Supervisors

Condo conversion legislation on hold for now

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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153

Following a contentious five-hour hearing, a committee of the Board of Supervisors postponed voting on a controversial housing proposal, and agreed to revisit the issue on Feb. 25. Over the next few weeks, opposing sides are expected to negotiate a possible alternative.

Authored by Sups. Scott Wiener and Mark Farrell, the proposed condo conversion impact fee would have allowed as many as 2,000 tenancy-in-common (TIC) units to be immediately converted to condos for a fee, allowing owners to bypass a housing lottery system that places an annual cap on conversions.

While TIC owners voiced frustration about the backlogged lottery system, tenants expressed fears that the legislation could give rise to a wave of Ellis Act evictions if landlords or speculators interpreted it as a signal that lucrative condo conversion would be easier to achieve.

Prior to the hearing, a group of tenants gathered in front of City Hall in a show of opposition to the condo-conversion legislation, waving signs that read, “Stop the Attack on Rent Control.”

“The reality is, if this legislation passes, there will be more evictions in San Francisco,” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee, who spoke at the rally.

Tenant advocates worry that the legislation would result in a permanent loss of affordable, rent-controlled units from the city’s housing stock, at a time when rents are soaring. When landlords rent out their condos or TICs in San Francisco, there’s a key difference: TICs are covered by rent control, but condos are exempt.

“I’ve been evicted three times,” one woman said while addressing members of the Land Use & Economic Development Committee. “I know so many people who have gotten evicted. I don’t know anyone who’s won their case against eviction.”

During the hearing, Farrell adopted a defensive tone against critics who’d described the proposal as an attack on rent control. “The tactics that these opponents have deployed is out of line,” he said. To assuage concerns, he noted that he and Wiener had included a provision guaranteeing lifetime leases for existing tenants in units that qualified for condo conversion under the program.

But Sup. Jane Kim drilled down on this detail, questioning whether such an agreement would be legally enforceable in the long run. In response, a representative from the City Attorney’s office said he thought the provision was on solid legal ground, but noted that the specific matter “has not been litigated before,” meaning there is still a question as to whether it could withstand a court challenge. When Kim asked if any funding was set aside to enforce these lifetime leases, the response was “no.”

Board President David Chiu proposed holding off on a vote for several weeks. “I do not support the legislation in its current form,” he said. If the current generation of TIC owners were allowed to convert this time, he explained, the next generation’s frustrations with the housing lottery would only “lead us back to an identical debate in a short period of time.”

Kim echoed this point. “My concern was that … folks were looking at this legislation as an ice-break for more condo conversion,” she said just after a public comment session that lasted several hours. And she acknowledged that there is a larger problem to consider. “It’s very tragic that we have set up a situation where [TICs and renters] are pitted against one another,” she said.

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
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On the Cheap listings by Cortney Clift. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 23

“From Vision to Icon: Building the Golden Gate Bridge” Sports Basement, 1590 Bryant, SF. www.sfwalksandtalks.com. 7pm, free. Local writer, producer, and narrator Peter Moylan presents the story of the Golden Gate Bridge, exploring all the triumphs and challenges encountered throughout its creation The lecture will be told with over 120 historic photos in the live documentary style SF Walks and Talks is known for.

THURSDAY 24

“Pixilated Drift” Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph, Oakl. www.johanssonprojects.net. Through March 16. Noon-6pm, free. The show will feature Andrew Benson’s hypnotic pixel prints, David O’ Brien’s explosive and abstract video stills, and Tamara Albaitis’ sound sculptures, sure to be as entrancing and mysterious to look at as they are to listen to.

FRIDAY 25

“Full Wolf Moon” Cotton Mill Studios, 1091 Calcot, Oakl. www.f3oakland.com. 6-10pm, free. F3 at the Cotton Mill will be showing off resident and guest artists’ new work in the collective’s eighth event. The evening will be a bit of a cultural smorgasbord with various galleries and studios open throughout the building, live music, dance, and spoken word in the “Wolf Den,” a design bazaar, and food trucks. Free shuttle transportation will be provided to the Cotton Mill Studios from the Fruitvale BART station from 6-10:30pm.

Fundraiser for KPOO Radio Mercury Café, 201 Page, SF. 7-10pm, free. For over 40 years local nonprofit radio station has been discussing issues facing underserved communities such as GLBT folks, low-income families and young people as well as playing music largely absent in mainstream media. But KPOO has recently lost a significant source of funding due to budget cuts. Head over to Mercury Café for a night of food, drinks, and music to help keep the station on the air. 10 percent of all sales will go to KPOO.

“Deviant Type Press Benefit Show” Temescal Arts Center, 511 Eighth St., Oakl. 7pm, $10 donation suggested. Hosted by Jezebel Delilah X, this evening will consist of readings by Mia McKenzie, fat activist Virgie Tovar, Sister Spit-Valencia queer author Michelle Tea, and Manish Vaidya. After the readings Bay Area band Gaymous rocks.

SATURDAY 26

“All You Can Dance” Alonzo King LINES Dance Center, 26 Seventh St., fifth floor, SF. www.linesballet.org. 1-5pm, $5. Whether you’ve been itching to brush up on your ballet skills or wanting to test your talent in Zimbabwean dance, the $5 entry fee allows you try out any and all classes on today’s schedule. Offering everything from Bollywood dance to Pilates to Argentinean tango, you’re free to dance ’til you drop.

Roe Vs. Wade 40th anniversary celebration Justin Herman Plaza, SF. www.oursilverribbon.org. 10am-noon, free. Reproductive rights pioneer Pat Maginnis, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors David Chiu, and other speakers will be addressing women’s issues today in remembrance of the legendary court case that gave us our reproductive rights. It may not technically be a carnival, but there will be face-paining, airbrush tattoos, balloon artists, a bubble artist, and a performance by One Billion Rising, a radical gang of flash mobbers.

SUNDAY 27

“San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguía’s Inaugural Address” San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sfpl.org. 1-3pm, free. Murguía will give his inaugural address as the city’s sixth poet laureate and speak about the connection Latino history and San Francisco history have to one another as well as how poetry has affected the local Latino community. A reception will follow his wise words, so you’ll have ample time to chew them over.

“Drunken Spelling Bee” Café Royal, 800 Post, SF. www.caferoyale-sf.com. 6pm, free. Hosted by Jimi Moran, this event is exactly what it sounds like. Maybe you dominated in your sixth grade spelling bee, but how are your skills after a few beers? No iPhone spell checks allowed.

“Oakland Youth Orchestra ‘Russian Romance’ Winter Concert” Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain, Oakl. www.oyo.org. 3pm, free. Get classy Sunday afternoon at what is sure to be something far better than an average high-school music recital. The 75 musicians who make up the Oakland Youth Orchestra range from ages 12 to 22 but possess musical skills far beyond their years. The concert will include festive pieces by Dimitri Shostakovich, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Rachmaninov.

MONDAY 28

Berkeley Arts & Letters presents Adam Mansbach’s Rage is Back The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk. www.berkeleyarts.org. 7:30pm, $5/students, $12/advance. The author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep is back to tell the story of a clever kid, the father who left him, and the greatest graffiti stunt New York City has ever seen in his new book titled Rage is Back. Today Mansbach will read and discuss his new release. The Marsh Cabaret Bar will be open before, during, and after the program.

TUESDAY 29

Recology art exhibit and panel discussion Reception at 503 Tunnel, SF. 5-7pm, free. Panel discussion at 401 Tunnel, SF. 7pm, free. Exhibition also on display Fri/25, 5-9pm; Sat/26, 1-3pm. www.recologysf.com. Recology’s artist in residence program will exhibit work created by Michael Damm, Julia Goodman, and Jeff Hantman over the past four months, made from scavenged materials found at the dump. After the exhibit, head a few doors down to catch the artists talking about their experience working to create art in trashland.

TIC legislation is a rent control issue

Andrew Lam
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177

OPINION If legislation introduced by Supervisors Scott Wiener and Mark Farrell passes the Board of Supervisors next month, up to 2,000 tenancies in common will be allowed to bypass the lottery process and convert to condominiums.

Add those to the nearly 6,000 conversions that have occurred from 2001-2011 (according to stats from the Department of Public Works), and you have a sizable chunk of rent-controlled units that will have been yanked from our housing stock in the past decade or so in a city that can’t afford to lose rental units, especially those that preserve affordability while tenants live in them. TICs are still under rent control; condos lose it when they’re sold.

Which makes the Wiener and Farrell legislation a rent-control issue. Not to mention a really bad idea at a really bad moment in time.

San Francisco’s perennial housing crisis can’t possibly get worse. Rents are the highest in the country — and still rising. The average rent in the city these days is $3,000. The vacancy rate is low.

Ellis Act evictions, a tool for creating TICs by allowing a landlord or speculator to circumvent just-cause eviction protections, are on the upswing. They’re not as high as they were at the height of the dot-com boom of the late 90s, but, considering that these days many landlords and speculators threaten tenants with Ellis or buy them out rather than do the dirty deed, the number of folks displaced for TICs is higher than what is recorded at the Rent Board. Some tenants have actually received letters from new landlords with two checkboxes — one for Ellis and the other for a buyout. Take your pick, which way do you want to be tossed out and possibly left homeless?

The folks being displaced are from every district and represent the diversity about which we always brag: longterm, generally low-income seniors, disabled people, people with AIDS, families, and people of color. And they’re less likely to find other apartments they can afford.

Wiener claims that buildings where there are evictions will not be eligible for conversion, but many of the TICs currently in the lottery, which will be eligible for conversion under the Wiener/Farrell legislation, were created by evictions. Almost 20 percent of the units in the pipeline were formed before legislation was put into place to restrict conversions if tenants are ousted. How many of the other 80 percent are the result of threats and buyouts, de facto evictions? Or were entered into the lottery even when they shouldn’t have been?

Brian Basinger, founder of the AIDS Housing Alliance, was evicted from his apartment for a TIC, yet his place was converted to a condo, despite the fact that he’s a protected tenant.

Allowing as many as 2,000 conversions not only diminishes the rent-controlled housing stock, but it also jacks up rents. Not to mention it gives speculators incentive to do more Ellis evictions or buyouts — after all, though Wiener and Farrell say this is a one-time only deal, once Pandora’s box is opened, it’s going to be hard to keep it shut. I think landlords and speculators know that.

The Housing Element of the City’s General Plan, adopted in 2009, instructs officials to “preserve rental units, especially rent controlled units, to meet the City’s affordable housing needs.”

This legislation won’t preserve rent-controlled units. It’s a bad fit for our city.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who’s worked for the Housing Rights Committee for 13 years, is a longtime queer tenants right/affordable housing advocate.

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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3

EDITORIAL Airports are special. There are schools and roads and buildings — and rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike — named after famous and not-so-famous people, but airports, particularly major international airports, are, in a word, monumental. Tens of millions of people, many of them immigrants, have come through Kennedy Airport in New York, a place named after an inspirational leader who was killed before his time. We’re not so enamored with Reagan National in Washington, but the guy was a hugely influential president of the United States. Lt. Colonel O’Hare was a war hero.

That’s why the idea of naming San Francisco International Airport after Harvey Milk is so wonderful — and entirely appropriate.

There are lots of politicians in the world, and there have been many civic leaders who have done great things in and for San Francisco. But Harvey Milk was different, and special.

Milk was the first openly person gay person elected to public office in a major American city. He was an inspiration to tens of thousands of people, and his speeches, his signature line — “you’ve gotta give them hope — and his role as an LGBT icon made a better life possible for generations of young people who faced, and often still face, oppression, discrimination and fear.

It’s important to remember that, although he only served 11 months in office, Milk changed San Francisco, changed America, and changed the world. His bold actions forced the nation to accept a marginalized community. He represented the best of San Francisco, the essential spirit of rebellion, the demand for justice and the passion for equality that defines this city in the world.

And the struggle he embodied isn’t even close to over: All over the world, LGBT people are beaten, denied basic rights, killed for who they are. And if San Francisco can’t make a giant global statement against that, nobody can.

The renaming of SFO wouldn’t just honor a local political figure. I would make an international statement. The airport is a major West Coast hub, and people from all over the globe pass through its gates. While many of them won’t care who the airport is named for, others will — and an appropriate display in the terminals would educate countless visitors, many from countries and cultures where LGBT people are still not accepted, about the role Milk played in changing society’s attitudes.

We don’t take lightly the naming of civic institutions. There’s too much opportunity for political mischief, for someone like former mayors Willie Brown or Dianne Feinstein — neither of whom changed the city in a positive way or made dramatic statements — to get honored. That’s one reason that the San Francisco Airports Commission has declined to name anything after anyone who is still alive.

Sup. David Campos, who is promoting this idea, has taken the right approach: A decision this serious ought to go before the voters. The supervisors should place his charter amendment on the ballot, and the people of San Francisco should tell the world that the legacy of Harvey Milk is alive — and out there, our front, for everyone to see.

The battle of Brotherhood Way

Zelda Bronstein
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24
The battle of Brotherhood Way

Brotherhood Way is a creature of another era. Tucked between the San Francisco Golf Club and ParkMerced, it was long known as Stanley Way. But in 1958, under Mayor George Christopher, the city, which owned all of the land on the south side of the street, turned that property over to a long list of religious institutions and renamed the street to reflect its role as a place for houses of worship. It’s now home to six churches or synagogues and nine religious schools. It has its own (religious) neighborhood association.

And this quiet little corner of the city has been the scene of a pitched battle over a plan to build 182 housing units on an empty patch of land on the north side of the street.

Opponents of the project say the area was set aside for educational and religious uses, not housing — and they argue that the expansion of ParkMerced will add too much congestion to the area. Supporters say the west side of town needs to acept more housing and more density.

It’s gotten ugly: At one point, the Archbishop himself ordered the pastor of St. Thomas More Catholic Church to quit agitating against the development. Sean Elsbernd, who represented the district for eight years, infuriated neighbors when he supported the project, and later apologized for his insensitivity to their concerns.

And seven years after the Planning Commission and the supervisors gave the project a green light, it still hasn’t broken ground.
Now the developers are ready to go — and the churches, aided by retired Judge Quentin Kopp, are trying once again to shut it down.

Kopp’s been arguing for some time now that the project needs to go back for a new permit because too much time has passed and nothing has happened. But he’s got another argument, too, and he brought it to the Board of Appeals Jan. 9. See, the original deal had a problem with transit access, since there isn’t enough Muni capacity along Brotherhood to handle 300 or so new residents. So the developer agreed to build two pedestrian walkways from the project up to Font Blvd. in Park Merced. But according to Kopp’s appeal, ParkMerced management never agreed to the easements that would be necessary to build a path through its property.

Instead, in 2008, Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner unilaterally changed the requirement, allowing for one footpath to the edge of Park Merced — with some vague agreement that later there might be an extension to the Muni stop. That, Kopp argues, should have triggered a new Conditional Use application and a new hearing. Oh, and in the meantime, ParkMerced has just moved to greatly expand the size of its complex, so maybe that should be considered, too.

The Board of Appeals rejected Kopp’s arguments, but he’s petitioning for a rehearing, in part because the board chair wasn’t present for meeting. Kopp argues that this is a quasi-judicial board — “and you don’t go before the Supreme Court with only eight of the nine members present.” Under city rules, though, four out of five is a quorum and able to hear the matter.

Kopp has another argument, too — one that’s unusual, perhaps unique: He claims none of the board members actually read his original appeal brief.

Kopp, see, asked during the hearing if all of the members had read the papers he submitted, and none of them responded affirmatively. “It is appearent and inferable that no members of the short-handed Board of Appeals had read Appelants’ brief before the hearing, or at all,” the motion for rehearing states. “The manifest failure of the four members present to real Appellants’ carefully-prepared brief constitute extraordinary circumstances and injustice.”

I’ve been able to reach two of the board members, Frank Fung and Darryl Honda, and both insist they read the brief. “I read every case in its entirely,” Fung said, “and so does everyone on this panel.” Honda, who is new to the board, also said he read the documents. “I bust out the highlighter pen and go through all of the briefs in every case,” he said.

So why didn’t they answer Kopp’s question? Well, Fung says, it took them all by surprise: “I don’t think any one has every asked that before.”

I’ll let you know if the petition for rehearing is accepted.

King’s ideals echoed in SF and DC events

Sasha Cuttler
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2
King’s ideals echoed in SF and DC events

Labor leaders and a plethora of elected officials from San Francisco – including almost the entire Board of Supervisors – began today at the San Francisco Labor Council’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast. They heard inspiring words from speakers on hand, but not from President Barack Obama, whose inaugural address wasn’t broadcast at the event as planned due to technical difficulties.

Yet the ideals voiced here at the West Bay Conference Center on Fillmore Street echoed those sounded on Capitol Mall in Washington DC, channeling the spirit of Dr. King in calling for us to take bold collective action to better care for all people and the planet.

“My fellow Americans, we were made for this moment, and we will seize it as long as we seize it together,” Obama said in his speech. “For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

At his invocation here in San Francisco, Rev. Floyd Trammel, called for a “clarity of thought and unity of purpose” and cast Obama as the inheritor of King’s legacy. “In many ways, you sent one, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to pave the way for another, President Barack Hussein Obama,” Trammel said in his prayer.

Sen. Mark Leno – speaking in the place of Mayor Ed Lee, who is in DC for the inauguration – quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” And while Leno praised those present for helping pass Prop. 30 to begin turning around California’s fiscal state with higher taxes on the rich, Leno also said, “The work is just beginning.”

It was a theme echoed by the most dynamic speaker on the program, Thurgood Marshall High School teacher Van Cedric Williams, who said the theme of both MLK Day and Obama’s inaugural address was that there is still much work to do to realize King’s dreams of social and economic justice.

“I believe community and labor are working on the unfinished business that Martin Luther King started,” Williams said, calling it a moral imperative to help create a better world for all. He called on those present to really “embrace your fellow community member,” those of all races and backgrounds, to pursue the solutions the world needs.

“They have to see the passion,” Williams said of young people today, “they have to know we got their backs.”

Obama also appealed to the obligation that we have to future generations. “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

It was a call for Americans to move beyond our narrow self-interest. As King once said, in a quote included at the MLK memorial in SF’s Yerba Buena Center, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

The Chron’s bizarre attack on Milk Airport

Zelda Bronstein
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78
The Chron’s bizarre attack on Milk Airport

It must have been hard for John Diaz, the Chron’s editorial page editor, to just come out and oppose the idea of renaming San Francisco International Airport for Harvey Milk. So instead he put out a tortured argument that goes like this:

It’s too easy to put things on the ballot in San Francisco. To wit:

San Francisco has a system that is ripe for abuse by politicians who want to call attention to themselves or want to try to acquire at the ballot box what they could not otherwise attain by working with their colleagues.

He actually quotes Lite Guv Gavin Newsom who says, apparently without blushing, that he went to “excrutiating lenghts” to avoid putting things on the ballot that he couldn’t get passed through the Board of Supervisors. Excuse me? Care Not Cash? WiFi?

More Diaz:

The renaming of SFO is an example of an issue that demands a thorough public airing: about its cost, about the implication for the airport’s global brand and about whether other San Franciscans should be considered. The regrettable upshot of the Harvey Milk San Francisco International Airport proposal is that it could devolve into a referendum on the late supervisor’s worthiness for such an honor.

Wait: You don’t think the supervisors will discuss this, that there won’t be public comment, that this proposed city charter amendment won’t go to committee for discussion? You don’t think that’s already happenning, or that a ballot campaign won’t involve all of those issues? That’s just silly.

Yeah, there have been things put on the ballot in the past without adequate hearings, but that’s certainly not the case here. This thing will be discussed and dissected and cost-analyzed and debated at great length. And in the end, it ought to go on the ballot. The Diaz argument is just an excuse to oppose something that’s hard to fight on the merits; if the supes had just gone ahead and done it on their own, we’d be hearing the opposite, that the voters need to weigh in.

And this?

There may be a time when an airport naming makes perfect sense, perhaps because of a San Franciscan’s contribution to the airport itself or aviation generally. Harvey Milk simply does not offer such a natural connection.

Please. John F. Kennedy may have sent a man to the moon, but had nothing substantive to do with New York City aviation. Ronald Reagan didn’t even fly into National Airport; Air Force One lands at Andrews Air Force Base. And his major contribution to civilian aviation was firing all the air traffic controllers and breaking their union.

Naming SFO after Milk would be a political statement on a grand scale. The City and County of San Francisco would be saying that a gay person deserves a monument of international scale, that Milk’s contributions to changing the world are something this city should treat as so special that we should tell the whole world, loudly and forever.

I’m all for it. But if you’re not, let’s at least debate it on the merits

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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EDITOR’S NOTES The guy who runs the San Francisco Housing Authority is in pretty serious doo-doo: His agency has just been placed on the federal government’s “troubled” list, and he’s getting sued by his own lawyer, and he’s hiding from the press while tenants complain that they can’t get basic repairs.

Although Mayor Ed Lee has so far officially stuck by Henry Alvarez, he’s already backing off a bit, and it’s pretty likely Alvarez will be gone when his contract expires this summer. He may be gone even sooner than that; there’s a growing chorus of voices calling on the mayor to fire him.

So at some point we’ll get a new director, who will make a handsome salary (Alvarez gets $210,000 a year plus a car and seven weeks paid vacation) and live in a nice house and go into work every day to deal with problems that are pretty damn far from his or her life.

That’s always the case to some extent with the heads of agencies who deal with the poor, but it’s particularly dramatic when you talk about the Housing Authority. Public housing is never luxurious, but in San Francisco, it’s been riddled with problems for many years. And frankly, I’m much more concerned about the tenants than about Alvarez or his management style.

I get that the Housing Authority has financial problems. The federal government long ago abandoned any serious commitment to funding housing in American cities, and the authority only recently managed to pay off a multimillion-dollar judgment from a lawsuit filed by the families of a grandmother and five children killed in a fire on Housing Authority property.

Yet, tenant advocate continue to complain that it can be hard, even impossible to get a response from the agency. When critics complain, the agency goes after them: The Housing Rights Committee went after the Housing Authority over evictions, and wound up getting investigated by SFHA employees who wanted to gut their city funding. And while some say Alvarez is a hard-charging person who demands results (and thus pisses some people off), nobody has used the words open, accessible or compassionate to describe him.

I’ve got an idea for the next director (or for Alvarez, if he wants to stick around). Why not live in public housing?

Seriously: Why shouldn’t the person who controls the safety and welfare of tenants in more than 6,000 units spend a little time understanding what their lives are like? Why not spend, say, one night a week in one of those apartments?

In the old days, judges used to sentence slumlords to live in their own decrepit buildings, which seemed to work pretty well: Once the guy in charge has to deal with the rats and roaches and broken windows, he’s much more likely to expedite repairs.

But it wouldn’t have to be punitive — just a chance to get a first-hand look at how the agency policies are working on the ground. The city employee unions have had a lot of success asking members of the Board of Supervisors to do a union worker’s job for a day; the director of the San Francisco Housing Authority could certainly live like one of his tenants every now and then.

Think of it as a management tool: What better way to figure out whether his staff is doing the job than to look at the end product? Or figure it as a way to stop being an asshole and see what people who live on less than ten percent of his salary really think of his administration.

 

Chiu’s committee assignments keep the moderates in charge

Sasha Cuttler
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42
Chiu’s committee assignments keep the moderates in charge

A week after engineering his unanimous re-election to an unprecedented third consecutive term as president of the Board of Supervisors, David Chiu today announced his assignments to board committees, placing fiscal conservatives into two of the most powerful posts and making himself a key swing vote on the Land Use Committee.

“I believe these committee assignments reflect a balanced approach and the diverse interests and talent of the supervisors,” Chiu said just after 4pm during the Roll Call portion of today’s meeting.

But some progressive activists were immediately grousing about some of the selections, which seem to reflect Chiu’s neoliberal approach to governance, preventing progressives from doing much to challenge development interests or the appointment of Establishment insiders to city commissions.

The Land Use Committee is perhaps the most powerful and impactful, particularly as the Warriors arena and other controversial waterfront developments and the CPMC hospital deal come to the board. Scott Wiener – a moderate who is already perhaps the most prolific supervisor – gains far more power as he is named to chair that committee. It is balanced out by Chiu and Sup. Jane Kim, both of whom have some progressive impulses on land use issues but also personal ambitions and a penchant for cutting deals. Developers have to be happy about this lineup.

Sup. Mark Farrell was named chair of the Budget Committee, succeeding Sup. Carmen Chu – a pair that are indisputably the most conservative supervisors on the board. While progressive Sups. Eric Mar and John Avalos will help balance out the permanent committee, their influence will be offset by the temporary members added during budget season: Sups. London Breed and Wiener.

That roster essentially puts Breed in the swing vote role, which should immediately give her some clout. Chiu’s defenders note that Budget’s balance of power is essentially status quo (with Breed now in the same swing vote role that Sup. Malia Cohen played) – and that the committee’s work last year was supported by labor and business interests alike.

Chiu is proposing to combine the Public Safety and City Operations & Neighborhood Services committees, naming Sup. David Campos as chair, Mar as vice-chair, and new Sup. Norman Yee as its third member. Yee, who nominated Chiu for president last week, was also rewarded with a chair on the Rules Committee – controlling appointments, it arguably the board’s third most influential committee after Land Use and Budget – with that committee filled out by Breed and Sup. Malia Cohen.

Speculation that Cohen and Kim would be rewarded for withdrawing their nominations as president before the vote last week don’t seem to have materialized in these appointments. Cohen was also named to the Government Operations Committee, along with Campos, which Sup. Carmen Chu will chair. That doesn’t give Cohen, who told us that she wanted to be on Land Use, much power.

Similarly, Kim was named chair of the City & School District Committee – nice, but not exactly a political launching pad – and Kim’s only real power on Land Use will come when Chiu is opposing some project, as he did with the controversial 8 Washington project that Kim and seven of her colleagues supported.

Aaron Peskin, Chiu’s predecessor as board president, said that he vaguely saw some semblance of Chiu’s claimed strategy of having conservative committee chairs balanced out by liberal majorities (although even that depends on how you define your terms). Yet Peskin questions that approach, and sees committees unlikely to really gel around good decisions or policies.

“It’s a recipe for dysfunction,” Peskin told us. “But it certainly will be fun to watch.”

The Chamber of Commerce becomes even more irrelevant

Zelda Bronstein
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19
The Chamber of Commerce becomes even more irrelevant

It’s been years since anyone really took the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce seriously as a political force. The verdict from the techies came in long ago; they do their own thing with their own money. Small business never got much out of the Chamber, and most of those folks have their own organizations. Even the big-business agenda was taken over for a while by the Commitee on JOBS. Then there’s SFSOS, Plan C and a bunch of other pro-business and anti-regulation groups. Rose Pak and her allies have their own Chamber of Commerce. You rarely hear anyone at City Hall worried about what the Old Chamber says or is doing.

Steve Falk, the current director, has softened the Chamber’s image a bit and tried to be somewhat diplomatic. But now this organization is about to go backwards.

If what Matier and Ross report is accurate, a former City Hall aide, former failed candidate for supervisor, and current director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association may be the new chamber director. Rob Black seems to have a line at the top job after Wade Rose, an executive with Catholic Healthcare West, dropped out of the running:

We’re told some of the chamber’s big dogs – like the brokerage house Charles Schwab and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – weren’t all that enamored of the soft-glove approach that Rose was promising to bring to his dealings with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

That jobes with what I’ve been hearing from local politicos, who’ve been saying that there were two candidates for the job — one very good and one very bad. Looks like the very good candidate (good by Chamber standards, anyway) is gone.

I don’t know Rose, but I do know that even this more moderate board of supes isn’t likely to take direction from what many see as an antidiluvean organization, a moribund old white men’s club with a ridiculous out-of-date agenda. Putting a person in charge who actually sought to build bridges (and who, by the way, might not have gone all-out for the new CPMC hospital) might have edged the Chamber back toward some sort of relevance.

But no: If Black gets the job, prepare for the Chamber to stick to its old ways, whine about everything the board does that’s even remotely progressive, issue report cards that nobody cares about — and waste its members dues. Great move.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much weirdness at the City College Board

Zelda Bronstein
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44
Much weirdness at the City College Board

And you thought the election of the new old Board of Supervisors president was odd. Check out what happened with the Community College Board: After weeks of telling everyone in sight how horrible it would be if any of the three old-timers who helped screw up the school (Natalie Berg, Lawrence Wong and Anita Grier) got elected board prez, current board president John Rizzo won another term — with the support of Berg, Wong, and Grier. And left some of his progressive allies either scratching their heads or fuming.

The backstory: A couple of weeks ago, Rizzo got word that prog colleague Chris Jackson was considering supporting Grier for the top post. That would have given Grier the four votes she needed, since Berg, Wong and her all vote together most of the time. And it would have screwed the progressives, who managed with considerable effort to hold onto a one-vote majority at a critical time in the board’s history, while the college is trying to win reaccreditation. Why bother to win at the polls if you’re just going to turn control over to the other side? I mean, the GOP doesn’t vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker.

So Rizzo asked former sup. Aaron Peskin, who remains one of the town’s most savvy political operators, to help out. Peskin put an immense amount of time into working out the details and cutting through the various interest-group problems. (Example: By tradition, the top vote-getter becomes board president. That would be Steve Ngo. But the teacher’s union is mad at Ngo because he wants to put more money into the school’s reserves even if it means laying off teachers. So Jackson, a longtime labor guy, couldn’t vote for him. Jackson had already told Grier he’d vote for her, so he’d have to be convinced to withdraw that promise. And on and on.) In the end, after a lot of wrangling (while trying to avoid the fact that the Brown Act prohibits the four progressives from talking to each other outside of a public meeting) Peskin managed to find a solution: Four people were willing to vote for newcomer Rafael Mandelman. Okay, that works.

The vote was Jan. 10. The night before, Berg called Rizzo to say that she didn’t want Mandelman, but would agreed to support … Rizzo. Presumably (she won’t take my phone calls so I don’t know for sure) she had already talked to, or was about to talk to, Grier and Wong to seal the deal. That, of course, would be a direct Brown Act problem, but nobody seems to care about the state’s landmark open-government law anyway (witness the BOS leadership fight, where everyone was talking to everyone else behind the scenes).

So Rizzo agrees that would be dandy, never tells his colleagues on the left — and when the vote goes down, he gets nominated by and re-elected with the support of the people he’s been bad-mouthing all over town for the past couple of weeks. In the end, the progs saw the handwriting on the wall and went along and made it unanimous.

I called Rizzo after the vote and he told me that he hadn’t expected Berg’s offer, but that “it avoided a fight at the meeting, and that’s a good thing for the state accreditors. It shows the board isn’t divided.” Actually, the board IS divided, and Rizzo has been part of that divide, and if the special trustee hasn’t figured that out yet, he’s not terribly observant.

He told me he should have given his allies a heads-up, but “that would have violated the Brown Act.” (Clue phone: The whole deal that re-elected him was a blatant violation of the Brown Act.)

Mandelman just joined the board, and wasn’t pushing for the top job, although he’d agreed to do it. So he’s not that upset. But he was a bit bemused when I talked to him. “To have the two-week shitstorm stirred up by John, who then forms a partnership with the people he’s despising, and not to tell any of us, is wierd,” Mandelman said.

Peskin’s more direct. “Politics is all about keeping your word,” he told me. “This is exactly not how you do politics.”

 

 

SFBOS grab bag: Diva Breed, Yee’s jig, delayed Chiu, and more

Sasha Cuttler
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10
SFBOS grab bag: Diva Breed, Yee’s jig, delayed Chiu, and more

Now that the dust has settled from this week’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors inauguration and presidential vote, I thought I’d return to a few random gems that were still stuck in my notebook, waiting to see the light of day.

Under the heading of There’s a New Diva under the Dome, new D5 Sup. London Breed didn’t wait for the official noon inauguration prescribed by the City Charter to take her oath of office, instead holding a packed event at 10am in the North Light Court, where her oath was administered by a key supporter, Attorney General Kamala Harris.

“I held a swearing in earlier to be able to have a large crowd of supporters,” was how Breed explained it to her colleagues later, and it’s certainly true that attendance at the official event was limited by the size of the room. But it’s equally true that gathering a who’s who list of local power brokers to applaud Breed’s ascendance as a key swing vote sends the signal that she expects to be at the table when the big deals get cut.

President David Chiu, who is also no stranger to political power plays, sounded a tone of humble leadership after maneuvering himself with closed-door negotiations into an unprecedented third consecutive term as president, noting that there is still much more work to do.

In fact, Chiu said he was almost late for Breed’s event because, “my bike light got stolen, the Muni bus was late, and then I had a hard time catching a cab.”

Sup. Eric Mar revisited his reelection race last year with a huge understatement – “In my campaign, I had to do a little more work than my colleagues did.” – noting that he and his supporters overcame an unprecedented $1 million in spending against them: “We sent a strong message that the Richmond District is not for sale and never will be.”

Sup. John Avalos gave credit for his surprisingly easy reelection campaign to a unlikely but deserving source: journalist Chris Roberts, who uncovered evidence that Avalos challenger Leon Chow didn’t really live in the district, which he reported in SF Appeal, forcing Chow to withdraw from the race. Avalos called Roberts “an honorary member of our campaign.”

Meetings like this are often just dripping in sanctimony, and this one was no exception, so it was nice to see a moment of genuine child-like exuberance from new D7 Sup. Norman Yee, who at 63 is about twice as old as most of his colleagues. As he thanked supporters and laid out his goals, Yee suddenly seemed overcome by this opportunity, smiling broadly, doing a little jig, and declaring, “Darn, I’m excited!”

I was less impressed by the rambling mini-lecture that Cohen gave on the topic of leadership before she withdrew her nomination as president. “That’s what leadership is about, stepping forward, outside your comfort zone, and doing things,” said the supervisor with a scant legislative record as she quit the race for president before her colleagues were even given the chance to vote on what she said was the importance of having a women of color in charge. “Every person here has that leadership quality within them.”

From both supervisors and the general public, there were also a number of statements made about the history of the board presidency that were not quite right, particularly as it pertained to Cohen and Jane Kim nominating one another for president and the issue women of color being nominated for that slot.

So, for the record, the last time a woman of color (former D10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell) was nominated for board president was 10 years ago. The last time a woman served as president was Barbara Kaufman (1997-99). And the last time there was a woman of color serving as president was Doris Ward, who served from 1991 to mid-1992 when she left to become Assessor. Also, the last three-term president was John Molinari, who served from 1979-83 and ’85-’87.

The most colorful moment in public comment was when nudism activist Gypsy Taub came clad in homemade hat that urged people to oppose and recall Sup. Scott Wiener. But because Wiener had already said he wouldn’t accept a nomination as president, she turned her criticism on Chiu, who was also slammed by another leftist speaker who told supervisors, “If you can’t prevent David Chiu from being president, we deserve to be slaves.”

Finally, the meeting included an unremarkable speech by Mayor Ed Lee, who pledged to work with each supervisor and offered this unsupported claim, “We continue to make sure this city is successful for everyone.”

Cheap rent: A thing of the past

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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222
Cheap rent: A thing of the past

Surfed Craigslist for an apartment lately? Then you don’t need us to tell you that rent in San Francisco is too damn high. But what are the broader implications of this becoming a city where median asking rent is above $3,000?

Here’s an example. Today, District 11 Sup. John Avalos shared a story with the Guardian about his arrival to San Francisco in 1989. He had $1,000 to his name, enough to cover rent and a security deposit. He landed a job that paid just $8 an hour, but that was no big deal, since he split the rent for his $675-per-month, two-bedroom apartment in the Haight with a friend.

Translate those 1989 figures to 2013 dollars, and the dramatic rent increases the city has experienced really come into focus. With inflation factored in, that same two-bedroom apartment would cost $1,253 per month today. Noticed any Craigslist ads for two-bedroom apartments in the Haight going for $1,253 lately? (If so, be careful. It’s probably a scam.) Rents for such units hover closer to $4,000 these days.

Avalos joined his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors in highlighting issues of affordability at Tuesday’s meeting. “San Francisco needs to do something specifically to measure how people, particularly those on the bottom rung, are getting by in San Francisco,” he commented just prior to the vote for board presidency.

District 9 Sup. David Campos echoed this sentiment. “I want a city that works, but I want a city that works for everyone,” Campos said. “We have to work collectively to make sure that happens … We have great wealth in the city, but many people are being pushed out.”

War of the waterfront

Andrew Lam
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40
War of the waterfront

tredmond@sfbg.com

There’s a blocky, unattractive building near the corner of Howard and Steuart streets, right off the Embarcadero, that’s used for the unappealing activity of parking cars. Nobody’s paid much attention to it for years, although weekend shoppers at the Ferry Building Farmers Market appreciate the fact that they can park their cars for just $6 on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

But now a developer has big plans for the 75 Howard Street site — and it’s about to become a critical front in a huge battle over the future of San Francisco’s waterfront.

Paramount Partners, a New York-based real-estate firm that also owns One Market Plaza, wants to tear down the eight-story garage and replace it with a 350-foot highrise tower that will hold 186 high-end condominiums. The new building would have ground-floor retail and restaurant space and a public plaza.

It would also exceed the current height limit in the area by 150 feet and could be the second luxury housing project along the Embarcadero that defies the city’s longtime policy of strictly limiting the height of buildings on the waterfront.

It comes at a time when the Golden State Warriors are seeking permission to build a sports arena on Piers 30 and 32, just a few hundred feet from 75 Howard.

Between the proposed 8 Washington condo project, the arena, and 75 Howard, the skyline and use of the central waterfront could change dramatically in the next few years. Add to that a $100 million makeover for Pier 70, the new Exploratorium building on Pier 15, and a new cruise ship terminal at Pier 27 — and that’s more development along the Bay than San Francisco has seen in decades.

And much of it is happening without a coherent overall plan.

There’s no city planning document that calls for radically upzoning the waterfront for luxury housing. There’s nothing that talks about large-scale sports facilities. These projects are driven by developers, not city planners — and when you put them all together, the cumulative impacts could be profound, and in some cases, alarming.

“There hasn’t been a comprehensive vision for the future of the waterfront,” Sup. David Chiu told me. “”I think we need to take a step back and look at what we really want to do.”

Or as Tom Radulovich, director of the advocacy group Livable City, put it, “We need to stop planning the waterfront one project at a time.”

 

Some of the first big development wars in San Francisco history involved tall buildings on the waterfront. After the Fontana Towers were built in 1965, walling off the end of the Van Ness corridor in a nasty replica of a Miami Beach hotel complex, residents of the northern part of the city began to rebel. A plan to put a 550-foot US Steel headquarters building on the waterfront galvanized the first anti-highrise campaigns, with dressmaker Alvin Duskin buying newspaper ads that warned, “Don’t let them bury your skyline under a wall of tombstones.”

Ultimately, the highrise revolt forced the city to downzone the waterfront area, where most buildings can’t exceed 60 or 80 feet. But repeatedly, developers have eyed this valuable turf and tried to get around the rules.

“It’s a generational battle,” former Sup. Aaron Peskin noted. “Every time the developers think another generation of San Franciscans has forgotten the past, they try to raise the height limit along the Embarcadero.”

The 8 Washington project was the latest attempt. Developer Simon Snellgrove wants to build 134 of the most expensive condominiums in San Francisco history on a slice of land owned in part by the Port of San Francisco, not far from the Ferry Building. The tallest of the structures would rise 136 feet, far above the 84-foot zoning limit for the site. Opponents argued that the city has no pressing need for ultra-luxury housing and that the proposal would create a “wall on the waterfront.”

Although the supervisors approved it on a 8-3 vote, foes gathered enough signatures to force a referendum, so the development can’t go forward until the voters have a chance to weigh in this coming November.

Meanwhile, the Paramount Group has filed plans for a much taller project at 75 Howard. It’s on the edge of downtown, but also along the Embarcadero south of Market, where many of the buildings are only a few stories high.

The project already faces opposition. “The serious concerns I had with 8 Washington are very similar with 75 Howard,” Chiu said. But the issues are much larger now that the Warriors have proposed an arena just across the street and a few blocks south.

“Because of the increase in traffic and other issues around the arena, I think 75 Howard has a higher bar to jump,” Sup. Jane Kim, who represents South of Market, told me.

Kim said she’s not opposed to the Warriors’ proposal and is still open to considering the highrise condos. But she, too, is concerned that all of this development is taking place without a coherent plan.

“It’s a good question to be asking,” she said. “We want some development along the waterfront, but the question is how much.”

Alex Clemens, who runs Barbary Coast Consulting, is representing the developer at 75 Howard. He argues that the current parking garage is neither environmentally appropriate nor the best use of space downtown.

“Paramount Group purchased the garage as part of a larger portfolio in 2007,” he told me by email. “Like any other downtown garage, it is very profitable — but Paramount believes an eight-story cube of parking facing the Embarcadero is not the best use of this incredible location.”

He added: “We believe removing eight above-ground layers of parked cars from the site, reducing traffic congestion, enlivening street life, and improving the pedestrian corridor are all benefits to the community that fit well with the city’s overall goals. (Of course, these are in addition to the myriad fees and tax revenues associated with the project.)”

But that, of course, assumes that the city wants, and needs, more luxury condominiums (see sidebar).

 

Among the biggest problems of this rush of waterfront development is the lack of public transit. The 75 Howard project is fairly close to the Embarcadero BART station, but when you take into account the Exploratorium, the arena, and Pier 70 — where a popular renovation project is slated to create new office, retail, and restaurant space — the potential for transit overload is serious.

The waterfront at this point is served primary by Muni’s F line — which, Radulovich points out, “is crowded, expensive, low-capacity, and not [Americans with Disabilities Act]-compliant.”

The T line brings in passengers from the southeast but, Radulovich said, “if you think we can serve all this new development with the existing transit, it’s not going to happen.”

Then there are the cars. The Embarcadero is practically a highway, and all the auto traffic makes it unsafe for bicycles. The Warriors arena will have to involve some parking (if nothing else, it will need a few hundred spaces for players, staff, and executives — and it’s highly unlikely people who buy million-dollar luxury boxes are going to take transit to the arena, so there will have to be parking for them, too. That’s hundreds of spaces and new cars — assuming not a single fan drives.

The 75 Howard project will eliminate parking spaces, but not vehicle traffic — there will still be close to 200 parking spaces.

And all of this is happening at the foot of the Bay Bridge, the constantly clogged artery to the East Bay. “Oh, and there’s a new community of 20,000 people planned right in the center of the bridge, on Treasure Island,” Peskin pointed out.

Is it possible to handle all of the people coming and going to the waterfront (particularly on days where there’s also a Giants game a few hundred yards south) entirely with mass transit? Maybe — “that’s the kind of problem we’d like to have to solve,” Radulovich said. Of course, the developers would have to kick in major resources to fund transit — “and,” he said, “we don’t even know what the bill would be, and we don’t have the political will to stick it to the developers.”

But a transit-only option for the waterfront is not going to happen — at the very least, thousands of Warriors fans are going to drive.

The overall problem here is that nobody has asked the hard questions: What do we want to do with San Francisco’s waterfront? The Port, which owns much of the land, is in a terrible bind — the City Charter defines the Port as an enterprise department, which has to pay for itself with revenue from its operations, which made sense when it was a working seaport.

But now the only assets are real estate — and developing that land, for good or for ill, seems the only way to address hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance and operating costs on the waterfront’s crumbling piers. And the City Planning Department, which oversees the land on the other side of the Embarcadero, is utterly driven by the desires of developers, who routinely get exemptions from the existing zoning. “There is no rule of law in the planning environment we live in,” Radulovich said. So the result is a series of projects, each considered on its own, that together threaten to turn this priceless civic asset into a wall of concrete.

Disappearing poles

Andrew Lam
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5
Disappearing poles

steve@sfbg.com

Political dynamics on the Board of Supervisors moved into uncertain new territory this week with the inauguration of two new members -– London Breed and Norman Yee –- who break the mold in representing districts that have long been predictable embodiments of opposite ideological poles.

Breed and Yee are both native San Franciscans with deep roots in their respective districts, which they tapped to win hotly contested races against challengers who seemed more closely aligned with the progressive politics of Dist. 5 and the fiscally conservative bent of Dist. 7. Both tell the Guardian that they represent a new approach to politics that is less about ideology and more about compromise and representing the varied concerns of their diverse constituencies.

“I don’t see everything as a compromise, but I want to be sure we find compromises where we can and don’t let personalities get in the way,” said Yee, whose background working in education and facilitating deals as a school board member belies District 7’s history of being represented by firebrand opponents of the progressive movement.

Some of the strongest champions of the pro-tenant, anti-corporate progressive agenda have come from the Haight and Dist. 5, a role that Breed has no intention of playing. “When you talk about the progressives of San Francisco, I don’t know that I fit in that category,” Breed told us. “I’m a consensus builder. I want to get along with people to get what I want.”

Yet what Breed says she wants are housing policies that protect renters and prevent the exodus of African-Americans, and development standards that preserve the traditional character of neighborhoods against corporate homogenization. “I don’t see the difference between my causes and progressive causes,” she said, claiming a strong independence from some of the monied interests that supported her campaign.

We spoke a few days before the Jan. 8 vote for board president (which was scheduled after Guardian press time, and which you can read about at the SFBG.com Politics blog). Neither Yee nor Breed would tip their hands about who they planned to support -– the first potential indication of their willingness to buck their districts’ ideological leanings.

Breed had raised some progressive eyebrows by telling the Guardian and others that she admired moderate Sup. Scott Wiener and would support him for president, but she had backtracked on that by the time we spoke on Jan. 5, telling us, “I’m going into this with an open mind.

“I’m waiting on my colleagues to decide who has the most votes,” Breed said, ing a candid take on valuing compromise over conflict. “I really would like to see us walk into this all together.”

Yee had similar comments. “They’re all competent people and can be leaders, it just depends on where they want to lead us,” he said. “I value people who can work with anyone and see themselves as facilitators more than as dictators.”

Both Breed and Yee come from humble roots that they say give them a good understanding of the needs of the city’s have-nots. Breed was raised in the public housing projects of the Western Addition, an experience that makes her want to solve the current dysfunction in the San Francisco Housing Authority.

“I can’t tell you what needs to be done, but I can tell you something is wrong,” Breed told us. “My goal is to get to the bottom of it and be extremely aggressive about it.”

Yee grew up in Chinatown, his father an immigrant who worked as a janitor, his mother a garment worker. They later lived in the Sunset and the Richmond, and Yee moved into his district’s Westwood Park neighborhood 26 years ago.

When Yee was eight years old, the family saved enough money to open a grocery store at 15th and Noe, and he said that he basically ran the store in his teen years while his father continued working another job.

That was where Yee developed his deep appreciation for the role that small, neighborhood-serving businesses play in San Francisco. In an era before credit cards, he would offer credit lines to local customers struggling to make ends meet; that experience showed him how stores like his family’s were essential parts of the city’s social and economic fabric.

“That’s why I value small businesses,” Yee said, calling that his top focus as a supervisor. “They’re going to have a bigger voice now.”

Yee draws a clear distinction between the interests of small business and that of the larger corporations that dominate the powerful San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Asked where he might have placed on the Chamber’s recent scorecard ranking supervisors’ votes — where Yee’s predecessor, Sean Elsbernd, got the highest marks — Yee said, “Probably not on their A list. They are just one entity in San Francisco and I’m not going to be judged just by them.”

At 63 years old, Yee is by far the oldest member of the youngest Board of Supervisors in recent memory, while Breed, at 38, is closer to the current average. Yee hopes his age and experience will help him forge compromises among all the supervisors.

“People draw their lines, but I try to listen to people and see where their lines are,” Yee said. “It’s a balancing act, but at the same time, there’s things I’ve been working on all my life, like education and safety net issues, and this district does care about those things. At the same time, they care about their homes. Are these issues in conflict? I don’t think they have to be.”

Behind today’s unanimous vote for Chiu

Sasha Cuttler
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37
Behind today’s unanimous vote for Chiu

For all the high-minded talk about diversity and working together on behalf of the public – and the relentless praising of their political colleagues and supporters – today’s unanimous re-election of David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors once again demonstrated that much of the people’s business is done behind closed doors.

As most of the supervisors acknowledged publicly or in comments to the Guardian, in recent days there was a flurry of meetings about the president vote among the supervisors, despite the prohibition in the state’s Brown Act against “seriatim meetings,” in which elected officials have serial meetings with each other until an quorum of supervisors has illegally discussed some topic.

How else could Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, and Scott Wiener – all hopefuls for the president’s seat who withdrew themselves from consideration before a vote was cast – have all known that Chiu had the votes he needed to win an unprecedented third consecutive term? But they did know, as they all told the Guardian.

“The reality was the support wasn’t there,” Cohen told reporters after the vote when asked why she withdrew her nomination just before the supervisors were about to vote, just after Kim had done the same thing, leaving Chiu as the sole nominee.

I asked whether she was promised anything in return for withdrawing from consideration, and Cohen said, “There’s always negotiations involved in everything, from committee assignments to appointment to regional bodies…The full story will come out later.”

Cohen even obliquely suggested that Chiu – who is known to have his sights set on Tom Ammiano’s Assembly seat, which comes open in two years – may not serve his full two years as president and that was part of the backroom discussions. In the more immediate future, Cohen said she wants to serve on the Land Use Committee, so don’t be surprised if Chiu appoints her as chair of that powerful body.

“It may seem like a small setback today, but it sets the stage for greater conversations going forward,” Cohen said of her decision to voluntarily step down.

Kim also told reporters that she knew Chiu had the votes – saying “we know there was broad support for David for another term” – and that the decision that she and Cohen made to nominate one another was mostly symbolic, intended to make a point about the need for women of color to be in leadership positions: “I thought it was important that we put the dialogue out there.”

Kim said she really appreciated the opportunity to speak with more fellow supervisors privately in the last few days than she had before. “All of this was last minute. There were really only discussions in the last three days,” Kim told me. “I got a good sense of people’s policies and priorities.” As for Kim’s priorities, she said she wants to serve on the Budget Committee, so don’t be surprised when Chiu names her as chair.

Wiener also told me that he realized a couple days ago that he didn’t have the votes but that Chiu did. “It would have been an honor to serve as board president, but it wasn’t in the cards,” Wiener said.

Some of what the cards showed was made clear as the nominations for president opened today and new Dist. 7 Sup. Norman Yee spoke first and nominated Chiu, thus making it clear that Kim probably didn’t have the six votes she needed. As former Sup. Chris Daly, a veteran vote counter, told me, “Norman Yee and Eric Mar could have made Jane Kim board president. They were the deciding bloc, but it would taken both of them.”

Yet Mar told us that he was caught off guard by how the voting unfolded today. “I was surprised that people dropped out before the vote,” he told me.

Yet he acknowledged that it was perhaps a smart move by the progressive supervisors, who voted against Chiu two years ago and were punished with bad committee assignments, to instead get behind Chiu now and hand him a unanimous victory.

“I think that was the hope when people dropped out. It would have been hard if they didn’t, but these negotiations [with Chiu over committee assignments] will go on over the next few days,” Mar said, noting that he will push for strong representation by supporters of labor and other progressive constituencies on key committees.

Asked about his negotiations with fellow supervisors, Chiu would only say, “My conversation with everyone was very consistent.” As for his pending decision on committee assignments, he told me, “We have a board that is very diverse and we’ll have committees that reflect that.”

During his speech in Board Chambers, Chiu talked about running the board in a way that would let each supervisor have her/his moments in the spotlight to provide leadership on issues they care about, comparing it to the San Francisco Giants and the contributions that so many players made to their World Series sweep.

“They took turns making the big plays,” Chiu said, going on to tick off the list of how he’ll help his colleagues shine. “Whether it’s Sup. Mar advocating for a healthy environment, Sup. Farrell addressing out looming health care costs, whether it’s Sup. Chu disciplining our budget, Sup. Breed getting the jobs that young people need, Sup. Kim making sure that all our kids graduate, Sup. Yee making sure that small businesses succeed, Sup. Wiener fighting for better transportation options, Sup. Campos fighting against wage theft, or Sup. Cohen curbing gun violence, and Sup. Avalos delivering on local hire, by the end of our season, if we’re going to help each other succeed in getting these things done, we are all going to win.”

A tale of police priorities

Zelda Bronstein
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116
A tale of police priorities

By Anh Lê

On Friday afternoon, November 9th, as I was walking on Howard St. near 3rd, I was physically assaulted twice by a Caucasian man walking with an accomplice, an African American woman. I was punched in the jaw the first time while I was still on the sidewalk; the assailant followed me into the street traffic to punch me in the jaw again. Many people passed by, yet none stopped to help. 

I called 911 from the a nearby restaurant. The first oSan Francisco police officer to arrive ordered me to sit down, and then quickly left. Then two other officers arrived, one of whom told me that he was already on assignment at the Moscone Convention Center. Even though I had an eyewitness, and we both provided the officers with a description of the assailant and his accomplice, and I told the officers that the two were still in the vicinity on Howard St., the police did nothing. One of the cops told me, “I think the guy looks like someone from the Tenderloin.”

Compare that to another incident and you get a sense of the city’s police priorities.

On Thursday afternoon, December 13, at the Muni island bus stop on Market St. at 5th, I saw two young African American men in handcuffs. They were detained by an SFPD officer, and two Muni fare inspectors. Both African American men were calm, poised, and respectful in their behavior.

One of the handcuffed men had a cell phone in his mouth while the police officer was questioning him. I thought that it was an odd situation, since the officer could have assisted him by removing the cell phone from his mouth.  I also thought that the dynamics of the situation seemed degrading and demeaning to this young man.

Within five minutes, several additional SFPD officers arrived on the scene, and then several more arrived in an unmarked large black SUV. Nearly all of the police officers were Caucasian. None was African American. 

One of the officers unzipped the second detainee’s backpack.  He calmly said to the officer, “I don’t have any weapon in there.” I could see that the situation involved a simple Muni fare situation. Yet I saw more than ten SFPD officers responding.

I spoke with two of the passengers waiting at the bus stop to ask them what they had seen. Semetra Hampton and Laversa Frasier told me that they saw the two young males handcuffed, and that these young men never acted in any aggressive manner.

I spoke with the two young men, Wayne Price and Jamal Jones. Each received citations, one for paying a youth fare as an adult, the other for misuse of a Clipper card. Hardly serious crimes.

I contacted Officer Michael Andraychak in the Media Relations Unit at SFPD and Paul Rose, spokesperson for San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority to ask why so many officers were involved in such a minor incident.

Rose emailed to tell me that transit fare inspectors saw that the men were using youth passes and asked for identification. When they refused, the fare inspectors contacted police. Andraychack said a Muni fare inspector tried to detain the suspects, but they refused to comply and ran onto the Muni bus island. The inspectors flagged down a nearby police officer, who radioed his location and told dispatch that he was being summoned by Muni personnel for an undetermined problem. Additional officers heard this radio transmission and responded to the scene.

He noted that “Fifth Street / Market is on the border of Tenderloin and Southern Districts. Officers from both districts patrol this area and the MTA K9 officers routinely patrol the Market Street Muni Metro Stations and surface transit stops.”

I appreciate the efforts by Rose and Andraychack to provide me with the information requested.  However, their statements only tell part of the story. Some of their information does not match what I observed, nor what the eyewitnesses told me at the Muni bus stop.

I was there; I counted more than ten SFPD officers who descended on these two young men. Neither of them had done anything violent to anyone, yet their fare evasion elicited massive response.

On the other hand, there was no diligent effort by SFPD to locate, apprehend, and arrest the assailant who assaulted me, on November 9th when he and his accomplice were still in the vicinity of the attack.

Mayor Ed Lee recently proposed a policy permitting police officers to detain and search certain individuals on the street if police deemed it necessary. After vigorous protests from San Franciscans and the Board of Supervisors on the grounds that such a policy would encourage racial profiling, the mayor withdrew the plan.

Still, I have to wonder: Is sending that many officers to handle a simple Muni fare situation involving two young African American males necessary — or is it racial profiling at its extreme? Is this how we as San Franciscans want to see our tax dollars spent — and wasted?

Will narrow business interests continue to dominate SF’s political agenda?

Sasha Cuttler
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44
Will narrow business interests continue to dominate SF’s political agenda?

Will the narrow, deceptive, and disempowering “jobs” rhetoric of the last two years continue to dominate San Francisco politics in 2013? Or can San Franciscans find the will and organizing ability to create a broader political agenda that includes livability, sustainability, and affordability?

If it’s up to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce – whose perspective has been aired in both the Examiner and Chronicle over the last two days – private sector profits will continue to be our only metric of civic success.

Just take a look at the “Pinkslips and Paychecks Scorecard” that the Chamber released yesterday, rating members of the Board of Supervisors based on a series of 16 votes for tax cuts and public subsidies for businesses, approvals of projects serving the rich, rollbacks of government regulations, business surcharges on consumers, maintaining PG&E’s dirty energy monopoly, and blocking an expansion of developer fees to improve Muni.

That aggressive neoliberal agenda, which is shared by Mayor Ed Lee and his big corporate backers, was reinforced by Chamber VP Jim Lazarus in an op-ed in today’s Examiner. Ignoring the rising housing and other living costs that plague the average San Francisco, Lazarus uses hopeful language about how we’re all “poised for success in 2013,” burying the Chamber’s aggressive and exclusive agenda in the subtext.

At the top of his agenda are: “Approval of the California Pacific Medical Center rebuild, reforming San Francisco’s California Environmental Quality Act appeals process, and rule-making for the upcoming gross-receipts tax.” In other words, let CPMC have what it wants, make it more difficult to challenge developers on environmental grounds, and ensure business taxes remain as low as possible.

And to ensure supervisors get the message, he closes by noting that business leaders are “energized and ready” to push their agenda with tools such as the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth, which waged some of the nastiest and most deceptive political attack ads on progressive candidates in the last election cycle.

The progressive movement of San Francisco has its problems and issues, including a recently widening schism between environmental and transportation activists on one side and the nonprofit housing and social justice faction on the other. And in the current economic and political climate, both sides too often find themselves partnering with corporate and neoliberal interests to get things done.

But now, more than ever, San Francisco needs to broaden into political dialogue, and that means a reconstitution and expansion of its progressive movement. That’s something that the Guardian has long focused on facilitating and publicizing – something that will be my personal focus as well – and we have some idea percolating that we’ll discuss in the coming weeks and months.

Then maybe all San Franciscans can be poised for success in 2013 and beyond.

White men behaving (very) badly

Andrew Lam
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69
White men behaving (very) badly

Could it be — the worst year ever?

I keep asking. And every time the Offies come around, I find myself boggled yet again. Our awards for the very worst — the dumbest, the most tasteless, the most truly offensive acts of the year past — keep sinking lower and lower.

But what can we do? There are still Republicans, and this year a lot of them ran for high office, and every single one made a fool of himself. There are still politicians who think you can run for San Francisco supervisor even if you live in Walnut Creek, and elected leaders who find the courage deep in themselves to prevent a bunch of old men from walking around with their sagging asses and limp dicks out.

There are still entertainers who punch psychics, and gun nuts who blame mass murder on TV sex, and … well, a whole lot of people who have made this a banner year for the Offies.

 

SUPPORT OUR BRAVE, HEROIC TROOPS! (EXCEPT THE MEN WHO FUCK MEN)

The audience at a Republican presidential primary debate booed a gay solider who called in from Iraq with a question about don’t ask, don’t tell.

 

FROM A GUY WHO HAD TO BUY OXYCONTINS AND VIAGRA ON THE STREET, THIS SORT OF THING IS AN OBVIOUS CONCERN

Rush Limbaugh attacked law student Sandra Fluke, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she testified that health-care plans should cover contraceptives.

 

THERE ARE MEN SO BRILLIANT THAT WE STAND IN AWE OF THEIR INTELLECT

Mitt Romney said he really liked Michigan because the trees were all the right height.

 

GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE 1 PERCENT

Herman Cain proclaimed that for every woman who claimed he sexually harassed her, there were a thousand others who didn’t.

 

IF WE WANTED A DRESS CODE ON AIRLINES, WE’D START WITH THOSE DREARY PILOT UNIFORMS

An American Airlines pilot kicked a woman off a flight for wearing a shirt that said “if I wanted the government in my womb I’d fuck a senator.”

 

PROBLEM IS, BUSH MADE THAT ONE A CABINET-LEVEL POSITION

Rick Perry proclaimed in a debate that he was going to do away with three agencies of the federal government, but after listing Commerce and Education, he couldn’t remember what the third one was, identifying it only as “oops.”

 

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE NAME MEANS ASS-CUM JUICE, THAT’S A REALLY PRETTY PICTURE

Rick Santorum said that he’d listened to John F. Kennedy’s speech on the separation of church and state and it made him want to throw up.

 

LOOK! UP AT THE RAMPARTS! THE MAN WITH THE HAIR!

Donald Trump, mistakenly believing Romney won the popular vote but lost the election, called the election “a sham and travesty” and called for “revolution.”

 

BUT HE COULD HELP THEM OUT WITH A FEW BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN

Romney insulted the British by saying the nation didn’t appear ready to host the Olympics.

 

FINE, JUST TAKE RICK PERRY WITH YOU

More than 50 thousand people signed a White House petition asking for permission for Texas to secede.

 

GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, ATHEISM AND OVERSTIMULATED GLANDS DO. HAPPY FRIDAY, SHOOTERS!

On the same day that a gunman opened fire at a showing of the Dark Knight movie in Colorado, the National Rifle Association’s magazine sent out a tweet that read: “Good morning, shooters! Happy Friday.”

A Congressman from Texas, Louie Gohmert, argued that the Dark Knight shootings happened because of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs.”

Mike Huckabee blamed the massacre in Newtown, CT on atheism. “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said on Fox News. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Timothy Bordnow at Tea Party nation said the shooting was caused by too much sexual stimulation in the media . “There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands.”

Megan McArdle, the Daily Beast writer, urged the victims of mass shootings to gang-rush the shooter so he wouldn’t kill as many people.

The head of the National Rifle Association said the only way to stop mass murders of school children is to post armed guards in every school.

 

WOW — THE DISTRICT 8 SUPERVISOR HAS BEEN OVERWHELMED BY A COUPLE OF OLD MEN’S FLACCID DICKS

Sup. Scott Wiener promoted a ban on public nudity in San Francisco.

 

WHEN YOU’RE A MAJOR LOSER, EVEN MONEY CAN’T BUY YOU LOVE

Michael Breyer, who has never been elected to anything, spent roughly $1 million trying to win a state Assembly seat as the candidate of “traditional San Francisco values,” and lost badly.

 

AND THESE PEOPLE ARE COOPERATING WITH HOMELAND SECURITY?

Confetti thrown in the Giants parade turned out to be lightly shredded internal police documents that included home addresses and social security numbers of officers.

 

GUESS IT’S OKAY TO PERJURE YOURSELF IF YOU’RE THE MAYOR

Mayor Ed Lee testified under oath that he’d never discussed the Ross Mirkarimi case with members of the board of Supervisors, although friends of Sup. Christina Olague said she’d been open about her talks with the mayor on the topic.

 

NOW, WHICH ONES ARE THE IRON MONSTERS OF DEATH?

A San Francisco bicyclist who was allegedly trying to beat a speed record crashed into and killed a 71-year-old man in the Castro.

 

UNFORTUNATELY, THERE’S NO MALPRACTICE STATUTE GOVERNING THAT AUGUST PROFESSION

Political consultant Enrique Pearce oversaw perhaps the worst district election campaign in history, helping Olague become the first incumbent ever to lose in ranked-choice voting in SF.

 

SOMEHOW, REPRESENTING WALNUT CREEK AT CITY HALL DIDN’T SEEM LIKE SUCH A GOOD IDEA

Union official Leon Chow dropped his challenge to Sup. John Avalos when the SF Appeal revealed that he didn’t live in District 11, or even in San Francisco.

 

 

WHEN MEN ARE JUST TOTAL DICKS: THE GOP REDEFINES RAPE

1. Divine providence rape (Rick Santorum): “The right approach is to accept this horribly created .. gift of life, accept what God is giving to you.”

2. Honest Rape (Ron Paul): “If it was an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room.”

3. Forcible Rape (Paul Ryan): Federal law should prevent abortion except in the case of “forcible rape.”

4. Emergency Rape (Linda McMahon): “It was really an issue about a Catholic Church being forced to issue those pills if a person came in with an emergency rape.”

5. Legitimate Rape: (Todd Akin): “If it was a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

 

CALL IT BIEBER RAGE; IT’S DANGEROUS SHIT

After a Justin Bieber concert, Lindsay Lohan punched a psychic in the face at a New York nightclub, then threw her personal assistant out of the car.

 

YEP, AND IT DOESN’T LOOK ANY BETTER THE SECOND TIME

Romney’s campaign manager said that his candidate would change his right-wing positions for the fall campaign: “It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”

 

AND IF HE GOES WITH THEM, IT WILL ALL BE WORTH WHILE

Newt Gingrich proposed sending 13,000 Americans to the Moon and creating a new state there.

 

AND WE ALL WONDER WHY THE MEDIA IS DOING SO SMASHINGLY WELL THESE DAYS

After Gabby Douglas became the first black woman to win the Olympic gold medal in all-around gymnastics, the news media reported on problems with her hair.

 

AND YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD IS OVER, OVER, OVER, OVER

Justice Antonin Scalia, in defending his argument that sodomy is legally equivalent to murder, told law students at Princeton that the Constitution is not a living document, it’s “dead, dead, dead, dead.”

 

MAKES YOU WONDER ABOUT THE POOR SOUL WHO CAME IN AT 99

Kim Kardashian fell 90 places, to 98, on AskMen Magazine’s list of the worlds 100 most desirable women.

 

SADLY, “GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL” DOESN’T MAKE SUCH A GREAT CAMPAIGN SLOGAN

Herman Cain said his life’s philosophy came from a Pokemon song.

 

WE’RE GLAD THAT HIS FAITH HAS GIVEN HIM SUCH AN UPLIFTING ATTITUDE

Romney said he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”

 

HE WAS PROBABLY SHITFACED, TOO, BUT SINCE HE DOESN’T DRINK HE CAN’T REMEMBER THAT EITHER

Romney said he didn’t remember beating up a gay student at his prep school and cutting off his long hair.

 

IT’S A GOOD THING MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL ISN’T LOOKING FOR ANOTHER JOHN MADDEN

A full 78 percent of Americans thought Ryan Seacrest was doing a good job broadcasting from the Olympics, although most of them couldn’t figure out what he was actually doing.

 

HE ALSO TOLD US THAT TAX CUTS AND DEREGULATION WOULD IMPROVE THE ECONOMY, SO HE’S GOT A WINNING RECORD HERE

Karl Rove on election night kept insisting the Romney still had a chance to win.

 

TALK ABOUT A BLOWN COVER

David Petraus resigned as CIA director after an affair with a woman who was threatening another woman who might have had a thing for him.

 

TOO BAD — HE MIGHT HAVE HAD TO SEEK ASYLUM IN THE NEW REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

A petition to allow every American to punch Grover Norquist in the dick was removed from the White House website.

 

WE’RE WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF BELIZE; THIS MAN IS “BONKERS”

One-time software mogul John McAfee fled Belize claiming the cops would persecute him after he was sought for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor — using a body double, faking a heart attack, pretending he was crazy, and winding up in Miami.

 

IT SUCKS TO BE STINKING RICH AND OWN FOUR HOUSES AND HAVE TO LIVE WITH REJECTION

Ann Romney was deeply depressed that her husband didn’t win the election, telling friends she though it was their fate to move into the White House.

 

AND WHEN ASKED IF SOMEONE THAT MORONIC COULD ACTUALLY RUN FOR PRESIDENT, HE SAID “I’M A REPUBLICAN, MAN”

Marco Rubio, when asked about the age of the Earth, said “I’m not a scientist, man.”

 

EASY — THE ONES WHO ARE GETTING PAID ARE THE ONES PRETENDING TO BE INTERESTED IN NASTY OLD FRENCHMEN

After Dominique Strauss-Kahn was held overnight in Lille to be questioned about possible connections between a prostitution ring and orgies he attended in Paris and Washington, his lawyer said: “I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other woman.”

 

DUDE — THAT’S THE TERRITORY OF SERIOUS LOSERS

Vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan lied about his time in the marathon.

 

GO AHEAD, CLINT — MAKE OUR DAY

Surprise guest speaker Clint Eastwood addressed GOP convention delegates for 12 minutes, during which he carried on an imagined dialogue with an empty chair he identified as President Obama.

 

AND YES, HE DID GET A FAIR AMOUNT OF THE STUPIDITY VOTE

Santorum told a gathering of conservatives in Washington, “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

The next board president

Andrew Lam
-
9

EDITORIAL The president of the Board of Supervisors does more than bang the gavel at meetings, tell people to put their clothes back on, and run for higher office. It’s a powerful position largely because the president makes appointments — to the Planning Commission, the Police Commission — and unilaterally decides who serves on which board committees.

Two years ago, Sup. David Chiu, who won the top post in 2009 with progressive support, wanted re-election, and the left wasn’t siding with him anymore. So he cut a deal with the conservative members, appointing the right-wing of the board to plum committee posts — and making life harder for progressives who wanted to pass Legislation or prevent bad developments from happening.

He clearly likes the job and would love to hold it for a third term. But that won’t be easy — Sup. Scott Wiener, who is to the right of Chiu on many issues, is also interested, as is Sup. Jane Kim, who has always been close to Chiu, and Sup. David Campos, who is one of the leading progressives. None of the candidates can count to six right now, so somebody’s going to have to back down or make a deal.

And before that happens, the candidates ought to tell us something about what they plan to do.

Chiu’s 2011 committee appointments were a bit of a shocker, although, in retrospect, the horse trading shouldn’t have surprised anyone. In fact, after he made his decisions, and put Carmen Chu, one of the most conservative supervisors, in charge of the Budget and Finance Committee and put the conservative Scott Wiener and the moderate Malia Cohen on Land Use and Economic Development, and put conservative Sean Elsbernd in charge of two committees, he told us that he felt he had no choice. If the progressives had voted for him, he wouldn’t have had to reward the conservatives.

This time around, with two new supervisors taking office (a more centrist Norman Yee replacing Elsbernd and a more moderate London Breed replacing Christina Olague) everything is up in the air. The progressives still have a solid three votes, and can sometimes count on Jane Kim and Chiu. That’s not enough to elect a president, but it’s coming pretty close.

Based on experience, skills, and temperament, our first choice for board president is Campos, who would be fair to everyone, approachable, and a voice for open government and community participation. But if Campos can’t get six votes, he and his progressive colleagues should ask anyone who want their support to be open about what he or she plans to do.

Who will be on the budget committee? Rules? Land Use? Where will he or she look for candidates for commissions? We know it would look unsightly if, say, Chiu named in advance his preferences for key committees — and then those people voted for him. But the reality is, those discussions are happening anyway, those deals being cut — and it’s happening behind closed doors, where the public (and the other supervisors) can’t watch.

Let’s bring all of the discussions into the sunshine, and have an open debate about the next board president.

 

The new board president

Zelda Bronstein
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204
The new board president

The last time the San Francisco supervisors elected a new board president, the progressives got a swift kick in the ass. David Chiu, who had been elected to the top slot two years earlier with the unanimous support of progressives, disappointed some of his allies and wasn’t going to get their votes. But he wanted to keep his job, so he turned to the conservatives — and with the support of the folks on the right, he won another term. The he turned around and put the center-right folks in charge of some key committees. Price of the deal.

Now he’s looking for a third two-year term — but this time there aren’t any easy alliances. Several of his colleagues are also in the running, from across the political spectrum. And nobody right now has the magical six votes.

Scott Wiener on one side, David Campos on the other, Jane Kim closer to Chiu … somebody’s going to have to back down or cut a deal. And that’s where these things tend to get squirrly.

Me, I think Campos would be perfect for the job, not only because I agree with him most of the time but because he’s reliable, fair, and cares about public empowerment and input. That wouldn’t be to Chiu’s advantage — the two are likely to be facing off in a tough state Assembly contest when Tom Ammiano is termed out in two years, and the last thing Chiu would want is to have his rival in such a high-profile spot. So it’s not likely either of those two will be voting for the other.

I haven’t always agreed with Kim, but she’s more on the progressive side than not, and she’s really smart. You could see that as she took apart the city attorney’s arguments during the Ross Mirkarimi debate. Wiener has one of the most ambitious legislative agendas of any current board member and has proven to be an effective (sometimes dangerously effective) politician.

Wiener can probably get votes from the most conservative side, Mark Farrell and Carmen Chu, and might be able to line up, say, Malia Cohen and possibly even newcomer London Breed. But that’s not six — and that assumes that Chiu doesn’t make a play for those votes the way he did last time. Campos will get the progressives (John Avalos and likely Eric Mar), but that’s not six either. And with Kim and Chiu going after some of the same people, nobody’s going to come close in the first round.

That is, unless somebody cuts a series of backroom deals.

So my suggestion is this: Let’s demand that all of them tell us up front who they would put on which committees. Sure, it looks like pandering if Wiener promises Budget and Finance Chair to Cohen, who then votes for him — but that stuff is going to happen anyway, and I’d rather have it out in the open.

 

 

 

 

 

The Muni vs. housing clash

Andrew Lam
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73

OPINION Two votes at the Board of Supervisors and the Municipal Transportation Agency Dec. 4 laid out a stark contrast between two different approaches to transportation advocacy — one based on a sense of justice and the idea that public transit is an issue of equity, and another based on the self interest and transactional politics of a cash-strapped transportation agency and its dedicated allies.

After years of work, organizing transit riders and talking to policy makers from the local to the regional levels, a scrappy group of transit justice advocates, many of them young, most of them people of color, got the Municipal Transportation Agency board to approve a $1.6 million plan to fund free Muni passes for low-income youth. It sent a strong message that a new kind of transportation advocacy has arrived, one that puts race, class, and environment at the center.

Meanwhile, a separate vote was taking place at the Board of Supervisors that seemed to pit community organizations, nonprofit service providers, and affordable housing developers on opposite sides of the fence from what has become a mainstream transportation and bicycle advocacy community.

We should have been on the same side. But a last-minute maneuver by Sup. Scott Wiener to add to the MTA’s strained budget (a worthy goal) by expanding the 30-year Transportation Impact Development Fee (TIDF) to include nonprofits that provide critical services in our neighborhoods backfired and sent his amendments out the door in a 9-2 vote.

Many transportation and bicycle advocates seemed incredulous that the rest of the world did not accept their arguments.

I consider many of these transportation advocates friends and acquaintances whom I have known and worked with for years. But rather than seeing themselves as part of a greater social justice movement rooted in the communities who are most affected, some of these advocates have become increasingly narrow in their scope, single-minded in their pursuit of funding for bike lanes and bulbouts, as well as rapid transit projects serving downtown commuters.

Real-world politics requires that activists, organizers, and policy advocates be flexible and willing to figure out how to work with others very unlike themselves. Recently an organization I work for was able to work in a broad coalition, convened by the mayor, to develop and campaign for a Housing Trust Fund to create a permanent source of funding for affordable housing, as a direct response to the State of California taking away the city’s housing budget when it dissolved the redevelopment agencies. We walked into the room knowing that we would have to make tough decisions, and have to take those back to our allies in the progressive movement.

But we also walked in with non-negotiables. We were not going to entertain any attempt at weakening rent control by tying the Housing Trust Fund to lifting the condo conversion lottery. We would not support a set-aside without increasing city revenue to support not just our housing trust fund but also critical health and social services. We do not screw over our broader movement for pure self-interest.

We stand at a crossroads, and we could very well end up with two different transportation advocacy communities, both talking about the same thing, but with very little to say to each other. As the old mineworker’s song used to say, it’s time to decide: “Which side are you on?”

Fernando Martí works at the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse

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