Supervisors

Ed Lee does some ‘splainin

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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46

Ed Lee, appointed San Francisco’s interim mayor early this year after giving the San Francisco Board of Supervisors his word that he would not seek a full term, filed papers to enter the race as a mayoral candidate on Aug. 8.

“I haven’t changed at all,” Lee said when reporters questioned his 180-degree turnaround. “I’ve just made a change of mind in terms of running for this office.”

Standing beside his wife, Anita, the mayor delivered a five-minute speech about what has transpired in his seven months as interim mayor, saying he was motivated to run by his accomplishments in office so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u4DudZPY80

Lee said he had met with members of the Board of Supervisors and understood that some would be looking for an explanation on his change of heart.

Former District 6 Sup. Chris Daly has said he believes Lee’s run for mayor was scripted from the start. Whatever the case, an outburst that occurred as Lee was filling out paperwork certainly was not part of any script. Surrounded by news cameras, Charles Khalish heckled Lee, asking, “Sir, are you going to step down? You’re in the office under false pretenses, Mr. Lee.” When security surrounded him, he loudly protested, and a group of sheriff deputies and mayoral security officers with the San Francisco Police Department closed in and grabbed him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs0tFvWCNzo

While it was impossible for this reporter to see exactly what took place seconds before Khalish was forcibly removed, Tony Winnicker, a former press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom who is now issuing media advisories for Lee’s mayoral campaign, later claimed he wouldn’t have been removed if he hadn’t gotten pushy. The officers hauled Khalish down the corridor as he shrieked, “Heeeeeeelp!!” They restrained his arms behind his back and placed his head in a lock while they told him to stop resisting.

“He was cited for obstructing public business,” sheriff spokesperson Eileen Hirst later told the Guardian. “It is likely that he will be released as soon as the paperwork is finished.” She added that she had not yet seen an incident report.

The interim mayor said he made the decision to run over the weekend with the help of his family members. Chinatown power broker Rose Pak is not part of his family, but Lee’s daughter Brianna wrote in a January editorial called “Fear the ‘ Stache” that she had always known Pak as “Auntie Rose.”

Pak was a key driver behind “Run, Ed, Run,” the campaign backed by Progress for All that plastered cartoon drawings of Lee all over San Francisco. Progress for All will be the subject of discussion at the Aug. 8 Ethics Commission meeting, since Ethics director John St. Croix has stated he believes the political organization filed improperly as a general purpose committee. In late July, five mayoral candidates — including Board President David Chiu — joined Democratic County Central Committee chair Aaron Peskin in asking for an investigation into whether Progress for All had violated local campaign laws. Campaign finance reports, meanwhile, show that the effort was backed by a small group of inflential business insiders. Asked about the role of “Run, Ed, Run,” on his campaign for mayor, here’s how Lee responded:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBI5SSmVr4E

This evening, Lee the will participate in a mayoral candidate forum hosted by the Duboce Triangle/Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association at the Castro Theater at 7 p.m.

Fall ballot gets stripped of progressive measures

Sasha Cuttler
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25
Fall ballot gets stripped of progressive measures

The San Francisco Tenants Union suffered a pair of disappointing setbacks in the last week – first when a referendum on the Parkmerced project narrowly failed to qualify for the fall ballot, then when progressive supervisors withdrew a proposed ballot measure to prevent demolition of existing rental housing – leaving the fall ballot without any progressive measures (unless one counts the sales tax measure that was unanimously approved this week by the Board of Supervisors).

Also dropped from the ballot this week was another progressive measure that would have prevented the Recreation and Park Department from entering into new commercial leases of parks and recreation centers, a measure written by the citizens group Take Back Our Parks to reverse RPD’s recent push to monetize more of its assets.

Yet unlike last week’s removal of a third measure placed on the ballot by at least four progressive supervisors – the Fair Shelter Initiative, written by the Coalition on Homelessness, which was unhappy that Sup. Jane Kim dropped her support under pressure from the Mayor’s Office – it was the sponsoring groups that asked the supervisors to remove the two measures this week.

Sponsors of the parks measure say it had some legal problems that would have complicated the campaign, particularly after an analysis by the City Attorney’s Office concluded that it could affect things like private party reservations and leases associated with the America’s Cup.

Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union said his group concluded there were legal problems with the anti-demolition measure as well and that it wouldn’t affect the demolition of 1,500 housing units associated with the Board of Supervisors’ 6-5 vote to approve the massive Parkmerced project, which was the catalyst for the measure.

SFTU sponsored the signature-gathering campaign to do a referendum on that vote, but the Elections Department concluded on July 29 that of the 18,487 signatures that were turned in, just 12,917 were valid, falling short of the 14,336 they needed. Gullicksen said delays in qualifying the 56-page petition gave them just three weeks to gather signatures, and a freak mid-June rainstorm hurt that effort as well.

“We knew from the get-go that it was going to be a challenge,” he said. “It was very disappointing that we fell just short.”

But he said there was a silver lining: “It sent a message to the supervisors. David Chiu [the swing vote on the Parkmerced approval] called me the next day to say he’d make sure demolitions don’t become an epidemic.”

Sup. David Campos – who helped sponsor all three measures and even kept his name on the shelter measure after Sups. Eric Mar and Kim had removed theirs – told us, “I think it’s disappointing that there isn’t a measure on the ballot to excite the progressive base, but at the end of the day, we do have an exciting mayor’s race and races for sheriff and district attorney.”

Campos has endorsed John Avalos of mayor and Ross Mirkarimi for sheriff, but has not yet made an endorsement for DA.

Step up and save CCA

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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6

EDITORIAL Two things became abundantly clear at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission meeting July 26th: The Community Choice Aggregation program is off track — and General Manager Ed Harrington has no interest in making it work. The supervisors need to move aggressively to save CCA.

Since 2007, when a draft implementation plan was released, the goals of the program — which is supposed to offer a cleaner alternative to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. — have shifted fairly dramatically. No longer does the plan seek to meet PG&E’s rates. It won’t be aimed at the entire city to start. And the PUC is putting most of its effort into a short-term contract to buy green power from Shell Energy North America — and all-but ignoring the more important moves to build a publicly owned energy-generation infrastructure.

CCA, which allows cities to buy power in bulk and resell it to customers, is a step in the right direction. The program now before the PUC would put San Francisco in the public power business — to a degree. But as the financial projections for the program demonstrate, the real savings and the real revenue won’t come until San Francisco replaces PG&E as the owner and operator of the local grid. A full-scale public power system would allow the city to both increase renewable power and cut rates — and would bring hundreds of millions into the treasury in the process (see “Mud Money,” 6/26/08).

Still, CCA offers many benefits — including the chance for the city to build local renewable energy facilities. And that’s where the PUC’s efforts ought to be focused.

During discussion of the proposed contract July 26th, Harrington was largely negative and talked repeatedly as if he didn’t think the original program could work. He kept saying that renewable power was more costly (true, today — but not after the city starts building its own facilities). He said that the goals the “advocates” (who include a majority of the Board of Supervisors) have demanded were unrealistic. And most of the commissioners seemed clueless.

That’s a terrible way to launch one of the most important environmental and financial initiatives in modern San Francisco history. Marin County is already well on the way to creating a working CCA system. Other counties are moving forward. And San Francisco, the only city in the nation with a federal mandate for public power, can’t get its civic act together.

The supervisors need to get involved, quickly. The Local Agency Formation Commission, which is overseeing this project, should haul Harrington in for a hearing as soon as possible. Among other things, the LAFCO members should ask why Harrington is so determined that the project won’t work; why his proposal is geared to a small number of residents and businesses who would face higher rates for power; and what his plans are to create a local energy generation infrastructure that over the long run would be dramatically cheaper and greener than anything PG&E (which has been in the background here trying to undermine CCA) will be able to offer.

The problems with CCA reflect the immense challenges of putting this program in the hands of a commission a majority of whose members were appointed by a mayor who opposed public power, managed by someone who has never supported municipalization efforts. Harrington and the SFPUC appear to be setting CCA up to fail. The supervisors need to step in before that happens — and every candidate for mayor needs to be pushed to publicly support CCA and make this an important campaign issue. And they need to promise that they’ll appoint people with real public power credentials who will replace Harrington and shake up the next PUC.

is Rec-Park really broke?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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16

By David Looman

OPINION The senior staffers at the Recreation and Park Department routinely cry that the department is poor and going broke. Is it possible they are lying?

Conspicuously lacking in discussions of Rec-Park funding is any kind of hard data about how well or poorly San Francisco Rec-Park is really funded. Whether it’s the mainstream media, the alternative press, or our elected representatives on the Board of Supervisors, nobody seems to know how our park system compares with other park systems in California or the U.S.

And nobody seems to want to check up on Rec-Park’s sad-sweet story.

This lack of real information is particularly surprising, since the data is readily available. Every year, the Trust for Public Land, a well-respected, San Francisco-based park advocacy organization, conducts a meticulous and comprehensive survey of how well recreation and park systems across the country are being funded. The survey is always available on the Web, at www.tpl.org.

Surprise!

In the TPL’s 2000 book, Inside City Parks, by Peter Harnik, San Francisco was among the three best-funded systems, measured either per acre or per resident. In every annual survey after that, San Francisco continued to rank in the top three, until 2006. In 2006, the TPL found San Francisco to be the best-funded park system in America.

That’s right, the best-funded department in the entire U.S.!

This year’s survey, based on the 2008 figures, has changed its methodology a bit, and expenditures are no longer calculated per acre. With the new methodology, San Francisco has slipped a bit. The city is now only the fourth-best funded park system in the country for cities with populations larger than 500,000, and the sixth best for cities over 250,000.

For operating expenditures (total budget minus capital spending) San Francisco is the fourth best funded among all cities. We don’t have as many capital expenditures as, say, Seattle, whose newer park system is still growing.

The question of where that money goes is another matter. I think I can offer a few suggestions about what happens.

Problem number one is the long and glorious history of absolutely incompetent management, particularly in the last 15 years, under the administrations of mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom. Second is that longstanding Rec-Park Department practice of ignoring and rejecting any public input, including factual input, from people who actually use and know the parks. This has led to a number of costly mistakes.

The department has more ethically dubious faults too—the wages spent organizing so-called “public support” for some of its unpopular projects; more wages spent having employees testify about what a great job the department is doing, etc.

The department presently is trying to privatize everything within reach. Its poor-mouth rational for doing so is false. It’s time we all faced the fact that Rec-Park isn’t giving us the whole truth.

David Looman is a longtime San Francisco political consultant and parks user.

The foodie crackdown

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
The foodie crackdown

news@sfbg.com

Yet another blow was dealt to the San Francisco’s free-thinking food scene on June 11 when the final Underground Market was staged by ForageSF, at least for the time being. The market was shut down by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) in a clash between small-time food businesses and city officials over permitting and regulatory issues.

“I was ready for this for a while,” ForageSF founder Iso Rabins told us. “I thought someone would show up eventually to say something about this, and now they have.”

Rabins began the Underground Market in 2009 as a monthly venue for food entrepreneurs to share their goods without financial and bureaucratic red tape. It’s basically a farmers market without the permits, fees, and commercial kitchen requirements that add thousands of dollars to the cost of staging an event. Throw in live music, drinks, a little subversive thrill, and you’ve got a gathering that has proven enormously popular.

Until now, the market has operated as a private event. It is held in a private space and attendees are required to sign a membership form and pay a $5 entrance fee. It’s become a huge draw for foodies, with 1,500 to 3,200 patrons per event, according to Rabins, so the state government got wind of its largely unregulated operations.

Alicia Saam, the temporary events coordinator with SFDPH, says her department was asked by state officials to observe the market. It’s now too big to be considered private, she says, so it must adhere to health code and public safety regulations just like any other public event.

“One of the things that differentiate private versus public events is how much advertisement goes out there,” Saam said. “Something that is advertised and has grown big enough to have a following, that becomes a concern for us as a public event.”

Without official oversight, rules are bound to be broken. As with any novice venture, mistakes are made. When officials came to the Underground Market, they saw some vendors acting more like friends at a house party than professional food vendors, which is the complicated line that the market tries to toe.

“We observed operators and vendors eating and then handling the food, and that’s a huge contamination hazard for us,” Saam said. “They weren’t washing their hands before continuing food service, nor did they have a hand-washing set-up right there at their booth. There looked to be temperature issues as far as some of the food that was being stored, such as protein foods, sausages, and dairy. Some foods were not protected but were displayed on the table uncovered. People come up and they’re excited and curious, there’s a lot of creativity there, so they’re hovering over the food and possibly contaminating it with all sorts of things. The source of food, such as the kitchen where the food is coming from, needs to be an approved space where there are no animals, or cats like in some homes. It needs to be a commercial space that is properly cleaned and sanitized.”

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, one in six Americans get sick each year from eating contaminated food. Salmonella infection is of particular concern because food can be contaminated anywhere from the fields to kitchen surfaces.

The SFDPH has already allowed the Underground Market to operate unregulated for more than a year without any reported food illnesses, but Rabins is quick to agree that these health concerns are real.

“I do believe that these issues of health are important, and although I feel that all the vendors at the market are very careful about what they make, we do want to institute some Serve-Safe classes, basic food safety,” Rabins says.

He says that on the whole, people cooking small batches pay much more attention to their ingredients and processes than industrial food companies do. Rabin said that while the country’s food safety system works pretty well, it doesn’t allow for much locally based innovation in new models for making and sharing food.

“The Health Department’s position makes sense because this is the system that has existed, this is the system that they know and that their jobs support, and it’s a system that works in a lot of ways. But it’s also a system that was really created for industrial processes,” Rabins says. “Unfortunately the way regulations work, top-down is one-size-fits-all, but that’s just not the way it is.”

That gets to the meat of the issue: whether and how much the city should get involved in people’s food habits. Where is the line between public restaurants and private homes — and are there ways of creating hybrids of the two? It’s an ongoing battle in San Francisco between regulating restaurants (and netting taxes) while still promoting an innovative food industry that attracts locals and tourists alike.

In the past few years, the mobile food truck craze has hit San Francisco with little bits of foodie culture from all over the world. Entrepreneurs say it’s too difficult and expensive to start a successful restaurant in SF, so they’re trying small-time pop-ups instead.

At first they went unregulated, but now laws define what they can sell, the permits they need, and limit their mobility. Permits are expensive too, starting at $1660 for initial basic coverage, which is why Rabins says the Underground Market provides an additional support for motivated locals. As city officials have closed big budget deficits year after year without any substantial increases in general tax revenue, fees and permit costs have risen substantially in recent years.

According to Rabins, getting the Underground Market up to code means, “getting all the vendors commercial kitchen space, making them get catering licenses, which is around $600, making them pay for vendor event permits, which is $140 per event, and then I would have to buy a sponsor permit which is another $1200 per event plus event insurance plus, plus, plus all these things that would essentially destroy the spirit of the event. It would make the bar way too high.”

Tightening the membership rules is another option, such as making people sign up weeks in advance or requiring member cards. Richard Lee, the director of environmental health regulatory programs at SFPHD, says that regardless of the vendor’s complaints, the regulations must be met.

“We think that these are reasonable options,” Lee said. “Anyone who is going to sell to the public needs to meet certain requirements, and unfortunately some of those requirements are going to be costly. They have to pay for permits and whatever those permits cost they’re going to have to pay.”

Until some agreement can be reached, the Underground Market won’t be operating, and San Franciscans will have to find their fix at the numerous above ground markets and restaurants. Lee says that he hopes that the market meets city demands, and soon, as this kind of entrepreneurial innovation is essential to a thriving food economy.

“We do encourage the micro-enterprises, and there are possible ways to have that started in San Francisco,” Lee said. “It is possible that there may be legislation in the future that might be supported by the Board [of Supervisors] to make it easier for them to get permitted, so there are things that can be done. For us, though, it is food safety and public health that are the most important things.”

But Rabins is already looking far beyond just the small market model.

“They just want to make it another farmers market,” Rabins said. “I’m not interested in running another farmers market. There are plenty of farmers markets around and people who have been doing them for years and know how to do them.”

He also isn’t interested in conforming to the pre-set expectations and sees the motivation behind the market taking it to new heights. In addition to reopening, he says that ForageSF has secured a kitchen space for helping entrepreneurs launch their small businesses and host public classes.

“We are going to hopefully have a rooftop garden with a movie screen, a retail space in front that sells products being made in the kitchen by vendors, and possibly a small-scale brewery in back,” Rabins said.

He is also reaching out to other similar market organizers, such as some in Los Angeles, to brainstorm ways to make this business model more acceptable across the country. He says they are in the initial phases of creating a model that is reproducible for others who want to start their own markets.

Once again, in the place where the organic food movement first bloomed, people are coming together to create new interactions between producers, consumers, and their food.

A song and dance at City Hall

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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3

It was a lively scene on the steps of City Hall Aug. 2, as back-to-back press events featured live performances, lots of cheering, and support for new legislation that supporters hope will benefit low-wage workers, small businesses, and musicians.

Spirits were high at the Progressive Workers’ Alliance (PWA) rally, as organizers anticipated strong support for an ordinance they helped craft which aims to prevent wage theft by strengthening the powers of the city’s Office of Labor Standards & Enforcement (OLSE).

The Wage Theft Prevention Ordinance would double fees for employers who retaliate against employees seeking to have labor laws enforced, impose a timeline in which employee complaints must be addressed, and create new penalties for employers who fail to adhere to local labor standards. During the rally, workers speaking in various languages described their experiences of working long hours without receiving minimum wage or overtime pay.

Organized under PWA as part of a number of organizations including the Chinese Progressive Association, Young Workers United, the Filipino Community Center, the San Francisco Day Laborer’s Program, and others, the crowd of PWA members crammed into the Board Chambers and exploded into applause when the board voted unanimously to pass the ordinance on first reading.

Following a noon rally, youth with the Chinese Progressive Association’s high school program treated supporters and members of the press to a dance performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7CVb4K3tcw

Directly afterward, District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi appeared at the podium to drum up support for legislation he’d proposed to create a more affordable permit for cafes and restaurants wishing to host live performances in their establishments. He described it as a business-friendly idea that could “put musicians to work,” adding that more music in smaller venues could help dispel the notion that San Francsico isn’t as supportive of the arts as Chicago, Boston, New York, or even Paris. A preliminary survey found that some 700 restaurants could benefit from having access to less expensive live performance permits, he said.

Supervisors showed unanimous support for Mirkarimi’s idea, but Sups. David Chiu and Mark Farrell each added amendments to ensure that live performances couldn’t go past 10 p.m. in certain neighborhoods in their districts.

Mirkarimi invited Jazz Mafia to play a tune before the board meeting started. Here’s what they sounded like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjRbGBTEdMk

Videos by Rebecca Bowe

Editorial: Step up to save CCA and take on PG&E

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Two things became abundantly clear at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission meeting July 26th: The Community Choice Aggregation program is off track — and General Manager Ed Harrington has no interest in making in work. The supervisors need to move aggressively to save CCA.

Since 2007, when a draft implementation plan was released, the goals of the program — which is supposed to offer a cleaner alternative to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. — have shifted fairly dramatically. No longer does the plan seek to meet PG&E’s rates. No longer is it aimed at the entire city. And the PUC is putting most of its effort into a short-term contract to buy green power from Shell Energy North America — and all-but ignoring the more important moves to build a publicly owned energy-generation infrastructure.

CCA, which allows cities to buy power in bulk and resell it (along existing private utility lines) to customers, is a step in the right direction. The program now before the PUC would put San Francisco in the public power business — to a degree. But as the financial projections for the program demonstrate, the real savings and the real revenue won’t come until San Francisco replaces PG&E as the owner and operator of the local grid. A full-scale public power system would allow the city to both increase renewable power and cut rates — and would bring hundreds of millions into the treasury in the process (see “Mud Money,” 6/26/08).

Still, CCA offers many benefits — including the chance for the city to build local renewable energy facilities. And that’s where the PUC’s efforts ought to be focused.

During discussion of the proposed contract July 26th, Harrington was largely negative and talked repeatedly as if he didn’t think the original program could work. He kept saying that renewable power was more costly (true, today — but not after the city starts building its own facilities). He said that the goals the “advocates” (who include a majority of the Board of Supervisors) have demanded were unrealistic. And most of the commissioners seemed clueless.

That’s a terrible way to launch one of the most important environmental and financial initiatives in modern San Francisco history. Marin County is already well on the way to creating a working CCA system. Other counties are moving forward. And San Francisco, the only city in the nation with a federal mandate for public power, can’t get its civic act together.

The supervisors need to get involved, quickly. The Local Agency Formation Commission, which is overseeing this project, should haul Harrington in for a hearing as soon as possible. Among other things, the LAFCO members should ask why Harrington is so determined that the project won’t work; why his proposal is geared to a small number of residents and businesses who would face higher rates for power; and what his plans are to create a local energy generation infrastructure that over the long run would be dramatically cheaper and greener than anything PG&E will be able to offer.

The problems with CCA reflect the immense challenges of putting this program in the hands of a commission a majority of whose members were appointed by a mayor who opposed public power, managed by someone who has never supported municipalization efforts. Harrington and the SFPUC appear to be setting CCA up to fail. The supervisors need to step in before that happens.

 

Those crazy San Franciscans

Zelda Bronstein
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63
Those crazy San Franciscans

Joe Eskenazi has an SF Weekly piece that pretty much repeats what he’s been saying for years: That San Francisco has too much government. This time he goes after all the boards, task forces and commissions — and yeah, there are a lot of them, and yeah, some of them might not be necessary. I could also argue, though, that San Francisco is one of the most politically active cities in the world, and that having a whole lot of ways for residents to plug in to what’s going on in their city isn’t a bad thing at all.


Whatever. Here’s the stuff that drives me nuts:


Last month, the volunteer body appointed by the Board of Supervisors advocated curtailing all pet sales in the city — including guppies, goldfish, and live rodents meant as snake food. Coming on the heels of a proposed criminalization of circumcision, San Francisco was, once again, reduced to an international punchline — many were left to wonder whether a ban on circumcising goldfish is our logical next step. Disbelieving articles poured in from around the globe. Perhaps none was as caustic as a piece in London‘s Telegraph titled “San Francisco goldfish ban exposes the pathology of America’s bourgeois liberal nutjobs.”


Ah, yes, Joe: Those crazy San Francisco liberals and their madcap ideas.


I’m not for banning pet sales (although I think banning puppy mills — also a wacky idea that came out of the Animal Control and Welfare Commission — is a fine thing). And I’m not for the circumcision ban (although, geez, it has lead to some interesting commentary that gives new meaning to the term “dick face.”)


But every time I hear somebody talk about how San Franciscans should stop it with the nutty ideas, I think about a few I’ve followed over the years — and how they’ve changed the way the entire nation thinks. Let me suggest a few for Eskanazi to look at:


“Those crazy San Franciscans don’t want to build freeways.” Yep — in the late 1950s and early 1960s, while the rest of the country (and in particular, California) was rushing to build freeways as fast as possible, people in this city decided to say No. The freeway revolt and the movement that grew out of it changed the way Americans view cities. Wacky shit.


“Those crazy San Franciscans think homosexuals should have the same rights as married people.” Yep, back in the 1970s San Franciscans started talking not only about nondiscrimination — they actually said that gay people who live together should have health insurance benefits. Imagine that.


“Those crazy San Franciscans think that women should make the same amount of money as men.” When then- Sup Nancy Walker introduced legislation in 1985 making “comparable worth” (the notion that men and women who do jobs that require comparable skills should be paid the same) it made headlines all over the country — and was universally derided by the same set that now complain about “liberal nutjobs.” It cost the city a lot of extra money (money that the Eskinazi crew of the day said was too much for a broke city) and led to all sorts of comments about social engineering. San Francisco was the first to push the issue, and it’s now considered mainstream employment policy.


“Those crazy San Franciscans think we ought to give bicycles the same rights as cars.” All the way back in the mid-1980s, bicycle advocates were talking about bike lanes, bike maps, bike racks and alternatives to the automobile. What were they drinking?


“Those crazy San Franciscans think that transgender people ought to get health benefits.” This was as recent as 1993 — and if you think circumcision and pets put SF in the right-wing-talk-show and late-night-comedy targets, imagine when the city decided “to use taxpayer dollars to fund sex-change operations,” as the detractors insisted. Guess what? It turned out to be a major step forward for transgender rights.


“Those crazy San Franciscans think gay people should be allowed to get married.” We did. We do. We were first. The rest of the country is following.


“Those crazy San Franciscans want to ban plastic bags.” We did. For good reason. So did L.A. In another few years, it will be national policy.


“Those crazy San Franciscans want to ban happy meals.” Guess what — McDonald’s got the message. 


I could list plenty more.


Yeah, we’re ahead of the curve. Yeah, sometimes our shit seems crazy. But it’s the crazy shit that makes the world change — and over time, the world catches up to San Francisco. And if we weren’t doing it, the world would get better just a little more slowly.


 


 


 

Enviro justice groups spar with SFPUC on power program

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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10

A Pew Research Center analysis based on the latest U.S. Census data has found that Latino and African American households weathered deeper blows in the economic recession, driving the wealth gap between whites and minorities to an historic high. As things stand under current economic conditions, the Washington Post reports, the median net worth of a white family is now 20 times that of a black family, and 18 times that of a Latino family — roughly twice the gap that existed before the recession, and the biggest gap ever since 1984.

Meanwhile, a report issued yesterday by the Natural Resources Defense Council hit on another alarming trend, outlining the water-related challenges coastal cities will face as climate change takes its toll. The report highlights sea level rise, land erosion, saltwater intrusion, flooding, impacts to fisheries, and more frequent and intense storm events. (That’s to say nothing of wildfires.)

In San Francisco, a small group of environmental justice advocates has been working for the better part of a decade to help craft a municipal energy program with the aim of turning the tide, at least on a small local scale, to promote greater economic equality and fend off the worst impacts of climate change. Advocates from groups such as Global Exchange, the Local Clean Energy Alliance, the Sierra Club, the Brightline Defense Project, the San Francisco Green Party, and others have long envisioned CleanPower SF as a way to bolster local job creation, particularly for people who reside in the city’s low-income neighborhoods. The twin goal of CleanPower SF, also known as community choice aggregation (CCA), is to launch a local response to climate change by offering San Franciscans the option of purchasing clean electricity generated from local, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

At a July 26 meeting of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) in City Hall, however, it became clear that this overarching vision for the program wasn’t gaining traction with the agency that is tasked with implementing it. As the program inches closer to a review by the Board of Supervisors, advocates have reached an impasse with SFPUC staff as to how the whole endeavor should proceed.

Grassroots advocates raised concerns that the latest proposal for CleanPower SF amounted to a setup for failure, unless there was a concerted effort to plan for robust development of local green-energy sources. While SFPUC staff indicated that the current proposal would result in new jobs at call centers, advocates said more needed to be done to plan for installing local energy-generating sources which could truly bolster local job creation.

Yet SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington said that what the advocates were asking for wasn’t realistic. He dismissed the original vision for CCA, articulated in a 2007 board-approved ordinance, as “not a realistic goal.” And he spoke in a condescending tone about the grassroots stakeholders, saying, “People saw that they would like green power to be cheaper, and therefore they believed that it was.”

Under the proposal that the SFPUC described to commissioners July 26, monthly electricity rates under CleanPower SF would be at least $7 more than estimated PG&E rates. That’s a key difference from the original draft implementation plan, hammered out in 2007, to “meet or beat” rates offered by the investor-owned utility.

The new proposal has also been scaled down considerably since 2007. As planned, CleanPower SF would contract with Shell Energy North America to begin offering 30 megawatts of 100 percent green power to just 75,000 municipal customers by the spring of 2012. That’s assuming most of the 229,000 residential account holders who will initially be enrolled will opt out; and SFPUC media relations representative Charles Sheehan noted that the full customer base would eventually roll up to the original goal of 340,000 customers. Still, the target at the outset represents just a fraction of the 360 megawatts of power for 340,000 customers originally called for, with a 51 percent renewable energy mix. Under this new scheme, electricity would be purchased through Shell on the open market, with long-term plans to develop local sources but no solid short-term goals for achieving that end.

SFPUC Commissoner Francesca Vietor asserted that SFPUC staff should continue working closely with the grassroots stakeholders and find a way to seriously plan for building local renewable sources, which could ultimately serve to drive municipal rates down and make the program more viable and competitive. “I think local build-out is a really exciting and important opportunity, and a critical piece of the CCA program,” she said.

Commissioners continued the decision on whether to approve parameters for a term sheet and submit it to the full board, pushing the discussion back until September unless a special meeting is called. Several commissioners raised concerns about the financial risk to the city, since the program would have higher rates than PG&E and is designed in such a way that a bulk of power would have to be purchased up front before the agency can determine how many customers will opt out.

“I was actually glad to hear a lot of commissioners raise a lot of concerns, especially about the financials,” Eric Brooks, a long-time CCA advocate speaking on behalf of the Green Party and an organization called Our City, told commissioners. “The more of a local build-out … the lower your price, and the lower you can get in terms of the risks.”

June Brashares, green energy director at Global Exchange, echoed Brooks’ comments in a telephone interview with the Guardian. “The proposal they’re doing now is really vulnerable,” because the higher rates will make the alternative power program less competitive, she said. “The whole reason for CCA — yes, we want cleaner energy — but the real key is the building of local energy sources to create an economic boost, and local green careers. And that’s not at the core of what the SFPUC is doing.”

This article has been corrected from an earlier version.

Taking out the trash

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Taking out the trash

sarah@sfbg.com

A controversial city waste disposal contract appeared primed for final approval by the Board of Supervisors on July 26 (after Guardian press time) — despite being challenged by a lawsuit and initiative campaign — after two progressive supervisors rescinded their initial vote in a July 20 committee hearing and supported awarding the contract to Recology.

City staff had recommended awarding the 10-year, $112-million landfill disposal and facilitation agreement to Recology (formerly NorCal Waste Systems, Inc.), which has grown from a locally based company to the 10th largest waste management firm in the US, with $652 million in annual revenue, according to Waste Age magazine.

If the full board follows the unanimous recommendation of its Budget & Finance Committee, the vote will authorize Recology to transport and dispose up to 5 million tons of the city’s solid waste at the company’s Ostrom Road landfill in Wheatland, Yuba County. The contract will take effect when San Francisco’s disposal agreement at Waste Management Inc.’s Altamont landfill in Livermore expires — estimated to occur in 2015.

The deal will cement Recology’s control, at least for a 10-year period, over all aspects of the city’s solid waste stream, at a cost of about $225 million per year, even as the company faces significant challenges, many related to the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance.

That law, approved during the Great Depression to prevent conflict between competing garbage haulers, has resulted in Recology’s exercising complete control over trash collection and transportation in San Francisco, without having to bid on those contracts or pay the city franchise fees.

During the negotiations over the city’s next landfill contract — the only aspect of San Francisco’s waste stream put out to bid — this 79-year-old law was invoked to explain why Recology has the sole authority to transport trash and compostables to Wheatland, which is 130 miles from San Francisco.

The move also comes as Yuba County is contemplating significantly increasing dumping fees at the landfill — from $4.40 per ton to $20 or $30 per ton — a hike that could erase the $100 million that the Department of the Environment (DoE) claims the Recology deal would save over a competing bid by Waste Management Inc. WM is the largest waste firm in the U.S., according to Waste Age, with about $12.5 billion in annual revenues.

On July 18, WM filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court to prevent the city from approving the agreements with Recology on the grounds that they violate the city’s competitive bid laws.

“The Department of the Environment inappropriately and unlawfully expanded the scope of its 2009 ‘request for proposal for landfill disposal capacity’ and, therefore, violated the city’s competitive procurement laws,” WM alleges in the suit.

WM has long held that DoE inappropriately issued a tentative contract award for both the transportation and disposal of solid waste to Recology without soliciting any other transportation bids. But DoE, which gleans $7 million annually (to operate recycling, green building, and environmental justice programs and long-term planning for waste disposal) from rates that Recology’s customers pay, ruled last year that WM’s objections are “without merit.”

Now WM is asking the court to require DoE to scrap its award to Recology and issue a new request for proposals to comply with competitive bidding requirements.

“There is ample time for the department to issue a new RFP,” WM stated July 18, noting that there is plenty of room at its Altamont landfill to accommodate the city’s waste after the contract expires.

That same week, a coalition led by retired Judge Quentin Kopp, community activist Tony Kelly, and Waste Solutions CEO David Gavrich announced that it had submitted enough signatures to qualify an initiative on the June 2012 ballot requiring competitive bidding and franchise fees from any company that seeks to win any aspect of the city’s solid waste business.

Kelly says his group was unable to collect enough signatures in time for the November election because Recology hired the city’s two biggest signature-gathering firms to circulate what he calls a “phony petition” in support of Recology’s performance in San Francisco. And signature gatherers say they were harassed by Recology boosters while trying to petition citywide.

“But I believe the question of whether candidates support competitive bidding will continue to be a defining issue this fall,” Kelly said.

The board’s decision on the landfill agreements has already been delayed several months, following a February 2011 Budget and Legislative Analyst report recommending that the board consider submitting a proposition to the voters to repeal the 1932 refuse ordinance so that future collection and transportation services be put to bid. The report also recommended that future residential and commercial refuse collection rates be subject to board approval.

But with two progressive supervisors running in citywide elections this fall, and with Recology exerting massive pressure on elected officials, the Kelly coalition could not find four supervisors to place such a charter amendment on the November ballot, forcing them to launch their own initiative.

And at the July 20 meeting of the board’s Budget and Finance Committee, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who is running for sheriff, and Sup. Jane Kim rescinded their initial decision to send the agreements to the full Board without recommendation. Instead, after the committee had moved on to other business, they joined Chair Carmen Chu, one of the most conservative supervisors, in forwarding the Recology agreements to the full board with unanimous support.

Mirkarimi interrupted the committee’s next discussion to rescind the landfill vote. “I think there was some misunderstanding a little bit in wrapping up the landfill agreements with Recology, ” Mirkarimi said. He said that he asked for the vote to be rescinded, “so we can accurately reflect some of the sentiments being articulated here. I think we just learned some things on the fly.”

In many respects, the switch by Kim and Mirkarimi made sense: prior to their initial vote, they made positive statements about the proposed agreements, but also stated an interest in exploring the appropriateness of the city’s 1932 law.

“Overall, I think this was a good contract,” Kim said. But she noted that, thanks to the 1932 ordinance, the city doesn’t get franchise fees. And she claimed that it only gets half of what other Bay Area cities get from their waste contractors. “So, I’m really interested in continuing that conversation, but I think it’s a separate conversation,” she said.

Mirkarimi said it was his concerns that led the committee to “put a pause” on the Recology agreements until it could “undertake more homework.” He also noted that his office “held a number of meetings” and he tried to “leverage this opportunity to reanimate activity at the Port.”

“I was hoping that we might be able to arrive at something much more deliverable,” Mirkarimi said, presumably referring to the fact that these efforts resulted in DoE unveiling an amendment to include two “possible changes” to operations and facilities at the Port of San Francisco in the agreements.

These changes involve utilizing other modes of transportation, including barges, as alternatives to the rail-haul plan proposed in the agreement. They also call for developing new facilities at the Port for handling waste, recyclables, organics, and other refuse. The cost of such alternatives would be passed onto the rate payers.

“I think that, cost-effectively, we may be able to insert the Port into this equation, but it’s not ready for prime-time yet,” Mirkarimi said. He concluded by saying that Recology has been innovative in reducing the city’s waste stream.

“This should be a front-burner conversation,” Mirkarimi said, noting that former Mayor Gavin Newsom focused on making San Francisco “the greenest city” in the United States. He added that San Francisco claims to have a 77 percent diversion rate, the highest in the U.S., and said, “That comes at a cost, it doesn’t come for free.”

After the meeting, DoE deputy director David Assmann said that the City Attorney’s Office is reviewing WM’s filing. “But it’s too soon to comment,” Assmann said.

He also claimed that, thanks to the 1932 ordinance, “there was no practical way” for another company to transport San Francisco’s waste to its designated landfill, “other than building a second transfer station outside the city.”

But Kelly continued to express concerns that the agreements are not competitive, and that the city lacks a contract and ensuing franchise fees. “They are running this as if it’s still the 1950s,” he said.

Kelly claimed that Recology Vice President John Legnitto, who is the 2011 chair of the SF Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors, recently told him that Recology has been in negotiations with City Hall around a $4 million franchise fee, but that the money would now be spent opposing Kelly’s competitive bidding initiative.

Anger erupts over police shootings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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11
Anger erupts over police shootings

rebeccab@sfbg.com

As the murky details of two recent police shootings emerge, a palpable anger surging through targeted communities points to a deeper issue than the particular circumstances surrounding each of these deaths. Simply put, many Bay Area communities are fed up with police violence.

For many activists who descended on transit stations to protest the fatal BART police shooting of Oscar Grant III, the 20-year-old unarmed Hayward man who was killed on New Year’s Day 2009, an upwelling of rage was rekindled after BART cops shot and killed a homeless man named Charles Blair Hill on July 3 in Civic Center Station.

Then, on July 16, San Francisco police officers in the Bayview shot 19-year-old Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. multiple times after he ran from the T-Third train platform because he’d been stopped for fare evasion, leaving him dead on the sidewalk.

The recent officer-involved shootings occurred under two different law enforcement bodies, and both incidents remain under police investigation with many questions still unanswered. BART police say Hill was brandishing a knife; the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) said its response was justified because Harding fired at officers first. The investigation in Harding’s case took a bizarre twist July 21 when SFPD issued a press release based on a medical examiner’s report stating that Harding had died not from rounds fired by police, but a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

But among communities distrustful of the police, the particulars of each case seemed to matter less than the perception that officers are too quick to escalate conflicts into deadly standoffs. Both incidents provoked intense anger because they resulted in marginalized transit passengers suffering sudden, violent deaths following interactions that were initiated by police. The shootings sparked angry protests, prompting standoffs at Civic Center BART Station, along the T-Third line in the Bayview, on Valencia Street, in Dolores Park, inside the Castro Muni Station, and at the cable car turnaround on Powell Street.

A group of activists staged protests in the Mission following the Bayview police shooting, snaking through the streets as they disrupted traffic and public transit service. “The march began at Dolores Park where nearly 200 of us departed,” an anonymous post on the anticapitalist Bay of Rage website recounted, describing the events of a July 19 protest that resulted in 43 arrests. “Upon reaching the Castro Muni Station, all hell broke loose…. What had now become a mob moved effortlessly past the bewildered cops … Trash was set alight and thrown down onto the tracks below … ticket machines, the fare checkpoints, and the agent booth were all smashed with hammers and flags — totally ruined. Smoke bombs and fireworks were thrown throughout the station.”

This display occurred just eight days after protesters shut down BART stations in downtown San Francisco during rush hour to condemn the fatal shooting of Hill, the homeless BART passenger.

The message from outraged Bayview residents at a chaotic and emotionally charged community forum staged July 20 at the Bayview Opera House was not that people were upset that this had happened to Harding, a Washington state resident, in particular. Instead, people expressed outrage that police had gunned down yet another African American youth, and that unless some complicated and long-standing issues were addressed, it could happen again, to anyone. The forum was organized in partnership with the SFPD and clergy members from the Bayview. Police had prepared a PowerPoint presentation, but never managed to get that far.

At the meeting, Police Chief Greg Suhr tried to provide an explanation for the July 16 shooting. “During this foot pursuit, at some point in time, the suspect … fired at the officers, and the officers returned fire. This is the account that we have so far,” he said. “I cannot tell you how badly that I feel … as captain of this station for two years,” Suhr continued, as an angry crowd shouted him down.

Police escorted Suhr out of the meeting before everyone who had signed up to speak had a chance to be heard. Once outside, the police chief told reporters that he planned to return.

After Suhr and other city officials departed from the meeting, District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen stayed at the Bayview Opera House and addressed the crowd that remained, she later told the Guardian, and engaged in discussion with Bayview homeowners, merchants, and other community stakeholders.

“We had a very thoughtful conversation,” she said. “People had questions about [Municipal Transportation Agency] policy over the SFPD riding the bus. We talked about the importance of attending Board of Supervisors meetings, Police Commission meetings, and giving public comment. And there will be future conversations, without obstruction.”

Many who attended the meeting voiced concerns that went well beyond the July 16 incident. Several said they believed youth were unduly harassed by law enforcement over Muni fares on a regular basis. Elvira Pollard spoke about how her son was shot 36 times by police and killed seven years ago. Another woman complained that police had used abusive language when she was arrested in the Bayview four years ago.

Mayor Ed Lee told the Guardian that a bigger police presence at the Oakdale/Palou stop on the T-Third line was part of the city’s strategy to prevent violence in that area. “I actually asked the chief to pay more attention to areas that had a history of gun violence and shootings and other kinds of violence … and it just so happens that this particular area, Third and Palou, is a place where there’s a lot of violence,” Lee said. “So we had more uniformed officers on that specifically at not only my request, but with the understanding of the police chief, too.”

Responding to acts of violence by sending in more police sounds simple enough, yet it seems a toxic environment has arisen out of a heightened police presence in a community where tensions between police and residents already run high, fueled by anxiety and bad past experiences. Add to this dynamic a trend of youth who lack other transportation alternatives riding public transit even if they don’t have enough money to pay the fare, and the situation feeds ongoing strife, particularly when fare evaders are asked for identification and searched by police.

Lee, in partnership with Cohen, called a meeting in City Hall July 19 with leaders of the Bayview community. The press was not allowed to attend, but participants said later that officials gave a presentation about the shooting and played an audio of gunfire from the SFPD’s SpotShotter program to offer evidence that Harding had fired first. Later that day, the SFPD reported that gunshot residue had been detected on Harding’s hand, supporting the police account of what happened. Yet the July 21 press release, suggesting that Harding had shot himself because a .380-caliber bullet that police said could not have come from SFPD firearms had entered the right side of Harding’s neck, made it even less clear what really happened.

By July 22, confusion was still swirling over why a gun hadn’t immediately been recovered from the scene of the shooting, and there still wasn’t any clarity on whether an online video of a passerby removing a silvery object from the sidewalk showed a person who retrieved Harding’s firearm after the shooting, as police have claimed. Police recovered a gun that was initially believed to be Harding’s, but later reported that the gun could not have been the same weapon that discharged a .380 caliber round into the victim’s head.

Chris Jackson, a Bayview resident who sits on the board of City College of San Francisco and ran for District 10 supervisor in 2010, said after the City Hall meeting that he felt it had amounted to little more than a lecture from the city’s top officials. Jackson said he perceived a need for a policy shift in terms of how to deal with fare evasion and violence prevention. “We need a better approach,” he said. “We cannot address this with more cops on the T line.”

After Harding’s death, it came to light that the 19-year-old Washington state man had served time for attempting to promote prostitution, and had been named as a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old Seattle woman. Yet a widely circulated online video showing him writhing on the sidewalk in a pool of blood after being shot, while a handful of officers continued to stand around with weapons drawn, sparked outrage. Once the forum at the Bayview Opera House had broken up, LaDonna Callaway condemned the police response, saying, “They didn’t have to shoot him as many times as they did.”

Angelique Mayhem, a Bayview resident who stood nearby, told the Guardian that she didn’t think the meeting had solved anything. “A boy gets gunned down. We don’t know if there was a gun there, but we do know that for 40 damn years, people have been getting gunned down in this community,” Mayhem said. “People are angrier now than when they were when they walked in the door. We’re a community that’s truly in pain, that’s truly frustrated, and really needs some respect.”

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST PROGRESSIVE CLUBHOUSE

Andrew Lam
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0

Since early January, when Chris Daly stepped down from the Board of Supervisors and took ownership of the Buck Tavern, a political realignment has made City Hall a far less welcoming place for progressives. So they’ve followed Daly over to his new digs (nicknamed Daly’s Dive) instantly transforming the Mid-Market bar into the seat of power for the progressive local government-in-exile: a place where revolutions are plotted and frustrations are soothed with strong drinks and juicy burgers. With SFGTV on the tube, Daly slinging classic cocktails and brewskis, and malcontents lining the bar, the Buck has become a refuge for leftist political junkies. And for those looking for shockingly clean bar bathrooms.

1655 Market, SF.(415) 874-9183

Kim removes homeless shelter reform measure from ballot

Sasha Cuttler
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Kim removes homeless shelter reform measure from ballot

Under pressure from the Mayor’s Office, Sup. Jane Kim today removed her sponsorship of the Fair Shelters Initiatives, effectively killing the measure that was set to appear on the November ballot, according to activists working on the issue. Sup. Eric Mar reportedly followed Kim’s lead and also removed his sponsorship, telling activists he was deferring to Kim’s decision.

“We hardly expected the supervisors would put a measure forward and then cave in before the campaign had even started,” said Bob Offer-Westort of the Coalition on Homelessness, which had asked Kim to be the lead sponsor of a measure that he said is the homeless community’s highest priority.

The measure would have removed shelter beds from the definition of housing under the city’s voter-approved Care Not Cash program, thus freeing up beds for the larger homeless population that is often denied space in shelters even as beds reserved for CNC recipients – who give up most of their welfare support in return for housing and services – often remain vacant.

The measure — which was sponsored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos, and John Avalos, in addition to Kim and Mar, giving it one more than the four votes it needed to make the ballot – had been harshly criticized by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and other downtown groups, as well as Mayor Ed Lee and other moderate politicians, who said it would somehow destroy CNC and attract more homeless people to the city.

In a recent email blast, Chamber head Steve Falk called the measure “alarming” and was “effectively dismantling the nationally-recognized program.” He tried to use the 100 nightly vacant shelter beds as a rationale against the measure (despite the fact that was the very problem the measure tried to correct), and wrote, “This measure is nothing more than pure politics to turn out progressive voters in a crowded mayoral race.”

Kim and her staffers haven’t returned Guardian calls for comments, and neither Mar nor Mirkarimi could be reached. But Offer-Westort said the arm-twisting by the Mayor’s Office shows just how little things have really changed at City Hall.

“It sets a really bad precedent when once again a mayor bullies members of the Board of Supervisors to get his way,” he said, noting that Kim still claimed to support the reform in her conversations with COH members. “It certainly wasn’t because she changed her mind about whether this was right or wrong. It had more to do with her concerns over the board’s relationship with Room 200.”

Will Esbernd support Lee?

Zelda Bronstein
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24
Will Esbernd support Lee?

As the tom toms grew louder at the Chronicle and in the Willie Brown/Rose Pak community for Interim Mayor Ed Lee to run for the full term as mayor, I emailed two impertinent questions to my district supervisor Sean Elsbernd:


1. Would you have nominated Ed Lee for interim mayor had you known he would consider running for the job?


2. Will you endorse him if he does decide to run for mayor?


As a longtime West Portal resident, I’ve always gotten annoyed at how Elsbernd (and other supervisors) love to play the neighborhood game back in their district — but when the chips are down on a power structure issue, they go down to City Hall and vote with Willie Brown and the downtown gang. Which is what happened in January on the critical vote for mayor when the Willie Brown/Rose Pak forces worked a quiet play to knock out the progressive candidates (Sheriff Mike Hennessey and former Mayor Art Agnos) and put in City Administrator  Ed Lee, a Willie Brown ally.


Elsbernd was happy to nominate Lee and told us at the time that he had done so because he wanted an interim mayor who would not run in November.


In his email answer to me, Elsbernd wrote, “I believe the benefits of that strategy have proven correct (e.g. the overall budget process and its unanimous approval, and the unanimous approval of the consensus and comprehensive pension/health care charter amendment.“


So what about today when Lee seems more and more poised to run?


Elsburn noted that he has not endorsed anyone, but that “I have been most attracted to the candidacies of City Attorney Dennis Herrera and former Supervisors Alioto-Pier and Bevan Dufty.” He said that these three have the “right combination of qualifications, experience, intelligence, skills and integrity to serve as mayor.”


So what’s his out? “Should Mayor Lee run for election, I would only consider endorsing his effort under one circumstance—if, and only if, I was convinced that without his candidacy, Sen. Leland Yee would be elected. That is, if I see that no one else can beat Sen, Yee other than Mayor Lee, then I would support a Mayor Lee campaign. At this point, I’m not convinced of that—I still think any one of the three I mentioned above could beat Sen. Yee.”


Well, that’s Elsbernd back in his district doing his neighborhood routine at the Village Grill, a favorite Elsbernd breakfast place. Elsbernd has still left himself a way to do what he said he was dead set against doing: going along with Willie Brown and  Rose Pak and  helping Lee become the fulltime mayor. Bring back Quentin Kopp and John Barbagelata. B3


 

Will Kopp’s competitive bidding initiative derail Recology’s train to Yuba?

Mary Magee
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Will Kopp’s competitive bidding initiative derail Recology’s train to Yuba?

Sponsors of an initiative to require competitive bidding on all aspects of the city’s multi-million-dollar garbage services say they plan to deliver their initiative petitions to the Department of Elections this afternoon. The petitions contain 12,000 signatures, far more than the 7,000-8,000 required, effectively signalling that, even after the city weeds out non-valid signatures, the initiative will qualify for the June 2012 election.

The move threatens to give the Board a political migraine, since the Board is set to vote July 26 on a Department of Environment resolution to expand Recology (formerly Norcal Waste System, Inc)’s monopoly on San Francisco’s garbage and recycling services.

In fact, the DoE resolution contains two separate agreements: a $112 million long-term landfill disposal agreement that was competitively bid, and a facilitation agreement that governs how waste is transported to the landfill and that was not competitively bid. As such, the city’s facilitation agreement is already the subject of a lawsuit that Waste Management Inc. filed in San Francisco Superior Court last week.

Sponsors of the competitive bidding ordinance, which include retired judge Quentin Kopp, community activist Tony Kelly and Waste Solutions CEO David Gavrich,believe the Board should delay voting on the landfill disposal and facilititation agreements until next summer, after voters have had a chance to weigh in on the bigger question of whether folks want competitive bidding on all the city’s garbage-related services, which are worth a quarter of a billion, each year. “

“It would be disrespectful to voters to accept a resolution while an initiative is pending,” Kopp stated.

“It would make sense if they severe the landfill disposal and facilitation agreements into two files,” Kelly added, referring to how the two separate agreements are currently lumped into one item on the Board’s July 26 agenda, under the section titled “recommendations of the Budget and Finance sub-committee.”

How the deal got filed in the B&F sub-committee’s recommended section is another story unto itself: Last Wednesday, after Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim, who sit on the Board’s Budget and Finance sub-committee, voted to send the deal to the Board with no recommendation, (a vote that suggested that they had some concerns with the deal) and after members of the public who came to testify about the item had left,  Mirkarimi asked to rescind the landfill vote.

“I think there was some misunderstanding a little bit in wrapping up the landfill agreements with Recology, “ Mirkarimi said, as he asked for the vote to be rescinded, “so we can accurately reflect some of the sentiments being articulated here.”
“I think we just learned some things on the fly,” Mirkarimi stated, as he and Kim joined committee chair Sup. Carmen Chu, one of the Board’s more conservative members, in sending the deal to the full Board “with recommendation.”

The Guardian learned of the vote switcheroo, after the DoE, which is apparently anxious to see the Recology agreements move forward, contacted us to say that our blog post about the Budget and Finance sub-committee, incorrectly stated that Mirkarimi and Kim had not given the deal their unmitigated thumbs-up. (The Guardian has since amended its blog post to accurately reflect what happened at the meeting, after this reporter and most members of the public, except the Chamber of Commerce’s Jim Lazarus, who supports the Recology agreements, had left the Board’s Chambers.)

Asked about the last-minute move to amend the vote Kelly said, “It was Ross at his Rossest.”

And in many ways, Mirkarimi’s move to rescind made sense: neither he nor Kim had registered any problems with the landfill disposal and facilitation agreements during the committee hearing, though a number of seemingly valid concerns were raised, including the observation by Yuba County supervisor Roger Abe that Yuba County is considering raising its host fees at Recology’’s Ostrom Road landfill in Wheatland from $4.40 a ton to $20- $30 a ton. If Yuba County does raise itsw fees, the move could wipe out the estimated $100 million in savings that DoE claims Recology’s proposal represents for San Francisco ratepayers. According to Abe, Yuba’s fees have not been raised for 14 years, and his county, which is one of the poorest in California, could use the additional income, especially if it is going to see its local landfill fill up faster than anticipated, thanks to San Francisco sending up to 5 million tons of trash over a 10-year period.

To be fair, Mirkarimi did warn that it would be unwise to dismiss Yuba County’s concerns , but he countered that any county can raise its fees. And DoE suggested that it was unlikely that Yuba County can raise its fees excessively, because those same fees would have to be paid by the other municipalities that use the Ostrom ROad dump, most of which are small towns that can’t afford to pay as much as relatively prosperous Bay Area cities like San Francicso.

Instead, Mirkarimi and Kim reserved most of their concerns for the bigger question of whether San Francisco ratepayers are best served by the city’s continuing lack of competitive bidding and franchise fee requirements on San Francisco’s remaining $225-million-a-year garbage collection related services–concerns that seem to bring us back full circle to Kopp and Kelly’s competitive bidding ordinance, which they had hoped to qualifty for

Asked how many supervisors he thought will stand up tomorrow and dig into the details of the DoE agreements and how they contradict with the requirements of the Kopp-Kelly-Gavrich competing bidding initiative, Kelly said, “Two.”

If so, that’s not likely to derail Recology’s train to Yuba, especially given that Mayor Ed Lee, who holds veto power over any item that less than eight supervisors support or oppose, told the Guardian in February that he believes Recology had earned its privilege.

But so far the City Attorney’s Office is remaining mum about the potential impact of WM’s lawsuit on Recology’s train to Yuba County, a silence that will give the Board the political cover they apparently so desperately need, if they vote tomorrow to haul San Francisco’s trash to Yuba County by rail, an arrangement that won’t start until after the city’s current contract at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill expires, something that is not anticipated to happen until 2015, based on the city’s current diversion rates.

 

Recology president Mike Sangiacomo disses the Guardian as landfill agreements head to full Board

Mary Magee
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4

Dressed in neon- yellow vests, a crowd of Recology employees filed into the Board’s Chambers to witness the Board’s Budget and Finance subcommittee, which Sup. Carmen Chu chairs, vote to forward the Department of Environment’s proposal to award the city’s landfill disposal and facilitation agreements to Recology (formerly NorCal Waste, Inc), to the full Board.

The B&F vote wasn’t exactly a surprise. In the past six months, Recology’s top brass have been exerting pressure on the committee members to approve the agreements, which got delayed after folks started raising questions about the lack of a franchise fee and competitive bidding on all other aspects of San Francisco’s multimillion dollar municipal solid waste stream. And lobbyist Alex Clemens reported $17, 134.25 in promised payments from Recology between January and June 2011 for services that included contact with B&F subcommittee vice-chair Ross Mirkarimi in mid-June.

If the full Board goes ahead and gives the green light July 26, that approval would authorize Recology, which Waste Age’s June 2011 issue named as the 10th largest waste management company in the U.S.,  to start transporting and disposing up to 5 million tons of municipal solid waste in its Ostrom Road Landfill in Wheatland, Yuba County, once the city’s agreement at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill in Livermore expires, which is expected to happen some time in 2014 or 2015.

The initial refusal of Mirkarimi and fellow B&F subcommittee member Sup. Jane Kim to agree to Chu’s suggestion that they forward the proposed agreements “with recommendation” appeared to be indications that both supervisors harbored some concerns about the deal. UPDATE: But According to DoE communications director Mark Westlund, before yesterday’s meeting was over, Mirkarimi called to rescind the vote on the landfill item asking for it to go to the full Board with recommendation. Jane Kim concurred, and so now it goes to the Board with unanimous committee support. 

“Overall, I think this was a good contract,” Kim said during the July 20 hearing.

Kim added that she thinks “We need to continue the dialogue,” about the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance, which resulted in Recology gaining a monopoly over every aspect of the city’s $225 million-a-year waste stream, except the $11-million-a-year landfill disposal agreement.

Kim noted that under the arrangement that grew out of the 1932 ordiance the city doesn’t get a  franchise fee. And she claimed that San Francisco is getting half of what other Bay Area cities, which all have franchise fees, get from their waste contractors. “So, I’m really interested in continuing that conversation, but I think it’s a separate conversation,” Kim said.

Mirkarimi, who is running for sheriff this fall, noted that he has been “the most outspoken member” of the committee on the Recology item, and that his concerns were what led the committee to “put a pause” on the deal, until the committee could “undertake more homework.”

Thanks to that pause, the city’s LAFCO committee was able to commission a report on what other jurisdictions do around transporting and disposing of their solid waste in landfills, and Mirkarimi noted that his office “held a number of meetings” and he tried to leverage this opportunity to “reanimate activity at the Port.”

“I was hoping we might be able to arrive at something much more deliverable,” Mirkarimi said, presumably referring to the fact that these efforts only resulted in DoE unveiling a last-minute amendment to include two “possible changes” to operations and facilities at the Port of San Francisco in the agreements.

These possible changes, which DoE director Melanie Nutter presented during the July 20 hearing, involve a) utilizing modes of transportation, including barges, other than, or in addition to, the rail haul plan proposed in the agreement, b) developing new facilities at the Port for the handling of waste, recyclables, organics and other refuse, meeting no later than the fifth anniversary of the agreement to discuss the feasibility of such changes, and c) incorporating into the rates, or otherwise financing, the cost of implementing such transportation alternatives and the cost of such facilities.

“I think that cost-effectively we may be able to insert the Port into this equation, but it’s not ready for prime-time yet,” Mirkarimi observed.

Mirkarimi concluded by noting the many innovative things Recology has done in terms of making the city’s waste disposal system more environmentally friendly. “This should be a front-burner conversation,” Mirkarimi said noting that Mayor Gavin Newsom made it a focus of his administration to make San Francisco the greenest city. Referring to the fact that San Francisco claims to have a 77 percent diversion rate—the highest in the U.S—Mirkarimi said, “That comes at a cost, it doesn’t come for free.”

Mirkarimi’s comments came in the wake of Nutter’s claims that Recology’s bid for the landfill disposal agreement will save ratepayers $130 million, over the 10-year course of the agreement, compared to the bid that Waste Management submitted. “This is the best deal for San Francisco,” Nutter said.

Nutter’s estimates were repeated by Jim Lazarus, who spoke on behalf of the SF Chamber of Commerce and the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth. “This is the right contract for the people of San Francisco,” Lazarus said.

But Nutter’s $130 million estimate was thrown into question by Yuba County Sup. Roger Abe, who had driven the 130 miles from Wheatland to alert San Francisco  that Recology’s bid is based on the assumption that Yuba County will only charge San Francisco a $4.40 per ton host fee.

As Abe pointed out, Yuba’s rates have not changed in 14 years, and his county is considering increasing them later this year by up to $20 or $30 a ton.
Such an increase, multiplied by the 5-million tons of garbage in the agreement, could dramatically increase the cost to San Francisco ratepayers over the course of 10 years, Abe observed..

[If Yuba County approves an increase, and diesel fuel prices also increase, it could eliminate much of the cost differential between Recology’s and WM’s bid: a recent Budget and Legislative Analyst report shows that Recology would charge $58.94 a ton, ($28.53 for tipping and other fees + $30.14 transportation cost per ton), while WM would charge $66.79 for tipping and other fees + $18.33 transportation costs per ton.). But if diesel rises above $2:30 a gallon, SF ratepayers could also get hit with a fuel surcharge.]

Also speaking at the hearing was former D10 supervisorial candidate Tony Kelly, who along with retired Judge Quentin Kopp, David Gavrich’s SF Bay Railroad, and other concerned citizens, recently gathered 12,000 signatures to qualify a petition to require all aspects of San Francisco’s $225-million-a-year waste services to be put out to bid, and to require the winning bidder to pay San Francisco an annual franchise fee.

Kelly et al were originally aiming to qualify their petition for the 2011 ballot, but they blame what Kelly described during public comment as, “a very expensive advertising campaign,” by Recology, plus harassment of petition gatherers and signers, as why they ultimately had to delay qualifying their initiative until the June 2012 election cycle.

Kelly urged the committee to probe the details of a $10 million Special Reserve fund, which Recology could access, under the terms of its facilitation agreement, to cover all its expenses that have not yet been reimbursed through rate hikes. “You’d think the Budget and Finance sub-committee would want to explore those things,” Kelly said.

David Gavrich, who is also President & CEO of Waste Solutions Group, which has hauled 6 million tons of waste in the last 20 years, said approving the landfill disposal agreement, without knowing what rates Yuba County are about to set, was tantamount to “opening up San Francisco’s check book to Yuba County.”

“Recology has never moved a single ton by rail,” Gavrich also asserted.

But while none of the supervisors asked for any clarification of details in the proposed agreements, including the last-minute amendment, during the hearing, Chu was quick to comment about Gavrich’s “blank check” comment, noting that any county can increase its rates. “Alameda County already charges a lot more, so there are no guarantees either way,” Chu said.

She also claimed that the agreements had been subjected to a “very extensive, competitive and open process, especially around tipping fees.” What Chu didn’t mention is that earlier this week, WM filed a writ of mandate with San Francisco Superior Court to prevent the final award of a new long-term solid waste transportation agreement and landfill disposal contract to Recology ordinances, on the grounds that the deal violates the City’s competitive procurement laws.

Instead, Chu urged moving on the deal as soon as possible, by invoking the specter of a disaster hitting San Francisco before a landfill agreement is reached.
“Imagine if we had to go to the open market,” Chu said, apparently ignoring the fact that WM has stated that it would take SF’s waste in an emergency.

After the vote, Kelly expressed concern that the agreements are not competitive, but cost-plus, which means all costs get passed along to ratepayers. And that the city continues to lack a contract and ensuing franchise fees. “They are running this as if it’s still the 1950s,” Kelly said.

Kelly claimed that Recology Vice President John Legnitto, who is the 2011 Chair of the SF Chamber of Commerce’s Board, told him that Recology had been in negotiations with City Hall around a $4 million franchise fee, but that the money would now be spent opposing Kelly et al’s competitive bidding initiative.
But when the Guardian approached Legnitto after the hearing, he refused to comment, telling me my questions should go to Recology’s Robert Reed.
And Recology President Mike Sangiacomo, who was speaking to Chronicle reporter Rachel Gordon rudely told me, “Not today thank you,” when I approached him seeking comment on the Board committee’s vote.

“What did you do to him?” Gordon asked, as she followed Sangiacomo into a corner of City Hall. Er, nothing. Except what any self-respecting reporter would do. Like ask questions, read documents, and challenge the spin.

But that something clearly has ruffled the feathers of Recology’s top brass.
 “It’s like Godzilla, it’s like Monster Island, they can’t help themselves,” Beyond Chron’s Eric Smith commented to me during the hearing. “I’m disgusted by how money, labor and all these different entities can influence what happens. They don’t care about the little people. They care about the bottom line.”

Smith, who ran for D10 supervisor in 2010, spoke to the huge pressure that has been exerted on those supervisors who have publicly raised questions about Recology’s monopoly over all other aspects of the city’s $225 million-per-year waste stream. “Big corporations like Recology throw big money around and intimidate the electeds,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, DoE deputy director David Assmann confirmed that the City Attorney’s Office is looking at WM’s writ of mandate. But Assmann added that it is too early to respond to questions about the implications of that legal action on the Recology agreements.

Assmann also responded to a number of questions I’d already raised on the Guardian’s blog about the juicy details buried in the Recology agreements, beginning with a special reserve fund that was established in 1988, as part of Recology’s facilitation agreement that governed the transportation of waste to WM’s Altamont landfill, which is where San Francisco has been depositing its trash since 1987, and that will be rolled over to form the basis of a new special reserve fund.

Assmann said the fund currently contains almost $29 million, but only needs a baseline of $15 million. The extra funds will be the subject of a hearing this fall, he said, to determine how to use the balance, including exploring the possibility of using the funds, which were collected through a 1.3 percent surcharge on ratepayers, to lower the garbage rates.

Assmann also noted that while there is no limit on how much Yuba County can theoretically increase its host fees, “there has to be a nexus with associated costs,” and that Yuba County supervisors would have to bring any such proposed increase, which would also apply to all their other landfill users, to their voters.

Assmann further noted that the idea behind developing new facilities relates to the city’s 2020 goal of zero waste is “to get to zero waste we need new methods of handling waste,” Assmann told me explaining that San Francisco wants to be able to take residual material and process it so it could be recycled and wouldn’t end up in the landfill.

Assmann said a consultant is comparing the feasibility of building those facilities on land next to Recology’s Tunnel Road facility in Brisbane, or on land the Port owns in San Francisco, and the report should be completed later this year. He also noted that the transportation amendment would allow the City to switch or improve its transportation mode, during the life of the agreement, should cleaner technologies be developed, “including trains that run on less polluting fuel.”

Assmann clarified that San Francisco ratepayers won’t be footing the cost of building a new rail spur in Yuba County. “We’re not paying capital costs. The rail spur is not a cost that Recology can charge because it’s out of county. And if San Francisco only produces 2 million tons during the life of the agreement, we are under no obligation beyond that.”

And he noted that a potential $10 million contingency payment would only go into play if the City gave Recology the green light, and the company incurred costs related to rail haul, and the City then reneged on its deal, at which point Recology could then use its incurred costs to justify why it needs up to $10 million to included in the garbage rates.

All interesting details as we approach the Board’s July 26 vote—with a lawsuit hanging over the City’s head. So stay tuned…

Editorial: Don’t gut SF campaign law

Maria Poblet
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1

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

 

 

Wage theft prevention ordinance moves forward

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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33

Supervisors expressed strong support July 20 for an ordinance that a San Francisco coalition of labor advocates is pushing for to prevent wage theft and shore up protections for low-income workers. Spearheaded by Sups. Eric Mar and David Campos with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, Jane Kim, John Avalos, and David Chiu as co-sponsors, the legislation would enhance the power of the city’s Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement (OLSE) and double fines for employers who retaliate against workers.

Dozens of low-wage restaurant workers, caregivers, and day laborers turned out for a July 20 Budget & Finance Committee meeting to speak in support of the Wage Theft Prevention Ordinance, which was drafted in partnership with the Progressive Workers Alliance. The umbrella organization includes grassroots advocacy groups such as the Chinese Progressive Association, the Filipino Community Center, Pride at Work, Young Workers United, and others.

A restaurant worker who gave his name as Edwin said during the hearing that he’d been granted no work breaks, no time off, and had his tips stolen by his employer during a two-and-a-half year stint in a San Francisco establishment, only to be fired for trying to take a paid sick day. “When I was let go, I did not receive payment for my last days there,” he said.

His experience is not uncommon. An in-depth study of labor conditions in Chinatown restaurants conducted by the Chinese Progressive Association found that some 76 percent of employees did not receive overtime pay when they worked more than 40 hours in a week, and roughly half were not being paid San Francisco’s minumum wage of $9.92 an hour.

“People who need a job and can’t afford to lose it are vulnerable to exploitation,” Shaw San Liu, an organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association who has been instrumental in advancing the campaign to end wage theft, told the Guardian.

The ordinance would increase fines against employers from $500 to $1,000 for retaliating against workers who stand up for their rights under local labor laws. It would establish $500 penalties for employers who don’t bother to post notice of the minimum wage, don’t provide contact information, neglect to notify employees when OLSE is conducting a workplace investigation, or fail to comply with settlement agreements in the wake of a dispute. It would also establish a timeline in which worker complaints must be addressed.

“The fact is that even though we have minimum wage laws in place, those laws are still being violated not only throughout the country but here in San Francisco,” Campos told the Guardian. “Wage theft is a crime, and we need to make sure that there is adequate enforcement — and that requires a change in the law so that we provide the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement more tools and more power to make sure that the rights of workers are protected. Not only does it protect workers, but it also protects businesses, because the vast majority of businesses in San Francisco are actually … complying with the law, and it’s not fair for them to let a small minority that are not doing that get away with it.”

So far, the ordinance is moving through the board approval process with little resistance. Mayor Ed Lee has voiced support, and Budget Committee Chair Carmen Chu, who is often at odds with board progressives, said she supported the goal of preventing wage theft and thanked advocates for their efforts during the hearing. The item was continued to the following week due to several last-minute changes, and will go before the full board on Aug. 2.

Mayor Lee meets with Bayview community leaders about officer-involved shooting

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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16

Mayor Ed Lee and officials from the San Francisco Police Department met with Bayview community leaders in City Hall July 19 to discuss the police investigation surrounding a July 16 officer-involved shooting that has prompted intense community anger and protests. While city officials indicated that the meeting was called to provide information and updates for the community, frustrated community members emerging from the City Hall conference room dismissed it as “more of a lecture,” saying city officials weren’t open to hearing broader community concerns that have intensified in the wake of this tragic event.

Reporters were not allowed in the room while the meeting was held because “it’s more of a community meeting,” according to mayoral communications staff member Francis Tsang. Attendees included Bayview community leaders Chris Jackson, Geoffrea Morris, Mike Brown, Charlie Walker, Ed Donaldson, and the Rev. Amos Brown. District 10 Sup. Malia Cohen also issued invitations to the meeting, which was scheduled at the same time as the full Board of Supervisors meeting, and sent a representative.


The shooting victim was Kenneth Harding Jr., 19, from Washington. Police say he fired one round at officers before police fired nine rounds, killing him. However, some witnesses initially reported that they did not see Harding fire a gun, and a firearm wasn’t immediately recovered from the scene. Police initially tried to detain Harding on the station platform of the Oakdale / Palou stop on the T-Third line on suspected fare evasion. After Harding was killed, it came to light that he had a criminal history and had been named as a person of interest in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old pregnant woman from Washington. The incident, which occurred in broad daylight and was captured on film and witnessed by people who were out on the street, proved to be a traumatizing event for a low-income, predominantly African American community where tensions already run high between police and residents.

Lee indicated to the Guardian that the July 19 meeting had been called primarily to clear up misinformation. “There have been a lot of stories spreading about what did and didn’t occur, and we felt it was necessary to get the community updated as quickly as possible,” Lee said. “Any time there is a death in any community we’re very concerned … this one in particular has been represented in many different ways, and a lot of it has been very inflammatory in terms of what people have said occurred. We’ve heard points like there was no gun, when in fact now we’ve found a gun through police investigation. That there was no shot made at officers when … the officers have at least some evidence through the ShotSpotter program that there was an initial shot made by the suspect.”

Lee added that MUNI staff had reported people relaying “all kinds of stories” while riding the buses. “These are very hard, hard feelings,” he said. “So I felt it necessary that we confront this head on with community leaders. We met with some yesterday, we’re meeting with some today, [Police Chief Greg Suhr] is hosting a town-hall meeting in the Bayview tomorrow to yet again find every opportunity to fully explain what they have uncovered as the evidence, and to make sure people base their views on the facts.” A larger community meeting is scheduled for July 20 at 6 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House.

Meanwhile, Bayview community leaders Chris Jackson and Geoffrea Morris were not pleased when they emerged from the conference room. “The mayor left without hearing one public comment,” Morris said. “It was just a lecture. It wasn’t addressing the police, and how they deal with fare evasion, and harass people along the T train. It was not that. It was just, the mayor said his little thing, did not say goodbye, and ran out.”

Morris went on, “We don’t have grief counselors out there. We don’t have the police saying that they’ll stay off the T-Train platform until the investigation is done. We thought this meeting was going to be for them to go, ‘where do we go from here?’ And the thing that people are missing … whatever demon that boy had, that was a human life.” Concerns are still swirling about how long it took for an ambulance to arrive after the shooting, Morris said, and about how police arrived at the scene with high-powered weapons which they kept drawn even as Harding writhed in a pool of blood on the sidewalk.

Morris and Jackson said that during the meeting, officials showed a Channel 7 TV news broadcast clip and played an audio of gunshots being fired to demonstrate that the suspect had fired an initial shot before police opened fire. “We all have Internet, smart phones, and all the footage as well,” Morris said. “I was there on the site.”

Shortly after the meeting, the San Francisco Police Department issued a statement to announce that gunshot residue had been detected on Harding’s right hand during an investigation. “The presence of gunshot residue on Harding’s right hand supports statements from witnesses that Harding held the gun in his right hand as he fired at the police officers,” the press release stated. It went on to note that the presence of gunshot residue on an individual’s hand could indicate that the individual fired a gun, or was in close proximity to a gun when it was fired, or touched something that was coated with gunshot residue.

Morris and Jackson also voiced concerns that went beyond the details of this particular case. “The response really needs to be a policy shift,” Jackson said. “We need a better approach in terms of violence prevention. We cannot address this with more cops on the T line.”

Jackson, who ran for District 10 supervisor in 2010, also questioned why police officers had been tasked with fare evasion enforcement on the T-Third line in the first place. MUNI also employs fare inspectors, he pointed out, and the city has a specialized program, called the ambassadors program, which was created last year in the wake of violence along the T-Third line directed at members of the Asian community. “Where was the public conversation about putting cops on MUNI trains?” Jackson wanted to know. “Who came up with that idea?”

Asked about this, Lee told the Guardian that he had specifically requested a higher police presence in areas where higher levels of crime were anticipated – and the July 16 shooting occurred in just such an area.

“I actually asked the chief to pay more attention to areas that had a history of gun violence and shootings and other kinds of violence … and it just so happens that this particular area, Third and Palou, is a place where there’s a lot of violence,” Lee said. “So we had more uniformed officers on that specifically at not only my request, but with the understanding of the police chief, too. He’s trying to do his best to keep everybody safe. And that in the summer, with all of the evidence that we have about where the shootings are and where they’re occurring, we naturally focus on areas where we think there’s going to be more violence to have more presence. So circumstances occurred where an individual was stopped because of a fare evasion, and I believe police were there to begin to detain him, and ask him to provide some evidence of who he is and why he did what he did, and that turned out to be a chase. A chase is one thing, but a chase with an opening of a firearm is a completely different thing.”

Meanwhile, Bayview community residents who ride the T-Third line experienced delays in recent days because MUNI operations staff decided to stop running light rail trains into the Bayview, instead dropping people off partway through the route and then directing them to wait for shuttle buses.

On July 18, a little before dark, a T-Third driver stopped at the Marin Street stop and announced that all passengers would have to wait for a shuttle bus. When passengers demanded to know why, she responded, “They’re acting up on Third Street, and our bosses don’t want us in the middle of it.”

According to SFMTA spokesperson Kristen Holland, operations staff began receiving reports around 6:30 or 7 p.m. July 18 that “there were upwards of 50 people walking on the right-of-way for the trains. As a safety precaution, our operations folks deployed buses for that portion of the line. We were told that they started at the southern terminus, and were walking north.”

This Guardian reporter hopped onto a shuttle bus with a notebook in hand after hearing that people were “acting up,” but by the time the bus made its way into the heart of the Bayview, the streets were calm. A MUNI employee who asked not to be named said he’d heard that someone had kicked in a window on one of the T-Third cars, and that was why the trains weren’t going through.

Meanwhile, the unexpected transfer left passengers weary, since for many waiting for the shuttle marked a second or third transfer on public transportation to get home. “People’s kind of frustrated. You go a few blocks, and they say it’s the end of the line. You go a couple blocks and they tell you the same thing,” said Darwin Green.

Another passenger, a youth who was with a friend and seemed concerned about the unfamiliar route the shuttle bus was taking, said, “I think it’s bullshit that they’re issuing citations. And there’s no need to shoot somebody because they didn’t have change for the bus fare.”
 
Another passenger was also disgruntled about the delays. Asked what he thought about everything that had been going on in recent days, he said, “It seems like they spend an awful lot of money in wages chasing down $2 fares.”

Shuttle wars at SFO

Andrew Lam
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1
Shuttle wars at SFO

news@sfbg.com

It’s a misty morning at San Francisco International Airport, with the fog breaking into a slight drizzle. At the ground transportation area, travelers were repeatedly running in to each other in their head-down dash across packed taxi lanes.

The biggest bottleneck wasn’t the cars, though; it was the confused populace staring up at multicolored, multiarrowed transportation-related signs. Taxi? No. Shuttle? Yes, but which shuttle — reserved, hotel, or shared-ride?

I watch the collective confusion from the shared-ride zone, itself a tricolor ménage. A small sign shows that the red, yellow, and blue zones each correspond to a set of shuttle companies, but it takes some time to figure out which is which. Someone (official or not, I can’t tell) has crossed out and reassigned companies with a permanent marker. Good thing I don’t actually need a ride.

I ask a curb coordinator on duty, Carlos Marenco, about the colored zones. He explains that there are eight small shuttle companies that share the yellow zone — they rotate every five minutes. Two companies use the red zone and rotate every seven minutes. And one company, SuperShuttle, has its own blue zone. Why are the zones distributed like this, I ask?

“SuperShuttle and Lorrie’s (a red zone company) are bigger. More people know them, so they need more space,” Marenco said.

Just then a bewildered couple approached the shared-ride zone. They began talking to the driver of a small yellow zone company who is about to finish his allotted five minutes.

“No,” a coordinator shouts as he comes bustling toward passengers. “You need to go down to the blue zone.”

“Why?” the man asks.

“It is not this driver’s turn. You need to go to the blue zone,”

The coordinator takes their bags from the driver and begins wheeling them to the blue zone.

“They want to ride with me!” he shouts.

The couple is already down the sidewalk though, guiltily following their bags to a waiting SuperShuttle — and the next yellow zone driver idles nearby waiting for their spot at the curb. The driver curses, slams his door, and drives off empty.

 

AT THE CURB

Curb space at SFO is prime real estate, and a battle is underway between the giant SuperShuttle — owned by a French conglomerate — and a group of small, locally owned airport shuttle companies that say that they’re being pushed aside.

It gets heated out at the curb — when I talked to him after the unlucky driver left without his potential passengers, Marenco explained that the coordinators are often yelled at by enraged drivers.

“They think we cheat them, but we do not,” Marenco said. He says his job is to make sure drivers do not solicit passengers and that each zone gets an equal number of walk-up customers. He has come up with his own system — three large rectangular red, yellow, and blue magnets he puts on a pole at the front of the line to show drivers who gets the next passenger.

But Aaron Chan, owner of Advance Airporter, a small company stuck in the yellow zone, said that “the drivers are always telling me that the curb coordinators give many more passengers to SuperShuttle, even when it is not their turn.” And some small companies say that the big outfit pays the coordinators for more favorable treatment.

Marenco insists he never took money (which you can call tips or bribes, depending on your attitude). But Matt Curwood, San Francisco SuperShuttle general manager, acknowledged that “there have been a number of situations where our drivers are forced into circumstances where coordinators will only escort passengers to their shuttle if they are provided with payment of some form.”

There are no shining angels here. Both parties blame the other side; both deny bribery themselves (but claim the others do it), and the coordinators deny it happens at all.

And the whole mess is getting dropped in the lap of the Airport Commission, which in the past has been very friendly to SuperShuttle.

 

GET RID OF THE LITTLE GUYS

When the new Terminal 2 opened in April, airport staff asked each shuttle company to submit a letter discussing how zoning should be organized at the new curb. SuperShuttle responded — and took the opportunity to push a topic it has been trying to get SFO officials to adopt since the early 1990s: limiting the number of shuttle companies allowed to serve SFO to no more than two or three.

Curwood says that of the airports SuperShuttle operates in, SFO is the most difficult for customers to navigate. In the letter, he proposed the solution of “a competitive RFP process [that] enables competition and improves the quality of service the customer currently experiences. The essence of the problem SFO faces is that it is trying to accommodate too many substandard operators at the jeopardy of the public’s experience and safety.”

Gil Sharabi, general manager of Airport Express, a yellow zone company his father started in 1979, told me that his company has a perfect safety record and is just as qualified to serve the public as SuperShuttle. Sharabi says that SuperShuttle is really aiming to eliminate local business competition.

SuperShuttle’s corporate offices are in Illinois, and it serves 36 airports in the United States.

Curwood says it’s unfair to make this about the big company versus the little guy. “When you see one of those SuperShuttles on the road, that’s its own business. That’s its own franchise. I want that to be clear because we talk about small companies, and in fact what we are is a franchise for over 100 small companies.”

SuperShuttle may be made up of franchises, but the company itself is owned by Veolia Transportation, part of French multinational company Veolia Environment. Veolia is a Fortune 200 company with four divisions — water, energy, environmental services, and transport — and is the 34th-largest employer in the world. Its website boasts that it is the leading private water service provider in the world and the “No. 1 private transportation operator in Europe and North America.” So much for the little guy.

Sharabi says that aside from monopolization threats, the real problem is the special treatment SuperShuttle is given by airport staff.

The current tricolor system began in 1993 when the airport tried to terminate space in the yellow zone. The issue went to the Board of Supervisors, which directed the airport to give yellow zone companies their space back.

Since then, the companies in the yellow zone have been forced to share their space eight ways, which means fewer customers for them. If each colored zone gets one-third of walk-up customers, a company in the yellow zone — if it’s lucky — one out of every 24. SuperShuttle, on the other hand, gets all blue zone customers and can wait to pile in passengers, saving on gas and time. Furthermore, the eight yellow zone companies pay more of the third-party curb coordinator’s salaries than SuperShuttle.

 

A FREE BILLBOARD

Ray Sloan-Zayotti of the local lobbying firm Public Policy Advocates, which has represented the eight yellow zone companies since 1993, said that by not making SuperShuttle rotate, “they essentially have a free billboard right outside the terminal — and they don’t have to pay the fees the others pay to loop through the airport.”

Sharabi said the situation at SFO is unusual. “There are even more shuttles at Oakland Airport, but no one complains there,” Sharabi said. “It’s because everyone over there is treated fairly — and that’s all we’re asking for.”

Indeed, Sharabi said, one of the most aggravating parts of this debate is that the day after airport staff received SuperShuttle’s letter, it led to a long discussion at the Airport Commission. He said his and other yellow zone companies have been trying for years to get the commission and staff to listen to their complaints of unequal treatment.

“They don’t want to listen to us,” Sharabi said. “They have decided that they want SuperShuttle here, and not us. And they haven’t given us a reason why.

“We’ve been sending letters and doing proposals and lots of work for years,” he added. “And they have not only never cared for us, they have never forwarded anything to the commission,” Sharabi said.

In exasperation, the eight yellow zone companies sent a response letter directly to the Airport Commission outlining their position. “For nearly two decades a majority of companies — many that have been around much longer than SuperShuttle — have sent letters to SFO and the commission that have been received with little or no interest,” it stated. The letter went on to ask the commission to consider giving all 11 companies equal time at the curb.

 

A MATTER OF SURVIVAL

Sharabi and Sloan-Zayotti both point out that SuperShuttle hired Platinum Advisors, a well-known local lobbying firm. Curwood confirmed that SuperShuttle has hired the company, adding that it’s common for businesses dealing with the city to hire lobbyists. (Indeed, yellow zone companies have a lobbyist of their own.) He said SuperShuttle’s proposal will benefit passengers, but that it is ultimately up to the commissioners and airport staff.

“The system is right now catering to the small companies to ensure their survival rather than catering to the public,” Curwood said. “[The letter is] not saying ‘I want to kick everyone out of business,’ it’s saying that these are serious issues our customers say they face and proposing a way to put standards in place that will change it.”

“In all honesty, we understand what SuperShuttle is doing — and that’s reducing the competition for them,” Sharabi said. “It’s business, right? But what’s not right is that unelected officials get to make decisions that affect small business owners like us without having to answer to the public. That right there is the problem.”

“I do not know where that’s coming from,” said Michael McCarron, director of the SFO Bureau of Community Affairs. “We listen to everyone. We can’t make everyone happy, but we try to listen to everyone and work out the best possible arrangements for all the operators.”

Sharabi disagreed. “Everybody drops the line ‘You know we support the local people.’ But it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

 

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