Supervisors

The dirt in D6

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› amanda@sfbg.com › sarah@sfbg.com If you live in San Francisco’s District 6, it’s pretty difficult to avoid what some residents are calling a new filth polluting Tenderloin corners and SoMa streets. It’s not overflowing trash bins or urine-stained door frames — it’s the relentless election billeting that uses those images to support Rob Black and oppose Chris Daly for the district’s seat on the Board of Supervisors. “We’re tired of talk. Of loud, whining, condescending, offensive, abusive, lying, showcasing, arrogant talk,” reads a recent poster on a telephone pole. “District 6 is dirty and dangerous. District 6 is still poor. Chris Daly is why. Dump Daly. Back Rob Black.” “I was totally offended by this,” Debra Walker, a progressive activist and resident of the district for 25 years, told the Guardian. “This kind of message intentionally suppresses the vote. People I’ve talked to in the district who aren’t very political are totally turned off by the mailings from Rob Black or made in his benefit.” Some of the mailings, posters, and literature can be directly attributed to independent expenditure (IE) committees recognized by the Ethics Commission and acting legally. Some, however, have more dubious ancestry but apparent links to a campaign attorney with a long history of using millions to control the outcome of elections in San Francisco: Jim Sutton (see “The Political Puppeteer,” 2/4/04). Sutton did not return calls for comment. Most of the anonymous literature directs people to the Web site www.DumpDaly.org. SFSOS’s Wade Randlett told us his group paid for the site and a volunteer set it up. SFSOS and Sutton formed Citizens for Reform Leadership 1–6 — IE committees listed on many of the signs and much of the literature, including the poster quoted above. The committees haven’t filed any IE reports with the Ethics Commission. Walker, along with Maria Guillen, vice president of SEIU Local 790, and another District 6 resident, Jim Meko, submitted a complaint with the Ethics Commission on Sept. 29 with nine pieces of physical evidence supporting their concern that the roof had been blown off the $83,000 spending cap on the campaign, in place because all candidates agreed to public financing. The evidence submitted with the complaint varied and included three different mailers from “Concerned Residents of District 6,” a committee that has yet to exist on paper in the Ethics Commission filing cabinets. The mailers from the “Concerned Residents” are glossy triptychs critical of Daly but not explicitly advocating for another candidate. They do not state the amount the committee paid for them, which is required of any electioneering communication. On Oct. 6 the Ethics Commission released a statement saying the spending cap for District 6 was no longer in effect. John St. Croix, executive director of the commission, has identified at least $90,000 in IEs, including three unreported mailers. “At some point we will attempt to determine who distributed the mailers,” St. Croix said. “But it’s not likely before the election.” The tactic of breaking the law before the election and taking the heat after the ballots are in has been used in the past, and this new example flouts recently passed legislation. These mailings should have been filed with the Ethics Commission, according to an ordinance passed in 2005 in response to similar anonymous hit pieces that came out in the elections of 2003 and 2004 against Supervisors Gerardo Sandoval and Jake McGoldrick. (Sutton defended SFSOS’s main funder, Donald Fisher, in his successful Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation against Sandoval over the issue.) “It’s a strategy taken straight from Karl Rove’s playbook,” Meko, a 30-year SoMa resident, told us. Joe Lynn, former Ethics Commission member and staffer, told us “all the committees in San Francisco should turn their backs on contributions from people who are involved in this scheme — at least until they explain their involvement. These are the most sophisticated folks in San Francisco politics. I think a full investigation including possible criminal activity ought to be assigned to a master.” He said District Attorney Kamala Harris used Sutton in her race and therefore may have a conflict of interest. The Rob Black for Supervisor committee claims no connection to the literature that hangs on doorknobs and clogs mailboxes, the push polls calling people, or the postings in the streets and tucked under windshields. “I don’t support the anonymous pieces. If people are doing it on my behalf, I don’t want it,” Black told us. But Daly told us “the IEs appear to be coordinated…. The Black committee is not running a campaign that would be independently competitive. He’s only sent one piece of mail, but he’s had eight sent on his behalf.” Residents suggest it’s even more than that: Walker received three more anti-Daly mailers Oct. 20. Black confirmed that he had only sent one mailing to the district, and he’s “not surprised” that so many IEs have sent out mailings in his support. With the exception of a filing from the Police Officers Association, the only legal IEs reported with the Ethics Commission so far are from the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA) and Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA). They also trace back to Sutton, Black’s former boss at Nielsen Merksamer, a law firm that represented PG&E in the 2002 campaign against public power, for which the firm was fined $100,000 for failing to report until after the election $800,000 from PG&E, the biggest fine ever levied by Ethics. Sutton left the firm shortly after. Black stayed on until 2004, when he took a position as legislative aide with Michela Alioto-Pier. The most recent poll released by Evans McDonough purports to show Black ahead by six points (with a five-point margin of error). It was commissioned by Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter, and Partners, which has also been employed by Sutton through BOMA and the GGRA for the IEs in the District 6 election. The financial shenanigans have been a rallying point for the Daly campaign. More than 70 volunteers signed in at an Oct. 21 rally and hit the streets: shaking hands, distributing literature, and making phone calls raising support for Daly. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi criticized the soft money’s “ugly, nasty, mean-spirited tactics” to oust Daly. “If they have to resort to these tactics, is that the kind of government we want in San Francisco?” he asked the crowd. “This is the nastiest, most personal and hateful thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Daly said. “It’s very painful.” But, he said, “our people power is better than their money power.” Outside a volunteer shouted into a bullhorn, “Don’t let downtown interests buy your democracy!” SFBG

PG&E’s candidates

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EDITORIAL We’ve seen plenty of allies of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. We’ve seen a few PG&E bagmen, PG&E shills, and PG&E fronts. But there’s never been anyone elected to the board in our 40 years who was actually a paid attorney for PG&E.
This year there’s at least one and possibly two candidates who have worked as PG&E lawyers — and that alone should disqualify them ever from holding public office in San Francisco. The most obvious and direct conflict involves Doug Chan, the former police commissioner who is seeking a seat from District 4. Documents on file with the California Public Utilities Commission show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received more than $200,000 in fees from PG&E in just the past two years.
Chan won’t come to the phone to discuss what he did for the utility, won’t respond to questions posed through his campaign manager and press secretary, won’t return calls to his law firm, and thus won’t give the public any idea what sorts of conflicts of interest he’d have if he took office.
This is nothing new for Chan: back in 2002 he put his name on PG&E campaign material opposing public power and earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.
Then there’s Rob Black, who worked as an attorney for Nielsen Merksamer, the law firm that handled all of the dirty dealings for the anti-public-power campaign in 2002. Black worked with Jim Sutton, his former law professor and PG&E’s main legal operative, during that period but insists he did no work on anything related to PG&E or the campaign. That’s tough to believe.
All of this comes at a time when PG&E is going out of its way, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to buff up its image — and to fight the city’s modest but significant plans for public power.
As Steven T. Jones reports on page 16, the notorious utility is well aware that its future in San Francisco is shaky. The city is bidding to provide public electric power to the Hunters Point shipyard redevelopment project and preparing to provide public power to Treasure Island. There is a study in the works to look at developing tidal power. The supervisors are moving forward on Community Choice Aggregation, which will put the city directly in the business of selling retail electricity to customers (albeit through PG&E’s grid). And there’s talk brewing of a public power ballot initiative for next November.
PG&E president Thomas King met with Mayor Gavin Newsom this summer and sent him a nice, friendly letter afterward discussing all the ways the city and PG&E could work together.
But in fact, the utility is already opposing even the baby steps coming out of City Hall: PG&E has bid against San Francisco for rights to sell power to the shipyard, and that’s forced the city to cut prices and reduce the revenue it could have gained from Lennar Corp., the master developer. PG&E is trying to stop the city from selling power on Treasure Island and has financial ties to a private company that has rights to Golden Gate tidal power development until 2008. Meanwhile, the utility just hired the former secretary to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — a woman who sat in on every closed-session strategy meeting the panel held, including sessions dealing with litigation against PG&E.
In other words, PG&E is gearing up for all-out political warfare — and the mayor and supervisors need to start preparing too. From now on, people should see whatever PG&E does as hostile — and on every front the city needs to adopt an aggressive strategy to move forward toward eliminating the company’s private power monopoly.
For starters, it’s ridiculous that the city should have to fight PG&E for the right to sell power at the Hunters Point shipyard. The Redevelopment Agency should have made public power a part of the program from the start, and the supervisors should examine that plan immediately to see if it can be amended to require Lennar to buy power from San Francisco. Newsom needs to take to the bully pulpit and say that if PG&E gets this contract, nobody on the Redevelopment Agency Commission will ever be reappointed.
Meanwhile, when Chan and Black appear anywhere in public this election season, they need to be asked to fully disclose their ties with PG&E and outline their positions on public power.
And it’s time for the public power coalition to start meeting again, with the aim of crafting a ballot measure that will create a full-scale municipal system, perhaps as soon as November 2007. SFBG
PS PG&E already has one staunch ally on the board, Sean Elsbernd, a Newsom appointee who also worked in the late 1990s for the Nielsen firm. That’s three too many.
PPS If Newsom is really for public power, as he claims, then why is he pushing so hard for two PG&E call-up votes for the board? And why is he not publicly denouncing PG&E’s attempt to scuttle public power and lending his political capital to a new municipalization effort?
PPPS The SF Weekly’s Matt Smith last week all but endorsed Doug Chan — but made no mention of Chan’s PG&E ties. Did that somehow slip through Smith’s investigative reporting net?

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com
The San Francisco Examiner reported last week that enrollment in the local public schools is down by another 1,000 students this year, which means, some school board members say, that more sites will have to be closed.
I understand the economic issues — the state pays for education based on average daily attendance, and if fewer kids show up, the school district gets fewer dollars. And I’ll admit I have a dog in this fight: my son goes to McKinley Elementary, a wonderful school that represents everything that’s right about public education in San Francisco — and McKinley was on the hit list last year. It’s a small school; that makes it vulnerable.
I also understand that there are some things the school board can’t control. Families are leaving San Francisco in droves. That’s largely because of the high cost of housing, which is an issue for the mayor and the supervisors (and one that’s going to take a lot more work and resolve to address). So we’re going to lose some students that way.
But we’re also losing a lot of kids to private schools; I know that because I have good friends who’ve chosen that route, mostly because they don’t think the public schools can offer what they want for their kids. This is a perception problem, and it’s something the school board doesn’t have to sit back and accept.
That, I guess, is what really frustrates me — so many people simply saying that as a matter of strategic planning, we need to assume 1,000 fewer students a year will go to the public schools. The district spent around a quarter of a million dollars last year on a public relations office, and almost all the office seemed to do was hide information from the press and promote the career of then-superintendent Arlene Ackerman. Now Ackerman’s gone, and so is her officious flak, Lorna Ho. It’s time to take district PR seriously.
How hard would it be to have one PR staffer dedicated to creating a major citywide ad campaign promoting the public schools? I suspect it would be relatively easy to find a top-flight local ad firm that would work pro bono and not at all impossible to raise money for media (billboards, bus sides, direct mail, print ads, TV, whatever). Lots of prominent people would do testimonials. Set a goal: no enrollment drop-off next year. Before we close any more schools, it’s worth a try.
Now this: Clear Channel, which owns 10 radio stations in San Francisco and does almost no local public affairs programming at all, recently dropped its only decent San Francisco show, Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie on KQKE, and replaced it with a syndicated feed out of Los Angeles. To listen to most of Clear Channel radio, you’d never actually know that you’re in San Francisco; the giant Texas chain doesn’t care anything about this community.
If you’re sick of this kind of behavior by an increasingly consolidated monopoly broadcast industry (using, by the way, the public airwaves), you’re not alone: Media Alliance, the Youth Media Council, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will host a hearing on media consolidation in Oakland on Oct. 27, and two Federal Communications Commission members, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, will be there to take public comments.
The hearing’s at the Oakland Marriott Civic Center, 1001 Broadway. For more information, go to www.media-alliance.org. SFBG

Just in: More investment info on PG&E’s candidates for supervisor

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Just as the Guardian went to press on Tuesday afternoon, our investigative interns returned from the Californa Public Utilities Commission with more information on the investments that PG&E has made in supervisorial candidates Doug Chan and Rob Black through two key law firms.

Documents on file with the CPUC show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received a total of $460,913 in fees from PG&E between 200l and 2005. In 2002, the year of the second public power initiative, the Chan firm received $49,969.78. Chan lent his name to PG&E for use in PG&E’s campaign material and thereby earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.

As our editorial and my previous blogs pointed out, Chan, his campaign, and his law firm refuse to answer our telephone and email requests for an explanation of what he did for PG&E and whether PG&E’s investment will affect his position on public power. Chan is running in District 4 (the Sunset), backed by Mayor Newsom, PG&E, and downtown money.

Black, a PG&E and downtown-backed candidate against Sup. Chris Daly in District 6, worked as an attorney for Nielsen Merksamer, the political law firm that handled all of the dirty dealings for the nasty public anti-public power campaign that PG&E and its allies waged in 2002 with a huge warchest. Black worked with Jim Sutton, his former law professor and PG&E’s main legal operative, during that period but insists he did no work on anything related to PG&E or the campaign. We and many others find that hard to believe. In any event, he is eloquently vague about his current public power position. Nielsen Merksamer received $338,294 in 200l, the year of PG&E’s first victory over the first public power initiative, and $24,303.90 in 2002, the year PG&E beat back the second public power initiative. In 2003, with PG&E fighting numerous major campaign violations on ethical and campaign spending, Nielsen and Merksamer got $496,7l6.87.

In 2004 the firm got $443,50l.24 and in 2005 it got $8l6,97l. The interns who fought their way through the CPUC bureaucracy were Jeff Goodman and Sara Schieron, adding their names to a long list of Guardian staffers who have helped fight the good fight against PG&E for almost 40 years.

“All of this comes at a time when PG&E is going out of its way, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to buff up its image–and to fight the city’s modest but significant plans for public power,” our editorial points out. PG&E is also fighting the city in several expensive legal actions, from conflicts over the city’s right to power municipal buildings to PG&E’s working against the city building more solar sites.

At the end of Steven T. Jones’ story on “PG&E’s Extreme Makeover,” he quotes Peter Ragone, the mayor’s press secretary, as saying, “We’re going to do what’s in the best interests of the city of San Francisco. This is the first mayor to support public power, and that hasn’t changed at all.”

Okay. Maybe so. But then why did the mayor appoint Sean Elsbernd to the board, a staunch PG&E ally who worked for Nielsen Merksamer in the l990s? And then why is he now strongly backing PG&E’s supervisorial candiates in this election (Chan and Black)? That would give PG&E three callup votes on the board for PG&E. Fair play: If Chan and Black aren’t potential callup votes on the board, then they need to come clean, right now, and give us and the public an explanation of the PG&E investments in their firms and what their position on public power is now and will be as supervisors.

SOS: it’s time for the public power forces to regroup and start hammering back at the PG&E offensive. Things of great moment are once again in the making. B3

Chan stonewalls on PG@E questions: will anybody be able to pin him down before the election?

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As our editorial for the Wednesday Guardian states, “We’ve seen plenty of allies of Pacific Gas and Electric Company on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. We’ve seen a few PG@E bagmen, PG@E shills, and PG@E fronts. But there’s never been anyone elected to the board in our 40 years who was actually a paid attorney for PG@E.

“This year, there’s at least one, and possibly two candidates who have worked as PG@E lawyers–and that alone should disqualify them from ever holding public office in San Francisco. The most obvious and direct conflict involves Doug Chan, the former police commissioner who is seeking a seat from District Four. Documents on file with the California Public Utilities Commission show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi and Leal, has received more than $200,000 in fees from PG&E in just the past two years.

“Chan won’t come to the phone to discuss what he did for the utility, won’t respond to questions posed through his campaign manager and press secretary, won’t return calls to his law firm and thus won’t give the public any idea what sorts of conflicts of interest he’d have if he took office.

“This is nothing new for Chan: Back in 2002, he put his name on PG&E campaign material opposing public power and earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.”

At blogtime last Monday afternoon: still no word from
Chan, his campaign, nor his law firm. (See my blog below for the Guardian questions.) Key question: will anybody be able to pin Chan down on his PG@E connections before the election? Let us know. B3

Reforming democracy

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By Steven T. Jones
Wtih ranked choice voting up and working well in San Francisco, four other communities around the country are poised to approve it in the upcoming election. In addition to Prop. O in Oakland, ranked choice is on the ballot in Davis, Minneapolis, and Pierce County, Washington.
“I see these four elections as key. If we can sweep them, that’s a tipping point,” activist and former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said last night at a Prop. O fundraiser in the law office of Matt Gonzalez, who championed the San Francisco measure while serving on the Board of Supervisors.
Novoselic got involved in politics back in his Nirvana days, fighting to overturn a Seattle law that prevented people under 18 from attending concerts.
“Along the way, I got enthusiastic about democracy and participation,” he said. But even among those working on his campaigns, many felt their votes for candidates didn’t count. Reading SF-based democracy reform leader Steven Hill’s book, “Fixing Elections,” he learned about the concept of the “surplus voter” whose preference for a candidate other than the Democrat or Republican is essentially discarded. With ranked choice, voters can cast a ballot for their favorite candidate and also for the lesser of two evils, thus allowing minor parties to gain support. As such, Novoselic called democracy reform “the Holy Grail of the Green Party.”
Hill said he is cheered by the current situation. “It’s starting to happen, but these things take time. It’s a big country, but we’re making progress.”

Macy’s loses

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By Tim Redmond

Sometimes you settle a lawsuit, and sometimes you roll the dice and fight.

Back in 2001, the San Francisco supervisors voted to cough up some $80 million in cash to pay off a group of big corporations that claimed the city’s business tax was unconstitutional. It was a close call — the city attorney warned that if the city fought and lost, the potential liability could have reached $500 million.

There were a few crazy dissenters — Matt Gonzalez and me, and not a whole lot of others — who said, in effect, let’s take the chance: These assholes wanted to soak the city for a bunch of money at a time when corporate America was rolling in the dough, thanks in part to Bush Administration tax cuts at the federal level. Fuck ’em — we’ll see you in court.

But cooler heads prevailed, and the city settled with all but one of the 52 companies. One holdout — Macy’s (the greedy pricks) — decided not to accept the settlement and to push the case and squeeze every drop possible out of the taxpayers. Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled in Macy’s favor, awarding the company $13 million. It looked as if the supes had done the smart thing settling with everyone else.

And then yesterday, the Court of Appeal overturned Macy’s award, saying that the $13 million refund was excessive. The giant retailer — where I will never again shop, by the way — gets only pocket change, a few hundred grand.

Of course, the court didn’t re-instate the tax; this was only a small part of the case. But still, Macy’s lost, big. Makes me wonder what might have happened if we’d never settled with any of the Filthy 52.

Macy’s loses

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By Tim Redmond

Sometimes you settle a lawsuit, and sometimes you roll the dice and fight.

Back in 2001, the San Francisco supervisors voted to cough up some $80 million in cash to pay off a group of big corporations that claimed the city’s business tax was unconstitutional. It was a close call — the city attorney warned that if the city fought and lost, the potential liability could have reached $500 million.

There were a few crazy dissenters — Matt Gonzalez and me, and not a whole lot of others — who said, in effect, let’s take the chance: These assholes wanted to soak the city for a bunch of money at a time when corporate America was rolling in the dough, thanks in part to Bush Administration tax cuts at the federal level. Fuck ’em — we’ll see you in court.

But cooler heads prevailed, and the city settled with all but one of the 52 companies. One holdout — Macy’s (the greedy pricks) — decided not to accept the settlement and to push the case and squeeze every drop possible out of the taxpayers. Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled in Macy’s favor, awarding the company $13 million. It looked as if the supes had done the smart thing settling with everyone else.

And then yesterday, the Court of Appeal overtuned Macy’s award, saying that the $13 million refund was excessive. The giant retailer — where I will never again shop, by the way — gets only pocket change, a few hundred grand.

Of course, the court didn’t re-instate the tax; this was only a small part of the case. But still, Macy’s lost, big. Makes me wonder what might have happened if we’d never settled with any of the Filthy 52.

The D6 sleaze reaches high tide

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By Tim Redmond

For starters, don’t the over-funded losers who are attacking Sup. Chris Daly have anything better to do than keep on circulating the same old image?

This comes from one of six — count ’em, six — expensive attack mailers aimed at ousting Daly, one of the city’s most progressive and hard-working supervisors.

Before I get into the ugly politics, let me give a bit of background on the photo.

Buried treasure

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com
Despite the fast-moving urban centers that surround it on each side of the San Francisco Bay, not much about Treasure Island has changed since it was shut down as a United States naval station 10 years ago.
After the feds ceased operations on the island and at several other military installations in the mid-’90s, the idea was to give the land to local governments for redevelopment to fill the economic void of losing active bases. Since then, several plans for Treasure Island have been floated with great fanfare in the press, but all have become mired in the infamously contentious development politics of San Francisco.
Late last month, after three years of deadline extensions, the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) finally received a full-blown plan from the developer — a partnership between Lennar Corp., Wilson Meany Sullivan, and Treasure Island Community Development — that was given exclusive negotiating rights over the land three years ago.
The $1.2 billion redevelopment plan must now run a gauntlet of state and local approval, including consideration from the Board of Supervisors, which is expected to hold hearings and debate the plan by the end of the year. It isn’t likely that construction will begin on the island for at least a couple more years.
The latest proposal anticipates about 6,000 new homes, 1,800 of which will be targeted to low-income residents, including 750 units for households earning no more than 60 percent of San Francisco’s median income and 440 built as part of a program for the homeless. Plans include town houses, single-family homes, and high-rise residential towers, although at least half the properties will be limited to 65 feet in height.
Right now the island contains about 800 occupied units, over half of which are market-rate leases with the John Stewart Co., while about 200 are operated under the Treasure Island Homeless Development Initiative. By the time the project is done, according to the newest plan, the island’s population is expected to balloon to around 10,000 residents, plus around 3,000 new workers necessary to maintain the minicity.
Some of the existing housing stock will be demolished, or as the plan calls it, “reconstructed.” Current residents will have an option to move into the new units or be placed in a lottery if demand for certain types of units outstrips the supply. The plan calls for about 27 percent of the overall planned housing units to be rentals.
Private automobile use would be regulated by metering ramp access to the island during peak commute hours; assessing possible congestion fees for driving on the island; limiting residential parking; and emphasizing thruways that promote walking, bicycling, and public transit.
Much of the development is slated for the west side of the island — with its breathtaking and profitable views of the city — near an existing ferry terminal that would provide access to the city all day long.
Treading lightly, Sup. Chris Daly, whose District 6 includes the island, said he supports the environmental and housing components so far, but if existing island residents mount significant opposition for any reason, he’d consider opposing the plan.
“You don’t know how clean something is until you take it out of the wash, and they’re just now starting to throw it in,” Daly told the Guardian.
Rob Black, Daly’s main challenger in the upcoming election, lives on Treasure Island. He was similarly cautious. “I think people have finally begun to think in a more progressive way about making this a more sustainable neighborhood,” Black told us. “Past plans have been so poorly put together.”
On the local level, the plan must be approved in the coming months by both the TIDA board and the Board of Supervisors. After that, it will undergo an extensive environmental impact review by the city’s planning department before returning to the board for final local approval.
The developer and the TIDA board — which is composed entirely of mayoral appointees, three of whom work directly for Mayor Gavin Newsom — must still overcome other major hurdles as well, including the fact that the Navy hasn’t turned over any of the land yet and likely won’t without major concessions.
The Bush administration has stalled the transfer, pushing for some payment before giving up valuable federal land. One tentative option is to relieve the Navy of about $45 million in environmental cleanup costs for which it is currently responsible. Those costs would then be borne by the redevelopment plan and the developer, which has already pledged $26 million for remediation. The land became contaminated in part after decades of military activity that included emergency drills with radioactive materials.
David Rist, a project manager for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is overseeing the cleanup, said that while there is some contamination where residents are living today, it doesn’t pose an immediate threat to human health. Identified contaminants include dioxin, lead, and PCBs. Rist told us the cleanup, regardless of who ends up paying for it, will be “significantly done in the next two and a half years.”
After mulling over ideas, TIDA finally brokered an exclusive deal in 2003 with a company incorporated as Treasure Island Community Development, a group of Democratic Party heavyweights with deep links to the current and former mayoral administrations and other top elected Democrats.
Jay Wallace, a project planner for Treasure Island Community Development, said the plan’s mammoth size and uniqueness have required considerable and time-consuming attention to specifics. Investors anticipate spending $500 million of their own money, but they’re looking to earn upward of $125 million in profits, according to the plan.
The remaining cost of about $760 million for infrastructure, open space, and transportation system improvements could be covered largely by tax increment financing from the redevelopment area and Mello Roos bonds, both of which would essentially be funded by future property taxes, according to the latest term sheet.
Wallace told the Guardian that his group “has worked in good faith and transparency throughout this project, with over 150 public meetings before reaching this milestone and presenting this plan to the city.”
Daly said that while “there are going to be a hundred issues that need to be worked out,” the green-meets-affordable-housing theme “is the right proposal for San Francisco.”
“Political connections to the Newsom juggernaut notwithstanding, these guys are politically savvy enough to know what’s wise and what isn’t,” he said. “On the actual merits of the proposal, it’s palatable if you’re OK with the concept of high-rises in the middle of the bay.” SFBG

East Bay races and measures

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Editor’s note: The following story has been altered from the original to correct an error. We had originally identified Courtney Ruby as running for Alameda County Auditor; the office is actually Oakland City Auditor.

Oakland City Auditor
COURTNEY RUBY
Incumbent Roland Smith has to go. He’s been accused of harassing and verbally abusing his staff and using audits as a political weapon against his enemies. The county supervisors have had to reassign his staff to keep him from making further trouble. And yet somehow he survived the primary with 32 percent of the vote, putting him in a November runoff against Courtney Ruby, who led the field with 37 percent. Ruby, an experienced financial analyst, would bring some credibility back to the office.
Peralta Community College Board, District 7
ABEL GUILLEN
Challenger Abel Guillen has extensive knowledge of public school financing and a proven commitment to consensus building and government accountability. In the last six years Guillen, who was raised in a working-class community and was the first in his family to go to college, has raised $2.2 billion in bond money to construct and repair facilities in school districts and at community colleges. Incumbent Alona Clifton has been accused of not being responsive to teachers’ concerns about the board’s spending priorities and openness.
Berkeley mayor
TOM BATES
This race has progressives tearing at each other’s throats, particularly since they spent a ton of cash last time around to oust former mayor Shirley Dean and replace her with Tom Bates, who used to be known as a reliable progressive voice.
Bates’s reputation has shifted since he became mayor, and his record is a mixed bag. This time around, he stands accused of setting up a shadow government (via task forces that duplicate existing commissions but don’t include enough community representatives), of giving developers too many special favors instead of fighting for more community benefits, and of increasingly siding with conservative and pro-landlord city council member Gordon Wozniak.
The problem is that none of Bates’s opponents look like they would be effective as mayor. So lacking any credible alternative, we’ll go with Bates.
Berkeley City Council, District 1
LINDA MAIO
Incumbent Linda Maio’s voting record has been wimpy at times, but she is a strong proponent of affordable housing, and her sole challenger, Merrilie Mitchell, isn’t a terribly serious candidate. Vote for Maio.
Berkeley City Council, District 2
DONA SPRING
A valiant champion of every progressive cause, incumbent Dona Spring is one of the unsung heroes of Berkeley. Using a wheelchair, she puts in the energy equivalent of two or three council members and always remains on the visionary cutting edge. If that weren’t enough, her sole challenger, Latino businessman and zoning commissioner Raudel Wilson, has the endorsement of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. Vote for Spring.
Berkeley City Council, District 7
KRISS WORTHINGTON
Incumbent Kriss Worthington is an undisputed champion of progressive causes and a courageous voice who isn’t afraid to take criticism in an age of duck and run, including the fallout he’s been experiencing following the closure of Cody’s on Telegraph Avenue, something conservatives have tried to link to his support for the homeless. His sole challenger is the evidently deep-pocketed George Beier, who describes himself as a community volunteer but has the support of landlords and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce and has managed to blanket District 7 with signage and literature, possibly making his one of the most tree-unfriendly campaigns in Berkeley’s electoral history. Keep Berkeley progressive and vote for Worthington.
Berkeley City Council, District 8
JASON OVERMAN
Incumbent Gordon Wozniak postures as if he is going to be mayor one day, and he’s definitely the most conservative member of the council. During his tenure, Wozniak has come up with seven different ways to raise rents on tenants in Berkeley, and he didn’t even vote against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election last year. Challenger Jason Overman may be only 20 years old, but he’s already a seasoned political veteran, having been elected to the Rent Stabilization Board two years ago. Vote for Overman.
Berkeley city auditor
ANN-MARIE HOGAN
Ann-Marie Hogan is running unopposed for this nonpartisan post, which is hardly surprising since she’s done a great job so far and has widespread support.
Berkeley school director
KAREN HEMPHILL, NANCY RIDDLE, NORMA HARRISON
With five candidates in the running and only three seats open, some are suggesting progressives cast only one vote — for Karen Hemphill — to ensure she becomes board president in two years, since the job goes to the person with the most votes in the previous election.
Hemphill has done a great job and has the support of Latino and African American parent groups, so a vote for her is a no-brainer.
So is any vote that helps make sure that incumbents Shirley Issel and David Baggins don’t get reelected.
Nancy Riddle isn’t a hardcore liberal, but she’s a certified public accountant, so she has number-crunching skills in her favor. Our third pick is Norma Harrison, although her superradical talk about capitalism being horrible and schools being like prisons needs to be matched with some concrete and doable suggestions.
Rent Stabilization Board
DAVE BLAKE, HOWARD CHONG, CHRIS KAVANAGH, LISA STEPHENS, PAM WEBSTER
If it weren’t for the nine-member elected Rent Stabilization Board, Berkeley would have long since been taken over by the landlords and the wealthy. This powerful agency has been controlled by progressives most of the time, and this year there are five strong progressives running unopposed for five seats on the board. We recommend voting for all of them.
Oakland City Council
AIMEE ALLISON
When we endorsed Aimee Allison in the primary in June, we pointed out that this was a crucial race: incumbent Patrician Kernighan has been a staunch ally of outgoing mayor Jerry Brown and Councilmember Ignacio de La Fuente — and now that Ron Dellums is taking over the Mayor’s Office and a new political era could be dawning in Oakland, it’s crucial that the old prodevelopment types don’t control the council.
Kernighan’s vision of Oakland has always included extensive new commercial and luxury housing development, and like De La Fuente, she’s shown little concern for gentrification and displacement. Allison, a Green Party member, is the kind of progressive who could make a huge difference in Oakland, and she’s our clear and unequivocal choice for this seat.
From crime to city finance, Allison is well-informed and has cogent, practical proposals. She favors community policing and programs to help the 10,000 parolees in Oakland. She wants the city to collect an annual fee from the port, which brings in huge amounts of money and puts very little into the General Fund. She wants to promote environmentally sound development, eviction protections, and a stronger sunshine ordinance. Vote for Allison.
East Bay Municipal Utility District director, Ward 4
ANDY KATZ
Environmental planner Andy Katz is running unopposed. Despite his relative youth, he’s been an energetic and committed board member and deserves another term.
AC Transit director at large
REBECCA KAPLAN
Incumbent Rebecca Kaplan is a fixture on the East Bay progressive political scene and has been a strong advocate of free bus-pass programs and environmentally sound policies over the years. A former public interest lawyer, Kaplan’s only challenger is paralegal James K. Muhammad.
Berkeley measures
Measure A
BERKELEY PUBLIC SCHOOLS TAX
YES
This measure takes two existing taxes and combines them into one but without increasing existing rates. Since 30 percent of local teachers will get paid out of the revenue from this measure, a no vote could devastate the quality of education in the city. Vote yes.
Measure E
RENT STABILIZATION BOARD VACANCY
YES
Measure E seeks to eliminate the need to have a citywide special election every time a vacancy occurs on the Rent Stabilization Board, a process that currently costs about $400,000 and consumes huge amounts of time and energy. The proposal would require that vacancies be filled at November general elections instead, since that ballot attracts a wider and more representative group of voters. In the interim, the board would fill its own vacancies.
Measure F
GILMAN STREET PLAYING FIELDS
YES
Measure F follows the council’s October 2005 adoption of amendments that establish the proper use for public and commercial recreation sports facilities, thereby allowing development of the proposed Gilman Street fields. Vote yes.
Measure G
GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
YES
Measure G is a nice, feel-good advisory measure that expresses Berkeley’s opinion about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions to the global climate and advises the mayor to work with the community to come up with a plan that would significantly reduce such emissions, with a target of an 80 percent reduction by 2050. Vote yes.
Measure H
IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH AND VICE-PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY
YES
In left-leaning Berkeley this is probably the least controversial measure on the ballot. Do we really need to spell out all over again the many reasons why you should vote yes on this issue?
If this measure passes, both Berkeley and San Francisco will have taken public stands in favor of impeachment, which won’t by itself do much to force Congress to act but will start the national ball rolling. Vote yes.
Measure I
AMENDING CONDO CONVERSION ORDINANCE
NO, NO, NO
Measure I is a really bad idea, one that links the creation of home ownership opportunities to the eviction of families from their homes. It was clearly cooked up by landlord groups that are unhappy with Berkeley’s current condo conversion ordinance, which allows for 100 conversions a year. Measure I proposes increasing that limit to 500 conversions a year, which could translate into more than 1,000 people facing evictions. Those evictions will hit hardest on the most financially vulnerable — seniors, the disabled, low- and moderate-income families, and children. With less than 15 percent of current Berkeley tenants earning enough to purchase their units, this measure decreases the overall supply of rentals, eliminates requirements to disclose seismic conditions to prospective buyers, and violates the city’s stated commitment to fairness, compassion, and economic diversity. Vote no.
Measure J
AMENDING LANDMARK PRESERVATION ORDINANCES
YES
A well-meaning measure that’s opposed by developers, Measure J earns a lukewarm yes. It establishes a nine-member Landmarks Preservation Commission; designates landmarks, structures of merit, and historic districts; and may approve or deny alteration of such historic resources but may not deny their demolition. It’s worth noting that if Proposition 90 passes, the city could face liability for damages if Measure J is found to result in substantial economic loss to property — all of which gives us yet another reason to say “vote no” on the horribly flawed Prop. 90 while you’re voting yes on Measure J.
Oakland Measures
Measure M
POLICE AND FIRE RETIREMENT BOARD INVESTMENTS
YES
Measure M would amend the City Charter to allow the board that oversees the Oakland Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS) slightly more leeway in making investment decisions. The board claims that its current requirements — which bar investment in stocks that don’t pay dividends — are hampering returns. That’s an issue: between July 2002 and July 2005, the unfunded liability of the PFRS grew from $200 million to $268 million — a liability for which the city of Oakland is responsible. We’re always nervous about giving investment managers the ability to use public money without close oversight, but the new rules would be the same as ones currently in place in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Measure N
LIBRARY IMPROVEMENT AND EXPANSION BONDS
YES
Oakland wants to improve and expand all library branch facilities, construct a new main library at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, and buy land for and construct two new library facilities in the Laurel and 81st Avenue communities. The upgrades and construction plans come in response to residents’ insistence that they need more space for studying and meeting, increased library programs and services, tutoring and homework assistance for children, increased literacy programs, and greater access to current technology and locations that offer wi-fi.
This $148 million bond would cost only $40 a year for every $100,000 of assessed property. Vote yes.
Measure O
INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING
Ranked-choice voting, or instant runoff voting, is a great concept. The city of Oakland is using it to elect officials in the November election without holding a prior June election. There’s only one problem: so far, Alameda County hasn’t invested in voting equipment that could make implementing this measure possible. Voting yes is a first step in forcing the county’s hand in the right direction. SFBG

Back to Black

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By Steven T. Jones
These are busy days, so I suppose I’ll just have to dump out the District 6 dirt just a little at a time. That’s cool, considering tomorrow’s deadline for filing pre-election campaign statement will allow me to plow into the freshest compost for y’all. We’re also having a few technical difficulties in getting the audio from Rob Black’s endorsement interview with us online, but that problem should be solved in the next couple days. And it’s worth the wait to hear him squirm in his seat over tough and legitimate questions about how he’s been doing the bidding of the wrong people for awhile now. Stay tuned.
For now, let’s recap yesterday’s Black press conference (which was held in the City Hall Press Room, despite state laws against campaigning in government offices not open to the general public, and just as the Board of Supervisors meeting was starting down the hall).

Pot. Kettle. Black.

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By Steven T. Jones
District 6 supervisorial candidate Rob Black called a press conference this afternoon to accuse incumbent Sup. Chris Daly of “illegal campaigning.” The charges involve the letters that Daly and other supervisors send to their constituents. Frankly, I don’t have time right now to fully get into all the dimensions of this incident, which is rich with good color and hypocrisy. I’ll spin the full tale for y’all tomorrow. But for now, suffice it to say that the City Attorney’s Office — which Daly checked with before sending out the letters in batches of less than 200 each — doesn’t think this is illegal. That’s point one. Point two is that desperate candidates calling for a Fair Political Practices Commission investigation during the height of an election is trite, transparent, and downright cliche. But the third point is the most important. Black is a candidate that has benefitted mightly from a series of unethical, deceptive, expensive, and probably illegal attacks on Daly, many of which were orchestrated by Black’s mentor and former boss, campaign attorney Jim Sutton. These are attacks that Black has refused to fully condemn or disassociate himself from. So that’s what made today’s press conference not just ironic, but downright amusing. Check back tomorrow when I’ll have more, including good links to much of the above so you don’t just have to accept my perspective on the situation.

Tidal (public) power

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EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, perhaps looking for a big issue to bring to a star-studded environmental meeting in New York City last week, suddenly discovered the value of tidal energy. There’s actually nothing new about the idea: although Newsom didn’t give anyone but himself credit, the plan was first floated by Matt Gonzalez in the 2003 mayor’s race. It was picked up by Supervisors Jake McGoldrick and Ross Mirkarimi and has been on the agenda at Mirkarimi’s Local Area Formation Committee (LAFCo) for more than a year.
But whatever — if the mayor’s on board, fine. There’s a tremendous amount of potential in the concept — huge amounts of renewable energy with little significant environmental impact (and no greenhouse gases). The technology appears to be available, and there’s every reason for the city to move forward rapidly — as long as the power generator is owned, operated, and totally controlled by the city. And that’s not at all guaranteed.
A pilot project would cost about $10 million — peanuts compared to the revenue potential but a chunk of change nonetheless. Newsom, who is looking for state money, is also considering the possibility of seeking private-sector partnerships. And one company that has its greedy eye on the potential energy in the ocean tides is Pacific Gas and Electric.
PG&E is trying desperately to buff up its tarnished image, spending millions on slick ads promoting itself as a green company. It’s crap: among other things, PG&E still operates a nightmare of a nuclear plant on an earthquake fault in San Luis Obispo and is trying to get the plant’s operating license extended. But environmentalism sells in California, and the state’s largest and most rapacious private utility has no shame.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Sept. 19 that city officials were negotiating with “a number of companies that could help run the turbines and cover the costs” and added that “Pacific Gas and Electric Company is among them, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city’s Department of the Environment.” Blumenfeld told us he was misquoted and that officials are only discussing with PG&E the prospects for connecting to the PG&E-owned grid in the city.
But Blumenfeld explained that a private company called Golden Gate Energy already has a federal license to develop tidal energy in the San Francisco Bay — and PG&E has a stake in that venture. The Golden Gate Energy license expires in 2008, and it’s unlikely the company will be able to start work by then, Blumenfeld said. Given that nobody actually has a working model of a tidal generator of this scale, that’s probably true.
Still, it shows that PG&E isn’t going to give up easily on the idea of owning or running what could be a source of energy that could power a sizable percentage of San Francisco. The reason is obvious: if the city operates the tidal power plant, it will be a huge boost for public power. Between tides, $100 million worth of solar energy that’s in the pipeline, and the Hetch Hetchy dam, San Francisco would come pretty close to generating enough renewable energy to power the whole town — and PG&E could be tossed entirely out of the picture.
Of course, that assumes that the city is serious about creating a full-scale public power system, which involves taking over PG&E’s transmission grid. Newsom says he supports public power. So does Susan Leal, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. But while both are ready to cough up $150,000 for a study into the benefits of tidal power (and a possible $10 million for a pilot project), neither has ever been willing to spend a penny for a study into the costs and benefits of taking over the grid.
Mirkarimi told us that LAFCo will begin hearings on tidal power next month and get to the bottom of what the mayor has in mind. The supervisors should allow no shadow of doubt about the policy for pursing this energy source: it can only be done as part of a larger plan to bring public power to the city — and if PG&E or any other private energy company has even the tip of a finger anywhere near it, the deal is dead in the water. SFBG

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com
So much going on this week: the cops and the San Francisco Police Commission are heading for a battle over secrecy, the cops and the supervisors are headed for a battle over foot patrols — and Mayor Gavin Newsom is heading for a battle with homeless advocates over a new round of sweeps at Golden Gate Park. The mayor and the local gendarmes can’t win any of this without community support and would do far better to stop trying to fight these battles.
Then there’s redevelopment and the city attorney … and we might as well get started:
•The state Supreme Court ruled a couple of weeks ago that all police disciplinary records have to be kept secret. It’s an awful decision, and San Francisco needs to find a way around it if at all possible. Some police commissioners, starting with David Campos, want to do that, but City Attorney Dennis Herrera is interpreting the law very conservatively and not offering the commission a lot of options.
Why not make public all the charges against cops with the individual officers’ names redacted? At least the community would know that some cops are improperly shooting people, giving liquor to minors, beating up people of color, beating up their spouses … and at least we’d all have a way to demand some policy changes. Or why not tell bad cops facing disciplinary hearings that they can plea bargain for a lenient sentence — and waive their rights to privacy — or take their chance in a full commission trial, where they will face termination if they lose? Let’s think here, people: this is too important to just give up. San Franciscans aren’t going to accept a secret police state.
•The mayor and the police chief are still fighting against Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s plan to put cops on foot in high-crime areas. That’s a loser, Mr. Mayor. Nobody thinks that your current plans are working.
•After visiting Central Park in New York City — which is run by and for a private group of rich people — Newsom has decided to clear all the homeless people out of Golden Gate Park. Let me offer a little reality here: people sleep in the park because they have no place else to go. You cut their welfare payments and let the price of housing skyrocket, this is what you get. Sweep them out and they won’t disappear: they’ll sleep on the streets in the Haight and the Sunset and the Richmond. There’s a great campaign issue.
Besides, Golden Gate Park, homeless and all, is generally a safe, pleasant place, with only minor crime problems. But kids are dying on the streets only a few hundred yards away in the Western Addition. We don’t have enough cops to walk the beat where they could save lives — but we have enough to roust the homeless?
•Herrera, who’s got his hands full of ugly messes this week, tossed a referendum on the Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan off the ballot because each of the petitions didn’t have the entire plan attached. For the record, the plan is 62 pages. If this is the standard — an entire plan has to be copied and printed with every single petition — then as a practical matter, nobody in California can ever do a referendum on a redevelopment project. I suspect that’s not what Hiram Johnson had mind. SFBG

The people’s program

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OPINION San Francisco progressives have spent years getting on the political power map. We have achieved amazing victories, such as the 2000 sweep that defeated the Brown machine and ushered in an independent Board of Supervisors. At times we’ve gotten mired in sectarian clashes that have prevented unity around a common vision. However, such obstacles and stumbles have taught us valuable lessons that can be the building blocks for a vibrant people’s movement. To be successful, we progressives need to have a clear vision and to keep asking ourselves questions. What does it mean to be progressive and for progressives to have power? Assuming we all agree that progressive unity is a necessary foundation for social change, what should unity look like today? And if we’re successful at maintaining power, what do we want to look like five and 10 years from now? In the first year following its founding convention and with these questions in mind, the San Francisco Peoples’ Organization (SFPO) has chosen to focus on three issues central to the lives of all San Franciscans — health care, affordable housing, and violence prevention. Over the past year, this fledgling organization has logged a long list of achievements and participated in many exciting causes. The SFPO has: •worked with the Alliance for a Better California to defeat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election measures in November 2005; •assisted in the development and passage of Supervisor Tom Ammiano’s Worker Health Care Security Ordinance, creating universal health care for local residents; •advocated for Supervisor Chris Daly’s recently passed legislation to increase mandatory levels of affordable housing in new housing developments; •took a leadership role in uniting communities of color and progressives to fight for Proposition A’s homicide and violence prevention efforts, including a host of new budget initiatives addressing some of the root causes of violence; •launched an e-mail dispatch that reaches over 5,000 constituents and highlights local progressive issues, campaigns, and events; •played an active role in the UNITE-HERE Local 2 contract campaign, attending pickets, planning meetings, and participating in civil disobedience. Part of our effort involves critically analyzing the policy agendas of our elected lawmakers and making recommendations. Mayor Gavin Newsom, through his highly visible work to legalize same-sex marriage, rightfully gained the respect and admiration of progressive San Franciscans. However, same-sex marriage is only one issue; Mayor Newsom should not be given carte blanche among progressives for this single act. The SFPO’s second annual convention will take place Sept. 30 at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Please join us. We cannot wait to work together. The future of our city — who we want to live here, who we want to work here, who we want educated here — is being determined now. SFBG Jane Kim and John Avalos The writers are president and vice president, respectively, of the San Francisco Peoples’ Organization. For more information about the SFPO and the Sept. 30 convention, go to www.sfpeople.org.

Battle for Bayview

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› steve@sfbg.com
It’s been a week since City Attorney Dennis Herrera invalidated the seemingly successful referendum drive challenging the Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan, and everyone involved is still wondering what’s next.
Can the biggest redevelopment plan in city history just move forward as if more than 33,000 city residents hadn’t signed petitions asking to vote on it? Legally, that’s where the situation now stands. But even Herrera told the Guardian that the legal question he answered is separate from the policy and political questions.
Should the Board of Supervisors hold a hearing to discuss the controversial issues raised by redevelopment and this referendum? Should it consider repealing the plan and allowing a ballot vote, as some supervisors want?
And if each referendum petition must include a thick stack of all related documents, as Herrera’s opinion indicates, won’t that make it prohibitively expensive for a community group to ever challenge such a complex piece of legislation? Have the citizens in effect lost the constitutional right to force a referendum on a redevelopment plan?
“I can’t speak to what the practical effect will be. I can just tell you what the state of the law is,” Herrera told us, noting that referendum case law clearly indicates that the petitioners should have carried the 62-page redevelopment plan and all supporting documents, not simply the ordinance that approved it.
A “TERRIBLE” DECISION
Four supervisors — Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, Gerardo Sandoval, and Ross Mirkarimi — voted against the plan in May. All have expressed concern about Herrera’s decision, but none have yet called for a hearing.
“Whether you agree or disagree with this opinion on the validity of the redevelopment referendum, it raises some grave concerns that this process — a democratic, grassroots process — was overturned,” Mirkarimi told us. Daly called the decision “terrible.”
Yet given that they need the support of at least two more supervisors to reconsider the plan, Mirkarimi conceded that the next step will probably have to come from a lawsuit by the petitioners, a move referendum coalition leaders Willie Ratcliff and Brian O’Flynn say they intend to pursue if political pressure fails.
“It’s unclear what the next steps are to dislodge this from the legal shackles that knocked it down,” Mirkarimi said. “Something doesn’t smell right, and it’s difficult to trace the odor completely without the courts getting involved.”
But Ratcliff hasn’t given up on forcing a political solution, which he is pushing through his coalition and the San Francisco Bay View newspaper he publishes. The paper last week ran a story on the decision under the hyperbolic headline “City Hall declares war on Bayview Hunters Point.”
“We’re talking to lawyers, but to us the last resort is going to court. We feel we can pull it off politically,” Ratcliff told us. “What this did really was unite this community. If the city will pull this kind of thing, how are we going to have any faith in this plan? We’re going to flex our power…. People are ready to fight now.”
One gauge of Ratcliff’s support in the community will come on the afternoon of Sept. 27, when he will lead a march and rally on the issue. The event is tied to the 40th anniversary of the so-called Hunters Point Uprising, when a teenager was shot by police and the resulting community backlash was violently quelled using National Guard tanks and police sharpshooters.
“With the 40th anniversary of the Hunters Point Uprising of Sept. 27, 1966, only days away, this sounds like a declaration of war against the same people who protested then and are protesting still against police brutality and for jobs, economic equity and the right to develop our own community and control our own destiny,” Ratcliff wrote in a front page editorial.
Ratcliff told us, “We’re going to have a big march out there to show the city that we oppose this plan.”
THE PLAN IS IN EFFECT
Herrera’s opinion on the referendum was requested by Mayor Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, and Sup. Sophie Maxwell.
Redevelopment Agency director Marcia Rosen told the Guardian that fears of redevelopment stem from how badly it was handled in the Western Addition in the 1960s, but that the agency and the political climate of the city have changed. She said the agency is approaching Bayview–Hunters Point in an incremental, community-based fashion. She said the plan should go forward and will eventually prove the fears are unfounded.
“The plan was adopted by the board and signed into law by the mayor, and there is no further action needed, so the plan is in effect,” she told us.
Maxwell and Peskin each said they’re inclined to just let the redevelopment plan go into effect, although Peskin said, “I’m not going to stop any supervisor from having a hearing on any subject.”
“It’s important to understand that this plan is a living document, so there will be changes and people talking to each other,” Maxwell told us. “It’s certainly not the end of anything.”
She told the Guardian that the referendum campaign used paid signature gatherers, money from a developer from outside the area, and distorted claims about eminent domain and other aspects of the plan — misrepresentations that signers could have checked if the plan was readily available as legally required.
“The democratic process has to be taken seriously, and democracy is not easy,” Maxwell told us. “The decision was about preserving the democratic process, and people need to have facts at their disposal. There has to be a process and there has to be a standard.”
That’s certainly true — and O’Flynn is a contractor who lives in the Marina. But it’s hard to imagine how carrying around thick stacks of paper filled with complex land-use plans would have made a difference. Most signers would never have stopped to take several hours to read it all.
John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California School of Law, said that referendum case law has been built around a few courts validating actions by civic officials to strike down citizen movements.
“The sad fact is it looked like elected officials are trying to keep measures off the ballot and looking for ways to support that,” Matsusaka told the Guardian. “Preventing the people from voting is really not going to bring harmony to the community.” SFBG
The Defend Bayview Hunters Point Coalition’s Sept. 27 march begins at 3:30 p.m. at the Walgreens at 5800 Third St. and Williams and continues up Third Street to Palou Street, where there will be a press conference and rally at 4:30 p.m.

Casting off

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› amanda@sfbg.com
Hornblower Yachts assumed control of the ferry service to Alcatraz Island on Sept. 25. As the new crew cast off the dock lines, spurned union workers — some 30-year veterans with the former contractor, Blue and Gold — rallied with supporters at the entrance, asking passengers not to board the boats.
Two union-friendly visitors from Sydney, Australia, ripped up their tickets and demanded refunds. “We don’t agree with what they’re doing to the workers,” one said, while in the background Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Tom Ammiano took turns with the bullhorn, also offering their support to the workers.
“All of our colleagues on the board are not going to stand for it,” Peskin said to the couple hundred laborers gathered on the sidewalk. “We’re going to stand with you and march with you.”
Terry MacRae, CEO of Hornblower, expressed little concern about the boycotting tourists and the rally at his gate. “I suspect there’s plenty more people who want the tickets if they’re not going to use them,” he told the Guardian. Visits to Alcatraz peak this time of year, with a couple thousand people turned away every day when tickets sell out, according to National Park Service spokesperson Rich Wiedeman.
The NPS decision to grant the lucrative, 10-year contract to Hornblower over Blue and Gold has resulted in more than just what some are calling the largest union layoff in San Francisco waterfront history. The story also has an environmental angle as slick as an oil spill and a nasty landlord-tenant tussle.
“The port and I are extremely concerned with how Hornblower has conducted itself,” City Attorney Dennis Herrera told the Guardian, referring to the company’s artful dodge of city and state permitting processes. “They’ve focused more energy on sidestepping public oversight than complying with it.”
Despite infuriating two leading San Francisco institutions — unions and city planners — MacRae has managed thus far to avoid too much of a stir by keeping another critical local constituency off his back with a well-played “green” card.
THE GREEN MACHINE
When NPS put out a request for proposals in 2004, three companies submitted bids for Alcatraz: Red and White, a local charter and bay cruise company that ran the service when it first started in the ’70s; Blue and Gold, which took over Red and White’s boats and unionized crew in 1994; and Hornblower Cruises and Events, which runs charter and dinner boat cruises from five California ports and is a subsidiary of a larger, $30 million company.
When Brian O’Neill, superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, announced last year that Hornblower won the bid, union activists immediately challenged the choice. Mayor Gavin Newsom, Peskin, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and both of California’s US senators expressed concerns about the decision. Neighborhood group Citizens to Save the Waterfront filed suit. Environmentalists, however, were elated.
For the first time since being passed by Congress in 1998, the Concessions Management Act applied to the bid for Alcatraz. In addition to forbidding the Department of the Interior from favoring incumbent contractors, the act also outlined new criteria for awarding contracts that included a mandate to improve environmental quality in national parklands.
“Bluewater Network has been advocating for more than five years for a solar- and wind-powered ferry for San Francisco Bay,” said Teri Schore, a spokesperson for the local environmental group. She added that diesel vessels in the Bay Area account for more pollution than cars and buses combined. “We’ve been talking to every ferry operator on the bay, and we also knew that the Alcatraz contract was up. We thought it was the perfect application.”
Hornblower’s MacRae wrote a provision into his bid that within two years of taking over the Alcatraz service, the company would build and launch a ferry to run on a combination of solar, wind, and diesel power. After one year of testing the vessel, a second would be built within five years.
That — in combination with a plan to make two initial vessels 90 percent more fuel efficient, as well as implement a clean energy shuttle service on the Embarcadero, power the landing facilities with solar panels, purchase green products, and vend healthy snacks — put Hornblower’s bid over the top.
Wiedeman said all bidders are informed that financial feasibility of the company and potential revenue for the government, as well as environmental and sustainability initiatives, were considered. But some criteria were more weighted than others, and Hornblower ranked strongly on all points.
“We’re ecstatic,” Wiedeman said. “We’re looking at higher-quality visitor services from the get-go.”
But some doubt whether the proposed vessels are anywhere close to a reality. MacRae said a final design and marine contractor have not been selected yet, although Solar Sailor’s model BayTri has been touted. A giant solar-arrayed fin provides auxiliary wind and sun power to the trimaran’s diesel engines. No such vessel has ever been built, but the model is based on a smaller solar ferry that services Sydney Harbor in Australia — with a top speed of just seven knots.
The proposed boat is emissions free and could go 12 knots with the aid of the wind, although it would need a push from auxiliary diesel engines to keep up with Alcatraz’s schedule. Boats now run between 15 and 19 knots.
The other concern is that MacRae’s commitment of $5 million for constructing the 600-passenger vessel might not be enough. The San Francisco Water Transit Authority has been looking into a similar vessel carrying no more than 150 passengers that would cost between $6 and $8 million.
“Their requirements for design are different than what mine would be,” MacRae said. “I think it’s possible to do it for $5 million.”
Bluewater Network founder Russell Long worries that the low-budget cap could hurt the vessel’s environmental potential. “We believe that Hornblower may intend to maintain this budget ceiling even if it compromises other aspects of the design, such as best management practices in regard to environmental components,” he wrote in a letter to NPS, urging reconsideration of the contract.
NPS awarded the contract anyway and Bluewater is hoping for the best.
“We will be watchdogging the progress and keeping track of what’s going on. If it doesn’t happen, it will be a huge black eye for the National Park Service, Hornblower, and the city of San Francisco,” Schore said. “At this point we have faith that it’s going to get built, because it’s in the contract.”
However, Hornblower’s snub toward union contracts and dodgy relations with the city suggest that playing by the rules may not be a top priority for the company.
THE PERFECT TYPO
Since 1974, boats to Alcatraz have run from the Pier 39 area of Fisherman’s Wharf, where waiting ticket holders can indulge in the myriad distractions the tourist hub offers.
MacRae launched his new ferry service from Pier 31, half a mile farther south on the Embarcadero, where he currently leases space and operates a charter and dining cruise business.
Pier 31 is little more than a parking lot with a ramp and floating dock, which only sees about 100,000 people a year, far fewer than the 1.3 million annual passengers Alcatraz draws.
MacRae has attractive plans for a complete overhaul of the area, which would include landscaping and sheltered seating, a bookstore, and an informational center. Such alterations would require a thorough run through the city’s planning process, which MacRae told the NPS he won’t be doing until 12 to 18 months from now.
Instead, interim improvements to the lot were planned, which sparked concern from the city that the sudden increase in foot traffic wouldn’t be properly mitigated. That area of the Embarcadero also hosts 250,000 passengers a year from cruise ships docking at adjacent Pier 35. The Port spent close to $200,000 last year controlling that traffic with signage and police officers. The addition of thousands more visitors streaming down the sidewalks seeking passage to Alcatraz could cause gridlock every time a cruise ship docks.
Monique Moyer, executive director of the port, sent repeated letters over the last year to MacRae asking for clarifications about his plans and expressing concern that the change in use of Pier 31 required a review of existing permits.
She wasn’t alone. On July 31, Citizens to Save the Waterfront filed suit against Hornblower, claiming that the amount of activity at Pier 31 would increase twentyfold. “That represents a substantial change in the intensity of use,” Jon Golinger, a representative from the group, told us.
A change in the intensity of use of a waterfront property triggers the need for a complete environmental impact review (EIR) from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), a state agency with jurisdiction over anything within 100 feet of the shoreline. As many city developers know, EIRs can take many months to consider all potential changes to the existing landscape that the applicant would cause. Delays of that sort could have hindered MacRae’s ability to assume ferry service on the contracted date of Sept. 25.
MacRae said the litigation kept him from divulging to the city his proposed plans for upgrades to the pier.
Just days before the lawsuit was to be argued in San Francisco Superior Court on Sept. 6, BCDC executive director Will Travis sent a letter to Moyer stating that Hornblower’s new service and alterations to Pier 31 did not require any new permits.
He cited a typo from Hornblower’s current BCDC-issued permit as an allowance for the increase in passengers. The permit states that the pier may provide “access to the entire bay via vessel for 200,000 to 5000,000 [sic] people/year.”
He footnoted the quote: “There is clearly a typographical error in the 5000,000 number, which is intended to state the maximum anticipated usage of the dock … the correct number is probably either 500,000 or 5,000,000. While it seems reasonable to believe that the correct number is 500,000, the record contains nothing to substantiate this conclusion.”
Travis also relayed that Hornblower plans to use temporary measures that include trailers with port-a-potties, a portable ticket booth, and hollow traffic barriers for guiding traffic and pedestrians on and off the boat.
Herrera told us that this was the first Moyer had heard of what was planned for the lot and there was concern about how other services in the area and traffic on the Embarcadero would be affected, as well as if any structures, signage, and other enhancements would require additional permits. “It certainly would have been nice if they had shared all these plans so the port could conduct the proper environmental review that we all agree is in order,” he said.
In a strongly worded letter to Travis, Herrera wrote that to allow Hornblower to proceed without any environmental review could violate the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and urged the BCDC to “issue an immediate cease and desist order” to prevent the start of service. Herrera also made the salient point that “the later the environmental review process begins, the more bureaucratic and financial momentum there is behind a proposed project, thus providing a strong incentive to ignore environmental concerns that could be dealt with more easily at an early stage of the project.”
On Sept. 7, BCDC commissioners met in closed session at the end of a four-hour meeting and voted to stand by Travis’s argument.
David Owen, a former Peskin aide who’s also a BCDC commissioner, was one of two abstentions to the otherwise unanimous vote. “It was really frustrating, because it seemed like Hornblower did everything in their power to avoid a permit review,” Owen told us. “Now what? We have a CEQA lawsuit and then the Board of Supervisors shuts down the Alcatraz ferry service? They’ve managed to start up service without acquiring a single permit. Kudos to them for strategy.”
Citizens to Save the Waterfront then dropped its lawsuit, feeling it was weakened by the BCDC decision.
“Essentially, now there’s a turf war between Bush’s park service and the Port of San Francisco,” Golinger said. “BCDC tried to avoid getting involved, but the precedent it sets is horrible. A corporation can come in and skirt any planning process.”
UNION TOWN POLITICS
After scoring the Alcatraz bid, Hornblower sought an exemption to the Service Contract Act of 1965 that would have required MacRae to pay equal to or more than what current crew make. But the Department of Labor ruled Sept. 21 against Hornblower. So veteran Blue and Gold crew have added safety to their concerns.
“I’ve made tens of thousands of landings on Alcatraz Island, and now they have captains who have never been there,” Capt. Andy Miller said. For 17 years, Miller has navigated the busy shipping lanes and the constant summer fog against the tugging tide and the sudden slams of inclement weather to bring tourists, park service staff, and supplies to the island.
“No one’s ever gotten hurt. It’s a very tricky place to land a boat. It takes skill and experience that you can’t just hire off the street,” he said.
Miller said he applied for a job with Hornblower but was not interviewed. So far, no captains and only three ticket agents and a deckhand have been hired from Blue and Gold’s former fleet.
“We have a ready workforce,” Master, Mate, and Pilot union spokesperson Veronica Sanchez said. “They’re going to have to be paid the same wages as union workers at Blue and Gold. They don’t want to be a union shop. Why don’t you want to be a union shop on a union waterfront like San Francisco?”
One reason could be concern that it might bump up costs for Hornblower’s other tour operations. “They want us to agree that if we sign up our workers for Alcatraz, that we won’t organize the dining yachts,” Sanchez said. In 1998, the union attempted to organize Hornblower’s dinner cruise operations in San Francisco but didn’t prevail in a supervised election.
MacRae said he’s not opposed to the unions and he’s encouraged the Blue and Gold staff to apply for jobs. “The unionization is the choice of the workers,” he said. “We try to let the employees make the choices. Last time I checked, that’s who the unions represent.”
“We want to make sure we have the best crew,” he said. “Many of the products and guest services we provide aren’t what Blue and Gold do now.” He added that some current employees from the dining cruises have also been shifted to the Alcatraz route.
“I’ve been here 21 years, and we’ve been replaced by busboys and waiters,” said deckhand Robert Estrada, standing with fellow workers outside the gate of the new Alcatraz ferry service.
Estrada said Hornblower’s reliance on part-time, low-wage workers has earned the company the nickname “the Wal-Mart of the Water.” The company’s rapid expansion, from a two-boat Berkeley-based charter to a multinational fleet with government contracts is a similar characteristic.
Blue and Gold spokesperson Alicia Vargas assured us that the remaining ferry services to Alameda, Angel Island, Oakland, Sausalito, Tiburon, and Vallejo will be solvent, but some of the veteran crew who haven’t been laid off yet are worried this is the beginning of the end.
“The public needs to be warned. If funds don’t come from Alcatraz, Blue and Gold could fold,” said David Heran, an International Boatmen’s Union member and deckhand since 1974 who applied to Hornblower but wasn’t hired. “I’m not ready to retire yet, and this wasn’t the way I was expecting it to happen.” SFBG

Josh’s going-back-to-jail party at Crash

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On the eve of Josh Wolf going to jail, and on the eve of Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada facing yet another federal decision moving them ever closer to jail, I was honored to be the lead speaker at the fundraiser and going-back-to-jail party for Josh last night at Crash, a club on Mason Street in San Francisco.

I made two major points: first, that this was the only city in the country to my knowledge that had three reporters who were in jail or heading to jail, on orders from Washington, for failing to produce sources and material in federal cases. This was no mistake. This was a direct hit at San Francisco, the country’s leading city for dissent and anti-war movements for decades, and came down directly from the Bush Administration and its PATRIOT Act politics as a way to scare the city and put its dissenters on notice.

My second point was that I was speaking as a member of many journalism organizations (from the Society of Professional Journalists, which has already contributed $30,000 to Josh’s defense, to the California First Amendment Coalition to the California Newspaper Publishers Association to international groups from the InterAmerican Press Association to the World Association of Newspapers to the International Press Institute) and that these professional organizations either are or would be in solidarity on this common ground journalism/public service issue. They could be counted on. But the Josh Wolf case was different because he was a lone freelance video photographer, without a news organization and attorneys behind him, and he looked like easy prey for the local cops and the feds.

That, I noted, was what was so important about the Crash event and the emerging Josh brigade. The event was lively, well attended, lots of fun, and demonstrated that a freelancer who stands tall, as Josh is doing, can build a strong grassroots constituency capable of mobilizing sustained resistance.

The real outrage is that the local cops turned Josh’s case over to the feds and gave them another timely target for Bush in San Francisco. And the cops did so secretly and unilaterally, without going to the mayor, to the supervisors, to the district attorney, to the Police Commission. The cops who are fighting like hell to keep beat patrolmen out of the neighborhoods and were happy to invite the feds to come to town and rough up our press and our public on their behalf. At minimum, that move demands public hearings by the supervisors to determine how this happened and what can be done to see that it never happens again.

Today’s Chronicle blaring front page head said: “SILENCE MEANS PRISON, JUDGE TELLS REPORTERS” No, silence in this case for these three reporters means principle and honor and holding your ground under fire. There is no principle or honor for the people in Washington who are working overtime to put in jail three reporters who were doing their job at this critical moment in the City and County of San Francisco.

Free the Media!

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WHAT: Free the Media!
WHEN: Thursday September 21st, 8pm-midnight
WHERE: Crash (34 Mason Street between Eddy and Turk)

Blogger and video-journalist Josh Wolf has been ordered back to jail for refusing to let a federal grand jury have unedited footage of a July 2005 protest demonstration.

Free the Media! Is a benefit to raise money for the Rise Up Network legal defense fund for freelance journalists.

Speakers at Thursday’s event will include Josh Wolf (on the eve of his return to prison), Bruce Brugmann, editor and publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian; San Francisco Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly; filmmaker Kevin Epps; Sarah Olson, Truthout.org journalist; Jeff Perlstein, executive director of the Media Alliance; Richard Knee, acting Journalism Division chair of the National Writers Union’s Bay Area chapter; and Njeri Sims, filmmaker.

Live music by Magnetism. Chuck Gonzalez to DJ.

District 6 sleaze

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EDITORIAL The fall campaign season has only begun, and already the District 6 race is getting really ugly. A downtown-funded operation, hiding behind anonymous mailers and front groups, is spending gobs of money to smear Sup. Chris Daly, and thanks to the city’s campaign-spending laws, Daly’s ability to fight back is limited. The whole mess points to a real problem in the way so-called independent-expenditure committees are regulated, and the supervisors and the Ethics Commission should take up the issue immediately.
Daly, who’s represented the district for almost six years, has offended a lot of people — including some of the city’s richest and most powerful interest groups. They tried to unseat him four years ago with no success, but this time around they have more money and a slimy, secretive strategy that appears to expose a loophole in local law.
The first salvo landed a few weeks ago: a slick, 22-page mailer called “The Case Against Chris Daly” that attacks him on almost every front. The hit piece is unsigned, so the people who received it have no way of knowing exactly who’s behind the message. And there’s no requirement that the sponsors register with the city’s Ethics Commission and reveal their source of financing.
It’s pretty clear, though, who produced and paid for the piece. The money is going through a group called Citizens for Reform Leadership #1, which was set up by downtown elections lawyer Jim Sutton, organized by SFSOS, and funded in large part by Republican kingmaker and the Gap founder Don Fisher. (Sutton has also established Citizens for Reform Leadership committees two through six, indicating that there’s more of this to come.)
The way San Francisco’s campaign-spending limits work, no candidate for supervisor can spend more than $83,000 — unless one of the other candidates breaks that cap. Then all rules are off. But that cap doesn’t apply to whoever put out the 22-page hit piece — in part because we don’t even know legally who it was. That means the SFSOS-Fisher crew can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars hammering away at Daly — and he can’t spend more than $83,000 fighting back.
The candidate who benefits most from this sewer money is Rob Black, a former aide to Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier who has the backing of Mayor Gavin Newsom and is by any account Daly’s most serious challenger. Black told us he has no direct connection to the hit squad — but he stopped short of promising not to engage in negative campaigning himself. And he’s certainly not going around town denouncing the anti-Daly sleaze.
That should change now. If Black wants to be seen as anything other than a pawn of Fisher, he should put out a formal statement calling on SFSOS and its allies to back off, quit the anonymous name-calling, and either come clean or stay out of District 6. So should every other candidate in the race. (The hotly contested District 5 battle two years ago was remarkably clean, in part because all of the candidates agreed not to accept this sort of nonsense.)
The Ethics Commission should launch a full investigation of this anonymous campaigning with the aim of exposing the forces behind it — and if the city’s current law doesn’t allow a ban on secret hit pieces, the supervisors should amend it today. Meanwhile, the commission ought to lift the expenditure limit for District 6; it’s not optimal, but in this case it’s only fair. SFBG

A vote on Oak to Ninth

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In just 30 days, the Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee collected the signatures of 25,068 Oakland residents who want a chance to vote on a massive development project that would bring 31,000 new homes to the Oakland waterfront. But the matter may never be on the ballot: on Sept. 6, Oakland City Attorney John Russo directed the city clerk to invalidate the petition because it didn’t conform to the requirements of state election law.
It’s likely that from a legal standpoint Russo’s determination is correct. Nevertheless, the decision exposes flaws in California’s election system that the state legislature should fix. In the shorter term, the Oakland City Council ought to recognize that there’s strong public sentiment for a referendum on the project and put Oak to Ninth before the voters.
It’s tough to force a referendum vote on an act of local government: you need to gather a significant number of signatures within 30 days of the passage of the bill — and there are no second chances. If the petition doesn’t meet every possible legal standard — and the standards are high, the rules complex — then the referendum is dead forever.
Erica Harrold, communications director for Russo’s office, told us she sympathized with the plight of Oak to Ninth foes and acknowledged that the current rules applying to referendum petitions are “draconian.” Russo, she said, is seeking reforms to the current system, including establishment of a new rule that would not start the 30-day period until the city provides a certified final version of an ordinance to petition sponsors. That was a key issue in this conflict: the Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee apparently had to rush to gather signatures to meet the deadline and for various reasons did not submit the version of the ordinance that Russo and the City Council consider the final draft (additionally, the committee did not include certain attachments to the ordinance that the City Attorney’s Office says were required).
The legislature should follow Russo’s suggestion and change the deadlines. It should also consider allowing petition sponsors to cure unintentional defects in their petitions.
State legislative reform can’t come quickly enough to remedy the current situation involving the Oak to Ninth petition. But the City Council can still act: it’s well within the authority of local officials to simply acknowledge the public interest in (and demand for) a citywide vote on a project that will change Oakland forever — and place the entire matter on next June’s ballot.
There’s no rush to break ground here — in fact, we’ve long argued that the project shouldn’t have final approval until the incoming mayor, Ron Dellums (who has expressed real concerns with the deal), takes office. Legal technicalities aside, the bottom line is simple: Oakland residents deserve a chance to be heard on Oak to Ninth. SFBG
PS Stop the presses: on Sept. 19, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera ruled that petitions demanding a vote on the redevelopment plan for Bayview–Hunters Point were invalid — on a legal technicality similar to the one that undermined the Oakland petitions. Again, Herrera may well be legally correct (and we’re under no illusions here — the referendum was financed in part by a private housing developer) — but when in doubt, the desire of the voters to weigh in on an issue should be paramount. The supervisors should determine whether it’s possible to put this plan on the ballot anyway.

Discovering the formula

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› amanda@sfbg.com
San Francisco has a thing for local businesses. From Chinatown to Hayes Valley, the dozens of distinctive neighborhoods that constitute this city have for the most part maintained their individuality with one-of-a-kind, locally owned places to shop, snack, and seek services.
While many cities and small towns across the country have succumbed to the sprawl and homogeneity of chain stores, some have resisted, even in the face of lawsuits and wily campaigning from megaretailers. Big corporations including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Target are combating restrictive municipal legislation with their money, pouring millions into local political races and flying in paid signature gatherers for ballot referenda.
“They’re spending $100 per vote in some cases,” Stacy Mitchell told the Guardian. Mitchell is the author of Big-Box Swindle and a senior researcher for the New Rules Project, a subsidiary of the Institute of Local Self-Reliance, which tracks legislation against formula retail.
“They’re getting mixed results,” she said, which means sometimes the big boys lose, like in the multiyear battle with Inglewood that sent Wal-Mart walking. But more often than not, the formula retailers win.
Take Chicago as a recent example: Mayor Richard Daley overrode city councilors and issued his first veto in 17 years, against legislation that would have required large retailers to pay a living wage to employees. Councilors hoped to trump the mayor with another vote, but at the last minute three councilors switched positions to side with Daley.
“I still don’t understand how it happened,” said SF supervisor Tom Ammiano, who flew into Chicago to speak in favor of the legislation. He told us the city was behind it, though opponents were arguing that low-income people needed the option to work and shop at Wal-Mart and it was discriminatory to not allow the store to move into the city. “They played the race card. It was obvious they were people on [Wal-Mart’s] payroll.”
In the week since the veto, Wal-Mart has already swooped in with several site proposals for the first 20-acre megamart in Chicago. It’s stated an eventual goal of building 20 stores in the Windy City. Could Wal-Mart spite San Francisco just like it did Chicago?
Since 2004, San Francisco has operated with the Formula Retail Ordinance, designed to preserve “the city’s goal of a diverse retail base.” This isn’t an outright ban, but it makes the application and review process more arduous for formula retail. The ordinance defines formula retail as any chain with 11 or more outlets that offer standardized services or mimic one another in decor, architecture, and practices (like Starbucks, the Gap, and Wal-Mart, to name an infamous few).
The relevant legislation, Section 703.3 of the Planning Code, reads like it was penned by a Norman Rockwell acolyte and cites such businesses as generally undesirable, granting neighborhoods the right to be notified of potential chain store proposals. While the legislation allows neighborhoods to create their own stricter legislation, it also grants them the right to accept a chain into the fold, which is a pretty big loophole.
So far, most neighborhoods haven’t been welcoming. A battle in North Beach over Home Depot resulted in an outright ban of all formula retail in the neighborhood. Hayes Valley followed suit. Conditional use permits in western SoMa, Cole Valley, and Divisadero from Haight to Turk add an extra layer of scrutiny to the planning process when a Starbucks or Target want to set up shop. Potrero Hill–Showplace Square is the next in the trend, with a 12-month interim conditional-use period and a more permanent restriction on the way. That restriction was introduced by Sup. Sophie Maxwell, approved by the Land Use and Economic Development Committee, and headed to the full Board of Supervisors for initial approval Sept. 19 after Guardian press time.
Maxwell’s legislation could become moot this November if voters approve Proposition G, the Small Business Protection Act, which would extend conditional-use permitting to the entire city, making any proposal from a chain store subject to public hearings and an arduous Environmental Impact Review at the expense of the applicant, not the city.
Dozens of counties and municipalities have enacted similar ordinances around the country in response to the track records of megaretailers. Public criticism is mounting against corporations such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot for drawing the shopping masses by reducing prices to quash smaller competitors and for pulling profits out of communities instead of keeping them local, as small businesses tend to do.
But the chain stores aren’t just rolling over.
“It’s happening in enough places that it’s reached a point where they’re feeling nervous about how it’s affecting their growth,” Mitchell said about the retail giants. Her organization has been assisting communities for several years in drafting legislation against formula retail and is seeing some of that legislation undercut by voracious chain stores. Wal-Mart, the most notorious foe, dumps thousands of dollars into local election races. The tactic is especially evident in California.
“Wal-Mart spends more in California than anywhere,” said Nu Wexler, spokesperson for Wal-Mart Watch, a Washington-based organization with hawk eyes on the company. “They have active lobbying in all 50 states, but California is a particularly important market for them.”
He attributes that to the state’s status as the sixth-largest economy in the world. In 2002, Wal-Mart promised to open 40 supercenters in the state within four to six years. As of October 2005, only six had been opened. “They’re fighting expansion battles all over the country, but they’re having an especially difficult time in California,” Wexler said. Inglewood, Turlock, and Hercules have all recently dodged Wal-Mart.
But several other cities have not, despite protective measures, and in the last year 12 more supercenters have opened in California, bringing the grand total to 19.
Contra Costa County, apropos of no immediate threat, passed a 2003 ordinance prohibiting “big box” stores over 90,000 square feet. In response, Wal-Mart dumped more than $1.5 million campaigning for a measure overriding the ordinance on the next available ballot. In 2004, the ordinance was overturned by 54 percent of voters.
Four years of fighting in Rosemead resulted in two city council shake-ups, with a recall election of two council members set to be decided this week; a possible Brown Act violation when city officials approved a permit for Wal-Mart during a meeting when it wasn’t on the agenda; and multiple lawsuits from both sides. Wal-Mart spent $200,000 campaigning and dropped another $100,000 in local charities to spread some good cheer. It worked: doors opened at a new supercenter Sept. 18.
Last August, a Wal-Mart opened just across the bay in Oakland even though the city already had a ban on big-box retail larger than 2.5 acres. Spurning the city’s provincial laws, Wal-Mart found real estate regulated by the Port of Oakland — which, similar to San Francisco’s port, is outside the city’s jurisdiction and not subject to local ordinances.
“It was passed in a backroom deal with the port before the city could have any public hearings,” said Adam Gold, a spokesperson from Just Cause Oakland, a local group that opposed the store. “It made it difficult to resist it. It had already been approved.”
At the state level, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently vetoed Senate Bill 1414, introduced by San Francisco’s state senator Carol Migden, which would have required employers with more than 10,000 workers to put 8 percent of total wages toward health care. Not a surprise: Wal-Mart’s Walton family dropped more than half a million dollars into electing the governor, with a most timely donation of $250,000 last year on the very day he vetoed legislation aimed at Wal-Mart that would have required businesses to disclose when employees use public health care services.
Two other bills, SB1523, requiring environmental impact reports and public hearings for the construction of stores larger than 100,000 square feet, and SB1818, allowing cities to recover legal fees when sued by big-box retailers, sailed through the legislature but are currently festering on the governor’s desk.
Is it all enough to protect San Francisco? Can the city keep mom and pop on the corners and resist the commercialism that has made a city like Emeryville the mall that it is today?
Maxwell, who pushed the recent legislation for Showplace Square and Potrero Hill, hopes so. “I’d rather have the position of them on the offense than the defense,” she said of potential retail applicants. When asked if the city codes are strict enough, she said, “If not, I’d be willing to put forth the legislation that is.”
As for the idea of Wal-Mart coming to town, the District 10 supervisor was nothing if not firm: “No, no way. Not in San Francisco.” SFBG

Notes from the underground

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
Looking for hints of San Francisco’s renowned underground nightlife? It pays to keep your eyes and nose to the ground — and to be textable. That’s one of the few subtle signs that the hottest underground party in town is happening right here on an early Sunday summer morning: reedy, peg-legged hipsters standing out by the curb on this barren, bulldozed Hunters Point artery, busily texting and talking up fidgety, insomniac friends about their next landing strip. Beats bang gently in the background as fashion-damaged kids dangle from the railings along the short flight of steps to the door, smoking and guzzling from sacks like it’s recess at their own semiprivate too-cool school.
Upstairs in a long, tall space lined with huge rectangular windows, the Sixteens are getting ready for a set. And everyone else — and that’s every-fucking-body — is madly dancing on the other side to stabbing electrotech beats that come off so metallic and grimy that you could slice yourself open and get a nasty infection on ’em. Is that arch-retro-candy raver actually swinging a stretchy glow stick with one hand while trying to hold on to a mixed drink in the other? Swirling moiré patterns, projections of flames, and found industrial footage lick the walls of the room and the faces of the dancers. A burnt-orange slice of summer moon is slung low in the sky as if already hungover from the shit-hot party raging below.
Closing time — you may not know whom you want to take home, but do you know where your next party is? Above-grounders might say “you don’t need to go home, but you can’t stay here,” but you needn’t turn into a pumpkin and pass out in your car just yet. Bay Area underground parties like this one — and of every imaginable stripe and musical genre — are where sleepless scenesters flock.
So why is the underground scene continuing to blossom like a hundred Lotus Girls on a dust-caked playa in a city chock-full of wholly legit clubs? This summer, as a series of humongoid dance clubs including Temple Bar SF, prepped to throw open their doors, one had to wonder: why bother going off the grid?
Perhaps that’s where you can find the sounds you crave, a frustrating chore when clubs book conservatively — and an experience that may end all too soon with the city’s 2 a.m. last call. DJs such as Jamin Creed of BIG are seeing their grime and dubstep parties, for instance, starting to blow up now both over- and underground after gestating in after-hours soirees. “It’s a music-orienting thing, to be honest,” says underground breaks party thrower DJ Ripple, né Lorin Stoll. Citing undergrounds in Big Sur as well as the Harmony fest in Santa Rosa, the ex-Deadhead sees continuity between the city’s Left Coast vibe and “the merging of the counterculture of the ’60s with the rave culture of the ’90s, merging with the experience and professionalism of Burning Man culture in the 2000s. It’s created this nice renaissance in underground music.”
Dub it an unintended fringe benefit stemming from the failure to change the city’s last call two years ago, an effort led by Terrance Alan, chairman of the Late Night Coalition and legislative chair of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission. That move failed — after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution urging the state legislature to make the change — when the proposed legislation got stuck in committee at the State Assembly. Despite the support of the city’s Entertainment Commission, Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Gavin Newsom, the bill was opposed by antialcohol groups and organizations such as the Oakland Police Department, whose officers testified that a later last call in San Francisco would create traffic accidents in Oakland. “Those observations were never supported in the data on changes in last call,” Alan says today.
The reality is that partly as a result of those quashed endeavors, the Bay Area underground party scene continues to flourish, via Tribe.net, lists, and those omnipresent flyers. Tomas Palermo — a DJ, Guardian contributor, and former XLR8R editor — thinks the underground warehouse and techno event circuit has been bubbling along nicely since 1988, with surges in house in the early ’90s and explosions in drum ’n’ bass during the dot-com years. And even a seasoned listener like him isn’t immune to the simple pleasures of an outdoor beatdown: “In the last two weeks I went to a free [breakbeat] sound system gathering in a tiny grassy nook of Golden Gate Park and a Sunset Party in McLaren Park,” he e-mails.
The latter gatherings, put on by Pacific Sound System, just may embody the resilient, oh-naturel vibe of the undergrounds in this area. DJ Galen began the daytime Sunset Parties on summer Sundays about a dozen years ago at Golden Gate Park. Old-school — yep. Family oriented — believe it. Ideal if you’re still tweaked the morning after — maybe. An outdoor dance floor of up to 3,000 — yikes. “I just feel events are very much the reflection of the people who put them on, and you can kind of tell when people are doing it for money or just the pure feeling of bringing people together through music and the outdoors,” says Galen, who co-owns Tweekin Records. When he started the parties, he was a shell of a raver, burned out from lifelong training as a swimmer for the 1996 Olympics. “I hadn’t felt like I lived life and came home and some friends took me to a party and just opened my eyes,” he recalls, citing the Wicked Crew’s Full Moon Raves as inspirational. “Looked at all these people having fun and a sense of community — I just got so excited that this whole other world existed and got immersed in it.”
He maxed out his credit card, bought a sound system, and began playing house music in the park as the audience grew. His three-person collective has since produced successful overground boat parties, but they’ve maintained that earthbound sense of perspective. “I think that’s one major reason why things have gone well — we’re not out of it for ego,” he says. “We are very respectful of everyone, and in turn people are respectful of us. When we leave these parks, they’re spotless, and a lot of people have told us, ‘Wow, that was a really crazy party, but everyone’s so mellow and nice!’ SFBG

More underground:


Live bait: the secret life of warehouse shows

Oral Histories: underground gay sex clubs of the early ’90s

Party primer: underground party web sites

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