Ross Mirkarimi

Slow down the solar project

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EDITORIAL The concept is so good it’s hard to imagine why anyone would criticize it: the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission wants to cover the Sunset Reservoir with solar panels, creating the largest municipal solar generating project in the country. The money would come from existing SFPUC revenue — no new taxpayer dollars. The Sierra Club loves the idea, and Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing it.

We agree that the reservoir is a perfect place for a solar project, and that the city ought to be pursuing this.

But the structure of the deal makes us uncomfortable — and the financing shows a serious flaw in how federal money for renewable energy is allocated.

Under the terms of the proposal, a private company, Recurrent Energy, would finance and build the plant at a cost of perhaps $40 million. The facility would have the capacity to generate 5 MW of electricity, enough to power 2,500 houses. The city, in turn, would agree to buy that power for the next 25 years, at about 23.5 cents per kilowatt hour — far more than the current market rate for electricity but less than what other cities have agreed to pay for long-term solar contracts.

The city would have an option to buy the plant from Recurrent after seven years for $33 million.

The good news is that this would be a public-power project — the city would own the electricity and could use it to power public buildings and eventually, once the community choice aggregation (CCA) system is running, could sell it as retail power to residents and businesses.

But Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos have asked the obvious question: Why is a private company even involved? Why can’t the city build the solar generating station itself? The CPUC’s answer: It’s cheaper to let Recurrent do the work — because the private outfit will get a $12 million tax break from the federal government.

That’s a serious problem — why is the Obama administration giving tax breaks for private projects that aren’t available to cities? "What we should be looking at is why San Francisco, with all its clout in Washington, can’t get that same sort of subsidy for a public project," Campos told us.

Or as Mirkarimi put it: "This only makes sense to me if there’s some guarantee that the city will actually buy the plant in seven years. Otherwise we’re going to look back at this in year 15 and realize it’s not such a good deal."

The city’s energy future is very much up in the air right now — CCA is on the cusp of viability, there’s still an active public-power movement, and it’s very hard to say what the city’s needs will be (or what the price of solar energy will be) 10 years from now, much less 25. So we’re very nervous about signing a contract of that length with a private company.

Yes, the Recurrent deal offers solar now — and that’s important. But the supervisors shouldn’t rush this through. At the very least, they should pass a resolution asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to seek to direct the same subsidies that private companies can get to public solar projects — and to delay a final vote on this until there’s a better analysis of why a private company should be given a long-term contract for what ought to be a public project. *

Fun under seige

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news@sfbg.com

As San Francisco’s party season gets underway — a time when just about every weekend includes street fairs and festivals, venerable celebrations like Bay to Breakers, quirky cultural events such a flash mobs, promoter-created club nights, and underground parties designed to raise funds for Burning Man camps and other endeavors — police and other party-poopers keep finding new ways to crack down on the fun.

The latest: potentially fatal price gouging of the How Weird Street Faire, a series of bizarre police raids on underground clubs, and state alcohol officials threatening to yank local club licenses.

For years, the Guardian has been warning that NIMBY neighbors, intolerant enforcers, and indifferent city officials were threatening the vibrant social events that make San Francisco such a fun and unique city (see “Death of fun,” 5/23/06, “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/25/07, and regular recent posts on the SFBG Politics blog).

Lately the situation has gotten so bad that even the conservative San Francisco Examiner has written about the problem (“Squeezing the fun out of festivals,” 4/13/09) and followed it up with an editorial calling for city officials to address the issue and ensure that the cultural events can keep happening.

Overwhelming public opposition to recently proposed restrictions on the May 17 Bay to Breakers and April 12 Bring Your Own Big Wheel events led City Hall to pressure the San Francisco Police Department into reversing promises of a crackdown, although many events are being threatened.

The How Weird Street Faire is scheduled for May 10, although organizers say they can’t come up with the nearly $10,000 the San Francisco Police Department is demanding by May 1. Organizer Brad Olsen sought help from City Hall (Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and senior mayoral aide Mike Farrah — who helped save BYOBW — have both tried to intervene, so far to no avail) and unearthed city codes that seem to cap police fees for events like How Weird at $5,494, but the cops haven’t budged.

“Although we appreciate your position, it would be unwise for the SFPD to risk public money by not collecting the required fees prior to the event. If the event is the only way your group is able to pay for police services, we are all betting that the event will be as successful as you hope,” SFPD Lt. Nicole Greely wrote to How Weird promoters on April 13, suggesting that organizers take out a loan to pay the escautf8g protection money demanded by SFPD.

But Olsen said his grassroots group, which barely breaks even on the event, has never in its 10-year history been required to pay in advance and told us that entrance donations at the event are the only real source of revenue for the popular dance party.

Meanwhile the Guardian has heard multiple reports of undercover cops infiltrating underground parties in SoMa in the early morning hours of April 11 and 12, followed up by groups of more than a dozen uniformed officers storming in and roughly making arrests for resisting arrest, illegal alcohol sales, and drug possession.

“All of a sudden an undercover cop just tackled someone on the dance floor,” 27-year-old San Francisco resident Ryan Parkhurst told us, describing the scene at one party. “Then at that point, more than 10 officers came upstairs … I asked an officer, ‘What’s going on?’ and he said, ‘Arrest this guy.'”

Parkhurst said four cops then jumped on him, roughed him up, and arrested him. “Another guy was beat up worse than I was, with severe bruises and scratches all over his face.”

Parkhurst said he was charged with being drunk in public, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer, but when he went to court on April 13, he was told all charges had been dropped.

SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Lyn Tomioka spent several days trying to gather information on the raids, but had little to offer by Guardian press time. “I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for based on what the computer is telling me,” she said. The District Attorney’s Office also did not respond by press time.

The attention that the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) is paying to licensed venues seems to have ratcheted up lately as well. DNA Lounge, a nightlife haunt for freaks of all stripes, was cited by ABC in February for operating “a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals” after undercover agents for the department witnessed brief instances of nudity and simulated intercourse during the DNA’s popular regular queer parties Cream and Escandalo.

These instances occurred during go-go and stage routines, mostly involving flashing buttocks and a wet T-shirt contest. In a statement on the DNA Lounge Web site , www.dnalounge.com, DNA owner Jamie Zawinski contends that ABC is retaliating against his club for appealing the department’s decision not to grant DNA a conversion of its license from a Type 48 (21-and-over bar) to a Type 47 (all-ages venue that serves food). During the appeal process, a settlement was reached, and the DNA successfully converted its license.

“As a direct result of our having filed an appeal, ABC began sending undercover agents into the club during our gay and lesbian promotions looking for dirt,” Zawinski writes, drawing attention to the specific targeting of DNA’s queer nights, a particular that inflamed the gay community when a story about it was published in the Bay Area Reporter.

It is the specific requirement that all-ages venues collect 50 percent or more of their revenue from food sales that has gotten several other San Francisco clubs in trouble with ABC. The state requires that venues possessing a Type 47 (“bona fide eating place”) license, a requirement for most all-ages clubs, earn just as much revenue from food sales as liquor sales. That’s particularly daunting for businesses that have traditionally made most of their money at the bar.

“There is grave concern and fear,” San Francisco Entertainment Commissioner Terrence Alan told the Guardian, “that the recent conflicting and oftentimes underground regulations [of ABC] could undermine the great and ongoing work of the Entertainment Commission and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s proposed cultural legislation.”

Alan was referring to the “Promoting and Sustaining Music and Culture in San Francisco” charter amendment sponsored by Mirkarimi that would “produce a master plan and vision that promotes a sustainable environment for music, culture, and entertainment throughout the city.”

It appears the law enforcement types are doing everything possible to make sure Mirkarimi’s vision never becomes reality.

What’s in a Mayor’s Office merger? Pots of money it seems

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You can’t blame folks for being confused about and/or suspicious of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s attempted merger of the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or whatever they are calling themselves these days.

(When you call folks in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, some identify themselves on their voice mail like so: “This is so-and-so with the Mayor’s Office.” I won’t name names, but you know who you are. And besides, this seems like an accurate description of where people feel OEWD stands in Newsom’s pantheon, no matter what the department is called.)

Following the Boards’ April 15 Budget committee hearing, it became clear for the first time since Newsom announced the merger in December, that the resulting shift in funding and staff is not a done deal, since it needs Board approval, per the city charter.

As a result of yesterday’s legislative revelations, the Board budget committee has convened a task force to examine Newsom’s proposal, which apparently, is part of his 2009-10 budget submission, which is due in June. The Board then has 30 days to decide, on the basis of these recommendations and its own impressions, whether to approve or disapprove of the merger.

Judging from the reactions and comments of Budget Chair Sup. John Avalos and Sups. David Campos, Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi, approval seems far from automatic, with many folks worried that the merger is really about raiding the community development cookie jar in a time of ballooning deficits.

At yesterday hearing, OEWD deputy director Jennifer Entine Matz clarified that OEWD has not been part of the Mayor’s Office for years.

Energy deficiency

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More in this issue:

>>Fed money for green jobs?

>>Green living resource guide

rebeccab@sfbg.com

As the window of opportunity for averting the worst-case global warming scenarios narrows, wise use of energy seems increasingly urgent. So millions of dollars in state and federal funding and significant contributions from utility customers are devoted each year to improving energy efficiency in California.

It’s a crucial program designed to reduce consumption and planet-damaging emissions and eliminate the need for new fossil-fuel burning power plants. Yet the state’s energy-efficiency programs are often run by investor-owned utility companies, such as Pacific Gas & Electric, that have been missing efficiency targets yet demanding ever more public money anyway.

Critics say the programs would yield more energy savings on the dollar if local governments or nonprofits were in charge. The utilities have not only fought to maintain control of these programs, they’re now seeking even more taxpayer money by trying to claim federal economic stimulus funds.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is engaged in a long, slow process of rolling out an ambitious community choice aggregation (CCA) program, Clean Power SF, which would utilize 50 percent renewable energy and promote green technologies in the city.

While state law guarantees that energy-efficiency funding generated by San Franciscans could be funneled into Clean Power SF, it isn’t likely to happen without a fight from the state’s most powerful utility.

AN ‘A’ FOR EFFORT


Although PG&E and other utilities are entrusted with millions in ratepayers’ money to promote energy efficiency, independent analysis demonstrates that they’ve had limited success. But last December, they garnered rich rewards anyway, at ratepayers’ expense.

In 2007, the California Public Utilities Commission adopted a system to encourage utilities to strive for high energy efficiency standards. Utilities could receive hearty payouts for achieving a certain threshold of energy savings, the commission decided. Conversely, if the companies failed miserably, they’d be slapped with penalty fees. Rather than take the utilities’ word for it, the CPUC directed its Energy Division to inspect the companies’ energy efficiency program performance and report on it each year.

About a third of the funding for these programs is amassed with a mandatory fee on every ratepayer’s monthly energy bill, called the Public Goods Charge. This is combined with a second pot of ratepayer money and collected by utilities to fund initiatives such as rebates, light-bulb discounts, energy retrofits, and consumer-education drives. The program budget for all the utilities from 2006 through 2008 was around $2 billion. For the 2009 to 2011 program, the utilities are collectively seeking closer to $4 billion.

Last December, based on the utilities’ own claims that they’d hit the targets for the 2006 — 2007 program, the CPUC handed over nearly $82 million in incentive payments — with some $41 million going to PG&E. The commission accepted the utilities’ claims because the Energy Division’s verification report was behind schedule, and the utilities argued that this delay would postpone their payments and thus undermine the whole incentive.

At the same time, the commission noted, "We have profound concerns that accepting the [utilities’] proposal … would subject ratepayers to significant risk of overpayment." In an attempt to strike a balance, the CPUC voted to award $82 million rather than the $152.7 million that the utilities claimed they were owed.

But the independent report, which was finally released two months later, concluded that PG&E and two other utilities shouldn’t have been entitled to any incentive payments at all. Based on this analysis, they’d missed the targets.

The move drew criticism from groups like The Utilities Reform Network (TURN), Women’s Energy Matters, and the California Public Utilities Commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, which charged that investor-owned utilities are more concerned about the payouts they receive for running these programs than maximizing energy savings.

"They didn’t seem troubled by the fact that they hadn’t met the goals. They were only troubled by the fact that they weren’t going to get the financial reward," said Mindy Spatt, communications director for the Utility Reform Network (TURN). "I suppose there’s a message in there about just how seriously they take energy efficiency."

Loretta Lynch, a former CPUC commissioner, told the Guardian that she’d been watching the proceedings closely. "They had already promised Wall Street they were going to get this money, and so they had to meet Wall Street’s expectations regardless of whether or not they met the technical requirements of the program," Lynch said.

The CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates opposed the decision to award the incentive money. "[The utilities] are being rewarded for something they say they’ve done, but that independent analysis shows they just didn’t do," DRA Regulatory Analyst Thomas Roberts told the Guardian. "It’s like rewarding a student for getting a D."

Part of the problem is that PG&E’s program relied heavily on giving away compact-fluorescent light bulbs, and then the utility inflated estimates for how much energy savings they would provide and how long they would last. In other words, CFLs are a good first step to energy conservation, but not enough to make the greatest strides in reducing demand.

Roberts also said PG&E often delivered the bulbs to what he called "free riders," or people who would’ve made the switch on their own. TURN once discovered a box of light bulbs posted on eBay by some crafty entrepreneurs who had purchased them at a discount, courtesy of PG&E. At that point, the bulbs could have wound up anywhere in the country, Spatt points out, instead of reducing electricity demand in California.

"There is no clear connection that we are not building new power plants due to energy efficiency programs," said Cheryl Cox, senior policy analyst and project manager for energy efficiency at the CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates. "And we do not appear to be on track to achieve long-term, persistent energy savings. Given the dependence of energy efficiency portfolios on short-term savings like lighting, it appears that the utilities would have to spend additional dollars to play catch-up — yet they persist on proposing the same old, non-progressive, CFL programs."

WHO’S IN CHARGE OF YOUR SURCHARGE?


For some, the incentive payouts provided new fuel for a longstanding argument that utilities shouldn’t be in charge of administering state-mandated energy efficiency programs in the first place. Barbara George, executive director of Women’s Energy Matters, points out that states with financially disinterested third parties managing energy efficiency measures tend to be more careful with the money they’re granted, resulting in more energy savings per dollar.

She points to a report completed by analyst Richard Estevez, which ranked 37 statewide energy efficiency programs by cost-effectiveness. "Non-utility implemented programs make up 18 out of the top 20 rankings; utility-implemented programs make up 15 out of the 17 poorest rankings," that report concludes.

Under the current system, "PG&E makes a profit on every dollar," says Lynch. "In addition, all of PG&E’s costs are covered. Then, of course, all the subcontractors’ costs are covered too, so it gets down to only 50 or 60 cents of every dollar that is actually going into programs. The rest of the money is going into PG&E’s profit, PG&E’s overhead, and the subcontractors’ overhead. Not surprisingly, if you’re a nonprofit or a government, you’re doing that service directly at no profit and lower administrative costs."

Paul Fenn, a consultant to Clean Power SF, sounds a similar note. In his view, PG&E "doesn’t want to reduce energy consumption. Why? Because every year, they go to their shareholders and they predict next year’s load growth. That’s their business. They burn gas, and they sell power. They’re a gas and electric company. The idea that a gas and electric company could be adequately incented to reduce their sales is naïve."

Fenn is the founder of Local Power, Inc. and the author of Assembly Bill 117 — a state bill passed in 2002 under the sponsorship of then-Assembly Member Carole Migden that allows municipalities to set up community choice aggregation programs. Local Power has been a key player in San Francisco’s own embryonic CCA.

AB 117 also gave cities the option to gain control of Public Goods Charge funds generated by their own ratepayers. In SF, that would mean funneling roughly $18 million annually into Clean Power SF’s energy efficiency budget.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who chairs a committee overseeing the CCA implementation, told the Guardian he supports the idea. But he warned that the city probably wouldn’t be able to wrest the funding away from PG&E without a fight. "It’s completely appropriate for city government to be in charge of those funds," he says. "PG&E shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat with all that money anyway."

San Francisco is already hailed as a green city, but Clean Power SF, which has renewable energy as its centerpiece, would set a new standard for what cities can do to address climate change. The plan calls for 50 percent renewable energy, compared with PG&E’s energy mix of 11 to 12 percent renewable power. The SFPUC is slated to present CCA program plans to the state next year.

SFPUC’s Michael Campbell, the CCA program director, rejects the idea of going after Public Goods Charge funds just yet. "It’s premature to do that now," Campbell says. "About one-third of the energy efficiency dollars that PG&E collects … come from Public Goods Charge, and the other two-thirds are charges associated with procurement portions of customers’ bills. If a CCA were formed … to have an equal amount of dollars, we would need to have additional charges to CCA customers that would be associated with the energy portion of their bill."

Yet Fenn said applying to administer those funds is long overdue. Not knowing whether that $18 million is in place every year could derail the CCA bidding process, Fenn argues, since it would be difficult for prospective power suppliers to draft a plan if they lack clarity on the program budget.

The other problem, Fenn said, is that without the energy-efficiency funds, it would be harder for the city’s CCA to get its rates down low enough to compete with PG&E. Given the CCA is required to beat PG&E rates, it could make or break the success of the project.

"Energy efficiency is the cheapest resource," Fenn said. "It helps the economic feasibility of the portfolio by creating surplus revenue. If you’re just doing green supply, and not green load reduction, it’s going to be really hard not to pay more than PG&E."

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PG&E


While Clean Power SF lags, energy efficiency programs are percoutf8g throughout the city — usually touted by Mayor Gavin Newsom and funded through public-private partnerships with PG&E.

In a recent post on TriplePundit.com, Newsom announced the creation of an Existing Buildings Efficiency Task Force — composed of landlords, developers, PG&E, and other downtown interests — tasked with greening buildings and creating green jobs.

"The Task Force builds upon a great deal of work we’re doing already — taking full advantage of the $7 [million] to $11 million provided in energy efficiency block grants by the federal stimulus, leveraging our ongoing … partnership with PG&E, and working with private partners to create a San Francisco Clean Energy Fund," Newsom wrote.

A recent initiative to install energy efficient streetlights in the Tenderloin is the result of another PG&E partnership. While there’s no doubt that these programs will have positive results, they also serve to further entrench PG&E into citywide green initiatives, which render it more difficult for Clean Power SF to gain footing further down the road.

With federal stimulus money flowing into state coffers, the utilities are back at the table, recommending to the CPUC that some of the federal funding go into their existing energy-efficiency programs. "We believe that the Recovery Act or ARRA funds should work in conjunction with [investor-owned utility] programs to minimize potential customer confusion and leverage the success we have had with the programs," Marc Gaines, a representative for the state’s four investor-owned utilities, said during a recent All-Party CPUC meeting to discuss the stimulus funds. "Rather than competing with the programs, we would like to use ARRA funding to supplement existing energy efficiency [and other] programs."

Not so fast, countered George, who stood up to speak during the meeting. "We have to worry about if these funds are commingled with current programs, are the utilities going to rake off profits?" she wondered. "These funds need to be used for authorized purposes, and not for fraud, waste, error, and abuse. The energy efficiency programs have been used to fight public power and community choice efforts. The competition is brutal when it comes to the utilities."

Clean Power SF will take center stage at joint meeting

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By Rebecca Bowe

Last Friday, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi declared 2009 the “make-or-break year” for San Francisco’s ambitious Community Choice Aggregation program. Also known as Clean Power SF, the program would establish the city and county as an electricity purchaser for residents and businesses currently served by PG&E, and put S.F. on track for achieving 50 percent renewable power generation. At an April 3 LAFCo (Local Agency Formation Commission) meeting, it was announced that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has agreed to sit down with LAFCo for a meeting about CCA for the first time ever — a sign that things could actually start moving forward.

The process of getting Clean Power SF off the ground has been fraught with delay, in part because the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — which is tasked with implementing the program — dropped the ball on a series of deadlines. During the last couple monthly meetings, LAFCo, which is charged with overseeing CCA implementation, has vented frustration about the feet dragging at the PUC and questioned the agency’s commitment to the effort. However, the tone shifted some at the April 3 meeting.

CCA director Michael Campbell, who was hired by the SFPUC, noted that the city agency is getting back on schedule — and announced the launch of a new Web site. Two new LAFCo staff positions were approved recently by the Board of Supervisors, providing further momentum.

America’s Next Top Supervisor

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Eleven began the competition, but after last week’s spectacular fiasco involving Ross Mirkarimi and a ring-tailed lemur, only five finalists are left to face our panel of sublebrity judges, who reviewed their looks, poise, style, and grace during a session of drunken Googling (Droogling). Which one will receive a $100 modeling contract with Board Babes and a seven-slide spread on HuffPo? Who’s gonna be on top?

THE JUDGES:

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Nicole Markoff of local label Nicacelly (www.nicacelly.com), fashion goddess

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Anna Conda of clubs Charlie Horse (myspace.com/charliehorsecinch) and Herr-A-Chick, merciless queen

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Marke B. of SFBG, noted closet case

THE HOPEFULS:

MICHELA ALIOTO-PIER


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Nicole Oh, you round-the-way girl. Peek-a-boo lacey undergarments haven’t looked this good since Jody Watley. As for your slimmed-down bamboo hoops — nice touch! We know you’re feeling underground, all gold chains and sweet blue eyes. Represent!

Anna You’re a beautiful woman with great eyes and hair, but would a little color — just to break up the funeral gray — kill you?

Marke She’s definitely working the "sweet as apple pie," all-American look. But you know that within that pie lurks a coiled python as pink and sweaty as any hot dog, and that’s what brought down the auto industry.

CHRIS DALY


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Nicole C-Diddy, you’re pushing up on some Sarah Palin eyewear, but I’m not hating. I’m feeling your approach and evolution, running from the "Didn’t we meet at Pops a couple years ago?" 5 o’clock-smudged hipster through proud beard-papa.

Anna Wha … hunh? Oh, I’m sorry. Just a little nap.

Marke I thought Chris was really going to blow it on the Bollywood challenge, but he barely edged out Jaslene by last-minute waxing his thighs with some packing tape and break dancing right through the herd of elephants. Who’s sari now, Jaslene?

Newsom officials dodge budget questions

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By Melody Parker and Steven T. Jones

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee yesterday held a hearing on deep budget cuts proposed for city health and welfare programs and tried unsuccessfully to get straight answers to why the Newsom Administration isn’t planning to use federal stimulus money to offset those cuts.
Congress and President Barack Obama specifically offered economic stimulus money to prevent cuts in things like housing, homeless, and social services that are most needed during hard economic times. San Francisco’s share is more than $50 milllion. As Obama said, “This plan will also help ensure that you don’t need to make cuts to essential services Americans rely on now more than ever.”
But Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos expressed frustration that the Mayor’s Office has said it doesn’t want to use these one-time funding to cover ongoing expenses and that they’ve refused to engage in a dialogue about that stand. At a press conference before the hearing, Mirkarimi said dealing with the administration has been like pulling teeth: “The Board had received zero word from Mayor Newsom.”
So they pressed Newsom’s Public Health Director Mitch Katz at the hearing, but still made little progress on getting a straight answer. As a lawyer, Campos said he was “familiar with nuanced language” and told Katz that he didn’t feel the administration is being responsive.

Update on proposed solar power purchase agreement

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By Rebecca Bowe

The city’s Budget & Finance Committee voted 3 –2 this afternoon to table the discussion about the Recurrent Energy power purchase agreement until April 22.

The 25,000 solar panels that would be installed upon the roof of the Sunset Reservoir could generate enough power to serve 2,500 San Francisco households, Barbara Hale of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission told the committee. It would increase the city’s solar generation from 2 to 7 megawatts, she said, and it would become California’s largest solar photovoltaic system. But while everyone applauded the idea of going solar, some supervisors said they weren’t comfortable with the terms of the contract with Recurrent Energy.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said he had a problem with the city cementing a 25-year agreement to pay $235 per megawatt-hour, a rate that will escalate at 3 percent per year, when there is uncertainty about how the renewable-energy market will behave. If the going rate for solar power drops significantly in the next two decades, he pointed out, the deal could leave San Francisco locked into paying a high price to a private company.

At LAFCo, more trouble getting CCA into gear

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By Rebecca Bowe

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who serves as chair of the Local Agency Formation Commission, frowned at what he characterized as “shadiness” at a March 6 LAFCo meeting, and ultimately moved to hold off on a decision to award a contract that would have pushed things forward with San Francisco’s Community Choice Aggregation program.

Ironically, many of the advocates who typically voice concerns that the municipal-power program is moving too slowly expressed relief that this decision was stalled, saying that if the contract had gone to the wrong firm, the integrity of San Francisco’s CCA program would have suffered.

LAFCo is charged with working alongside the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to implement a community-choice aggregation program, which would bring municipal electricity to San Francisco using locally produced, cleaner energy generation.

Score one for fun

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› steve@sfbg.com

City officials and race organizers have dropped plans for a crackdown on partying at the annual Bay to Breakers race in the face of a massive grassroots organizing effort that quickly generated more than 20,000 members opposed to the proposed bans on alcohol, floats, and nudity.

"We’re pleased with the outcome. I think it’s a victory," Ed Sharpless of the group Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2Breakers told the Guardian. "When you have over 20,000 people join your group in two weeks, it means something."

It means that people are tired of the string of crackdowns by Mayor Gavin Newsom (and his special events coordinator, Martha Cohen) that the Guardian has labeled the "Death of fun" (see "Death of fun, the sequel," 4/25/07), which have included canceling Halloween in the Castro District and placing restrictions on the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, How Weird Street Faire, North Beach Festival, North Beach Jazz Festival, and other events.

And the public outcry demonstrates that big events like Bay to Breakers don’t belong to the organizers and sponsors; they’ve become the property of the entire city.

Sharpless was part of a Feb. 27 meeting convened by the Mayor’s Office that included opponents of the crackdown, race organizers, neighborhood groups, and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who has been trying to balance complaints about public urination, drunkenness, and trash with his concerns about killing yet another party.

Afterward, the Mayor’s Office issued a statement indicating that floats would be allowed as long as they aren’t used to transport alcohol, urging Bay to Breakers participants to register for the race, and stating that alcohol consumption "will be subject to the laws of California. Race organizers will coordinate with the San Francisco Police Department to proactively remove kegs and glass bottles of alcohol from the race course."

While that alcohol policy was left deliberately vague, those involved with the negotiations and the May 17 event say drinking will be allowed as long as attendees don’t get out of control. As with alcohol, nudity isn’t specifically allowed, but it’s no longer explicitly banned.

"The issue was it had gotten out of hand last year," Sam Singer, a crisis communications specialist brought in by race organizers, told the Guardian. He said the race organizers wanted to put a stop to the mayhem and proposed the restrictions, but eventually agreed to work with the partyers this year.

"There was a request by the pro-float, pro-alcohol group to continue what had been a San Francisco tradition. Now it’s incumbent on them to register for the race so organizers can pay for it," he said. "This debate has created a positive social pressure to be a cool person and to be respectful of one’s self and one’s neighbors."

Opponents of the crackdown agree and say they will work to keep things under control. Or as Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2Breakers wrote in a public statement, "The problems with public drunkenness … we get it and agree. People, you need to act more responsibly. Pace yourself. It’s a long day. Don’t get out of hand and don’t ruin it for the majority of folks who are acting responsibly. Most importantly, take care of your friends and each other."

But there are still outstanding questions about whether race organizers (including for-profit corporations AEG and ING) are providing enough portable toilets and trash receptacles to avoid last year’s problems, concerns that were raised but not resolved on Feb. 26 during a permitting hearing before the city’s Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation.

Organizers told ISCOTT they would provide 650 portable toilet this year, compared to 550 last year, and that they would be more concentrated around problem areas such as Alamo Square and the Panhandle. But Sharpless told the committee that still wasn’t adequate, describing last year’s problems as "mostly a logistical issue" and saying the proposed crackdown and hiring of Singer, who often charges $400 per hour, were counterproductive.

"Why is it they bring in such a heavyweight to deal with this when they could have applied their resources to these logistical issues?" Sharpless told ISCOTT. "They want to take away the fun in San Francisco to make a buck."

Longtime runner Tony Rossman, who supports the crackdown, didn’t agree and told ISCOTT, "There is a one-word problem here and that is alcohol. And that requires public enforcement."

But Conor Johnstone, a runner who opposes the crackdown, told ISCOTT that banning alcohol was an attack on the character of the 97-year-old event, rather than dealing with the main stated problems. "I think an increase of 100 Porta-Potties is anemic at best," he said.

Jeremy Pollock, who was representing Sup. Mirkarimi, offered ISCOTT and race organizers a long list of suggestions to mitigate the problems, including using large capacity urinals, creating an end point with entertainment and Dumpsters for those with floats, and setting a cheaper registration tier for those who aren’t serious runners. "Nobody wants to see this race end," he said.

Opponents of the crackdown say they will continue working to resolve the outstanding issues.

"We’re not done, folks. There is still work to be done. Issues to be resolved. Details to be hammered out," Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2 Breakers wrote in a public statement. "What wasn’t discussed at the meeting and tabled for later discussion are the logistical deficiencies we still believe exist with race organizers’ plan for the event. Recent research by our group revealed that the New York Marathon sources 2,250 toilets for 39,000 participants in their race, while AEG race organizers source only 500 toilets for 65,000 participants in Bay to Breakers. Could it be that there are such massive issues with public urination because there simply aren’t enough toilets?"

Mirkarimi was happy with the agreement, but said it didn’t address the logistical concerns he’s been raising. "It’s a good step in the right direction. However, this is predicated on the trust that may not be felt until the day of the race. We were looking for specifics to improve this race."

Save public-access TV!

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By Tim Redmond

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has introduced a measure that might help save public-access TV, in San Francisco and elsewhere. It’s not that radical – just a nonbinding resolution calling on the federal and state government to make a small amendment to legislation that currently threatens the existence of PEG – public, educational and government – programming on cable TV.

But it’s got the giant AT&T all agitated, and lobbyists are descending on City Hall to crush it.

The background is a bit complicated, but I’ll try to make it simple. In 2006, the state of California passed a very bad law called the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act (DIVCA), which took away from cities and counties the ability to regulate cable-TV franchises. Now the state Public Utilities Commission – a crew of pro-industry hacks if there ever was one – has that jurisdiction.

One of the results: The city of San Francisco no longer has the ability to require that the operator of its cable franchise provide money for PEG programming. Meanwhile, an old federal law (from 1934) allows cities to mandate that cable franchises pay for capital facilities for PEG – but not for operating expenses.

And the city’s franchise agreement with Comcast is ending this year, and with it will go some $600,000 in operational funding for the city’s public-access TV. More than a dozen PEG channels in Los Angeles county have already gone dark; that could happen here as soon as June.

Mirkarimi wants the state and the feds (that is, our powerful Congressional delegation and our relatively powerful folks in Sacramento) to revisit this, and make a very modest change in law that would allow franchise money to be used not just for capital expenses but for operating budgets.

AT&T dashed off a letter to Mirkarimi Feb. 27th whining about the measure and insisting that the city should pay the PEG expenses out of its existing franchise-fee money. That money goes to the general fund; at a time when the entire social safety net in San Francisco is about to collapse, who really thinks that money will be diverted to public-access TV?

The measure comes up tomorrow at the board. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Who will the AT&T lobbyists get to?

Russoniello and Ryan in the cross hairs

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Text by Sarah Phelan.

As the city searches for a new police chief, the Board of Supervisors is intensifying efforts to oust the US Attorney for Northern California, Joseph Russoniello, and the former US Attorney for Northern California, Kevin Ryan, who is currently Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top crime advisor, and replace them with folks more in tune with San Francisco values.

Ryan and Russoniello, who were both appointed a year ago, have come under increasing scrutiny since July, when the mayor ordered the city to report undocumented youth to federal authorities the minute these youth are arrested on suspicion of committing a felony.

Immigrant rights groups nationwide have decried Newsom’s decision as robbing youth of their right to due process. But, city insiders say Newsom is refusing to reopen the conversation, in face of a Grand Jury investigation that Russoniello convened. Russoniello has claimed that the city’s previous policy direction, which included flying Honduran youth back to their families, was tantamount to harboring and thus was a violation of federal law.

At last Tuesday’s Board meeting, Sups. David Campos, John Avalos, Chris Daly, Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi and Board President David Chiu introduced a resolution urging President Barack Obama and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to appoint a new U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.

The resolution cites five examples that “highlight Mr. Russoniello’s questionable judgment,” and states that the Board “recognizes the importance of having a U.S. Attorney that understands San Francisco’s diversity, values and commitment to equal justice, especially as s/he works closely with the City’s law enforcement agencies on public safety measures. The resolution also observes that the Board “has a duty to safeguard the well being of its residents and ensure their equal protection.”

The next night, Campos, who came from Guatemala to this country at age 14 as an undocumented immigrant, joined speakers at an immigrant rights forum that denounced recent changes in the sanctuary city ordinance, called for the ouster of Kevin Ryan and expressed disappointment that Newsom did not attend the forum.

“I understand Newsom sent a representative and I appreciate that, but for a lot of people it would have meant a lot if the mayor had attended himself,” Campos told the Guardian.

With the heat on Newsom locally and statewide—many voters in the upcoming gubernatorial race are of immigrant descent and/or have undocumented relatives here—will the mayor meet community members face to face? Or is he afraid of alienating the powerful Police Officers Association and losing vital campaign contributions?

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard reportedly told the Chronicle that, “the mayor supports Ryan but ‘is willing and eager to listen to feedback from the community.”

Asked if the Mayor has scheduled a meeting yet, Campos told the Guardian, “Newsom has said he wants to meet with me and members of the community, so until I hear otherwise, I will believe that is what is going to happen.”

Stay tuned.

Wolf mugged, more Ryan fallout

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Text by Sarah Phelan

With Congress about to reconsider a media shield bill, here’s another reason why legislators should protect reporters from being forced to reveal confidential sources: it could help prevent reporters from getting mugged by the folks who they might otherwise meet in prison while being held in contempt for refusing to reveal their sources.

That at least seems to be the take away message from the February 4 mugging of Josh Wolf, who says he was attacked outside Volare’s Pizza on Haight Street by Terrell Trammell, 28, who he met when both were inmates of Dublin Federal Correction Center.

Wolf, who spent a record-breaking 226 days in prison for protecting source materials from then US Attorney Kevin Ryan, who has since become Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of Criminal Justice, wrote about the attack in the Palo Alto Daily Post, where he works as a reporter.

Trammel was in Dublin at the same time as Wolf, following a series of violent events that included Page Street Mob members trying to murder Trammel in 2004, in retaliation for the murder of mob member Eugene Hill.

But on the night of February 4, both Wolf and Trammell were “free”, when Wolf ran into Trammell while waiting for food at Volare’s Pizza.

‘I talked to him about Greg Anderson,” Wolf recalls, referring to the Barry Bonds’ trainer, who was also at Dublin during Wolf’s tenure, ” and how I’d heard they were going after his wife,” Wolf recalls, And who has the better pizza in town. He asked me where I was working, and and I asked him, and he said, right here

“As I walked home with a box of pizza in one hand and two sodas in the other, I heard Trammell call from across the street, “Got a light?”” Wolf writes for the Daily Post. ” I awkwardly fished out a lighter from my pocket as he crossed the street. But when I went to hand it to him, I was greeted with a punch to the face. The pizza went flying.”

Wolf also describes how a friend of Trammell’s joins in, and how Trammel reaches into Wolf’s pocket and takes his iPhone, and then runs away.”

Reached by phone, Wolf told me that once he contacted Sup. Ross Mirkarimi about the attack, “everyone was bending over backwards to help,” and how he subsequently found himself in the awkward position of having to identify Trammell in a line-up, but that it was either do that or “wait for him to come back for me, like the school yard bully.”

Asked why Trammel attacked him, Wolf wasn’t sure: the iPhone seemed a likely motive, but then again, Wolf didn’t exactly “follow prison code,” while he and Trammel were inside.

Wolf also noted that while he was incarcerated the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in his support, but that as far as he knows, Mayor Gavin Newsom never signed the resolution. Fact or Fiction? Stay tuned.

June 2 special election gets a green light

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By Rebecca Bowe

On Feb. 3, the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to adopt a resolution calling for a municipal special election on June 2, setting the stage for an epic ballot battle over budget choices.

With Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd dissenting, the board approved the election, which will ask voters to decide on new tax measures in an effort to raise city revenues.

The election was proposed as a partial solution to the city’s looming $576 million budget deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year, which Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi described as a “tsunami … that the city is being hit by.” The cuts will deliver painful blows across the board, affecting citywide health and human service programs in particular. At last week’s meeting, hundreds turned out to express concern about how deep cuts will leave some of the city’s most vulnerable populations at risk.

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

This is what happened in the office of the mayor of San Francisco last week:

1. One of the most highly respected members of the Newsom administration — quite possibly the only department head the mayor ever hired who has the unquestioned respect of every sector of the community she works with — was forced to resign, for reasons the mayor won’t explain. In fact, in a lame attempt at spin, the mayor’s press office put out a statement suggesting that Margaret Brodkin, who ran the Department of Children, Youth and Families, was leaving to take a new position.

Wrong, as Brodkin quickly (and predictably) pointed out in her own release, which hit my inbox at almost exactly the same time. Brodkin told the truth: the mayor, who has had nothing but praise for her in public, fired her, summarily.

2. Just a few weeks after vowing to begin a new era of mutual respect and a desire to work with the new Board of Supervisors, the mayor tried to override the board, quietly, and place his own unqualified ally on a key state commission.

The supervisors had voted 8-0 to nominate Sup. Ross Mirkarimi for a slot on the state Coastal Commission. That’s an important job: the commission regulates development all along the state’s coast, and the person who represents San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma counties needs to be a strong and reliable environmentalist. Mirkarimi, a Green Party member, has devoted much of his life to environmental causes; his colleagues on the board agreed he was the best candidate to forward to the state Senate Rules Committee, which has the final say on appointments.

Without informing Mirkarimi or Board President David Chiu, Newsom tried to pull a fast move: he forwarded the name of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier to Senate Rules, hoping, perhaps, that as a Democrat, Alioto-Pier might get the nod. There’s a good reason the supervisors didn’t nominate her — her record on environmental issues is awful, she’s way too friendly to developers, and the last time she had an outside job, as a delegate to the Golden Gate Bridge board, she missed half the meetings. But Newsom wouldn’t trust the board, and wanted his own candidate.

Which was not only wrong, but stupid: turns out state law gives the supervisors, not the mayor, the exclusive right to nominate Coastal Commission candidates. Newsom’s office didn’t even check the regulations, and by the end of the week, his spinmeisters were pretending that they’d never really forwarded her name in the first place.

3. The mayor came out strongly against a June special election to raise taxes to cover some of the half-billion-dollar deficit — but offered absolutely no alternative. That left the supervisors, city employees, the press, and the public wondering what exactly the mayor has in mind — 1,000 layoffs? 2,000? Major service cuts? — and when he’s going to tell us about it.

Oh, and while all of this was happening, Himself was out of town, hobnobbing with the hip swells at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s asking — what the fuck is going on in Newsom-land, anyway? *

Newsom’s new spirit of cooperation …

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By Tim Redmond

… Is utter bullshit.

The mayor proclaimed that he’s going to try harder to work with the Board of Supervisors, and that he sees David Chiu as much more of a potential ally than outgoing board prez Aaron Peskin — but already we’re seeing what that means. Consider:

The supervisors voted 8-0 last week to nominate Ross Mirkarimi for a coveted slot on the California Coastal Commission. It’s an important job, and requires someone with a strong comittment to environmental issues. So what does Newsom do? He ignores the board vote, refuses to defer to the unanimous wishes of Mirkarimi’s colleagues, and instead puts forward Michela Alioto-Pier.

That’s Alioto-Pier, who loves developers and is among the worst environmental votes on the board. Alioto-Pier, who got appointed to the Golden Gate Bridge District a while back then missed half the meetings. Alioto-Pier, who would never get the support of more than two of her colleagues for any kind of important or high-profile job.

The final decision is in the hands of State Sen. President Darryl Steinberg, who has a few more pressing things to think about at the moment.

But the Sierra Club is supporting Mirkarimi. Assembly member Tom Ammiano is supporting Mirkarimi. State Sen. Leland Yee is supporting Mirkarimi. I haven’t been able to reach Sen. Mark Leno yet, but he ought to be supporting Mirkarimi.

Which leaves the mayor defying the supes, defying most of the state Legislative delegation and pushing an unqualified candidate in what can only be an F.U. to the supervisors he so recently pledged to work with. (I emailed his press office and asked why Newsom did this, but they haven’t gotten back to me.)

Some spirit of cooperation.

UPDATE: Leno tells me he is supporting Mirkarimi. But there’s a new twist: The mayor CAN’T nominate Alioto-Pier for the Coastal Commission. He doesn’t have the legal authority. It turns out that in a city and county like San Francisco, nominations can only be made by the supervisors. Government Code Section 50279.2 states:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this article, in any county in which there is only one incorporated city, the legislative body of such city is hereby created and shall serve as the city selection committee

Newsom didn’t check before he put the word out, and now he looks like a fool. In fact, I’m told his office is now trying to pretend they never nominated Alioto-Pier in the first place. (Not that the mayor ever worried about things like state law in managing his office.

Hell of a job our guy is doing running this town.

Immigrant activists seek Newsom meeting

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› news@sfbg.com

As cops pushed their way through City Hall’s crowded hallways the day after the presidential inauguration, telling immigrant-rights demonstrators to make a clear pathway, a woman pulled her friend closer to the wall.

"Be careful," she said in Spanish. "You don’t want to be detained."

The mostly Latino protesters placed a candle and an invitation to an immigrant rights meeting in front of each supervisor’s door. The event was meant to bid good riddance to George W. Bush and demand policy change from both President Barack Obama and Mayor Gavin Newsom in light of the escautf8g nationwide crackdowns on undocumented immigrants.

Angered by what they see as a lack of local political leadership in the face of federal assaults on San Francisco’s sanctuary city ordinance, the protesters, numbering in the hundreds, sang social justice songs and chanted "Si se puede" before stopping in front of the Mayor’s Office to shout, "Let us in!"

Organized by the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee, a coalition of 30 organizations that has been working on an immigrants’ rights platform since last July, the action was intended to place additional pressure on Newsom to meet directly with activists.

Newsom has refused to hold a public meeting with immigrant-rights groups since announcing last summer that the city would contact federal authorities whenever youth suspected of being undocumented are arrested on felony charges. That means even innocent kids, arrested by mistake, could be deported.

Newsom’s abrupt policy shift came on the heels of a series of racially charged San Francisco Chronicle articles that hit newsstands just as he was announcing his intention to run for California governor.

Since then, SFIRDC has organized protests and met individually with nine supervisors to persuade them to uphold the city’s sanctuary ordinance and municipal ID program, and to work to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, police checkpoints, and budget cuts to immigrant community programs.

To date, the four newly elected supervisors — John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, and Eric Mar, all direct descendants of immigrant families — along with two returning board members, Sups. Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty, have signed SFIRDC’s pledge.

But while Sup. Sophie Maxwell is said to be open to the idea and Ross Mirkarimi is likely to sign it, Sups. Michela Alioto-Pier, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu, Newsom’s closest allies on the board, have not.

SFIRDC co-organizer and Asian Law Caucus staff attorney Angela Chan said the coalition hopes Newsom will be receptive to the idea of a Feb. 25 town hall meeting, and that Obama will heed calls to stop raids and suspend detentions and deportations — moves that have increased in frequency locally since Joseph Russoniello was appointed U.S. Attorney for Northern California in December 2007.

"Russoniello’s priorities don’t seem to be in line with the Obama administration," Chan told the Guardian, further noting that the success of SFIRDC’s February 25th meeting, which will be held at the office of St. Peter’s Housing Committee, hinges on the presence of the mayor: If he doesn’t show, the discussion cannot move forward.

San Francisco’s 1989 Sanctuary Ordinance prohibits the use of city funds to enforce federal immigration law, but a 1993 amendment requires the city to report immigrants suspected of felonies to the federal government.

But San Francisco law-enforcement officials chose not to apply that rule to young people — until last summer’s policy shift. Since then, the Juvenile Probation Department has referred an estimated 100 San Francisco youth (who were arrested on suspicion of a crime, but not yet convicted) to ICE. The feds can detain undocumented youth in county jails with adult criminals or transfer them to other facilities, often in other states, without notifying an attorney or a family member.

"We want to narrow the 1993 felony exception to be applied only if a youth has gotten due process and been found to have committed a felony," Chan said.

The city’s crackdown is part of a larger national picture. The amped-up federal campaign against undocumented immigrants, a product of post-9/11 programs, began when ICE was created to replace the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 2003.

"There are victims of domestic violence who will not call the police because they are afraid of their families getting deported," Guillermina Castellano, a domestic worker and activist with Mujeres Unidas and La Raza Central, said at the protest."The main difference between now and before is the scale," said Francisco Ugarte, a lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Education Network. "It’s hard to describe the kind of fear that exists now."

Strange bedfellows

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY San Francisco’s bicycle community found itself in the strange position of encouraging Superior Court Judge Peter Busch — someone many cyclists revile for his strict enforcement of a far-reaching injunction against bike projects in the city — to reject a city-sponsored bike safety proposal during a Jan. 22 hearing. It was one more sign of the desperation bicyclists and city officials are feeling over the three-year-old ban on all things bike-related, from new lanes to simple sidewalk racks (see “Stationary biking,” 5/16/07).

Judge Busch denied a city motion asking for the authority to make safety improvements at intersections that have proven dangerous to bicyclists, as well as a specific proposal by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) to remove the bike lane at the most dangerous of those intersections, on Market Street at Octavia Boulevard, where 15 bicyclists have been hit by cars making illegal right turns onto the freeway since the revamped intersection opened in September 2005.

But the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and other bicyclists opposed the MTA proposal, arguing it would be more dangerous and holding a Jan. 16 rally at the site, which drew several supportive local politicians, including Sen. Mark Leno, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, and Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos, and Bevan Dufty. “As people who ride through that intersection every single day, we believe the proposal would have made the intersection more dangerous. So I’m really relieved that the judge saw that,” SFBC director Leah Shahum told us.

She was less pleased with the judge’s refusal to relax the injunction, which stems from a legal challenge to the San Francisco Bicycle Plan. San Francisco resident Rob Anderson and attorney Mary Miles successfully sued the city in June 2006, arguing that the plan was hasty and did not include an environmental impact report (EIR), as required by state law, to determine how the plan would affect traffic, neighborhoods, businesses, and the environment.

“This case has been very discouraging because there are a handful of activists against bicyclists in the city,” City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey said. “The hearing showed that the city has to go to court any time it wants to improve the streets for bicyclists.”

Although Judge Busch denied the city’s request to remove the bike lane, he hinted that the injunction would probably be lifted this spring with the completion of the Bike Plan’s EIR. “There was a strong message from the judge that he sees the bigger picture about getting the EIR done. It just needs to be complete and fair and accurate. Then the city can get back to work making the streets safer,” Shahum said.

Both Anderson and the SFBC, who usually agree on little, agreed on the judge’s latest ruling. Anderson advocates maintaining streets for cars and pedestrians, while the SFBC works to make roads safer for bicycles and encouraging bicycling as an important transportation option. Shahum urges city officials to rethink their approach to make Market and Octavia safer. “The city really does need to move on to the next steps to make the intersection better,” she said.

Although the number of bicyclists in San Francisco has doubled in recent years in light of volatile gasoline prices, the economic crisis, and greater awareness of global climate change, Anderson continues to argue that bicyclists will always be a minority interest, even in San Francisco.

“We have to make the streets as safe as possible without strangling the rest of the traffic,” Anderson told the Guardian. “Only a small percentage of the population in San Francisco use bicycles as their main mode of transportation. It’s not fair for the bike people to design the streets just to benefit them.”

Dorsey and Deputy City Attorney Audrey Pearson oppose Anderson, who has said bicycling is an inherently dangerous activity that the city shouldn’t be promoting. “As a policy, the city tries to discourage cars in San Francisco,” Dorsey said, referring to the longstanding “transit first” policies.

Now that the public comment period for the Bike Plan’s Draft EIR is over and Judge Busch has ruled to keep the bike lane at Market and Octavia, all parties are looking ahead to spring when the court is expected to lift the injunction on improving bike safety in San Francisco, unleashing nearly 60 new bike projects. That is, unless Anderson and Miles can find a way to stop them.

LAFCo to SFPUC: Hurry it up already!

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Supervisor David Campos sent a clear message at the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) meeting on Jan. 23, emphasizing that he was eager to move beyond the delays that have hindered progress on Community Choice Aggregation. Commissioners Michael Bornstein and Ross Mirkarimi — who represents District 5 on the Board of Supervisors — echoed his concerns, along with an array of community members who turned out to speak during the public-comment session. Meanwhile, a few members of the public warned that further delays might amount to missing the boat on federal funding for alternative-energy programs, which the Obama administration is expected to make available in the near future.

Campos, who represents District 9 on the Board of Supervisors, is also the newest LAFCo commissioner. The city agency is charged with monitoring and advising the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s efforts to develop and implement a Community Choice Aggregation program, which was mandated in 2004 by the Board of Supervisors to help ensure the “provision of clean, reasonably priced, and reliable electricity.” A CCA program would allow the city and county of San Francisco to become its own wholesale power purchaser for citizens. The plan includes targets for purchasing power generated from renewable resources such as wind and solar, with a goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2040. But the process of getting CCA off the ground has been moving along at a snail pace.

BOS committee assignments

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By Tim Redmond

Board President David Chiu has released the list of committee assignments, which look good — there are three solid progressive votes on the Budget Committee. The winners: David Campos and Ross Mirkarimi both have three good committee assigments. The losers: Sean Elsbernd, who gets only one job. Not sure I would have put him in charge of the school district committee (I’d have put him on budget instead of Carmen Chu), but overall, I don’t think the progressives will have a lot to complain about.

(UPDATE: Elsbernd just called me to say that he had requested not to be on budget because his first child is due in June and he wants to have enough time to spend with his family. “And the biggest issue I hear about these days is education,” he said. He is thrilled with the assignment he got.)

Here’s the rundown:

Budget & Finance
John Avalos, Chair
Ross Mirkarimi, Vice Chair
Carmen Chu, Member
David Campos, Temporary Member
Bevan Dufty, Temporary Member

City Operations & Neighborhood Services
Bevan Dufty, Chair
Chris Daly, Vice Chair
Michela Alioto-Pier, Member

City & School District
Sean Elsbernd, Chair
Bevan Dufty, Vice Chair
John Avalos, Member

Government Audits & Oversight
Ross Mirkarimi, Chair
Eric Mar, Vice Chair
Sophie Maxwell, Member

Land Use & Economic Development
Sophie Maxwell, Chair
Eric Mar, Vice Chair
David Chiu, Member

Public Safety
David Campos, Chair
Ross Mirkarimi, Vice Chair
Michela Alioto-Pier, Member

Rules Committee
Chris Daly, Chair
Carmen Chu, Vice Chair
David Campos, Member

The challenges for President Chiu

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EDITORIAL The ascension of Sup. David Chiu to the presidency of the Board of Supervisors gives a relative political newcomer considerable power. It also puts Chiu in position to carry on the legacy of Aaron Peskin and lead the opposition to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s pro-downtown, pro-Pacific Gas and Electric Co. agenda. Chiu, obviously, lacks the experience Peskin brought to the job, so he needs to move carefully at first. But he also needs to show that he’s more than a compromise candidate and that he has the ability to lead the board and promote the progressive agenda.

Let’s remember: Chiu was elected president entirely by the six progressive supervisors. The way the vote went down, five people, including Newsom’s closest allies, stuck together as a solid bloc and repeatedly voted for Sup. Sophie Maxwell. Maxwell had come down to the Guardian office a few days earlier to tell us that she was a solid progressive, but we saw the future of the board playing out when the votes were counted. Maxwell and Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who both have voiced concerns about the prospect of an inexperienced person taking the top job, could have broken with their bloc and voted for Sup. Ross Mirkarimi — that would have put him over the top. But through seven votes, as the progressives moved around trying to find a candidates all six could support, the Newsom Five stuck together. (Of course, if it hadn’t been for Sup. Chris Daly’s ill-conceived antics, Mirkarimi would have been able to get six votes, and we would have had an experienced leader in place).

Although Chiu talks (as he should) about bringing everyone together, he needs to keep in mind from day one that he is now the most visible member of a six-person board majority that can control the agenda and the set the tone for the city — if none of the six starts to drift toward the squishy center.

It’s going to be a rough, brutal year. The mayor has already made clear through his comments that he doesn’t even want to look at new revenue measures; he intends to solve the city’s half-billion-dollar budget crisis with cuts — deep, bloody cuts — alone. Chiu will have to stand up to him, publicly and privately, and make clear that a cuts-only budget isn’t going to fly in San Francisco.

And while Chiu will need some time to develop a leadership style and become familiar with the often-complex workings of the board, he should do a few things right away to show that he’s prepared to take on the difficult tasks ahead:

Support Peskin’s proposal for a special election in June. The proposal to allow the voters to consider raising taxes instead of just cutting is going to need a lot of help and support. The mayor opposes it, and some of his allies may oppose it too. But it’s absolutely crucial that San Francisco refuse to follow the lead of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s crucial that the progressives, while acknowledging that cuts will have to happen, also insist on looking at fair revenue ideas. Chiu needs to take the point on this.

In fact, now that the mayor and his allies on the board have made this a central battleground — and in effect have made this a litmus test for Chiu’s new presidency — it’s even more important that every one of the six progressive supervisors stands up to this challenge.

We’re not sure which of the dozen-odd tax proposals floating around is the right one. But it would be the worst kind of foolishness to take the whole idea off the table.

Put good people on the key committees. The Budget Committee at this point looks good, with Mirkarimi, Sup. John Avalos, and Elsbernd. When that panel expands to five members (and it should, soon) Chiu should make sure that either David Campos or Eric Mar joins the committee, keeping a progressive majority. The Land Use committee will be crucial as the Eastern Neighborhoods plan is implemented; Chiu needs to appoint a progressive chair and majority.

Save LAFCO. The Local Agency Formation Commission is the only board committee that has public power and energy policy as its primary agenda. Budget-cutters (spurred by PG&E, which more than any other company is responsible for the budget crisis) have made LAFCO a target; Chiu needs to make it clear immediately that LAFCO will remain in place, with strong appointments and a chair committed to making community choice aggregation work and pursuing public power as the largest potential new revenue source for the city.

Chiu has promised to work with the mayor, which is fine. But first he needs to show the progressives who elected him that he’s also ready to do battle.

Six aren’t enough

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› news@sfbg.com

The historic Jan. 8 vote electing Sup. David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors — rare for its elevation of a freshman to the post and unprecedented for a Chinese American — clearly illustrates the ideological breakdown of the new board.

The six supervisors who claim membership in the progressive movement (Chris Daly, Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Chiu) gave Chiu the presidency after their efforts to give it to Mirkarimi or Avalos fell short, while the other five supervisors voted for Sup. Sophie Maxwell in each of the seven rounds, refusing to support any of the progressive picks.

But there are limits to what a bare majority of supervisors can do in San Francisco, particularly when the mayor is threatening vetoes and the city is wrestling with a budget deficit of gargantuan proportions. Overriding a mayoral veto or approving some emergency measures requires eight votes.

So the first question is whether Mirkarimi and Daly can come together after their split divided progressives and led to Chiu as a compromise candidate. But the second, more important, question for progressives is whether they can attract swing votes such as Maxwell and Bevan Dufty when the need arises.

The answers to those questions could start coming immediately as supervisors consider proposals to close a looming $575 million budget gap, including the proposal for a special election on revenue measures in June. Mayor Gavin Newsom opposes that election, so the board would have to muster eight votes in the next month to move forward with it.

They might even need more than that. A confidential memo to supervisors and the mayor by the City Attorney’s Office that was obtained by the Guardian sorts out the complex requirements needed to approve new taxes, including the requirement of unanimous board approval to place tax measures that can be passed with a simple majority vote on the ballot this year.

So President Chiu, who pledges to bring his colleagues together, certainly has his work cut out for him.

 

POLITICS AND POLICY

Achieving a unanimous vote on anything significant or controversial seems impossible right now. Mirkarimi is unhappy with Daly for thwarting his presidential ambitions; Maxwell and Dufty are unhappy with progressives for keeping her out of their club; and Chiu must quickly learn his new job during a time of unprecedented turmoil.

Chiu told his colleagues that he was “incredibly humbled” by an election that he didn’t think he’d win, and said that he is “acutely aware that I am new to the institution and the body.” But observers say Chiu’s temperament, intelligence, and connections to both the business community and the progressive movement could serve the city well right now.

“I think Chiu is a great choice. He has the humility that will help him,” outgoing Sup. Jake McGoldrick told the Guardian.

This compromise pick for president was praised by all sides, from the progressive coalition that feted him after the vote at a party at the SoMa club Temple. Rob Black, government affairs director for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, told reporters that “David seems to be someone who is very willing to listen and willing to ask questions.”

“We have a progressive supervisor running the board,” Mirkarimi told the Guardian as he walked back to his office following the vote. Or, as Daly told us, “In the end, the progressive coalition stuck together and I’m happy about that.”

Walking back to Room 200 after the vote, Newsom told reporters that Chiu was “an outstanding choice” who represents “a fresh air of progress.” Asked whether he expects to have a better working relationship with Chiu than with outgoing president Aaron Peskin, Newsom replied, “That’s a gross understatement.”

“We’re looking forward to working with the new Board of Supervisors,” Newsom spokesperson Nathan Ballard told the Guardian after the vote. “The mayor has a long relationship with David Chiu. In fact, he was on our short list to be named assessor just a few years ago.”

Yet at the progressive party that night, Chiu sounded like a rock-solid member of that group, promising to help Mirkarimi with police reform, Campos with protecting undocumented city residents, Mar with strengthening city ties to the schools, and Avalos with safeguarding progressive budget priorities.

“I think this is the best outcome we could have,” Mirkarimi told the Guardian shortly after Chiu was elected. “I was the deciding vote that delivered Sup. David Chiu, the first Asian American president of the board. That doesn’t mean that the seasoned experience of Maxwell and myself wasn’t hard to pass by.”

In fact, both Dufty and Maxwell groused about the progressive bloc’s opposition to Maxwell, noting her positions on issues such as public power, affordable housing, and transportation issues. “The people that voted for me did so because they felt I would at least listen to them,” Maxwell told us, expressing frustration at not being accepted “by the board’s progressive clique” which, she noted, “are all males.”

“I think David will be great,” Dufty told the Guardian. “Obviously there was a desire to have someone strongly aligned with the progressive movement. I think it’s a mystery that Sophie isn’t considered part of the progressive movement.”

Progressives are going to have to work at resolving those differences if they are going to play a leadership role in the midyear budget cuts and prevent an expansion of the bloc of five supervisors who stuck with Maxwell and often align with the mayor.

“There has been tension between Ross and myself, but also between Sophie and Ross,” Daly told us. “Sophie is feeling that she might be a progressive, too. And some of the things we do on the board need eight votes. The rift between Ross and I is little. The real question is, when do we get Bevan and Sophie back?”

After fending off a progressive challenger in his reelection bid two years ago, Dufty seemed to move to the left, only to return to Newsom’s centrist faction — which mixes social liberalism with fiscal conservatism — in the last year. He prevented progressives from being able to override a mayoral veto of their decision to cancel $1 million in funding to Newsom’s Community Justice Center. And on Jan. 6, the old board delayed a vote on a mayoral veto of an ordinance that amends the Planning Code to require Conditional Use hearings and permits for any elimination of existing dwelling units through mergers, conversions, or demolitions of residential units, something sought by the tenant groups that are an important part of the progressive coalition.

Those issues, and the thicket that is the budget debate, illustrate what Daly admitted to us last week: “We can’t run this city with six votes.”

 

THE BUDGET MESS

The most pressing problem facing the new board is the budget, which requires $125 million in midyear cuts for the current fiscal year and will be an estimated $575 million out of balance for the fiscal year that begins in June. Chiu’s first move to deal with it — one lauded by progressives — was to name Avalos as budget chair.

“John Avalos has more experience on budget issues than me,” Daly, who chaired the Budget Committee for two years, said of his former board aide. But even Avalos was awestruck by the tsunami of bad budget news hitting the city, telling us, “I was visibly shaken.”

Mirkarimi and Elsbernd, the Budget Committee’s two other current members, also admit they face a daunting task.

“We can’t put a Band-Aid on the problem,” Elsbernd told the board last week. “This is not just about San Francisco now, but about San Francisco 20 years from now. We need to think about the next generation.”

Mirkarimi agrees with Elsbernd, at least in terms of the enormity of the problem.

“We cannot be incrementalist. We can’t dance around the edges,” Mirkarimi told his colleagues, shortly after making the surprise announcement that he’s expecting a child in April with Venezuelan soap opera star Eliana López, who he’s dated since meeting her last year at a Green Party conference in Brazil. Elsbernd and his wife are also expecting their first child.

Progressives strongly argue that such a large budget deficit can’t be closed with spending cuts alone, so one of Peskin’s final acts was to create legislation calling a special election for June 2 and having supervisors hold hearings over the next month to choose from a variety of revenue measures, but Newsom and the business community opposed the move.

“Basically, it’s not fully baked. It will take a citywide coalition (à la Prop. A) to win something like this and the coalition just hasn’t been built yet,” Ballard told the Guardian. Even Mirarimi echoed the sentiment, telling the Guardian, “I’m not opposed to a June election, but you can’t put something on the June ballot that’s half-baked because I doubt we could win in November if we put something half-baked on in June. My preference is that we work harder to create alliances to assure a healthy chance of getting something on the ballot and delivering a victory.”

Yet many progressives and labor leaders say it’s important to bring in new revenue as soon as possible, particularly because the cuts required by the current budget deficit would slash about half the city’s discretionary spending and devastate important initiatives like offering health coverage to all San Franciscans.

“For Healthy San Francisco to survive, the Department of Public Health has to have a minimum level of funding,” said Robert Haaland, a labor representative with the public employee union SEIU Local 1021. “Given the cuts that have been proposed, it’s not going to survive.”

While Peskin was criticized for acting prematurely, the City Attorney’s Office memo indicated that he couldn’t have waited and still allowed supervisors to play the lead role in determining what ended up on the June ballot. The memo was requested by Daly.

“In response to your specific inquiry about maximizing the amount of time a committee could deliberate the underlying measures and ensuring that the Board would have enough time to override a Mayoral veto, the emergency ordinance and the resolution calling for the special election should be introduced today,” the City Attorney’s Office wrote Jan. 6, the day Peskin introduced his revenue package.

Even then, supervisors would need to vote to waive certain election procedures, such as the 30-day hold for proposed ballot measures, and to move expeditiously forward with hearings, selection of the tax measures, and preparation of findings related to the special election and declaration of fiscal emergency.

The City Attorney’s Office wrote that the package needs final approval by Feb. 17. “We recommend that to meet this deadline, the Board adopt the resolution at its January 27 meeting and that the Mayor sign the resolution no earlier than February 2,” they wrote.

But Newsom has indicated that he would veto it, thus requiring eight supervisors to override. “Aaron had the right to do what he did, but in some ways he rushed the discussion, so it’s been a bit rockier than it otherwise might have been,” Dufty told us, noting that he’s still open to supporting a June ballot measure. “There is no way to avoid spending cuts, and we need more revenues and more givebacks from public employees … I think labor is spending a significant amount of time with the mayor, and he’s making a strong effort to work with the board. I’m trying to encourage us all to work together to the maximum extent possible.”

In fact, San Francisco Labor Council director Tim Paulson told the Guardian he couldn’t talk about the tax measures yet because of intense ongoing discussions. Ballard said Newsom might be open to tax measures in November, telling the Guardian, “Ideally we could do it all by streamlining government, reducing spending, etc. But the mayor lives in the real world and so he is open to the possibility of a revenue measure with a broad base of support.”

So, can the new board president help coalesce the broad base of support that he’ll need to avoid cuts that would especially hurt the progressive base of unions, tenants, social service providers, affordable housing activists, and others who believe that government plays an important role in addressing social problems and inequities?

“In light of the global meltdown, national slowdown, local crisis, and largest budget deficit in history, I believe this board understands the importance of unity and working together,” Chiu told his colleagues. “We don’t have time for the politics of personality when we have the highest murder rate in 10 years, when businesses are failing, and the budget deficit grows exponentially.”

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