private-sector business success translate to an ability to run a complex state government. That’s a dangerous trend — Whitman has no political experience or background (until recently she didn’t even vote) and will be overcome by the lobbyists in Sacramento.

This is a critically important election for California. Vote for Jerry Brown.

 

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

 

GAVIN NEWSOM

Why is the mayor of San Francisco running for a job he once dismissed as worthless? Simple: he couldn’t get elected governor, and he wants a place to perch for a while until he figures out what higher office he can seek. It’s almost embarrassing in its cold political calculus, but that’s something we’ve come to expect from Newsom.

We endorsed Newsom’s opponent, Janice Hahn, in the Democratic primary. It was hard to make a case for advancing the political career of someone who has taken what amounts to a Republican approach to running the city’s finances — he’s addressed every budget problem entirely with cuts, pushed a “no-new-taxes” line, and given the wealthy everything they wanted. His immigration policies have broken up families and promoted deporting kids. He’s done Pacific Gas and Electric Co. a nice favor by doing nothing to help the community choice aggregation program move forward.

Nevertheless, we’re endorsing Newsom over his Republican opponent, Abel Maldonado, because there really isn’t any choice. Maldonado is a big supporter of the death penalty (which Newsom opposes). He’s pledged never to raise taxes (and Newsom is at least open to discussion on the issue). He used budget blackmail to force the awful open-primaries law onto the ballot. He’s a supporter of big water projects like the peripheral canal. In the Legislature, he earned a 100 percent rating from the California Chamber of Commerce.

Newsom’s a supporter of more funding for higher education (and the lieutenant governor sits on the University of California Board of Regents). He’d be at least a moderate environmentalist on the state Lands Commission. And he, like Brown, is devoting a lot of attention to improving the state’s economy with green jobs.

We could do much worse than Newsom in the lieutenant governor’s office. We could have Maldonado. Vote for Newsom.

 

SECRETARY OF STATE

 

DEBRA BOWEN

California has had some problems with the office that runs elections and keeps corporate filings. Kevin Shelley had to resign from the job in 2005 in the face of allegations that a state grant of $125,000 was illegally diverted into his campaign account. But Bowen, by all accounts, has run a clean office. Her Republican opponent, Damon Dunn, a former professional football player and real estate agent, doesn’t even have much support within his own party and is calling for mandatory ID checks at the ballot. This one’s easy; vote for Bowen.

 

CONTROLLER

 

JOHN CHIANG

Chiang’s been a perfectly decent controller, and at times has shown some political courage: When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to cut the pay of state employees to minimum-wage level, Chiang refused to go along — and forced the governor to back down. His opponent, state Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Los Angeles), wants to use to office to promote cuts in government spending. Vote for Chiang.

 

TREASURER

 

BILL LOCKYER

Lockyer’s almost certain to win reelection as treasurer against a weak Republican, Mimi Walters. He’s done an adequate job and pushed a few progressive things like using state bonds to promote alternative energy. Mostly, though, he seems to be waiting for his chance to run for governor — and if Jerry Brown loses, or wins and decides not to seek a second term, look for Lockyer to step up.

 

ATTORNEY GENERAL

 

KAMALA HARRIS

This is going to be close, and it’s another clear choice. We’ve had our differences with Harris — she’s trying too hard to be a tough-on-crime type, pushing some really dumb bills in Sacramento (like a measure that would bar sex offenders from ever using social networking sites on the Internet). And while she shouldn’t take all the blame for the problems in the San Francisco crime lab, she should have known about the situation earlier and made more of a fuss. She’s also been slow to respond to serious problem of prosecutors and the cops hiding information about police misconduct from defense lawyers that could be relevant to a case.

But her opponent, Los Angeles D.A. Steve Cooley, is bad news. He’s a big proponent of the death penalty, and the ACLU last year described L.A. as the leading “killer county in the country.” Cooley has proudly sent 50 people to death row since he became district attorney in 2001, and he vows to make it easier and more efficient for the state to kill people.

He’s also a friend of big business who has vowed, even as attorney general, to make the state more friendly to employers — presumably by slowing prosecutions of corporate wrongdoing.

Harris, to her credit, has refused to seek the death penalty in San Francisco, and would bring the perspective of a woman of color to the AG’s office. For all her flaws, she would be far better in the AG’s office than Cooley. Vote for Harris.

 

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER

 

DAVE JONES

Jones, currently a state Assemblymember from Sacramento, won a contested primary against his Los Angeles colleague Hector de la Torre and is now fighting Republican Mike Villines of Fresno, also a member of the Assembly. Jones is widely known as a consumer advocate and was a foe of Prop. 17, the insurance industry scam on the June ballot. A former Legal Aid lawyer, he has extensive experience in health-care reform, supports single-payer health coverage, and would make an excellent insurance commissioner.

Villines pretty much follows right-wing orthodoxy down the line. He wants to replace employer-based insurance with health savings accounts. He argues that the solution to the cost of health insurance is to limit malpractice lawsuits. He wants to limit workers compensation claims. And he supports “alternatives to litigation,” which means eliminating the rights of consumers to sue insurance companies.

Not much question here. Vote for Jones.

 

BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, DISTRICT 1

 

BETTY YEE

The Board of Equalization isn’t well known, but it plays a sizable role in setting and enforcing California tax policy. Yee’s a strong progressive who has done well in the office, supporting progressive financial measures. She’s spoken out — as a top tax official — in favor of legalizing and taxing marijuana. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

 

TOM TORLAKSON

We fully expected a November runoff between Torlakson and state Sen. Gloria Romero. Both Democrats had strong fundraising and political bases — and very different philosophies. Romero’s a big charter school and privatization fan; Torlakson has the support of the teachers unions. But to the surprise of nearly everyone, a wild-card candidate, retired Los Angeles educator Larry Aceves, came in first, with Torlakson second and Romero third. Now Aceves and Torlakson are in the runoff for this nonpartisan post.

Aceves is an interesting candidate, a former principal and school superintendent who has the endorsement of the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Green Party. But he’s too quick to take the easy line that the teachers’ unions are the biggest problem in public education, and he wants the unilateral right to suspend labor contracts.

Torlakson wants more charter-school accountability and more funding for primary education. He’s the far better candidate.

 

STATE SENATE

 

DISTRICT 8

Leland Yee

Yee’s got no opposition to speak of, and will easily be re-elected. So why is he spending money on a series of slick television ads that have been airing all over San Francisco, talking about education and sending people to his website? It’s pretty obvious: The Yee for state Senate campaign is the opening act of the Yee for San Francisco mayor campaign, which should kick into high gear sometime next spring. In other words, if Yee has his way, he’ll serve only a year of his next four-year term.

Yee infuriates his colleagues at times, particularly when he refuses to vote for a budget that nobody likes but everyone knows is necessary to keep the state afloat. He’s done some ridiculous things, like pushing to sell the Cow Palace as surplus state property and turn the land over to private real estate developers. But he’s always good on open-government issues, is pushing for greater accountability for companies that take tax breaks and then send jobs out of state, has pushed for accountability at the University of California, and made great progress in opening the records at semiprivate university foundations when he busted Stanislaus State University for its secret speaking-fees deal with Sarah Palin.

With a few strong reservations, we’ll endorse Yee for another term.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 12

 

FIONA MA

A clear hold-your-nose endorsement. Ma has done some truly bad things in Sacramento, like pushing a bill that would force the San Francisco Unified School District to allow military recruiters in the high schools and fronting for landlords on a bill to limit rent control in trailer parks. But she’s good on public power and highly critical of PG&E, and she has no opposition to speak of.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 13

 

TOM AMMIANO

Ammiano’s a part of San Francisco history, and without his leadership as a supervisor, we might not have a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors. Ammiano was one of the architects of the return to district elections, and his 1999 mayoral campaign (against Willie Brown) marked a turning point in the organization, sophistication, and ultimate success of the city’s left. He was the author of the rainy day fund (which has kept the public schools from massive layoffs over the past couple of years) and the Healthy San Francisco plan.

In Sacramento, he’s been a leader in the effort to legalize (and tax) marijuana and to demand accountability for the BART Police. He’s taken on the unpleasant but critical task of chairing the Public Safety Committee and killing the worst of the right-wing crime bills before they get to the floor. He has four more years in Sacramento, and we expect to see a lot more solid progressive legislation coming out of his office. We enthusiastically endorse him for reelection.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 14

 

NANCY SKINNER

Skinner’s a good progressive, a good ally for Ammiano on the Public Safety Committee, and a friend of small business and fair taxation. Her efforts to make out-of-state companies that sell products in California pay state sales tax would not only bring millions into the state coffers but protect local merchants from the likes of Amazon. We don’t get why she’s joined with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates to try to get rid of Kriss Worthington, the most progressive member of the Berkeley City Council, but we’ll endorse her for re-election.

 

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 16

 

SANDRE SWANSON

Swanson’s a good vote most of the time in Sacramento, but he’s not yet the leader he could be — particularly on police accountability. The BART Police murdered Oscar Grant in Swanson’s district, yet it fell to a San Franciscan, Tom Ammiano, to introduce strong state legislation to force BART to have civilian oversight of the transit cops. Still, he’s done some positive things (like protecting state workers who blow the whistle on fraud) and deserves another term.

 

>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

The test of the Tenderloin

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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16
The test of the Tenderloin

caitlin@sfbg.com

This is a story about love and money. Or a story about love, money, and location. — Rebecca Solnit, Hollow City (Verso 2000)

It’s a sunny day in the most maligned neighborhood in San Francisco. I’m walking down a busy sidewalk with an excited Randy Shaw, long-time housing advocate. He’s giving me a tour of his Tenderloin.

“There’s history everywhere you look here,” he notes as we rush about the dingy blocks of one of the city’s most densely populated, economically bereft communities. In a half-untucked navy button-down and square-frame glasses, Shaw reels off evidence of this legacy faster than I can write it down and still maintain our walking pace.

To our left, Hyde Street Studios, where the Grateful Dead recorded its 1970 album American Beauty. Across the street, a ramshackle building that once housed Guido Caccienti’s Black Hawk nightclub, where the sounds of jam-fests by the likes of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane would echo out onto the streets during its heyday in the 1950s. Throughout its history, the Tenderloin has been renowned for its nightlife: music, theater, sex work — and the social space that occurs between them.

Shaw came to the Tenderloin 30 years ago as a young law student and founded and built the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a nonprofit agency that is now one of the largest property owners in the neighborhood and employs more than 250 full-time workers. Shaw has spent the last few decades fighting to improve conditions in the single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs, once notorious for malfunctioning heating systems and mail rooms that would dump the letters for their hundreds of low-income residents into a pile on the floor rather than fit them into personal lock boxes (which now line the walls of THC’s lobbies).

But that activism isn’t the reason for this tour. No, today Shaw is showing me why tourism can work in the Tenderloin. The heavy iron gate of an SRO is quickly buzzed open as the doorman recognizes him. Inside, working-class seniors mill about aided by walkers — this particular property is an old folks’ home — but over our heads, affixed to a majestically high ceiling, looms a triple-tiered glass and metal chandelier, evidence of the area’s architecturally important past.

“When I show people this,” Shaw smiles at my amazement at this bling in a nonprofit apartment building, “they’re amazed at the quality of the housing.” Further down the road, we peep in at a vividly Moorish geometric vaulted ceiling and a lobby that once housed a boxing gym where Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali liked to spar. Both are now home to the inner city’s poorest residents.

Of course, it’s not just tours that we’re talking when it comes to Shaw’s plans for the future. Shaw has acquired a 6,400-square-foot storefront in the Cadillac Hotel on the corner of Eddy and Leavenworth streets, where he plans to open the Uptown Tenderloin Museum in 2012. He says it will showcase the hood’s historical legacy as well as house a nighttime music venue in the basement. The increased foot traffic, he says, will do good things for public safety (a problem that has been identified as a high priority by the resident-run Tenderloin Neighborhood Association) and bring business to the neighborhood’s impressive collection of small ethnic restaurants.

An increased focus on the Tenderloin’s heritage and public image, Shaw says, will translate to more jobs and a better quality of life for the people who live here. “My goal is to have this be the first area in an American city where low income people have a high quality of life,” he says.

If Shaw is correct, it will indeed be a first. Many cities have attempted to transform low income areas with arts districts — and the end result has typically been the displacement of the poorer residents. Coalition on Homelessness director Jennifer Friedenbach described the process: “Gentrification follows a very specific path. First come police sweeps, then the arts, then the displacement. That’s the path that we’re seeing. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid the displacement part,” she says.

It’d be great if the Tenderloin took the road less traveled — but will it?

Shaw’s best-case scenario seems unlikely, according to Chester Hartman, a renowned urban planning scholar and author of the numerous studies of San Francisco history and the activist handbook Displacement: How to Fight It (National Housing Law Project 1982). Hartman doubts the Tenderloin will remain a housing option for the city’s poor, given its central location and market trends. “The question is, what proportion will move and what will stay?” he said in a phone interview.

Earlier this summer, the National Endowment of the Arts awarded the SF Arts Commission $250,000 toward an arts-based “revitalization of the mid-Market neighborhood.” The area, which is adjacent to the Tenderloin, is considered by many to be the more outwardly visible face of the TL. In truth, the two neighborhoods share many of the same issues and public characteristics, including high density living and prominent issues with drugs.

Amy Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of neighborhood business development, said the Newsom administration is using the money “to implement arts programming that would have an immediate impact on the street. These activities would then build momentum for the longer-term projects.” At this point, plans for that “immediate impact” have started with the installation of lights on Market Street between Sixth and Eighth streets. Two other projects are also in effect: a city-sponsored weekly arts market on United Nations Plaza and an al fresco public concert series.

It’s hard to distinguish these moves from a general trend toward rebranding the image of the Tenderloin. These streets have already seen Newsom announce a historic preservation initiative that put $15,000 worth of commemorative plaques on buildings; it was also announced they would be added to the National Register of Historic Places, a move that allows property owners deep tax cuts for building renovations.

Cohen said her office has spent time trying to attract a supermarket (something the neighborhood, although flush with corner stores, currently lacks), but efforts seem to be faltering. “Grocery store operators and other retailers perceive that the area is unsafe and have expressed concerns about the safety of their employees and customers,” Cohen said. “The arts strategy makes sense because it builds on the assets that are there. Cultivating the performing and visual arts uses that are already succeeding will ultimately enhance the neighborhood’s ability to attract restaurants, retail, and needed services like grocery stores.”

These days, many of the small businesses in the area have window signs hyping “Uptown Tenderloin: Walk, Dine, Enjoy” over graphics of jazzy, people-free high-rises. Looking skyward, one observes the recent deployment of tidy street banners funded by the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District that pay homage to the number of untouched historic buildings in the neighborhood. The banners read “409 historic buildings in 33 blocks. Yeah, we’re proud.”

Figuring out who benefits from these new bells and whistles can seem baffling at times. Even the museum plan, which Shaw says will draw inspiration in part from New York’s Tenement Museum, has drawn criticism. A July San Francisco Magazine blog post was subtitled “An indecent proposal that puzzled even the San Francisco Visitors Bureau” and likened Shaw’s attempts to the “reality tourism movement” that takes travelers through gang zones in L.A. and poverty-stricken townships in South Africa.

This seems to be a misconstruction of what he’s attempting. “You know what no one ever calls out? The Mission mural tours, the Chinatown tours,” Shaw says.

And Shaw scoffs when I bring up that PR bane of the urban renewer: gentrification. He takes me through a brief rundown of the strict zoning laws in the Tenderloin, adding that many people don’t believe that poor people have the right to live in a high-quality neighborhood: “I haven’t been down here for 30 years to create a neighborhood no one wants to live in.”

Indeed, thanks to the efforts of Shaw and others, it would be hard for even the most determined developers to get rid of the SRO housing in the Tenderloin.

In the 1980s, community activists struggled to change the zoning designation of the neighborhood, which lacked even a name on many city maps. The area was zoned for high-rise buildings and was being encroached on by the more expensive building projects of tourist-filled Union Square, Civic Center, and the wealthier Nob Hill neighborhood. Their success came in the form of 1990s Residential Hotel Anti-Conversion Ordinance, which placed strict limits on landlords flipping their SROs into more expensive housing.

Hartman remains unconvinced of the efficacy of the protective measures activists have won in years past; indeed, even SRO rental prices have soared. According to the Central City SRO Collaborative, in the decade after the Anti-Conversion Ordinance, rental prices increased by 150 percent, not only pricing residents out of the Tenderloin but out of the city. “Where do they move?” Hartman asked. “It’s probably the last bastion of low-income housing in the city. That changes the class composition of the city.”

“The neighborhood has been changing slowly but steadily,” says District Six Sup. Chris Daly when reached by e-mail for comment on the Tenderloin’s future. He writes that rents in the neighborhood have been consistently rising and that several condo development proposals have crossed his desk. Daly has been involved in negotiating “community benefits” and quotas for low income housing in past mid-Market housing projects, but has been disappointed by subsequent affordable housing levels in projects like Trinity Plaza on the corner of Sixth and Market streets. In terms of the Tenderloin, he said, “it is untrue to say that the neighborhood is immune from gentrifying forces. It is shielded, but not immune.”

But some see the influx of art-based attention to the area as a possible boon to residents. Debra Walker, a San Franciscan artist who is running for the District 6 supervisor post, said she believes arts can be used “organically to resolve some of the chronic problems in the Tenderloin, street safety being the primary one in my mind.”

Though most of her fellow candidates expressed similar views when contacted for this story, western SoMa neighborhood activist Jim Meko said he thinks artists in the area are being used to line the pockets of the real estate industry. “The idea of creating an arts district is an amenity that the real estate dealers want to see because it makes the neighborhood less scary for their upper class audience” he says.

The area clearly has a rich legacy of nightlife, arts, and theater. The Warfield is here, as is American Conservatory Theater, the Orpheum, and the Golden Gate. So is the unofficial center of SF’s “off-off Broadway district,” which includes Cutting Ball Theater and Exit Theater. The Exit has been located in the TL since its first performance in 1983, held in the lobby of the Cadillac Hotel, and sponsors the neighborhood’s yearly Fringe Festival. There are art galleries and soup kitchens, youth and age, and more shouted greetings on the streets than you’ll hear anywhere else in the city.

No one is more aware of this diversity of character than Machiko Saito, program director of Roaddawgz, a TL creative drop-in center and resource referral service for homeless youth. I met Saito in the Roaddawgz studio, which occupies a basement below Hospitality House, a homeless community center that also houses a drop-in self-help center, an employment program, men’s shelter and art studio for adults in transition.

Despite its being empty in the morning before the open hours that bring waves of youth to its stacks of paints and silk-screens, Roaddawgz is in a glorious state of bohemian dishevelment that implies a well-loved space. It could be a messy group studio if not for the load-bearing post in the center of the room covered with flyers for homelessness resource centers and a “missing” poster signed “your Mom loves you.”

We talk about how important it is that the kids Saito works with have a place like this, a spot where they can create “when all you want to do is your art and if you can’t you’ll die.” A career artist herself, she cuts a dramatic figure in black, safety pins, and deep red lipstick painted into a striking cupid’s bow. Her long fingernails tap the cluttered desk in front of her as she tells me stories from the high-risk lives that Roaddawgz youth come to escape: eviction, cop harassment, theft, rape.

The conversation moves to some of the recent developments in the area. Saito and I recently attended an arts advisory meeting convened by the Tenderloin Economic Development Corporation’s executive director, Elvin Padilla, who has received praise from many of the TL types I spoke with regarding his efforts to connect different factions of the community. Attendees ranged from a polished representative from ACT, which is considering building another theater, for students, in a space on Market and Mason streets, to heralded neighborhood newbies Grey Area Foundation, to Saito and longtime community art hub Luggage Store’s cofounder Darryl Smith. Talk centered on sweeping projects that could develop a more cohesive “identity” for the neighborhood.

I ask Saito how it felt for her to be involved with a group whose vision of the neighborhood might be focused on slightly different happenings than what she lives through Roaddawgz. She says she’s been to gatherings in the past where negative things about the Tenderloin were highlighted. Of Padilla’s arts advisory meeting, she says, “I think that one of the reasons I wanted to go was that it’s important [for attendees] to remember that there’s a community out there. Things can get really complicated. It’s hard to come up with decisions that affect everyone positively. If we’re going to say, ‘The homeless are bad; the drug addicts are bad; the business owners that don’t beautify their storefronts…” She trails off for a moment. “I don’t want to lose the heart of the Tenderloin.”

In yet another Tenderloin basement — this one housing the North of Market-Tenderloin CBD, an organization that is known for its work employing ex-addicts and adults in transition — Rick Darnell has created the Tenderloin Art Lending Library. The library accepts donated works from painters and makes them available for use by Tenderloin residents, many of whom have recently moved into their SRO housing and are in need of a homey touch.

Darnell is rightfully ecstatic at the inclusive nature of his library, but has been hurt over its reception at an arts advisory meeting he attended to publicize its creation. “Someone whispered under their breath ‘I would never lend anything to anyone in the Tenderloin,’ ” he tells me. The exclusion that Saito and Darnell sometimes feel highlights the reality that the definition of the Tenderloin might well vary, even among those who are set on making it “a better place.” The arts community appears to suffer from fractures that appear along the lines of where people live, their organizational affiliation, their housing status, and how they think art should play a role in community building.

Sammy Soun is one Tenderloin resident who would welcome an increased focus on art in the Tenderloin. Soun was born in a Thailand refugee camp to Cambodian parents fleeing the civil wars in their country. He grew up in the Tenderloin, where his family lived packed into small studios and apartments.

But he was part of a community, with plenty of support, and lives in the neighborhood to this day, as do one of his four siblings and his daughter. Soun paints, does graffiti, draws — he’s considering transferring from City College to the San Francisco Art Institute. He has worked at the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club for nine years, giving back to the kids he says “are the future. They’re going to be the ones that promote this place or keep it going — if they want to.” His sister, cousins, and uncles still live in the neighborhood. You might say he has a vested interest in the area’s future.

He finds the incoming resources for the Tenderloin arts scene to be a mixed bag. Soun has never been to the Luggage Store, although it’s one of the longtime community art hubs in the area. He can’t relate to the kinds of art done at the neighborhood’s recent digital arts center, Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, though he says the space has contacted him and friends to visit. His disconnect from the arts scene implies that future arts projects need to work harder on their community outreach — or even better, planning — with artists who call the Tenderloin home.

But Soun loves the new Mona Caron mural the CBD sponsored on the corner of Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue. Well-known for her panoramic bike path mural behind the Church Street Safeway, Caron painted “Windows into the Tenderloin” after dozens of interviews and tours of the neighborhood with community members. Its “before and after” panels are a dummies’ guide for anyone seeking input on ways to strengthen the Tenderloin community — though the “after” does show structural changes like roads converted into greenways and roof gardens sending tendrils down the sides of buildings, the focal point is the visibility of families. Where children were ushered through empty parking lots single-file in the “before” section, the second panel shows families strolling, children running, a space that belongs to them.

Our interview is probably the first time somebody has asked Soun where he thinks arts funding in the Tenderloin should go. “For projects by the kids in the community,” he said.

Truth be told, more art of any kind can only make the Tenderloin a better place — but if you’re trying to improve quality life, focus needs to be on plans that positively affect residents of all ages — art can be a vital part of that, but it should be one part of a plan that ensures rent control, safe conditions, and access to services. After all, if you’re going to rebrand the Tenderloin, you might want to look at the painting on the wall.

The District 8 dilemma

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The District 8 dilemma

tredmond@sfbg.com

Gabriel Haaland, a longtime queer labor activist, was talking to a friend from District 8 the other day, chatting about the race for a supervisor to fill the shoes of Harvey Milk, Harry Britt, Mark Leno, and Bevan Dufty. “She told me that she didn’t know who to vote for,” Haaland said, “because she didn’t know who the progressive was in the race.”

For supporters of Rafael Mandelman, that’s a serious challenge. “The polls are very consistent,” Haaland said. “Most of the voters in D-8 would prefer a progressive over a moderate, and when they know who the progressive is, they support that candidate.”

But oddly enough, although District 8 — the Castro, Noe Valley, and parts of the Mission — is one of the most politically active parts of the city, where voter turnout is consistently high, the supervisorial race is getting only limited media attention. The neighborhood and queer papers are doing a good job of covering the race, but for the rest of the media, it’s as if nothing’s happening. And that’s left voters confused about what ought to be a very clear choice.

The San Francisco Chronicle featured the District 6 race on the front page Sept. 19, with a long story about how demographic changes in the South of Market area would affect the successor to Sup. Chris Daly. District 10, with the mad political scrum of 22 candidates, no clear front runner and endorsements all over the map, has received considerable media attention.

Yet D–8 — which offers by far the most striking distinctions between candidates and the sharpest divisions over issues — has been flying under the radar.

Three major candidates are in the race, two gay men and a lesbian. All of them, for what it’s worth, are lawyers. Rafael Mandelman, who works for a firm that advises cities and counties, has the support of the vast majority of progressive leaders and organizations. Rebecca Prozan, a deputy district attorney, and Scott Wiener, a deputy city attorney, are very much on the moderate-centrist (some would say, by San Francisco standards, conservative) side of the political spectrum.

“As Barbara Boxer has said in her ads, the choice is clear,” Aaron Peskin, chair of the local Democratic Party and a Mandelman backer, told us. “Not to exaggerate, but this is like Boxer v. Carly Fiornia, and Rafael is our Boxer.”

Yet by almost all accounts, Wiener is ahead in the race.

 

ON THE ISSUES

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has been roughly divided in the past decade between the progressive camp and moderate camp. And while those labels are hard to define (the Chronicle won’t even use the term “progressive,” preferring “ultraliberal”), most observers have a basic grip on the differences.

The moderates, who tend to support Mayor Gavin Newsom, are social liberals but fiscal conservatives. They talk about the city surviving budget red ink without major tax increases. They talk about controlling government spending and increasing public safety. The progressives generally see local government as underfunded after four years of brutal cuts and support the idea of raising new revenue to fill the gap. They support tenants over landlords, seek stronger protections for affordable housing, support Sanctuary City, and oppose sit-lie.

Certainly with Wiener and Mandelman, it’s abundantly clear where the candidates fall. The two agree on some things (they both oppose Prop. B, the pension-reform measure that would reduce health care payments for the children of city employees) and they both support nightlife. But overall, they take very different political stands.

Wiener told us, for example, that the city’s structural budget problems won’t be solved without cuts. “We’re not going to able to tax our way out of this,” he said in an endorsement interview. “We have to lower our expectations for government.”

Other than Muni, public safety, and core public health services, cuts “will have to be across the board,” he said. “What are the things we really can’t do without?”

Wiener supports the sit-lie proposal, saying that he doesn’t think the local police have the tools they need to get poorly behaving people off the streets. He doesn’t support Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s measure mandating foot patrols because, he told us, he doesn’t think the supervisors should micromanage the Police Department.

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who currently holds the D–8 seat, has voted with the progressives occasionally — but almost never on tenant issues. And Wiener, who has the support of the rabidly anti-tenant Small Property Owners of San Francisco, is likely to follow that approach. Although he told us he supports rent control (which just about everyone in local politics agrees on at this point), he’s not a fan of additional protections against evictions and condo conversions. “I’m not prepared to go beyond what we have now” on eviction protections, he said. He supported Newsom’s plan to allow people to buy their way out of the waiting list and lottery for condo conversions.

And when it comes to public power, he’s to the right of the incumbent: Dufty has said repeatedly that he supports the city taking over Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s infrastructure and putting the city in control of a full-scale public power system. Wiener says he supports community choice aggregation (CCA), but not full-scale public power.

Mandelman is a big supporter of local government and says, without hesitation, that the city needs more revenue. “The public sector is dramatically underfunded,” he told us in a recent interview. “There’s great wealth in the city and it needs to be tapped to preserve public services.” Mandelman said he’s not “tax happy,” but told us that the structure of how the city raises revenue is a mess. He supports a top-to-bottom review of the city’s revenue base with the goal of making taxation more progressive — and bringing in enough money to fund crucial services.

Mandelman is a foe of sit-lie, which he sees as punitive and ineffective. He opposes gang injunctions and supports Sanctuary City. And he’s a strong advocate for tenants, supporting stronger eviction protections and limits on condo conversions that take away affordable rental stock.

“You have to look at the candidates and ask what their priorities are,” he said. “Are the displacement of long-time residents critically important or something that’s not on the top of the list? Do you believe we need to rebuild the safety net? Or is queer politics all about property values?”

Prozan told us that she’s the one who can “bring the two sides together” and said that, like Dufty, she is “right up the middle.” She supports the hotel tax and the vehicle license fee and opposes sit-lie, but also thinks gang injunctions are a useful tool for law enforcement. She doesn’t see any reason to split appointments between the mayor and the supervisors for the board that oversees Muni or the Redevelopment Agency. She doesn’t think the city can or should do anything more about the conversion of rental property to tenancies in common, but supports the idea of taking over foreclosed properties to create housing for teachers, cops, and firefighters. So it’s safe to say the Prozan would probably be similar to the incumbent — with the progressives on a few things, against them on others.

 

UNDER THE RADAR?

Wiener and Mandelman agree on two basic points: there are stark differences between the candidates — and the city’s major media outlets aren’t paying enough attention. That’s probably because the relatively tame politics doesn’t compare to the sort of wild excitement you see in Districts 6 and 10.

“There’s less chaos than some of the other districts,” Wiener said. “The three major candidates are all hard-working, respected people who have all lived in the district a while.”

He also agreed that he and Mandelman have “very different visions” for the district and the city, and that there are sharp contrasts and divisions between the two candidates.

Prozan also argued that the political differences on issues aren’t going to be the only — or even the deciding — factor for many voters. “I think they’re looking for who’s got the courage and independence to do what’s right,” she told us.

But Mandelman told us there’s a crucial story here that needs to be told: “It’s a definitional fight about what the queer community is about in 2010. As goes D–8, so goes San Francisco.”

Endorsement interviews: Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde

Zelda Bronstein
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2
Endorsement interviews: Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde

Editors note: The Guardian is interviewing candidates for the fall elections, and to give everyone the broadest possible understanding of the issues and our endorsement process, we’re posting the sound files of all the interviews on the politics blog. Our endorsements will be coming out Oct. 6th.

District 6 candidate Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde is full of intriguing ideas for how San Francisco can bring greater dignity into people’s lives.

These include a five-year moratorium on condominiums, the establishment of safe injection sites, building a grocery store in the Tenderloin, continuum housing for youth that age out of foster care, the charging of weight-based fees on vehicles that enter the city, and the creation of a theater and cultural district on the mid-Market Street corridor.

“We have been inspiring a whole lot of people that didn’t have a voice,” Hyde, who performs as the drag queen Anna Conda, told us in a conversation that touched on hot-button topics like decriminalizing homelessness, expanding rent control, creating safe and affordable housing, and providing better and basic services for folks in low-income areas,

“I was more into the idea of rent control but people are far more willing to talk about harm reduction and safe injection sites,” Hyde said of life on the campaign trail.

“San Francisco is a magical place that draws people to it, but it’s become the place that forces people out.”

Folks often talk about the divisive rise of NIMBYism in the South of Market, but Hyde thinks there is a way to create a more unified front in the district. “People don’t understand the ramifications of not taking care of the homelessness,” Hyde said. “Your tax is putting people in jail or on the streets, where it will cost twice as much. Three nights in jail equals the cost of an entire month of housing.”

To learn more about how Hyde intends to offer permanent solutions to these challengers, instead of simply sweeping folks from a doorstep to a jail cell, listen to the interview here:

 

glendon by janwend

Ideas that work: a plan for a new San Francisco

David Talbot
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Ideas that work: a plan for a new San Francisco

OPINION San Francisco is a city of tremendous riches and problems — a locus of wealth, inequality, innovation, creativity, and sometimes stifling resistance by political and economic power brokers. It’s time to break through. We have the ability, and opportunity, to create a whole new set of economic, social, and political relationships between people and government. On everything from municipal banking, to Muni reform, to public-controlled sustainable energy production and community-driven budgeting, we have a flood of ideas from thinkers and activists across the city.

The Aug. 14-15 Community Congress at the University of San Francisco will focus on turning those ideas into a political platform the city can implement. Last week, we described the vision; this week, we offer some proposals that will be discussed at the event; following the event, others will be posted at sfbg.com.

The event runs Aug. 14 from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. and Aug. 15 from 9 a.m.–1 p.m. at USF’s McLaren Conference Center. For information, go to www.sfsummitcongress.wordpress.com. (Karl Beitel and Christopher Cook)

1. A MUNICIPAL BANK


San Francisco is rich — it has $16.1 billion in assets, with a net worth of $6.5 billion, according to the city treasurer. With a little maneuvering and political will, roughly a half-billion of that money could be devoted to creating a municipal bank: a fiscally solvent, federally insured economic engine that would invest in community development projects serving underfunded activities and endeavors, providing significant economic and social benefits to the residents of San Francisco.

With its own public bank, San Francisco could begin to fund and promote more community-centered forms of economic development. Worker co-ops, for instance, could get loans for projects that are socially beneficial and economically viable. The bank could also help generate new homegrown industries that produce both revenue and social value to the city. This would help democratize the city economy, giving financial muscle to community-based projects and neighborhood-serving businesses.

Over a period of three to five years, a modest portion of the city’s liquid investments can be transferred to create to the new bank. The bank could use this pool of capital to extend low-interest, long-term loans for projects located in San Francisco. The bank would offer a full spectrum of retail banking services, such as money market accounts, to attract additional deposits to supplement funds from the city.

A municipal bank has potential to grow into a major economic force in the city for financing community-centered development. With the right up-front commitment from the city, the total asset portfolio of loans and other investments would grow far beyond this initial public investment — representing a significant infusion of loan capital into currently underserved segments of the credit market in San Francisco.

The municipal bank would be a member-owned, federally chartered, and federally insured credit union. It would engage in rigorous vetting of loan applicants. But because the bank would not run as a profit-maximizing enterprise, loan officers would explicitly consider projects in light of their economic viability and potential contribution to the economic, social, and cultural well being of San Francisco.

Priority could, for instance, be given to loans for affordable housing development and community economic development. In particular, the bank could prioritize businesses and enterprises that represent alternative models of ownership such as worker co-ops and worker collectives, and smaller, community-serving, locally-based, social enterprise-type businesses.

To ensure that the bank’s lending activities reflect the need for more democratic modes of credit and finance, governance and oversight could include representation from social groups and constituents normally excluded from corporate governance. The bank’s member-owners would elect the board of directors.

Municipal bank funds would be completely separate from the city’s general fund, with strict firewalls imposed to assure that lending activities do not become intermingled in any way with the annual appropriations process.

By creating its own bank, San Francisco would be a national model for community-based development and economic democracy. It would be a national first, and has the potential to transform how cities think about local economic development. (Beitel)

2. HOUSING SAN FRANCISCO


Since the beginning of the dot-com boom, San Francisco has seen displacement of low-income families from rent-controlled housing in alarming numbers. Much of this displacement has been happening through conversion of small residential apartment buildings (between four and 12 units) into tenancy in common units. Small-site displacement tends to target seniors, disabled people, and working class families — and many of the units that were converted were, under rent control, de facto affordable housing.

In addition, over the past 15 years the city has lost 4,370 units due to Ellis Act evictions. At the same time, the city’s housing production model favors larger projects because of the economies of scale possible for new construction of big projects, with 70 or more units. While these projects are important in adding to the city’s affordable housing stock, sites to accommodate giant developments are in short supply.

So how do we address San Francisco’s chronic affordable housing crisis. First, stabilize low-income communities and preserve diverse neighborhoods by encouraging the city to invest in developing a small sites acquisition and rehabilitation program that could help nonprofits take over and operate affordable rental housing for low-income tenants. That property could also be converted to limited equity housing cooperatives and community land trust properties.

Next, the city should ban all TICs from becoming condos. The city can give landlords and speculators a choice: If you want your property to be eligible for condo conversion, with all the economic benefits that come with that designation, then you need to follow the process and abide by tenant protections in the condo law. If you want to ignore the condo law, then you’re stuck with a TIC.

To further protect renters, prior to sale of a renter-occupied unit, the city could require the owner to offer tenants the right to buy the unit, at a price based on the last best offer from a bona fide purchaser.

The Rent Board also needs reform. The panel, which oversees rent increases, consists of five members: two landlords, two tenants, and one homeowner. All are appointed by the mayor. We suggest three tenants, two landlords, and two homeowners — with the appointments split between the mayor and the supervisors.

There also must be a permanent, local source of funding for affordable housing development. A progressive increase in the real estate transfer tax could generate $45 million annually.

We further support Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s proposed legislation that would protect resident’s rights during relocation and ensure their right to return to buildings that have been redeveloped. (Amy Beinart and the Council of Community Housing Organizations)

3. THE CRISIS IN CARE


More than any other American city, San Francisco relies on a network of faith- and community-based nonprofits to deliver critical health and human services to its poorest and sickest residents. More than 15,000 people are employed in this sector, which had a total budget of almost $800 million in 2000.

Health and human service nonprofits play a significant role in providing a substantial portion of the city’s services for seniors, people with AIDS, the homeless, children and youth, people with special physical and mental needs, and those who suffer from substance abuse.

Yet this critical sector finds itself bearing the brunt of cuts and reduction in services caused by the fiscal crisis facing San Francisco.

So what can we do? Here are seven suggestions.

• First, conduct a coordinated citywide health and human services needs assessment driven by neighborhoods and communities.

• Second, working with service users, service providers, and city employees, create a 10-year plan for health and human services that can guide yearly budget considerations.

• Third, as the city implements the 2009 ballot measure that calls for a two-year budget cycle informed by five-year financial plans, require department heads and commissions to include the perspective of professional service providers and service users, including a standards analysis plan and a narrative about the impact on services.

• Fourth, open a dialogue with the foundation community on addressing the changing needs of the nonprofit human services community, including community needs, accountability, and funding cycles.

• Fifth, depoliticize the request-for-proposals (RFP) process by moving it out of city departments and into the Controller’s Office.

• Sixth, require city departments that contract with nonprofit health and human service providers to complete their implementation of the recommendations to streamline the city’s contracting and monitoring processes approved by the 2003 City Nonprofit Contracting Task Force, and ensure that current procedures and processes are consistent with those recommendations.

• And seventh, preserve services for the most vulnerable San Franciscans by focusing on revenue solutions to the city’s ongoing structural budget deficit, including November 2010 campaigns to increase the hotel tax and the real property transfer tax. (Debbi Lerman, Human Services Network)

4. BUILDING WORKER COOPERATIVES


Although these are hard times, there’s an opportunity for San Francisco to realize a new model of economic sustainability — by supporting worker cooperatives.

The worker cooperative model is a business form well-suited to the diverse needs of urban areas and is already viable in a broad variety of sectors including manufacturing, service, and retail. A key aspect of worker cooperative development is that its goal is not just the creation of jobs; it’s also about making business ownership accessible.

An inspiring new model of economic development is currently taking place with the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland. In an ambitious effort, anchor institutions such as the local universities, hospitals, and the City of Cleveland have established procurement agreements with developing worker cooperatives rooted in the struggling urban communities of Cleveland (where unemployment rates are as high as 25 percent). The goal is to redirect the estimated $3 billion that these anchor institutions spend on goods and services toward worker cooperatives in the communities where these institutions are located. The first two business models underway are a commercial laundry service and a solar installation company.

There’s also a lot of inspiring work already being done by the worker cooperative community in the Bay Area. The Arizmendi Association continues to develop new worker-owned bakeries despite the economic recession. This fall, Arizmendi will launch its second SF location in the Mission District, creating new jobs and opportunities for local residents to have ownership over their work. Rainbow Grocery and Other Avenues are two extremely successful, long-lasting worker-owned grocery stores in San Francisco.

The city ought to officially recognize the worker cooperative model as both viable and preferable, and include it in the city’s various efforts of economic development. And city officials should take a leadership role in reimagining what a vibrant economy could look like and begin to promote worker cooperatives as central to that vision. (Poonam Whabi, Rick Simon, Steve Rice, Inno Nagara, and Nadia Khastagir)

A new community congress

David Talbot
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0
A new community congress

EDITORIAL The first time a group of activists from across San Francisco met in a Community Congress, it was 1975 and the city was in trouble. Runaway downtown development was creating massive displacement and threatening the quality of life. Rents were rising and tenants were facing eviction. An energy crisis had left residents and businesses with soaring power bills. The manifesto of the Congress laid out the problem:

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

The Community Congress hammered out a platform — a 40-page document that pretty much defined what progressive San Francisco believed in and wanted for the city. It included district elections of supervisors, rent control, public power, a requirement that developers build affordable housing, and a sunshine ordinance — in fact, much of what the left has accomplished in this town in the past 35 years was first outlined in that document.

Beyond the details, what the platform said was profound: it suggested that the people of San Francisco could reimagine their city, that local government could become a force for social and economic change on the local level, even when politics in Washington and Sacramento were lagging behind. It called for a new relationship between San Franciscans and their city government and looked not just at what was wrong, but what was possible.

That’s something that too often gets lost in political debate today. With urban finances in total collapse, the progressives are on defense much of the time, trying to save the basic safety net and preserve essential programs and services. It seems as if there’s little opportunity to talk about a comprehensive alternative vision for San Francisco.

But bad times are great times to try new ideas — and when the second Community Congress convenes Aug. 14 and 15 at the University of San Francisco, that’s exactly what they’ll be trying to do. It’s not going to be easy — the left in San Francisco has always been fractious, and there’s no consensus on a lot of central issues. But if the Community Congress attracts a broad enough constituency and develops a coherent platform that can guide future political organizing efforts, it will have made a huge contribution to the city.

The event also offers the potential for the creation of a permanent progressive organization that can serve as a forum for discussion, debate, and action on a wide range of issues. That’s something the San Francisco left has never had. Sup. Chris Daly tried to create that sort of organization but it never really worked out. The city’s full of activist groups — the Tenants Union, the Harvey Milk LGBT Club, the Sierra Club, and many others — that work on important issues and generally agree on things, but there’s no umbrella group that can knit all those causes together. It may be an impossible dream, but it’s worth discussing.

The organizers of the Community Congress discuss some of their agenda in the accompanying piece on this page. It should be based on a vision of what a city like San Francisco can be. Think about it:

This can be a city where economic development is about encouraging small businesses and start-ups, where public money goes to finance neighborhood enterprises instead of subsidizing massive projects.

This can be a city where planning is driven by what the people who live here want for their community, not by what big developers can make a profit doing.

This can be a city where housing is a right, not a privilege, where new residential construction is designed to be affordable for the people who work here.

This can be a city where renewable energy powers nearly all the needs of residents and businesses and where the public controls the electricity grid.

This can be a city where the wealthy pay the same level of taxes that rich people paid in this country before the Reagan era, where the individuals and corporations that have gotten filthy rich off Republican tax cuts give back a little bit to a city that is proud of its liberal Democratic values.

This can be a city where it’s safe to walk and bike on the streets and where clean, reliable buses and trains have priority over cars.

This can be a city where all kids get a good education in public schools.

Despite all the economic woes, this is one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in the history of human civilization. There are no economic or physical or scientific or structural constraints to reimagining the city. The only obstacles are political.

In the next two years, control of City Hall will change dramatically. Five seats on the Board of Supervisors are up in November, and the mayor’s office is open the year after that. The progressives have made great progress in the past few years — but downtown is gearing up to try to reverse those advances. The community congress needs to address not just the battle ahead, but describe the outcome and explain why San Francisco’s future is worth fighting for.

A new community congress

David Talbot
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2

Bad times are great times to try new ideas – the second Community Congress convenes Aug. 14 and 15 at the University of San Francisco

EDITORIAL The first time a group of activists from across San Francisco met in a Community Congress, it was 1975 and the city was in trouble. Runaway downtown development was creating massive displacement and threatening the quality of life. Rents were rising and tenants were facing eviction. An energy crisis had left residents and businesses with soaring power bills. The manifesto of the Congress laid out the problem:

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

The Community Congress hammered out a platform — a 40-page document that pretty much defined what progressive San Francisco believed in and wanted for the city. It included district elections of supervisors, rent control, public power, a requirement that developers build affordable housing, and a sunshine ordinance — in fact, much of what the left has accomplished in this town in the past 35 years was first outlined in that document.

Beyond the details, what the platform said was profound: it suggested that the people of San Francisco could reimagine their city, that local government could become a force for social and economic change on the local level, even when politics in Washington and Sacramento were lagging behind. It called for a new relationship between San Franciscans and their city government and looked not just at what was wrong, but what was possible.

That’s something that too often gets lost in political debate today. With urban finances in total collapse, the progressives are on defense much of the time, trying to save the basic safety net and preserve essential programs and services. It seems as if there’s little opportunity to talk about a comprehensive alternative vision for San Francisco.

But bad times are great times to try new ideas — and when the second Community Congress convenes Aug. 14 and 15 at the University of San Francisco, that’s exactly what they’ll be trying to do. It’s not going to be easy — the left in San Francisco has always been fractious, and there’s no consensus on a lot of central issues. But if the Community Congress attracts a broad enough constituency and develops a coherent platform that can guide future political organizing efforts, it will have made a huge contribution to the city.

The event also offers the potential for the creation of a permanent progressive organization that can serve as a forum for discussion, debate, and action on a wide range of issues. That’s something the San Francisco left has never had. Sup. Chris Daly tried to create that sort of organization but it never really worked out. The city’s full of activist groups — the Tenants Union, the Harvey Milk LGBT Club, the Sierra Club, and many others — that work on important issues and generally agree on things, but there’s no umbrella group that can knit all those causes together. It may be an impossible dream, but it’s worth discussing.

The organizers of the Community Congress discuss some of their agenda in the accompanying piece on this page. It should be based on a vision of what a city like San Francisco can be. Think about it:

This can be a city where economic development is about encouraging small businesses and start-ups, where public money goes to finance neighborhood enterprises instead of subsidizing massive projects.

This can be a city where planning is driven by what the people who live here want for their community, not by what big developers can make a profit doing.

This can be a city where housing is a right, not a privilege, where new residential construction is designed to be affordable for the people who work here.

This can be a city where renewable energy powers nearly all the needs of residents and businesses and where the public controls the electricity grid.

This can be a city where the wealthy pay the same level of taxes that rich people paid in this country before the Reagan era, where the individuals and corporations that have gotten filthy rich off Republican tax cuts give back a little bit to a city that is proud of its liberal Democratic values.

This can be a city where it’s safe to walk and bike on the streets and where clean, reliable buses and trains have priority over cars.

This can be a city where all kids get a good education in public schools.

Despite all the economic woes, this is one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in the history of human civilization. There are no economic or physical or scientific or structural constraints to reimagining the city. The only obstacles are political.

In the next two years, control of City Hall will change dramatically. Five seats on the Board of Supervisors are up in November, and the mayor’s office is open the year after that. The progressives have made great progress in the past few years — but downtown is gearing up to try to reverse those advances. The community congress needs to address not just the battle ahead, but describe the outcome and explain why San Francisco’s future is worth fighting for.

Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

David Talbot
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0
Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

EDITORIAL It’s rare to see a fairly conservative city agency, created in part to make it harder for progressives to push measures that might affect business, come down in favor of a new business tax. But the San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis has concluded that the proposal by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to change the local payroll tax and impose a new tax on commercial rents would actually help local businesses, particularly small businesses. The proposal presents a crucial opportunity for progressives to make the case that the Chamber of Commerce and big downtown corporations are not advancing the interests of small businesses — and local merchant groups need to pay attention.

Chiu has taken on a problem that has lingered in San Francisco for decades. The city’s business tax is terribly regressive: Only 10 percent of the companies in town even pay the payroll tax, in part because banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms are exempt under state law. That means the burden falls the heaviest on small and medium-sized companies — the ones that provide most of the net job growth in the city.

The new proposal would make the flat payroll tax more progressive and would exempt more small businesses. It would also raise $28 million more a year for the cash-strapped municipal coffers by taxing commercial rents of more than $60,000 a year.

The commercial rent levy would force the big outfits that now pay no city taxes whatsoever to take on at least some of the burden of financing San Francisco government. Smaller companies with modest leases, and small commercial landlords, wouldn’t pay the new tax at all.

Chiu originally had proposed an even broader tax, which would have raised more than $35 million. But after the Small Business Commission expressed concerns, he changed the measure, reducing the burden on small business even further. And at this point, Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist at the Office of Economic Analysis, reports that the tax would lead to greater job creation in the private sector (because of the reduction in the payroll tax) as well as greater job creation in the public sector (because of the additional revenue to the city).

It’s the kind of idea that ought to have broad-based support — progressives looking to fund crucial services see it as a way to bring in money, and small businesses ought to see it as a way to cut taxes and create jobs in the sector of the city that most needs economic stimulus.

Unfortunately, the response from small business leaders hasn’t been encouraging. The commission hasn’t taken a stand on the measure; on July 12th, the panel deadlocked 2-2, with one member absent and two slots still vacant (the mayor hasn’t filled them). That lets the big downtown players — the Chamber, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on JOBS, etc. — in a position to claim that the Chiu proposal is anti-business.

We’ve seen this pattern far to often. Small business groups allow big corporations, which have no interest in the real issues that impact local merchants, stick the little folks out front on political issues. We’ve seen it over the years with public power, commercial rent control, downtown development, and taxes — and it needs to stop.

The Small Business Commission, the Council of District Merchants, all the local community merchant groups, and anyone else who really cares about the interests of small business in San Francisco should support the Chiu measure. It’s a tax plan that’s good for small business. And if the advocates don’t realize that, they’re hurting themselves, the customers, and the city.

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