Sup. Scott Wiener

Nudity and tourism

Zelda Bronstein
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69
Nudity and tourism

KQED’s Forum weighed in on Sup. Scott Wiener’s anti-nudity law Oct. 18, and I particularly enjoyed the attempts by all to avoid the use of the word “cockring.” I taped a show for KPFA’s morning mix (to air 7:30 am Oct. 19) and host John Hamilton told me that “cockring” wasn’t on the FCC list of unacceptable words and it was ok to use it, but that’s KPFA, not KQED. I also laughed at Michael Krasny confessing that he was beeing “lookist” when he said he’d heard that the men at Jane Warner Plaza weren’t all that good-looking.

At any rate, here’s the real story: A friend’s mom was visiting recently from Switzerland, and what did she want to do in San Francisco? She wanted to go to the Castro and see the naked men. Of course.

You see the buses going down Market Street with all the tourists, sticking their cameras out the window to get a shot? It’s a tourist attraction. 

Remember — when the sea lions first arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf about 20 years ago, and hauled themselves up on the docks, the city tried to get them to leave — they were loud and stinky and unappealing. But they wouldn’t go — and after a few weeks, the merchants realized how good they were for business.

I asked the Convention and Visitors Bureau, now known as SF Travel, if banning nudity might be bad for the tourist industry — and the local economy. The folks there haven’t gotten back to me. But I don’t know; maybe the city economist should study this nudity ban.

Why the parks bond could lose

Zelda Bronstein
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13
Why the parks bond could lose

A general obligation bond to improve San Francisco parks ought to be a slam dunk, particularly when it’s getting pushed by Sup. Scott Wiener, who isn’t exactly a pro-tax kind of guy. The left always votes for these things. Wiener’s lining up the moderates. Proposition B would, in normal circumstances, get 70 percent of the vote.

But there’s an awful lot of pent-up anger at the Rec-Park department, and if you want to know why, just check this out. A group of mostly immigrant soccer players, who’ve been using a park in the Mission for pickup games for more than a decade, are now getting kicked out two nights a week — because Rec-Park has turned the place over to a private outfit that charges money to enter the games.

Oh, and you have to register on your smartphone.

So the young white techies who want to play soccer and can afford $7 for a game on parkland our taxes paid for get to play, and the Latino immigrants — who, by the way, were there first — lose out.

You like that? It’s the direction Rec-Park is going under the direction of Phil Ginsburg.

Even the Guardian, which has never opposed a GO bond for anything except prisons, had a lot of trouble with Prop. B. And while Wiener, in a meeting with us, dismissed most of the opposition as marginal, it doesn’t take much to prevent a bond from getting a two-thirds vote. Here’s the question Ginsburg needs to think about:

Would he rather have his park bond — or evict the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council recycling center? Would he rather have his $195 million for badly needed capital projects — or privatize recreation facilities? Will he do anything, anything at all, to show some good faith that he’s heard the message from his critics?

Ginsburg and Wiener both support the idea of coming up with a new (tax-based) revenue source for Rec-Park. And we went along with the park bond, reluctantly. But if doesn’t show us any reason to believe there’s hope for the Latino immigrants to play soccer without paying $7, if he isn’t changing his tune at all, he may not get his two-thirds vote Nov. 6. And he’s going to have a hell of a time convincing any of us to give him any more money in the future.

 

 

Historic, veto-proof vote launches CleanPowerSF

Sasha Cuttler
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24
Historic, veto-proof vote launches CleanPowerSF

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today cast an historic vote that was more than a decade in the making, approving the CleanPowerSF program – which challenges PG&E’s monopoly by offering 100 percent renewable energy directly to city residents – on an 8-3 vote that would be enough to override an implied veto threat by Mayor Ed Lee.

The outcome was far from certain throughout the two-hour hearing as conservative Sups. Mark Farrell and Carmen Chu led efforts to undermine the program, which was the final work product of retiring San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Executive Director Ed Harrington, who previously served as the city’s controller for 17 years.

The pair of supervisors offered a series of amendments challenging the state requirement that city residents must proactively opt-out of such community choice aggregation (CCA) programs if they want to remain with PG&E, offering convoluted language that would have required people to opt-in to the program before its launch, and requiring that the $13 million in reserve funds from the SFPUC be covered entirely by CleanPowerSF customers, which could increase its rates.

“It looks like the amendments would be harmful to the success of the program,” Sup. Eric Mar observed, prompting Farrell and Chu to flash broad conspiratorial smiles at one another.

Sup. Scott Wiener, who was undecided and considered a key swing vote in reaching a veto-proof majority, said he also had concerns about the opt-out requirement and wanted to better understand how the amendments would work and whether they were legal. “For me, I’m not interested in putting any poison pills in here,” he said.

Wiener posed questions about the amendments to Farrell and to Harrington, who said it was possible for the SFPUC to have CleanPowerSF customers repay the initial allocation of reserve funds over time but that he wasn’t sure how the opt-in change would work without sabotaging the program.

“It harms the ability to have an intelligent conversation with people,” Harrington said, noting that rates are based on the number of customers in the program, so it would be nearly impossible to survey everyone’s potential interest without being able to tell them how their bills would be affected.

As it is, the SFPUC has already done extensive surveys of which neighborhoods and demographics are likely to be interested in taking part in CleanPowerSF, initially paying about $10 more per month for 100 percent renewable energy (PG&E’s portfolio includes less than 30 percent renewable). “We’ve done extensive surveys already,” Harrington said. Based on that research, the city is initially rolling out the program to less than a third of city residents, who will be repeatedly notified about how to opt-out, anticipating about 90,000 customers remain in the initial program. 

The program has been repeatedly tweaked over the last eight years that it’s been in development, during which time Marin County launched a successful version of the CCA concept that was developed in San Francisco by legislators Tom Ammiano, Carole Migden, and Mark Leno.

“I feel pretty comfortable trusting Ed Harrington on whether the numbers add up,” said the measure’s chief sponsor, Sup. David Campos, arguing against the Farrell/Chu amendments, later adding, “With Ed Harrington leading this charge, this is as good as it gets. If you don’t like CCA under Ed Harrington, you’re not going to like CCA.”

Farrell claimed to support CCA in concept, but he strenuously objected to the opt-out requirements that Migden included in the enabling state legislation, which she had argued was the only way to make CCAs viable against PG&E’s proven willingness to spend tens of millions of dollars to sabotage would-be competitors.

“It’s the wrong way to legislate, the opt-out. It smells of coercion,” Farrell said. Campos countered that, “The best thing we can give the consumers in San Francisco is a choice, a meaningful choice.”

Wiener ultimately made a motion to delay the item by a week, something Mayor Lee yesterday told the Chronicle he wanted, in order to further study the opt-out issue, telling Farrell that his amendment “feels a little seat of the pants to me.”

Campos and other progressive supervisors who were supporting CleanPowerSF argued against the continuance, noting that it has been years in development and sitting in board committees since January, while the Farrell/Chu amendments weren’t offered until this meeting had already begun.    

“This is not going to change because we wait a week to make a decision,” Campos said. “The terms of this deal are not going to change.”

The motion for a continuance failed on a 4-7 vote, with Wiener joined by Farrell, Chu, and Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who offered no comments throughout the hearing).

Then, as the vote on the Farrell/Chu opt-in amendment came up for vote, Wiener said, “I don’t feel comfortable voting for amendments that I don’t know what they’ll do,” and it failed on a 3-8 vote.

Sup. Malia Cohen had earlier indicated a willingness to support the other Farrell/Chu amendment: saddling CleanPowerSF customers with paying the SFPUC back for reserve fund costs – which Harrington indicated could be dragged out over many years to minimize the impact on rates, and which might not be necessary at all if the initial program exceeds expectations.

That amendment was then approved on an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Jane Kim, Christina Olague, and John Avalos opposed. Another set of amendments that would keep low-income city residents out of the initial rollout and take other steps to reduce their rates if they opted in – which was developed by Kim, Cohen, and Sup. Eric Mar – was unanimously approved by the board.

Then it was time for the big vote on creating the CleanPowerSF program, approving the contract with Shell Energy Northern California to administer it, and authorizing the initial $19.5 million expenditure. Would there be eight votes to override a veto by Mayor Lee, who has been under pressure by PG&E and their downtown allies to kill the program?

“To be perfectly candid, I struggled mightily with this contract,” Wiener said, reiterating his concern about its opt-in requirement, noting that the measure wasn’t perfect, even though it was significantly improved from earlier versions. It sounded as if he were about to vote against it.

“What we have the opportunity to do is move forward with clean power,” Wiener said, noting that even Marin County supervisors who initially opposed its CCA have come around to supporting it. “This is something I believe we should try.”

And with that, the board voted 8-3 to launch the program in mid-2013, with Chu, Farrell, and Elsbernd opposed.

Campos said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the vote, while key supporters say they are cautiously hopeful it will stand up during next week’s final supervisorial approval on second reading and in a veto override vote, if that becomes necessary. Campos said he was thankful for the work of Harrington, who got a standing ovation after the vote as the board recognized him for his long service to the city.

Earlier in the meeting, Harrington told supervisors that while the program isn’t perfect, and it contains some risks that he considers reasonable, there is no other way the city has identified to meet ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals it has set for itself over the last decade. It is city policy to reduce emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2017 and 80 percent below those levels by 2050.

“This program before you has the only chance of reaching those goals. There’s nothing else,” Harrington said. He also said “it’s an incredibly efficient way to spend money,” noting that the city has spent $90 million on solar and other renewable energy projects that power fewer than 7,000 homes, whereas this $19.5 million will power 90,000 households, possibly without ever tapping into that $13 million reserve fund set aside to cover any losses by Shell, which will buy renewable energy, a role the city hopes to eliminate as it develops its own projects.

Harrington said the ultimate goal of CleanPowerSF is to develop a large enough customer base that the city could use revenue bonds to finance a wide variety of renewable energy projects – many using solar arrays along city-owned property connected to its water system stretching all the way to Hetch Hetchy Valley – that would pay for themselves.

“The real issue is can you build a facility that will have this rate structure support it?” Harrington said.

That’s the real power and potential of CleanPowerSF – finally taking action to address global warming, which will have a huge impact on San Francisco and future generations – as supporters noted in a rally outside City Hall before the meeting. Sen. Mark Leno said that he doesn’t usually weigh in on proposals before the board, but that, “This is an exceptional time and this is an exceptional vote. This is the time that we need to address our inconvenient truth.”

Committee approves CleanPowerSF over downtown opposition

Sasha Cuttler
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51
Committee approves CleanPowerSF over downtown opposition

The question of whether San Francisco creates a renewable energy program that offers an alternative to Pacific Gas & Electric got its first major hearing at City Hall today, with the business community claiming it’s too expensive and supporters arguing that the time has come for the city to address climate change and the long-term energy needs of city residents and businesses.

The Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Committee voted 2-1 in favor creating CleanPowerSF, entering into a contract with Shell Energy Northern California to administer the program, and devoting $19.5 million from the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s water fund to help launch it and buy clean power for city residents.

Sups. John Avalos and Jane Kim supported the project, while Sup. Carmen Chu was opposed. It now goes to the full Board of Supervisors next week, where it is expected to have progressive support and be opposed by the fiscal conservatives.

“I do think we will have the necessary majority to get this through,” the measure’s sponsor, Sup. David Campos, told us. But one open question is whether Mayor Ed Lee will veto a measure that his SFPUC appointees developed but his downtown allies are trying to kill, and if so, whether there are eight supervisors willing to override a veto.

But Campos noted that SFPUC officials testified today that CleanPowerSF is the only way they’ve identified to meet the city’s ambitious official goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which call for a reduction of 20 percent below 1990 levels by the end of this year and an 80 percent reduction by 2050.

Supporters who testified today included environmentalists, progressive groups, and young people who cast addressing climate change as the defining struggle of their generation. “This, not to go overboard, is the most important vote you’ll ever do,” said the Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein.

Those who spoke against the program included the usual array of downtown groups that have traditionally defended PG&E’s interests – including the Committee on Jobs, Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and Plan C – and they were joined by an unusually large number of elderly Asian individuals wearing stickers opposing the project.

“It’s a bad program that doesn’t meet even the basic elements of its original promise,” said Chris Wright, executive director of the Committee on Jobs, which PG&E has helped fund since its inception. Like most CleanPowerSF opponents, they have long opposed even the concept of community choice aggregation (CCA), the state law that allowed the city to create CleanPowerSF.

PG&E’s longtime support by local politicians has eroded in recent years because of its overkill campaigns against public power initiatives and supporters and its negligence in the deadly San Bruno pipeline explosion.

Even GGRA Executive Director Rob Black told the committee, “PG&E, a local company, candidly has its problems.” But he and other project opponents – and even a few supporters of the project – centered much of their opposition on the involvement of Shell, which has a bad reputation and environmental record, like almost every other multinational energy company.

“I have the same qualms about Shell that everyone else does,” said Katherine Roberts, who said that she nonetheless supports the project, calling it the only way for most San Franciscans to directly support the development of renewable energy sources. Shell was the sole bidder on a project that requires enormous financial wherewithal.

Campos calls the focus on Shell a diversionary tactic: “PG&E already buys energy from Shell. To the extent people don’t want Shell in the picture, Shell is already in the picture.”

Both the supervisors and the mayor will be under intense pressure to derail CleanPowerSF, with that campaign led by downtown groups and IBEW Local 1245, the union that represents PG&E workers. Sup. Scott Wiener, who says he’s still undecided, told us that his office was flooded with phone calls today, mostly in opposition to the project.

Compromise measures

Andrew Lam
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3
Compromise measures

news@sfbg.com

San Franciscans are poised to vote this November on two important, complicated, and interdependent ballot measures — one a sweeping overhaul of the city’s business tax, the other creating an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that relies on the first measure’s steep increase in business license fees — that were the products of intense backroom negotiations over the last six months.

Mayor Ed Lee and his business community allies sought a revenue-neutral business tax reform measure that might have had to compete against an alternative proposal developed by Sup. John Avalos and his labor and progressive allies, who sought around $40 million in new revenue, although both sides wanted to avoid that fight and find a compromise measure.

Meanwhile, Mayor Lee was having trouble securing business community support for the housing trust fund that he pledged to create during his inaugural address in City Hall in January. So he modified his business tax proposal to bring in $13 million that would be dedicated to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, but that didn’t satisfy the Avalos camp, who insisted the city needed more general revenue to offset cuts to city services and help with the city’s structural budget deficit.

Less than a day before the competing business reform measures came before the Board of Supervisors on July 24, a compromise was finally struck that would bring $28.5 million a year, with $13 million of that set aside for the affordable housing fund, tying the fate of the two measures together and creating a kumbaya moment at City Hall that was reminiscent of last year’s successful pension reform deal between labor and the business community.

But there was one voice raised at that July 24 meeting, that of Sup. David Campos, who asked questions and expressed concerns over whether this deal will adequately address the “crisis” faced by the working class in a city that will continue to gentrify even if both of these measures pass. Affordable housing construction still won’t meet the long-term needs outlined in the city’s Housing Element that indicates 60 percent of housing construction would need public subsidies to be affordable to current city residents.

It’s also worth asking why a business tax reform measure that doubles the tax base — just 8.4 percent of businesses in San Francisco now pay the payroll tax, whereas 16.4 percent would pay the gross receipts tax that replaces it — doesn’t increase its current funding level of $410 million (the $28.5 million comes from increased business license fees). Some industries — most notably the technology and restaurant industries that have strongly supported Mayor Lee’s political ambitions — could receive substantial tax cuts.

Politics is about compromise, and Avalos tells us that in the current political climate, these measures are the best that we can hope for and worthy of progressive support. And that may be true, but it also indicates that San Francisco will continue to be more welcoming to businesses than the working class residents struggling to remain here.

 

SOARING HOUSING COSTS

As Mayor Lee acknowledged during his inaugural speech, the boom times in the technology industry has also been driving up commercial and residential rents, he sought to create “housing for the 100 percent.”

The median rent in San Francisco has been steadily rising, jumping again in June an astounding 12.9 percent over June of last year, according to real estate monitor RealFacts, leaving renters shelling out on average an extra $350 a month to landlords.

Driven by a booming tech industry and a lag in new housing, the average San Francisco apartment now rents for $2,734. That’s an annual increase of $4,000 per unit over last year, in a city that saw the highest jumps in rent nationally in the first quarter of 2012. Even prices for the average studio apartment have edged up to $1,800 a month.

The affordability gap between housing and wages in the city is stark. Somebody spending a quarter of their income on rent would need to be making $85,000 a year just to keep up with the average studio. With a mean wage of $64,820 in the San Francisco metro area, even middle class San Franciscans have a difficult time affording a modest apartment. For the city’s lowest paid workers, even earning the country’s highest minimum wage of $10.25 an hour, even devoting every earned dollar to rent still wouldn’t pay for the average small studio apartment.

For those looking to buy a home in the city, it can be a huge hurdle to put aside a down payment while keeping up with the city’s high rents. Almost 90 percent of San Franciscans cannot afford a market rate home in the city. The average San Francisco home price was up 1.9 percent in June over May, climbing to $713,500, or a leap of $50,000 per unit over last year’s prices.

In the 2010 census, before the recent boom in the local real estate market, San Francisco already ranked third in the nation for worst ratio between income and home ownership prices, behind Honolulu and Santa Cruz.

But as the city leadership grapples to mitigate the tech boom’s effects, the lingering recession and conservative opposition to new taxes have gutted state and federal funds for affordable housing. Capped off last December by the California Legislature’s decision to dissolve the State Redevelopment Agency, a major source of money for creating affordable housing, San Francisco has seen a drop of $56 million in annual affordable housing funds since 2007.

Trying to address dwindling funding for affordable housing, the Board of Supervisors voted 8-2 on July 24 to place the Affordable Housing Trust Fund measure on the fall ballot. Only the most conservative supervisors, Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu, opposed the proposal. Sup. Mark Farrell, who has signaled his support for the measure, was absent.

“Creating a permanent source of revenue to fund the production of housing in San Francisco will ensure that San Francisco is a viable place to live and work for everyone, at every level of the economic spectrum. I applaud the Board of Supervisors,” Mayor Lee said in response.

At the heart of the program, the city hopes to create 9,000 new units of affordable housing over 30 years. The measure would set aside money to help stabilize the ongoing foreclosure crisis and replenish the funds of a down payment assistance program for those earning 80 to 120 percent of the median income.

To do so, the city anticipates spending $1.2 billion over the 30-year lifespan of the program, with a $20 million annual contribution the first year increasing $2.5 million annually in subsequent years. It would fold some existing funding in with new revenue sources, including $13 million yearly from the business tax reform measure. Language in the housing fund measure would allow Mayor Lee to veto it is the business tax reform measure fails.

The board was forced to delay consideration of the business tax measure until July 31 because of changes in the freshly merged measures. That meeting was after Guardian press time, although with nine co-sponsors on the board, its passage seemed assured even before the Budget and Legislative Analysts Office had not yet assessed its impacts, as Campos requested on July 24.

“I do believe that we have to ask certain questions when a proposal of this magnitude comes forward,” Campos said at the hearing, later adding, “When you have a proposal of this magnitude, you’re not going to be able to adjust it for some time, so you want it to be right.”

The report that Campos requested, which came out in the late afternoon before the next day’s hearing, agreed that it would stabilize business tax revenue, but it raised concerns that some small businesses exempt from the payroll tax would pay more under the proposal and that it would create big winners and losers compared to the current system.

For example, it calculated that between the gross receipts tax and business license fee, a sample full service restaurant would pay 69 percent less taxes and a supermarket 33 percent less taxes, while a commercial real estate leasing firm would pay 46.7 percent more tax and a large engineering firm would see its business tax bills more than double.

Board President David Chiu, who has co-sponsored the business tax reform measure with Mayor Lee since its inception, agreed that it is a “once in a decade reform,” calling it a “compromise that reflects the best sense of that word.” And that view, that this is the best compromise city residents can expect, seems to be shared by leaders of various stripes.

 

BACKING THE COMPROMISE

The business community and fiscally conservative politicians have long called for the replacement of the city payroll tax — which they deride as a “job killer” because it uses labor costs to gauge the size of company’s size and ability to pay taxes — with a gross receipts tax that uses a different gauge. But the devil has been in the details.

Chiu praised the “dozens and dozens and dozens of companies that have worked with us to fine-tune this measure,” and press reports indicate that representatives of major corporations and economic sectors have all spent hours in the closed door meetings shaping the complicated formulas for how they will be taxed, which vary by industry.

When the Guardian made a Sunshine Ordinance request to the Mayor’s Office for a list of all the business representatives that have been involved in the meetings, its spokespersons said no such list exists. They have also asked for a time extension in our request to review all documents associated with the deliberations, delaying the review until next week at the earliest, after the board approves the measure.

But the business community seems to be on board, even though some economic sectors — including real estate firms and big construction companies — are expected to face tax hikes.

“The general reaction has been neutral to favorable, and I expect we’ll be supportive,” Jim Lazarus, the vice president of public policy for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, who participated in crafting the proposal but who said the Chamber won’t have an official position until it votes later this week.

Lazarus noted the precipitous rise in annual business license fees — the top rate for the largest companies would go from just $500 now to $35,000 under the proposal, going up even more in the future as the Consumer Price Index rises — “but some of it will be offset by a drop in the payroll tax,” Lazarus said.

He also admitted that the new tax system will be “hugely complicated” compared to the payroll tax, with complex formulas that differ by sector and where economic transactions take place. But he said the Chamber has long supported the switch and he was happy to see a compromise.

“I’m assuming it will pass. I don’t believe there will be any major organized opposition to the measure,” Lazarus said.

Labor and progressive leaders also say the measure — which exempts small businesses with less than $1 million in revenue and has a steeply progressive business license fee scale — is a good proposal worth supporting, even if they didn’t get everything they wanted.

“We fared pretty well, the royal ‘we,’ with the mayor starting off from the position that he wanted a revenue-neutral proposition,” Chris Daly, who unsuccessfully championed affordable housing ballot measures as a supervisor before leaving office and becoming the political director for SEIU Local 1021, the largest union of city employees.

Both sides say they gave considerable ground to reach the compromise.

“Did we envision $28.5 million in new revenue? No,” said Lazarus, who had insisted from the beginning that the tax measure be revenue-neutral. “But we also didn’t envision the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.”

Daly and Avalos also said the measures need to be considered in the context of current political and economic realities.

“We were never going to be able to pass — or even to craft — a measure to meet all of the unmet needs in San Francisco,” Daly said. “Given the current political climate, we did very well.”

“If we had a different mayor who was more interested in serving directly the working class of the city, rather than supporting a business class that he hopes will serve all the people, the result might have been different,” Avalos said. “But what’s significant is we have a tax measure that really is progressive.”

Given that “we have an economic system that is based on profits and not human needs,” Avalos said, “This is a good step, better that we’ve had in decades.”

 

THE HOUSING CRISIS

The tax and housing measures certainly do address progressive priorities — bringing in more revenue and helping create affordable housing — even if some progressives express concerns that conditions in San Francisco could get worse for their vulnerable, working class constituents.

“I don’t know if the proposal before us is aggressive enough in terms of dealing with a crisis,” Campos told his colleagues on July 24 as they discussed the housing measure, later adding, “As good as this is, we are truly facing a crisis and a crisis requires a level of response that I unfortunately don’t think we are providing at this point.”

Not wanting to let “the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Campos said he still wanted to be able to support both measures, urging the board to have a more detailed discussion of their impacts.

“I wish this went further and created even more funding for critically needed affordable housing,” Sup. Eric Mar said before joining Campos in voting for the proposal anyway. “I think they need to build 60 percent of those units as below market rate otherwise we face more working families leaving the city, and the city becoming less diverse.”

Yet affordable housing advocates are desperate for something to replace the $56 million annual loss in affordable housing the city has faced in recent years, creating an immediate need for action and potentially allowing Lee to drive a wedge between the affordable housing advocates and labor if the latter held out for a better deal.

Many have heralded the mayor’s process in bringing together developers, housing advocates, and civic leaders to build a broad political consensus for the measure, particularly given the three affordable housing measures crafted by progressives over the last 10 years were all defeated by voters.

“One of the goals of any measure like this is for it to gain broad enough support to actually pass,” Sup. Scott Wiener said at a Rules Committee hearing on the measure.

In the measure’s grand bargain, developers receive a reduction in the percentage of on-site affordable housing units they are required to build, from 15 percent of units to 12 percent. The city will also buy some new housing units in large projects, paying market rate and then holding them as affordable housing — the buying power of which could be a boon to developers while creating affordable housing units.

At its root, the measure shifts some of the burden of funding affordable housing from developers to a broader tax base and locks in that agreement for 30 years, which could also spur market rate housing development in the process.

A late addition to the proposal by Farrell would create funding to help emergency workers with household earnings up to 150 percent of average median income buy homes in the city, citing a need to have these workers close at hand in the event of an earthquake or other emergency.

While some progressives have grumbled about the givebacks to developers and the high percentage of money going to homebuyer assistance in a city where almost two-thirds of residents rent, affordable housing advocates are pleased with the proposal.

“Did we gain out of this local package? Yes, we got 30 years of local funding. We came out net ahead in an environment where cities are crashing. We essentially caught ourselves way early from the end of redevelopment funds,” said Peter Cohen, executive director of the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations.

Without it, Cohen says many affordable housing projects in the existing pipeline would be lost. “This last year was a bumpy year, and we will not be back to the same operation level for a number of years,” Cohen said. “There was a dip and we are coming out of that dip. It will take us a while to get back up to speed.”

The progressive side was also able to eliminate some of the more controversial items in the original proposal, including provisions that would expand the number of annual condo conversions allowed by the city and encourage rental properties to be converted into tenancies-in-common.

With ballot measures notoriously hard to amend, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund measure is a broad outline with many of the details of how the fund would be administered yet to be filled in. If passed, it will be up to Olson Lee, head of the Mayors Office on Housing and former local head of the demised redevelopment agency, to fill in the details, folding what was essential two partnered affordable housing agencies into a single local unit.

But even the most progressive members of the affordable housing community said there was no other alternative to addressing affordable housing in the wings — which is indeed a crisis now that redevelopment funds are gone — making this measure essential.

As Sara Shortt of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco told the Rules Committee, “We lost a very important funding mechanism. We have to replace it. We have no choice.”

Guardian Voices: The case against RCV

Zelda Bronstein
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88
Guardian Voices: The case against RCV

“The Cure for the Ills of Democracy is More Democracy”
                                 — old Progressive Party slogan

My friends here at the Guardian have elevated support for ranked choice voting to a defining requirement for being considered a progressive. This is not only historically incorrect,  it is actually politically silly. There are many progressive reasons to oppose RCV — not the least of which is the undeniable fact that it overwhelmingly favors incumbents, has failed to deliver on the 2002 ballot promises, and now poses real threats to progressive political advancement in key supervisor districts. 

First, a little history. 

The two greatest national political victorys  of the Progressive Era were the 1913 adoption of the 17th Amendment of the US Constitution, which required direct elections of US Senators, and, at the tail end of the era,  the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Both expanded people power in elections, curing the ills of democracy by more democracy.

Historically, to be a Progressive is to favor MORE elections, MORE political opportunities for more people at the local level.  How can it be that it is now progressive to favor FEWER elections at the local level?

In the March, 2002 Voters Handbook, ballot arguments against RCV were authored by several progressive activists (Sue Bierman, Jane Morrison, David Looman, Larry Griffin, David Spiro and me, to name a few). We argued then that replacing local elections with a mathematical formula that few understand and even fewer could explain was political foolishness. While were outvoted, I think we were right a decade ago.

Left-liberals do very well in run-off elections in San Francisco — from 1975, when Moscone beat Bargbagalata in a December run-off, to the run-off victory of the more liberal candidate for City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, over Chamber of Commerce functionary Jim Lazarus in 2001. The reason is that in low-turnout elections, left-liberals vote more heavily that do conservatives, and that’s a verifiable San Francisco political fact.

But it was the 2000  supervisors races that showed just how well left-liberal forces did in run-off elections at the district level: Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, Matt Gonzales, Chris Daly, Sophie Maxwell, and Gerardo Sandoval, the very heart of the progressive majority, were elected in December run-off elections.

In 2002, three arguments were made for RCV: first, that it would reduce negative campaigning; second, that it would increase turnout in local elections and third, it would reduce costs by eliminating the run off election. Of the three  arguments only the last has been met, a dubious achievement in that even more such savings could be made by eliminating ALL elections.

Can anyone actually claim that last year’s mayoral election, the first contested one conducted under RCV, was anything but a negative free-for-all? Or, how about the 2010 D6 race between Debra Walker and Jane Kim, or the D8 race between Mandelman and Weiner? Or the 2002 D4 Ron Dudum – Ed Jew race? RCV did not end negative campaigns.

How about turnout?  Last year’s mayoral race had the lowest turnout in a contested race for mayor in the modern history of San Francisco. Every supervisorial race in 2008 had a lower turnout than  the citywide average. Turnout in 2010 was below citywide levels in the RCV supervisor races in D4, D6 and D10.

No, the record is clear RCV has not resulted in higher turnout, either.

RCV creates a political system in which candidates make deals with other candidates, behind closed doors, before the voters vote.  Runoff elections result in a system in which voters make deals with candidates AFTER they vote in the polling booth. What’s wrong with giving voters two choices in two elections instead of three choices in one election? Oh, that’s right, we save money by giving voters fewer elections.

Left-liberals tend to field fewer candidates for races than do moderates and conservatives because, especially in San Francisco, left-liberals simply don’t know how to raise political money, while moderates and conservatives do. RCV elections reward multiple candidates of the same political persuasion as these candidate can agree to appeal to their similar voters to vote for them as a block.  Thus, RCV will always favor, in an open contest in which there is no incumbent, moderate to conservative candidates because there are  usually more of them running.

That’s what happened to Avalos in last years mayoral election: he picked up nothing as the moderate candidates’ second and third votes went to the moderate Lee. The same happened in D10 two years ago: moderates voted for multiple moderate candidates and the only real left-liberal in the race did not pick up any of these votes and lost — although he outpolled the eventual, moderate winner.

RCV favors incumbents, and that’s why at least two of the Class of 2000 progressive supervisors told me they voted for it. Lets see how well it works to defeat Sup. Scott Wiener, who is far to the right of the average voter in D8, or Supervisor Malia Cohen in D10 who was supported by less than 30 percent of the election day vote.

What seems to be going on here is an incredibly silly political association game.  Because repealing RCV is supported by conservative supervisors and the Chamber of Commerce we should be opposed since they are for it. Haven’t we seen this year conservative Republicans make one self defeating political move after another?  When your enemy is threatening to shoot himself in the heard why are we trying to pull the gun away? It time to pull the trigger on RCV.

CPMC’s new numbers threaten St. Luke’s and the mayor’s deal

Sasha Cuttler
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9

Can San Franciscans trust California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) not to shutter St. Luke’s Hospital once the company gets what it wants from the city? And has the Mayor’s Office, in its desire to please the business community and building trades, accepted and promoted a bad deal that doesn’t adequately protect the city’s interests?

Those are some of the questions that arose Monday during a hearing on CPMC’s $2.5 billion, multi-hospital development proposal before the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee when officials from the Mayor’s Office revealed that the development agreement they negotiated with CPMC might not be good enough to keep St. Luke’s open.

As we’ve reported, CPMC (a subsidiary of Sutter Health, a not-for-profit corporation that nonetheless has a well-earned reputation for profiteering and other bad corporate behavior) is seeking to build a 550-bed regional luxury hospital atop Cathedral Hill. In exchange, the development deal requires CPMC to rebuild St. Luke’s, a seismically unsafe hospital in the Mission District that is relied on by many low-income San Franciscans (as well as the city, which would otherwise have to shoulder more of that burden at General Hospital).

After years of stalled negotiations between CPMC and two consecutive mayors, Mayor Ed Lee announced a deal in March that would have CPMC build a smaller version of St. Luke’s (with just 80 beds) and agree to keep it open for at least 20 years as long as CPMC’s operating margins didn’t dip below 1 percent in two consecutive years.

Activists had criticized the deal as too small, too short, and without enough guarantees, but Mayor’s Office officials have consistently said they were confident it was enough to keep St. Luke’s from being shuttered. But now, based on new revenue projections offered by CPMC, even those officials have lost confidence in the deal and say it needs to be renegotiated.

“These new 2012 projections, while still showing CPMC will not breach the 1 percent margin, do not offer the same comfort level we previously had,” Ken Rich of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development told the committee.

The news hit like a bombshell, shaking the confidence of even supervisors who strongly supported the deal, such as Sup. Scott Wiener, who called it a “surprising, critical piece of information” and said, “It’s very, very important that this issue is quickly resolved.”

For supervisors who were already skeptical of the deal and CPMC – such as Sup. David Campos, whose District 9 includes St. Luke’s – it was further evidence that this was a bad deal that needed more work before being brought to the board. The Planning Commission has already approved the project and the full board was scheduled to consider it in just a few weeks.

“What does that say about the way the negotiation was done?” Campos told us. “How half-baked can something be? What have we done to verify the numbers that CPMC gave us? And what does this say about CPMC?…If the numbers on St. Luke’s aren’t accurate, how can we trust the rest of what they’re telling us?”

Yet during the hearing, when Campos tried to get reassurances from CPMC officials and requested that the board be allowed to review the company’s financial records, he was rebuffed and belittled by CPMC attorney Pam Duffy – who later tersely apologized for her comments after Committee Chair Eric Mar criticized them as “insulting to the board.”

Campos had questioned Rich about why the city was relying on CPMC rather than independently assessing the numbers. “Maybe if you had done an audit, you wouldn’t be in this position of being surprised by the numbers that were given to you,” Campos told Rich.

But Rich said “projections are guesses, we can’t ever guarantee that they are right,” noting that CPMC had revised its revenue estimates downward for the years after St. Luke’s would open (when it would be absorbing the high costs of construction), making its profit margin slimmer. “CPMC took a more conservative approach to forecasting the rate of increase in hospital charges as well as patient volumes in light of the greater uncertainty in health care finance,” Rich said.

So Campos asked whether the supervisors could review CPMC’s data. Rich, who has reviewed it, replied, “The conditions under which we were shown CPMC’s projections is that those are confidential.”

Campos noted that it is the board’s job to review and approval this deal to determine whether it’s in the city’s best interests, which shouldn’t simply involve trusting CPMC. “Why should the executive branch of the government see those numbers but not the legislative branch?” he asked.
“It’s really not our call,” said Rich, noting that he had no objections to the request.

But when Campos asked CPMC’s Duffy, she offered a legalistic refusal, and when Campos tried to explain his reasoning, she said, “I heard your speech a moment ago” and added, “this isn’t really a game of gotcha.”

When Campos said the board was simply exercising its due diligence over an important project. she said “nothing unusual or untoward has occurred here, and the suggestion that might be the case, I think it unfair.”

But Campos wasn’t alone in wanting more reassurance from CPMC, who supervisors, labor leaders, and community activists have criticized for its secrecy and bad faith negotiating tactics with both the city and its employee unions.

“This announcement is shocking, on a number of levels,” Board President David Chiu said at the hearing, noting that he had met with CPMC officials just days earlier and they hadn’t mentioned the new developments, instead assuring him that their operating margins were high and the deal protected St. Luke’s. “It’s not a great way to build the trust we’ll need to move this forward.”

Rich said he had learned of the new numbers 12 days earlier, drawing a rebuke from Campos and others who said the supervisors should have been notified earlier. But Rich said that he was hoping that the problem would be solved through negotiations with CPMC before the hearing, but that talks over the issue have so far been fruitless.

“We would have vastly preferred to have an agreement in hand,” Rich told the committee, reassuring the supervisors that the Mayor’s Office will not support the project until the St. Luke’s issue is resolved to its satisfaction.

But Sup. Malia Cohen criticized CPMC as an untrustworthy negotiating partner. “CPMC has an interesting corporate culture,” she said, noting that the company has repeatedly misled supervisors and community leaders, accusing it of being “disingenuous in its negotiations.”

Chiu emphasized that this is a make-or-break issue: “This is an escape clause that could allow St. Luke’s – and what St. Luke’s means to the city – to not be operational. So this is an incredibly important question.”

Campos said this latest episode only added to his suspicion that CPMC will play games with its finances to shutter St. Luke’s – whose construction must be completed before CPMC can build Cathedral Hill Hospital – once it gets the lucrative regional medical center that it really wants.

“How do we know they aren’t transferring money out of CPMC into Sutter in order to shut down St. Luke’s?” Campos said, adding that he wants to see a clear guarantee that St. Luke’s will remain open as a full-service hospital. “This deal, as far as I’m concerned, is not ready for prime time.”

Fixing SF’s sunshine problems

Andrew Lam
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8

EDITORIAL Open-government advocates are circulating a series of amendments to the city’s landmark Sunshine Ordinance, and a lot of them make perfect sense. In general, the changes bring the law up to date — and deal with the ongoing and increasing frustration over the lack of enforcement that has rendered toothless one of the most progressive open-government laws in the nation.

The advocates are trying to find four supervisors to place the measure on the November ballot. It won’t be easy: Already, the City Attorney’s Office has circulated a memo arguing that some of the amendments conflict with state law or the City Charter.

And in the background, Sup. Scott Wiener is looking to take another approach to open-government, asking city departments to examine the costs of complying with the existing law — which could easily become an argument for loosening the rules.

The new disclosure rules are relatively modest. A policy body would have to release all documents relevant to a decision 48 hours in advance of a meeting. Documents that include metadata — tracked changes and other digital information — would have to be released in full. Regulations on closed meetings around pending legal issues would be tightened.

But the bulk of the changes have to do with enforcing the law — and that’s where the battle lines are going to be drawn. The measure would create a powerful supervisor of public records, appointed by the city attorney, who would be directed to review all denials of public records — and who, by law, would be ordered to “not consider as authority any position taken by the city attorney.” That seeks to address a key shortfall in existing law — the City Attorney’s Office, which (like most law firms) is often driven by privacy and confidentiality, advises city agencies on what records can be withheld, and city officials who refuse to release documents simply say they were following the advice of their attorney.

The proposal would turn the Sunshine Task Force into an independent commission, some of whose appointments wouldn’t be subject to any official review. The commission would have extensive new authority to levy fines on city employees who it finds in violation of the sunshine law and to force the Ethics Commission — which routinely ignores sunshine violations — to take action against offenders.

The idea, of course, is to mandate consequences for violating the Sunshine Ordinance, which is flouted on a regular basis by public officials who pay no penalty and thus have no real reason to comply. But increasing the scope and certainty of punishment is one side of the coin — and if there were better ways to ensure compliance, none of that would be necessary.

In Connecticut, a state Freedom of Information Commission has the statutory authority to require any government agency to release a document or open a meeting. The panel doesn’t punish people; it obviates that whole process. And it would be much, much easier to get beyond the penalties and simply create a legal process that allowed the Sunshine Commission full authority to order public agencies to comply with its rulings. The commission rules that a meeting was illegally closed? Tapes of that meeting must be released, at once. Documents improperly withheld? Cough them up, now. The only appeal city officials would have: go to court and seek a secrecy order. If the supervisors and other city officials think the proposed rules go too far, they can refuse to put this measure on the ballot, but that be ducking the clear and obvious problems. And there’s an easy solution: Give the Sunshine Commission the same power as the FOI panel in Connecticut, which has operated just fine for more than 30 years.

Free Muni for kids: Tough slog at the MTC

Zelda Bronstein
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15
Free Muni for kids: Tough slog at the MTC

There are plenty of reasons I like the David Campos free Muni for youth plan. Anything that gets the next generation used to seeing Muni as the primary form of transportation in town is a good idea. It’s a great benefit for low-income kids (and around SF these days, the only ones who we’re giving any benefits to are businesses that get tax breaks, and those breaks are worth far more than the modest cost of the Campos plan). But it’s particularly important this year, because the school district is in serious financial straights and is probably going to eliminate most school-bus transportation next year. So poor kids and kids whose parents don’t have cars will have a harder time getting to school.

The supervisors approved this, and the mayor signed off on it — but some of the money is supposed to come from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, made up of regional representatives, and Campos is having a tough battle.

The MTC staff recommended that SF get $4 million in regional transit money for the idea, but not all, or even most, of the 16 members of the panel want to see one city get money for something all of them would love to do.

But: Someone has to try this as a pilot project, and SF, with the highest per-capita transit ridership, is a good place to start.

Sup. Scott Wiener is also on the MTC, representing San Francisco, and he’s totally against the free Muni for youth plan. And when it come up at an MTC committee, he was willing to vote for it — “I realize I lost that battle, and at the MTC I’m representing San Francisco,” he said — but only if MTC stipulated that no additional city money would go to the program.

And that kind of screws the whole thing up, since it will be hard to do with just the $4 million.

Ugh. Such a great idea, for a fraction of the money we’re handing out like hot dogs to everyone who asks for a tax break. Why don’t the poor kids get a break for once?

Bevan Dufty’s all wet and woofy

Zelda Bronstein
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20
Bevan Dufty’s all wet and woofy

I’ve had issues with Bevan Dufty. Oh, lord, I’ve had issues. He so often voted the wrong way on the Board of Supervisors and was the only major candidate running for mayor who answered No to the affordable housing question at the Guardian mayoral forum.

But I have to say, he’s doing quite the creative job as the mayor’s homeless coordinator. I’ve always liked the idea of the “wet house” — a place where alcoholics can drink in safety. It’s basic harm reduction, something that sometimes conflicts with the prevailing wisdom on sobriety but will almost certainly save lives. He’s taking the right line on panhandling — the other day, he told me, he spoke in front of the Interfaith Council and complained about the notion of refusing to give money to panhandlers because they might use it for drugs and alcohol.

“Well,” he said, “there are people in this room who generate money for drugs and alcohol. What if that principle applied to your paycheck?”

(I always give money to panhandlers. I also spend part of my paycheck on Bud Light and bourbon. Deal with it.)

And now he’s got the puppy plan.

You can laugh at this all you want, and a lot of people will, but I think it’s a fabulous idea. It won’t solve homelessness, and I know that these little side trips can divert attention from the massive social problem that is housing costs and homelessness in this city, but still:

There are dogs that need to be adopted. There are lonely people who are in SROs who can adopt those dogs. It might keep some of them from panhandling. It will certainly make a number of canine and human creatures a lot more happy.

Remember PAWS? (One of my favorite groups.) These folks figured out in the worst days of the AIDS pandemic that having companion animals around made people’s lives better, and they worked to help people with AIDS keep their pets. Now they work with seniors and low-income people, providing support and services.

The dogs don’t care if their owners are living in an SRO; they’re happy to have a home. The people who might be isolated and stressed living alone and with very little money have a bit of light in their lives. Although a lot of SROs don’t take pets (and I get it — pit bulls on crack and fleas and shit), the Community Housing Partnership is working with Dufty on a pilot program, and if it works he cann push it further.

And that’s not the end. Under Sup. Scott Wiener’s recent legislation, dog walkers (thousand of ’em) are supposed to have some basic dog-training skills, and there aren’t that many places that offer those classes — but Dufty tells me he thinks maybe some low-income SRO residents can learn to teach dog training classes and make some money that way.

Again: Little stuff. I still want to tax the rich to provide housing as a human right for all. But things are not good on the streets of San Francisco, and every little bit helps.

 

 

Don’t water down campaign laws

Andrew Lam
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2

EDITORIAL The San Francisco Ethics Commission, which is hardly aggressive about cracking down on campaign-finance violations, has suggested some rule changes that would water down the city’s ethics laws. The supervisors should reject most of the suggestions — and start talking about real reform.

The commission has asked Sup. Scott Wiener to bring the changes to the board, and Wiener told us that he has problems with some of them and is going to be working with his colleagues, particularly Sup. David Campos, to fix the package.

It will need a lot of amendments to be acceptable.

The current proposal would make life easier for campaigns and big donors, but would make it harder for the public to figure out who’s putting up the money and where it’s going. For example, it would exempt from the spending cap all money spent complying with the ethics laws. That sounds fair at first glance — but the amounts involved are huge. For a mayoral race, as much as $147,000 would be exempted. That’s a lot of money for “compliance.”

More important, the ethics proposal would eliminate the restrictions on how much a single donor can give in an election season. Right now, the cumulative limit is $500 for each office on the ballot, which limits the impact that a handful of big-money contributors can have on an election. Under the new rule, a wealthy person who wants to make sure that every politician in town owes him or her can donate the maximum to a long list of candidates, giving more power to a few.

Wiener says that under ranked-choice voting, donors should be able to give to more than one candidate for a single office. Fine — but the cap doesn’t have to be eliminated. It could easily be amended to account for RCV.

The plan would somewhat loosen the reporting requirements in the last days of a campaign, eliminating weekend disclosures. It would decrease the transparency rules for campaign committees that shuffle money back and forth to hide its true source. It would aalow more spending by independent committees with less disclosure.

In other words, it would undermine the ability of the voters to know who is funding which candidates and initiative campaigns. There’s no reason to do any of that.

The problem with the current law is not that it requires too much disclosure — it’s that, in many ways, the controls on political money are too weak. And if the supervisors are serious about reform, there’s plenty to be done.

Ethics laws currently bar anyone who is seeking a city contract from donating to local officials. But it’s still perfectly legal for someone seeking a permit or zoning change to throw around cash. And there are endless problems with developers who need city officials on their side. Extending the contribution ban to anyone seeking special zoning or permit approval for any project with construction costs above a certain threshold — say, $10 million — would exclude, say, homeowners who want to build a new deck, but would limit the role of real-estate money in campaigns.

The amendments need eight votes to pass; before it even gets to the full board, the Rules Committee ought to ship this mess back to the Ethics Commission and tell the supposed watchdogs to try again.

Sup. Cohen answers some Impertinent Questions on sunshine

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b3 Note:  I sent some Impertinent Questions to the supervisors who voted against Bruce Wolfe, an excellent task force member,  and for Todd David (See other sunshine blogs.) To their credit, Sups.Elsbernd and Malia Cohen responded, Sup. David Chiu said he could not make the deadline but would reply with a new deadline.  Sups.Wiener and Farrell and Carmen Chiu have not responded.

Dear Bruce –
It was nice to see you the other night at the Potrero Hill Boosters dinner. I believe very strongly in the Sunshine Ordinance, transparency and efficiency in government. I also believe that the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force is an essential component of ensuring that our City departments are open with members of the public. As I mentioned in my comments on Tuesday, I have significant concerns with opinions of some of the Task Force’s members that the City Charter does not apply to them in the same manner as it applies to all other elected and appointed bodies in the City. I also have concerns about the inefficiency of Task Force meetings and the process by which complaints are adjudicated. I was encouraged by the qualifications of a number of new applicants that applied to serve on the Task Force. In particular I believe that the newly appointed members bring a diverse skill set in consumer advocacy, media relations and community involvement in governmental issues. It has also been one of my commitments as a member of the Board of Supervisors to increase the diversity of the membership of our City’s appointed bodies, whether that be on the Small Business Commission, Entertainment Commission or the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, and I believe that the new appointees bring a much needed level of diversity to this body. I also want to stress that we still have a number of seats that the Rules Committee has not yet recommended appointments to. I know that it is my intention and I would also bet that it is the intention of my colleagues to ensure that these remaining vacant seats meet the requirement to have a physically handicapped individual on the Task Force, as well as individuals who bring expertise and experience in the above mentioned areas.

Always at your service,
Supervisor Malia Cohen

B 3 comment: Your “strong” belief in the sunshine ordinance and task force is admirable but would be more so if you didn’t reject knowledgeable representatives from the organizations with open government and public access credentials and experience.  And if you weren’t voting for the big development projects that want as little sunshine as possible on their contracts and operations and lobbying. 

Sunshine eclipsed

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Sunshine eclipsed

As an advocate for the passage of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance in the early 1990s, I felt obligated to take my first and only City Hall position and serve as a founding member of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. I served for l0 years and helped with many other good members to build the task force into a strong and respected agency for helping citizens get access to records and meetings and hold city officials accountable for suppressing access and information.

The task force is the first and best local sunshine task force of its kind in the country, if not the world. It is the only place where citizens can file an access complaint without an attorney or a fee and force a city official, including the mayor, to come before the task force for questioning and a ruling on whether they had violated sunshine laws. The task force lacked enforcement powers, but it still annoyed city officials, including Mayor Willie Brown.

In fact, Brown spent a good deal of time trying to kick me off the task force. He used one jolly maneuver after another, even getting an agent to make a phony complaint against me for violating the ordinance with an email (The complaint went nowhere). I refused to budge and decided to stay on until Brown left office—on the principle that neither the mayor nor anybody else from City Hall could arbitrarily kick members off the task force.

That principle held until about 3pm last Thursday (May 17) at the meeting of the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee to appoint candidates to the task force. At that meeting, without proper notice, advance warning, explanation, apology, or even a nice word or two, the supervisors suddenly turned a normal drowsy committee meeting into an unprecedented bloodbath for the task force and its independence. Sup. Mark Farrell played the heavy, Jane Kim was the facilitating chair, and David Campos was the reluctant third party, working together to bring Willie Brownism back at the task force with a vengeance.

The committee rejected four qualified candidates from three organizations who are mandated by the Sunshine Ordinance to choose representatives for the task force because of the organizations’ special open government credentials. (Doug Comstock, editor of the West of Twin Peaks Observer; Attorney Ben Rosenfeld from the Northern California chapter of Society of Professional Journalists, sponsor of the ordinance; Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters and Suzanne Manneh from America New Media.)

The committee without blushing asked the organizations to come up with a “list of names,” a whiff of grapeshot aimed at members and organizations who had served the public well for years. Who wants to go before the supervisors on a list of names for a bout of public character assassination? Meanwhile, while knocking off the qualified, knowledgeable candidates, the committee approved four neophytes without experience and then unanimously appointed David Pilpel, a former task force member known for delaying meetings with bursts of nitpicking. He almost always comes down on the side of City Hall and against citizens with their complaints.

Farrell also tried to bounce Bruce Wolfe, an excellent member, but Kim and Campos supported him and his name was sent on to the full board for approval.

Then, when Wolfe’s name got to the board on May 22, it was a repeat of Willie Brownism and this time to the max. Sup. Scott Wiener moved to amend the motion and substituted Todd David. Farrell seconded. The vote was 6-5, meaning that Willie Brownism wiped the sunshine slate clean of anybody who would raise a pesky question of city officials and the City Attorney’s Office.

The infamous votes against Wolfe: Wiener (ah, yes, the heir of the Harvey Milk and Harry Britt seat in the Castro), Farrell (where is Janet Reilly when we need her?), Malia Cohen (who comes from the Potrero Hill/Bay View/Hunters Point district that needs all the sunshine it can get in facing an Oklahoma-style land rush of development), David Chiu (who was reportedly angry over the unanimous task force opinion finding he violated the Sunshine Ordinance with late submission of documents before the controversial vote to redevelop Parkmerced), Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd (neighborhood supes way out in West Portal and the Sunset who almost always vote the downtown line at City Hall). The good votes for Wolfe: John Avalos, Eric Mar, Cristina Olague, Jane Kim, and David Campos.

Campos told me that the organization candidates were “eminently qualified,” that they should have been appointed, and that he would fight for them. He advised the organizations to “stand by their candidates.” He is urging that the issue of organization candidates come back to the next Rules Committee.

Rick Knee, SPJ’s mandated journalist on the task force surveying the carnage, said the supervisors’ actions stem “partly from a desire by some supervisors to sabotage the task force and ordinance itself, and partly from a vendetta by certain supervisors after the task force found several months ago that the board violated local and state open meeting laws when it railroaded some last minute changes to a contract on the Parkmerced development project without allowing sufficient time for public review and comment.”

Knee is right, and it isn’t just Parkmerced, but all the high-stakes development deals flowing through City Hall these days, with their advocates preferring to cut backroom deals rather than being subjected to the full scrutiny of the public and the task force.

James Chaffee, a former chair of the task force, watched the board proceedings with outrage and fired off a letter to all supervisors later that day. He charged that the board in sacking Wolfe violated the Sunshine Ordinance on several counts. Among them: the board changed the committee recommendation on Wolfe without allowing public comment and it passed over Wolfe even though the ordinance requires at least one member of the task force to be “physically handicapped.” That was Wolfe.

Thus, Chaffee wrote, the orchestrated coup was “the perfect example of a failure to follow the sunshine ordinance that led to the sort of problem that it was intended to forestall, namely the supervisors taking an action without being informed of what they are doing.  If Scott Weiner and David Chiu and the rest of the crew did not consider the citizens the enemy and exercize judgment about whether they were complying with the spirit of open government rather than just shaving off the letter of the law as closely as possible, this could have been avoided.”

Chaffee said he couldn’t tell if David was physically handicapped but he said nothing in his application for the task force nor was any disability apparent from the video of the rules committee meeting.

Chaffee said David’s  application showed he  was “self-employed as an investor, obtained a BA from Stanford in 1993, has never attended a task force meeting, and left the statement of his qualifications blank.”

Chaffee said, “It’s easy to see why Scott Wiener likes him. He said it would be a long road before he would go against the city attorney’s office and when it came to constitutional law, he would place the city attorney’s opinion above his own because the city attorney is an ‘expert.'”

I sent Chaffee’s letter and my Bruce Blog post ( “The return of Willie Brown to the Sunshine Task Force,” 5/21) to City Attorney Dennis Herrera for comment: How can his office sit by while the letter and spirit of the sunshine laws are being violated in the move to sabotage the sunshine ordinance and task force? I also sent Chaffee’s letter, with the Bruce blog, to the supervisors with similar questions: Why  are you violating the sunshine laws to kick out the best candidates? For their answers (coming)  and the latest on this evolving controversy, follow along at  www.sfbg.com/bruce.

There you have it:  the state of sunshine and open government in city hall in San Francisco in May of 2012. Todd David over Bruce Wolfe. David  Pilpel uber alles.  Five inexperienced candidates over five experienced candidates. David Pilpel uber alles. A city attorney who rolls over and over and over again. And a whiff of grapeshot for the three organizations mandated by the charter to have represenatives on the task force  because of their open government and public access credentials (the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the League of Women Voters, and America New Media.)  On guard,  b3

 

What the preservation vote says about the 2012 supervisors

Zelda Bronstein
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64
What the preservation vote says about the 2012 supervisors

UPDATE: Important update at the end of this story

What does it mean that a historic preservation law favored by developers and promoted by Sup. Scott Wiener passed the Board of Supervisors 8-3? Maybe nothing. Historic preservation is a strange poliltical issue, favored by some of the wealthy white homeowner types who love pretty buildings (and aren’t so good on other issues), and this thing was sold as a way to help low-income people and affordable housing. But the reality is that the Wiener measure will make it harder to declare historic districts, and thus will take away a tool that the left can use to stop uncontrolled commercial development. And remember: The affordable housing community wasn’t pushing this bill, and, for the most part, hasn’t had problems with historic preservation. The most progressive political club in the city, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, came out strongly against the measure and urged Sup. Christina Olague, a co-sponsor, to oppose it:

We are extremely troubled that you appear to be buying into the flawed, bogus and self-serving arguments by SPUR and other supporters of this legislation that historic preservation is classist and leads to gentrification, interferes with the production of affordable housing and is a tool of San Francisco’s elite.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

There was a way to address the issues of low-income people in historic districts without making it harder to block inappropropriate development, but Wiener’s bill went much further. And while I respect Scott Wiener and find him accessible and straightforward, and I agree with him on some issues, he isn’t someone whose basic agenda promotes the interests of tenants or low-income people. His supporters are much more among the landlord class and the downtown folks. The San Francisco Chronicle, which is a conservative paper on economic and development issues, loved the legislation.

So what happened when this got to the Board? Only three people — the ones the Chron calls “the stalwart left flank of the Board” — voted no.

John Avalos, David Campos and Eric Mar. They are now the solid left flank, the ones who can be counted on to do the right thing on almost every issue. Once upon a time, there were six solid left votes. Now there are three.

What does this mean for the other key issues coming up, including CPMC, 8 Washington, and the city budget? Maybe nothing. As I say, this issue is complicated. Olague told me, for example, that she’s really worried about working-class people who can’t afford to comply with the increased regulations that come with historic districts. Her vote doesn’t mean she’s dropped out of the progressive camp, or that she (or Sups. Jane Kim and David Chiu) can’t be counted on in the future. I really want to believe that this was just an aberration, a vote where I’ll look back in the fall and say: Okay, we disagreed on that one, but nobody’s perfect. 

Still, it’s kind of depressing: The dependable progressive vote is down to three.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: I didn’t know when I posted this that Olague had spoken to the Milk Club leadership after the club’s statement went out and the club has since issued a correction:

Due to a misunderstanding, Supervisor Christine Olague’s position on the Historic Preservation Commission’s critical role in the life of San Franicsco was misrepresented in our weekly newsletter. Supervisor Olague is looking into ways to help continue Historic District status for the Queer community, the Filipino community in the South of Market area, and the Japantown area. She is specifically looking for wording that would help these plans remain viable and welcomes any questions on her position and on her plan. Our apologies to the Supervisor for this unfortunate mistake.

Wiener goes after historic preservation

Zelda Bronstein
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40
Wiener goes after historic preservation

 

Sup. Scott Wiener is pushing a bill that would make it more difficult to create historic districts in San Francisco, and it’s already cleared the Land Use and Economic Development Committee.

UPDATE: Milk Club calls on Sup. Olague to drop her support for the bill.

The measure hasn’t received a lot of news media attention, but it could have a far-reaching effect on development in San Francisco.

In essence, the Wiener bill amends two parts of the city planning code to tighten the requirements for designating a part of the city as a protected historic area — a designation that makes it harder to demolish or substantially alter buildings.
Developers and some property owners dislike the historic designation. Perservationists see it as a way to prevent the destruction of buildings and neigbhorhoods that are a part of the city’s heritage.

Classic example: In the 1980s, members of the Residential Builders Association were tearing down vintage Victorians in the Richmond district and replacing them with boxy, multi-unit apartments that were worth more money than a single-family home. The builders made a lot of quick cash; the city lost some elegant old houses that can never be replaced.

They couldn’t do that as easily in Alamo Square, which is a historic district.

On the other hand, the owners of those stately well-protected houses in these special districts have to go through increased Planning Department scrutiny any time they want to make any substantial alteration in the structure.

Context: Less than 1 percent of the developed part of San Francisco is currently in a historic district. It’s not a huge deal, and most people don’t pay any attention to this stuff.

But it’s important, and here’s why: One, this city doesn’t care enough about its past — but more important, preservation is a tool that can be used to prevent very bad things from happening.

If we’d had good historic preservation laws in the 1970s, the International Hotel could have been designated an historic structure and wouldn’t have been demolished. Same, possibly, for the Goodman Building. Preservation laws could have been used to fight some of the horrors of redevelopment, which mowed down African American and Filipino neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s.

Some of Wiener’s suggestions are relatively benign. He wants to exempt affordable housing units from the laws that apply to historic districts, and Sup. Christina Olague, his co-sponsor, wants an economic hardship exemption so that the owners of buildings, particularly in communities of color, can avoid expensive battles over minor repairs and alterations.

I’m fine with all of that. I’m all for it. Good idea. Although it’s not fair to say that this process was driven by a concern for affordable housing; I spoke to Peter Cohen, at the Council of Community Housing Organizations, and he told me that the idea didn’t come from his crew. Not one affordable housing activist showed up at the Land Use hearing to support the Wiener bill.

But the measure also adds more burdens to the process of designating an historic district. It mandates a written survey of all property owners and occupants in an area proposed for historic designation — an expensive and cumbersome thing that isn’t required for commercial development, demolitions, zoning changes, massive market-rate housing projects, full-on gentrification, or anything else that screws up neighborhoods.
It requires the Planning Commission to consider whether historic preservation conflicts with “the provision of housing to meet the city’s regional housing needs allocation,” which is odd because the commission didn’t consider that when it approved 8 Washington, which directly conflicts with the city’s housing needs allocation, or when it’s allowed 20,000 units of mostly high-end housing over the past decade without any provision for the proper corresponding amount of affordable housing.

In short, it gives opponents of historic preservation more ways to stop new protections. That’s going to make developers very happy.

I asked Wiener why he decided to do this, what the problem was that this law is meant to solve. His answer: There are lots of potential new historic districts (including where he lives, in the Duboce Park and Dolores Street areas) and he wants to be sure that there’s a “robust community process.” Excuse me, Supervisor: There’s a robust community process every time anyone does anything in this town, and designating a historic district is no different.

Also: “A lot of people believe that in some situations, historic preservation can be taken to the extremes. This is a real hot topic for the city.”

Now here’s where it gets interesting (and even more complicated). There’s a neighborhood group called the Mission Dolores Neighborhood Association that’s been trying for almost seven years to get the area between Market and 20, Valencia and Sanchez designated a historic district. Peter Lewis, a musician who has been leading the battle, told me that he got involved because developers were tearing down some important old buildings (a Willis Polk building on Dolores and 15th came down a few years ago) and he wanted to halt it.
The group’s got sophistication and resources — MDNA has raised $80,000 for the necessary studies and has been working the the Planning Department and the Historic Preservation Commission.

Wiener is opposed to the idea — particularly the concept of including the Dolores Street median (designed by John Mclaren, he of Golden Gate Park fame) and Dolores Park in the district. The median’s already a state landmark.

“He’s been very polite to us, but he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to see streets or parks included in any historic designation,” Lewis told me.
Why? Well, for one thing, the Planning Department is talking about building bulb-outs on Dolores as a traffic-calming measure. Historic designation for the median might make that more difficult. And Lewis opposes the bulb-outs for all the wrong reasons: “They just want to get people out of their cars,” he said, dismissively.

But really: Is this all worth pushing a measure that could undermine preservation and encourage demolitions and bad development all over the city? Is the current system really all that bad? Didn’t a measure to strengthen historic preservation (placed on the ballot with an 11-0 vote on the Board of Supervisors) just pass overwhelmingly two years ago?

Because it seems to me that this is a solution in search of a problem.

 

Should the Navy name a ship after Harvey Milk?

Zelda Bronstein
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Should the Navy name a ship after Harvey Milk?

A Democratic Congressional rep. from San Diego thinks so.Rep. Bob Filner has asked the Secretary of the Navy, who has final say over such things, to name a warship the “U.S.S. Harvey Milk.” Milk served in the Navy during the Korean War. And Sup. Scott Wiener has introduced a resolution in support of the concept.

His press release:

Supervisor Wiener, who represents Milk’s old district on the Board of Supervisors, expressed excitement at the prospect of the christening:  “Harvey Milk was a visionary in our community and redefined what it means to be LGBT in public life.  Given Supervisor Milk’s extraordinary public service and military service to our country, I can think of no more fitting tribute than to name a naval vessel after him.” Retired Navy Commander Zoe Dunning, a leader in the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, agreed:  “Harvey Milk was proud of his Navy service. Similar to the USS Cesar Chavez, there should be a USS Harvey Milk to honor Milk’s leadership in the LGBT civil rights movement.” Anne Kronenberg, who served as one of Supervisor Milk’s legislative aides and who now serves as San Francisco’s Director of Emergency Management, noted that Milk would be smiling to hear about the effort to christen a ship in his name: “Harvey understood the importance of symbolism in the advancement of civil rights.  He also lived in an era when being out in the military was simply impossible. He’d be quite pleased that we are now in an era when not only can LGBT people be out in the military, but they can even have warships named after them. Times truly have changed.”

My friend and colleague Sandy Lange, who is the Guardian’s controller, agrees. Sandy was an officer in the Navy, and loved it, and got kicked out after the Naval Investigative Service followed her to a lesbian bar, long before even Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “This would be a great statement, to finally kick homophobia off the waves,” she told me.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who is also my friend, isn’t so sure. In a piece on Open Salon, he argues that Milk would be opposed to today’s military adventurism and that a warship isn’t a fitting memorial:

It’s one thing that gays can serve openly in the military. It’s another to attach the name of a queer progressive who opposed war to a military ship. It’s just not appropriate. It’s like naming a Christian church after him (Milk was a Jew and an atheist). Or a bomber plane after Gandhi.
 
What’s next? Recruitment ads in the gay newspapers featuring the Village People and/or hunky half-naked men? A pink heart medal for killing with a gay flair? A lavender box with a rainbow flag for our gay and lesbian corpses?  

Marke B., our managing editor, just wants to be sure that he’s involved in the interior design of the new ship, and that its sailors “open their legs for fleet week.”

Seriously — Avicolli Mecca thinks a better honor would be to make Milk’s birthday, May 22, a national holiday. Of course, Chavez (also a man of peace) has both a ship and a holiday.

I never met Harvey Milk — I arrived in San Francisco in 1981 — but I have to wonder what he’d think about a ship of war carrying his name.

 

 

Free Muni for kids makes sense

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL San Francisco is a transit-first city that has spent millions of dollars over the years trying to convince people to ride Muni. And yet, one of the best and most effective ways to get people out of their cars is facing surprising opposition.

Sup. David Campos has been pushing for months to get Muni to allow young people to ride free. It makes immediate sense: The school district, perpetually short on funds, is cutting back bus service (which is preferable to cutting back classroom instruction). For low-income families, the disappearance of a yellow school bus, which offered transportation free of charge, is a financial obstacle — and the last thing anyone needs is another obstacle to keep kids out from coming to school.

Reduced-fare youth passes are already available — but they aren’t easy to get. Parents need to show up in person, during the day, with a birth certificate, passport or other government ID; that’s hard for a lot of working parents. The school district ought to be able to sell the passes, but right now nobody has the resources to make that happen.

It’s possible to create a system to identify and offer free service to low-income families, but again, unless it’s done through the schools, where that data is already kept (for reduced-price lunches), we’re talking about creating a complicated bureaucracy that isn’t remotely necessary.

According to Campos, the cost of providing free service for all youth is only $8 million a year — and he’s identified regional transit funds to pay for much of it. Muni has a deep budget deficit already, and anything that costs more money has to be carefully evaluated, but there are so many ways to cover the price tag. (Why is Muni still paying the Police Department tens of millions of dollars to get cops on the buses when that’s part of the department’s job already?)

And this goes beyond Ethe very clear needs of low-income families. Getting young people onto the buses is an excellent way to convince the next generation of San Franciscans that it’s not necessary to own and operate a motor vehicle in the city. The message is already getting out — according to an April 5, 2012 study by the Frontier Group, the number of car miles driven by people between 16 and 34 dropped 23 percent between 2001 and 2009. That trend crosses class lines — in fact, among young people who earned more than $70,000 a year, public transit use rose 100 percent over the decade and biking by 122 percent.

In other words, it’s proving to be a massive challenge to get older people out of their cars, but the kids are already moving in that direction. With a little help and push, San Francisco could make giant strides in the next few years.

And a significant reduction in car use would more than pay for the cost of free Muni for youth. Every car off the road means less road maintenance, less air pollution — and perhaps more important, less congestion to slow down the buses. Faster buses means more riders and more fares (and less money spent paying drivers to sit in traffic).

So it’s a great idea that pays for itself and helps the environment. And yet some city officials (led by Sup. Scott Wiener) still resist. They should back off; the city should move to approve this plan immediately.

Editorial: Free Muni tickets for kids makes sense

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San Francisco is a transit-first city that has spent millions of dollars over the years trying to convince people to ride Muni. And yet, one of the best and most effective ways to get people out of their cars is facing surprising opposition.

Sup. David Campos has been pushing for months to get Muni to allow young people to ride free. It makes immediate sense: The school district, perpetually short on funds, is cutting back bus service (which is preferable to cutting back classroom instruction). For low-income families, the disappearance of a yellow school bus, which offered transportation free of charge, is a financial obstacle — and the last thing anyone needs is another obstacle to keep kids out from coming to school.

Reduced-fare youth passes are already available — but they aren’t easy to get. Parents need to show up in person, during the day, with a birth certificate, passport or other government ID; that’s hard for a lot of working parents. The school district ought to be able to sell the passes, but right now nobody has the resources to make that happen.

It’s possible to create a system to identify and offer free service to low-income families, but again, unless it’s done through the schools, where that data is already kept (for reduced-price lunches), we’re talking about creating a complicated bureaucracy that isn’t remotely necessary.

According to Campos, the cost of providing free service for all youth is only $8 million a year — and he’s identified regional transit funds to pay for much of it. Muni has a deep budget deficit already, and anything that costs more money has to be carefully evaluated, but there are so many ways to cover the price tag. (Why is Muni still paying the Police Department tens of millions of dollars to get cops on the buses when that’s part of the department’s job already?)

And this goes beyond the very clear needs of low-income families. Getting young people onto the buses is an excellent way to convince the next generation of San Franciscans that it’s not necessary to own and operate a motor vehicle in the city. The message is already getting out — according to an April 5, 2012 study by the Frontier Group, the number of car miles driven by people between 16 and 34 dropped 23 percent between 2001 and 2009. That trend crosses class lines — in fact, among young people who earned more than $70,000 a year, public transit use rose 100 percent over the decade and biking by 122 percent.

In other words, it’s proving to be a massive challenge to get older people out of their cars, but the kids are already moving in that direction. With a little help and push, San Francisco could make giant strides in the next few years.

And a significant reduction in car use would more than pay for the cost of free Muni for youth. Every car off the road means less road maintenance, less air pollution — and perhaps more important, less congestion to slow down the buses. Faster buses means more riders and more fares (and less money spent paying drivers to sit in traffic).

So it’s a great idea that pays for itself and helps the environment. And yet some city officials (led by Sup. Scott Wiener) still resist. They should back off. The city should move to approve this plan immediately.

 

A new food-truck map

Zelda Bronstein
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2
A new food-truck map

Sup. Scott Wiener wants to compromise on the food-truck limits, and is working with the folks at SFUSD and the food advocates.

Dana Woldow, who is working with Nancy Waymack, director of policy and planning for SFUSD, Chris Armentrout, the district’s director of development and government relations, and School Board member Jill Wynns, told me that the advocates are open to the idea of allowing more trucks in the Mission:

As I have said, I (and other parent advocates wanting to maintain a viable school meal program which can afford to offer healthy food to all students) do understand the dilemma of gourmet food trucks; that’s why we are willing to reduce the zone around all middle schools in the City to 500 feet from the current 1500 feet. Additionally, we would consider looking at drawing a custom boundary, which could possibly be smaller than the current 1500 feet, around each of the high schools in the Mission district. That way, we could free up some prime parking for trucks while still maintaining a wide enough truck-free area to discourage students from leaving school at lunchtime.

She’s got a new map for me that shows where trucks would be banned under the compromise proposal — one that includes only public middle schools and high schools. Check it out here. (pdf) And compare it to the old map here.

This all seems eminently reasonable, and maybe we can have healthy school food and burrito trucks, too.

The food (truck) fight heats up

Zelda Bronstein
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The food (truck) fight heats up

Sup. Scott Wiener and public-school parent and advocate Dana Woldow are flinging dueling opinion pieces back and forth over the food-truck issue — and it’s getting hot.

Here’s the background: San Francisco currently bans food trucks within 1,500 feet of a public middle school or high school. That was almost encoded in state law, but the sponsor backed down. Now Wiener wants to modify the local law to allow trucks within maybe 500 feet or maybe a city block (of varying size) from a middle or high school.

Woldow thinks that’s way too lax — that, as she told me in an email, “a one block distance is not an obstacle at all for a long legged 15 year old. They can cover that distance and back in 5 minutes flat. And if a school is even partially open campus, (ie – seniors with 2.0 GPA can leave, or seniors and juniors, or whatever), then the kids who leave bring back food for the kids who stay.”

The thing is, this is a crowded, dense city, and there are schools all over, and in some places, like the Mission, a 1,500-foot limit means no food trucks at all, since there’s no place that exists that isn’t 1,500 feet from one school or another. Here’s a nifty map that shows the problem.

Woldow is ferocious when she gets into this stuff, and she decries the low-end food trucks as “roach coaches” and compares the industry to Big Soda (which we all know is evil.) Wiener’s hitting back, saying that Woldow (who he doesn’t name) is specious and that her comparisons to the sugar-mongers is nothing more than a quack conspiracy theory.

There are lots of elements to this — it’s not just about the unhealthy food that kids will (and yes, they will, I can speak from parental experience) buy and consume if they have the slightest opportunity. It’s also about how San Francisco provides lunch for students.

The school lunch program is subsidized — but also lives, to a certain extent, off the money that the schools charge for non-subsidized lunches. That is, if the kids who can afford to pay cough up for school lunches, there’s more money around to make the food better for everyone, including the kids who don’t pay. (It’s the same way at hospitals — if people who have insurance and can pay only go to a few high-end clinics, then the public hospitals and the ones in poor neighborhoods get only the charity cases, and don’t have the cash to improve services.)

As Caroline Grannan points out in a letter she sent me:

Let’s say there’s a restaurateur who feeds low-income diners free, subsidizing their meals by charging full price (albeit a modest full price) to non-low-income customers. Tempting food trucks pull up outside, luring away all the paying customers who can afford the food trucks. The restaurateur is no longer able to feed low-income diners free.
 
That simplified analogy conveys the basic situation, though it leaves out both the labyrinthine regulations governing school meals and the inadequate government subsidy for low-income students’ meals. The SFUSD meal program will, of course, continue to feed low-income children even if it suffers economic setbacks. It will just feed them a little less and a little worse, in both nutrition and overall quality. (And when the school meal program runs a deficit, classroom resources take the hit, another blow that inflicts the most harm on low-income kids.)

There’s a big difference between middle schools and high schools. Nobody’s allowed out of middle school during the day — you eat what the cafeteria offers or you bring your own lunch in a bag. Some high school campuses allow some kids to leave at lunch time; if there are food trucks nearby, and they sell cheap junk food, they’ll get plenty of patrons.

So Woldow and the nutrition folks at SFUSD want a compromise — they’ll allow the trucks to come within 500 feet of middle schools, but they want the 1,500-foot limit for all public high schools. Since there aren’t as many high schools, that’s less of a burden and cuts out less of the city. But you’d still lose about five blocks in every direction around Mission High on 18th near Dolores Park (including the space where the city wants to have a food truck in the park, but Rec-Park property is exempt, so the kids can go there anyway), and the same around John O’Connell at 19th and Folsom and International at 23rd and York.

I don’t think there’s another neighborhood where food trucks are popular that would take as much of a hit as the Mission.

I wonder: Can you regulate what food trucks near schools sell? Could you, for example, license two types of trucks — ones that are allowed to sell soda and chips, and ones that have to meet certain nutritional standards, and allow the ones with higher standards near the schools? There are plenty of trucks in the city that sell more gourmet, high-end stuff anyway. Then you could let the trucks park within, say, 750 feet (or whatever) of Mission high schools, but keep the real crap at a greater distance.

I know: More bureacracy. More regulations. But food trucks are already regulated and licensed, and if the choice was between staying away from the (hungry, captive) audience near high schools and letting Dana Woldow and the SFUSD nutritionists have some say in what you sold, I bet some of the truckers would take the good-food deal.

But that still leave the problem Grannan was talking about: If the cool kids with money all run out to eat at the (moderately) healthy food trucks, the district loses a lot of money from the lunch program. That’s a real concern, even if it goes beyond the food-truck fight. And it goes back to something some of us have been pushing for a while: If SF had a central kitchen for the schools, there might be better, fresher food for the kids in the cafeteria — maybe even food that could compete with the trucks.

I called Wiener to talk about what compromises he’s open to, but I haven’t heard back yet. I’ll update when I do.

 

 

 

 

 

The future of the DCCC

Zelda Bronstein
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The future of the DCCC

Now that Aaron Peskin is retiring as chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, and is not even seeking re-election, the future of a realtively obscure but political important agency is very much up in the air.

Peskin had his share of critics, and he would be the fist to say it was time for him to move on, but he orchestrated the progressive takeover of the DCCC four years ago and turned it into an operation that helped get progressives elected to local office. He raised money for the party and kept the often (ahem) fractious progressive committee members going in the same direction. He was a leader — and without him, the left wing of the local Democratic Party is struggling.

Nobody has been able at this point to take Peskin’s place — and in the meantime, the moderate-to-conservative folks are moving agressively to take the DCCC back.

It’s going to be a fascinating race — Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a bill that changes the makeup of the committee, giving the east side of town more members. That’s because more than 60 percent of the Democrats in the city live in what is now Tom Ammiano’s Assembly district. (The east side district of Fiona Ma now includes more of the Peninsula.)

So 14 of the members will be elected from Ammiano’s district, and only 10 from Ma’s (more conservative) district.

But Peskin won’t be on the ballot, and incumbent Debra Walker has stepped down and won’t run (she’s been replaced by Police Commission member Petra DeJesus).

Meanwhile, among the more centrist people who have filed to run: Former Supervisor Bevan Dufty. Sup. Malia Cohen, School Board Member Hydra Mendoza, and former Redevelopment Commission member London Breed. Sup. Scott Wiener, a longtime incumbent, is running for re-election.

The left starts with a vote deficit, since all of the statewide and federal elected officials who are Democrats and live in or represent part of SF are automatically members. That means Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jackie Speier, Attorney General Kamala Harris, state Sen. Leland Yee, State Sen. Mark Leno, Ma and Ammiano all have votes — and while they never show up, the elected officials send proxies, and other than Ammiano and sometimes Yee and Leno, they can’t be counted on to support progressive candidates and causes.

So progressives need to win more than a simple majority of the contested 24 seats, and while that’s entirely possible, it’s hard to see a full slate in both districts. At best, most progressive groups will probably endorse 12 candidates on the east side and eight on the west — and since the most conservative incumbents will likely win, as will Dufty, probably Cohen and quite possibly Breed, it’s entirely possible that the moderate wing will regain control.

There’s been some tension among progressives in the past few weeks, some arguments about who would best replace Peskin as chair. Animosity over those discussions was one reason Walker resiged. And while there are legit questions about which of the progressives would best run the committee, I fear the candidates were getting ahead of themselves. Because you can’t fight over leadership until you have a majority. And that’s going to be a bigger struggle than it’s been in quite a while.

SFPD-FBI spying restrictions could face mayoral veto

Sasha Cuttler
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8
SFPD-FBI spying restrictions could face mayoral veto

If the San Francisco Police Department isn’t working with the FBI to secretly spy on law-abiding local residents – as a secret document released last year indicated they had the authority to do – then why are Police Chief Greg Suhr, Mayor Ed Lee, and others opposing legislation that would ban such surveillance?

That’s the question that longtime police policy expert John Crew of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is asking as he tries to get two more members of the Board of Supervisors to join the six current co-sponsors of the legislation, which the board will consider on Tuesday, in anticipation of having to override a mayoral veto.

“What’s the harm?” Crew told us. “There’s something that doesn’t add up here.”

As we reported at the time, the ACLU last year obtained a 2007 memorandum-of-understanding between the SFPD and the FBI establishing procedures for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, in which SFPD personnel would be under the command of the FBI, circumventing local and state restrictions on domestic surveillance of people who haven’t committed any crimes.

After the ensuring controversy and under pressure from members of the Police Commission, Police Chief Greg Suhr issued Bureau Order #2011-07 to clarify that SFPD personnel are bound by local and state privacy protections. “With this Bureau Order, the language of the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding no longer applies and SFPD personnel are bound by the provisions of the 2011 Order,” SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza told us last month.

Suhr and Lee have each made public statements indicating that the new legislation – developed by the ACLU and carried by Sup. Jane Kim with five progressive supervisors as co-sponsors – is redundant and unnecessary. But Crew and the ACLU made a Sunshine Ordinance request for any modifications to the MOU or communications with the FBI indicating that SFPD’s contractual obligations no longer apply, and there were no such documents.

“When you talk about civil rights, you put it in writing,” Crew said. “This really doesn’t add up. We’re getting conflicting explanations. And the bottom line is this problem has been solved in Portland.”

When a similar issue arose in Portland, Oregon, civil libertarians pressured the city to withdraw from its MOU with the FBI and create a new one that includes restrictions on the surveillance of people who were not suspected of any crimes, but who may have been subjected to FBI attention because they were Muslims or because of their political beliefs. And Crew said it didn’t harm the relationship of the two policing agencies.

At an emotional hearing last week before the Public Safety Committee, a long string of representatives from groups that have been singled out for FBI surveillance that violated protections under the California Constitution – Muslims, anarchists, anti-war activists, Occupy demonstrators, immigrant groups, environmentalists, animal rights activists, etc. – urged supervisors to stand up for them. The legislation has a long and diverse list of organizational supporters.

Sup. Scott Wiener – one of two supervisors that Crew is hoping to win over – told us, “I agree that local surveillance rules should govern. But I’m not convinced that we need this legislation.”

Wiener said he still hasn’t made up his mind, and he plans to speak with Portland’s mayor before Tuesday’s hearing.

So why wouldn’t he support legislation that simply made his position official city policy? Wiener said he’s wary of telling SFPD how to do law enforcement and with “reducing the ability of the department to be flexible in the future.”

Crew said representatives of the Mayor’s Office, which did not respond to our calls for comment, have told him that Lee would defer to the SFPD’s determination of whether to sign the legislation. “That’s a pretty stunning claim,” Crew said, “which does not bode well in terms of reasonable civilian control of the SFPD for the next few years. I sure hope they back off that.”

Kim, who has a good relationship with the Mayor’s Office, also did not return calls for comment. But Crew was incredulous about why anyone who believes in civil liberties would oppose this legislation, telling us, “This is not a radical stand here.”

SF allows bikes indoors, but its cycling goal is elusive

Sasha Cuttler
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63
SF allows bikes indoors, but its cycling goal is elusive

When the Board of Supervisors this week voted 9-2 to require commercial building owners to allow employees to bring their bicycles indoors while they work, ordinance sponsor Sup. John Avalos hailed the legislation as an important step toward meeting the city goal of having 20 percent of all vehicle trips in the city be by bike by the year 2020.

“We are removing a barrier to people getting around the city by bicycle,” Avalos said at the March 6 hearing, noting that the measure addresses cyclists’ concern about bike theft and helps keep sidewalks uncluttered and racks and poles free for other cyclists to use.

While it’s true this may help make cycling a bit more attractive, San Francisco would have to take far bolder actions to get anywhere near meeting its 20 percent by 2020 goal, a target it set in 2010 with legislation sponsored by Board President David Chiu and one regularly touted in speeches by Mayor Ed Lee.

Just last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency released its latest bike count survey, which showed that about 3.5 percent of vehicle trips in the city are taken by bike, a 71 percent increase in the last five years, gains the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition lauded as “impressive.” Yet to reach the city’s goal would require a 571 percent increase in the next seven years – one that would seem unattainable at this pace.

“It’s a very ambitious but realistic goal,” SFBC director Leah Shahum told us, although she acknowledged it would require a drastic change in the city’s approach. “I’ve been impressed by how much Mayor Lee has touted the 20 percent by 2020 goal, but our city agencies need to step up their sense of urgency and commitment to meet that goal.”

The SFMTA is now finalizing a report on how to hit that 2020 target, which is scheduled for release next month. But agency spokesperson Paul Rose acknowledged the difficulty in meeting that goal: “It would take funding resources which at this point we don’t have.” He can’t yet say would it would take to meet the goal, which the report will outline, but he said, “We’re exploring what can be achieved with our available funding.”

Shahum said all studies by SFBC and other groups show concerns about safety is the biggest barrier to substantially increasing cycling in the city, and that most people need bike lanes – particularly paths physically separated from cars, known as cycle tracks – to feel safe. She praised the SFMTA for installing 20 miles of new bike lanes in the last two years, its fastest pace ever, “but that pace needs to double or triple to meet that goal.”

Instead, Mayor Lee has backed off a pledge he made last year to fast-track a short segment of bike lanes on dangerous sections of Oak and Fell streets that would connect two popular east-west bikeways: the Panhandle and the Wiggle. That project was delayed by a year for more meetings and work after motorists objected to the loss of street parking spots.

“We’re talking about three blocks. It’s relatively small in scope but huge in impacts,” Shahum said of the project. “If the pace of change on these three blocks is replicated through the city, it’ll take hundreds of years to meet the goal.”

In his run for mayor last year, Chiu regularly touted the 20 percent goal he set in 2010 after returning from a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands – where about 38 percent of vehicle trips are by bike – that he took with SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin, SFBC members, and officials from other cities. Chiu says that San Francisco might be further along than the SFMTA figures show, citing an SFBC poll showing that 5 percent of San Franciscans say they ride a bike daily and another 12 percent ride more than once a week.

“Whatever the current percentage is, we have a long way to go. We have to be bolder about specific projects and strategies,” Chiu told us. He said there is a growing recognition that promoting cycling is an important way to address traffic congestion and greenhouse gas reduction and that “segregated bikes lanes are the most efficient way to move the most people through areas of urban density.”

Chiu also said that San Francisco could be poised for rapid progress on the creation of new bikes lanes, citing early opposition to replacing parking spaces with parklets and the car-free Sunday Streets (which kicks off its new season this Sunday along the Embarcadero) events, with the business community and many neighborhood groups fearing that restrictions on motorists would hurt businesses.

“The experience has turned out to be exactly the opposite,” Chiu said, noting the explosion in demand for parklets and new Sunday Streets events in the last couple years, saying that a widening embrace of more cycle tracks and other biking infrastructure could be next.

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey told us, “The mayor is very much committed to the aggressive goals set to get to 20 percent by 2020 and the city is moving in the right direction. He has also always supported the Oak Fell project and we’re seeing progress. It will be complete in 2013 and he has been talking to the SFMTA about the project to keep up to date. San Francisco is on its way to becoming the most bicycle friendly city in the U.S. and in this era of limited public funding, the mayor is working with the SFMTA to explore what ways we can increase trips taken by bicycle with available funding and increased public awareness.”

She cited the Avalos legislation and the current installation of cycle tracks on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park as examples of the city’s commitment to “move us toward the goal of 20 percent,” but many in the cycling community consider these efforts to be low-hanging fruit – easy, cheap, and non-controversial improvements – that won’t get the city anywhere near its stated goal.

Bike activist Marc Salomon is critical of the incremental approaches taken by SFBC and the city, saying that to make significant progress the city needs to address enforcement and the culture on the roadways, protecting cyclists from aggressive or impatient motorists and recognizing that many traffic laws don’t make sense for cyclists.

“We need to change the culture of the cops to make sure every street is a safe street,” he said. Shahum said that’s an issue SFBC is trying to address: “We are talking to them about how police could better enforce dangerous behaviors.”

Yet any efforts to promote cycling will likely be met with a backlash by motorists who resent losing space to cyclists and the fact that many cyclists routinely run stop signs and lights. Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voted against the Avalos legislation, with Chu objecting to city staff evaluating businesses that seek waivers based on limited space or other factors, calling it a waste of precious resources.

But Avalos noted that his ordinance – which will be up for final approval on its second reading this Tuesday – has no enforcement mechanisms and “overall, this is a cost effective way to promote bicycling in the city. The costs are minimal.”

He also thanked the conservative Building Owners and Managers Association for supporting the legislation. Shahum said BOMA strongly opposed similar legislation almost 10 years ago and its embrace of it now shows how attitudes toward cyclists have changed. “There are so many more people biking now and the business community recognizes the benefits of having more of their employees biking,” she said.

Even politically moderate supervisors have been supportive of promoting cycling, with Sup. Scott Wiener saying at this week’s hearing, “It’s very important to make it as easy as possible to bike, and bike theft is a big issue in this city as well.”

Food-truck battle at the board of supes

Zelda Bronstein
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Food-truck battle at the board of supes

The supervisors are weighing in on a state bill that would ban food truck from parking within 1500 feet of schools — and it’s really tricky.

Let’s start with a bit of reality: My kids go to public schools, my son’s in middle school, he rides Muni home — and there’s ample opportunity for him to buy some really nasty stuff. There’s a 7-Eleven a couple of blocks from his school, and kids walk over there all the time and buy those disgusting 32-ounce sugar bombs. If a truck selling chips and soda and greasy tacos showed up at 3:30 p.m., the kids would be lined up to spend the money their parents though was going for a nice healthy lunch.

And the trucks would go there, if they could, the same way the ice cream trucks used to cruise through my suburban neighborhood in the 1960s (yeah, I’m old, old, old) in the late afternoon, when they could guarantee America’s children would be hungry and ready to spoil their supper.

But they can’t, see, because San Francisco already bans food trucks from within 1,500 feet of a public middle school or high school — which is a pretty broad zone.

Now Assemblymember Bill Monning has introduced a bill that would make that ban statewide — and would include middle schools and private schools. Sounds good, and some healthy-food advocates love it. But San Francisco’s a little different than, say, Hayward or Fresno — this is such a dense city that there are schools almost everywhere. If you ban food trucks from within 1,500 feet of all schools, then you ban them from about 80 percent of the city. Burrito Justice has a great set of maps that give you the picture (burritohibition!)

The maps also suggest the problems with banning anything from within 1,500 feet of a school in San Francisco. Pot clubs, liquor stores, sex clubs … there are all sorts of places where you really don’t want your kids hanging out, but if you make those broad exclusions, you force them all into a very few small areas (including northern Soma, the waterfront and Bayview) and that’s not exactly fair, either. Should all the food trucks in the city be congregated in those crowded places that fit the 1,500 foot rule?

My 10-year-old daughter walks through the heart of the Castro, which is probably within 1,500 feet of her school, and there’s some stuff in the storefronts that isn’t exactly age appropriate, and we deal. She asked me once why people were walking around naked, and I said “because they like to,” and she shrugged and that was that.My 12-year-old son knows that people smoke pot and that it’s legal for adults to use as medicine; I don’t think the notion of him walking past a well-regulated dispensary is going to make him any more (or less, god help me) likely to try some for himself some day.

So I’m kind of with Sup. Scott Wiener, who wants the city to oppose the Monning bill — not because I want trucks selling Doritos out in front of Aptos in the afternoon, but because I think San Francisco already prevents that, and 1,500 feet is way too much for a city this size. Maybe amend the bill to allow cities to make their own rules, but have the state rules apply if they don’t. Maybe allow cities beyond a certain density to change the distance to 500 feet.

Maybe think a little more about what it really means to ban things because they’re close to schools. It doesn’t always make sense.

PS: Actually, I’m thinking maybe we should ban all multimillion-dollar condos from anywhere within 5,000 feet of a school. Exposing the impressionable minds of small children to such graphic, disgusting, ostentatious displays of wealth has to be bad for them. Worse than seeing a sex club, anyway.

 

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