Sarah Phelan

Board considers extra $75.4 million for Mission Bay redevelopment

Mary Magee
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Board considers extra $75.4 million for Mission Bay redevelopment

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post reported that the Board was meeting in closed session. This was incorrect.

The Board is meeting today  to consider amending the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s (SFRA)  budget to issue an additional $70 million in tax increment bonds and appropriate $75.4 million ($70 million in bond proceeds, plus $5.4 million tax increment). The request, which comes on the heels of last year’s $64 million request, represents a 109.4 increase of tax increment bonds in 2010-2011. The city says thiis has nothing to do with Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies. But the last-minute timing of today’s session looks a tad fishy at best. And it’s playing out as a vote on Treasure Island’s final environmental impact report approaches, and against a backdrop of extreme funcertaintly related to all things Redevelopment, as Mayor Ed Lee and other city leaders try to figure out ways to prevent or reduce the affordable housing fallout from the governor’s elimination proposal.

According to a Budget and Legislative Analyst’s summary of today’s request, the requested bond issuance and expenditure is part of the “SFRA’s normal course of fulfilling its obligations under the tax increment allocation pledge agreements between the city, SFRA and FOCIL-MB (Catellus’ successor entity at the Mission Bay redevelopment sites), and not as a result of the Governor’s proposal to eliminate local redevelopment agencies. Ms. Lee [deputy executive director at the SFRA] states, that, as of the writing of this report, the impact of the Governor’s proposal on the Mission Bay Redevelopment Project is currently unclear and ambiguous as to whether approval of the Governor’s proposal would affect the requested bond issuance and expenditure authority.”

“At the time of the development and approval of the FY 2010-2011 budget, the Agency and Tax Assessor did not have available tax roll information that resulted in a significant increase in property taxes in Mission Bay due to the accelerated assessment agreement between the Assessor and the Agency,” states today’s Board resolution that Mayor Lee sponsored, explaining why there’s a request for an additional $70 million in bonds, so soon on the heels of the $64 million that the Board approved last year.

“The Agency wishes to amend its budget for the fiscal year 2010-2011 to permit the receipt of additional tax increment of $5.44 million and bond proceeds in the amount of $70 million for the purposes of low moderate housing and for the reimbursement of public improvements made by Catellus pursuant to the tax increment allocation pledge agreement between the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and Catellus made in November 16,1998 for Mission Bay North and South,” the resolution continues.

 Mission Bay North and South are two separate redevelopment areas that encompass 303 acres, bounded by King Street and AT&T Park on the north, the San Francisco Bay and the I-280 freeway on the east and west, and Mariposa Street to the south, according to Redevelopment Agency documents.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst notes that of the $5.4 million in additional tax increment, an estimated $3.48 million would fund a portion of the Agency’s required educational revenue augmentation fund payment to the state for FY 2010-2011. And that the remaining $1.95 million would be distributed to tax entities, with $870,400 to be expended on the agency’s low and moderate income housing fund.

 The BLA notes that the proposed sale of $70 million in tax increment bonds will provide $60.345 million bond proceeds, including $12 million (20 percent) to fund the construction of 1180 4th Street, a development of 150 units of family rental housing, including 25 units for formerly homeless families and $48. 276 million (80 percent) to reimburse Catellus’ successor, FOCIL-MB, LLC, for public infrastructure development that FOCIL-MB constructed..

“If the proposed resolution is approved, of the $177 million total estimated debt service, $100, 890,000 or 57 percent will be paid from the City’s General Fund. The City’s General Fund estimated additional annual cost would be $3,648,000 for the first 20 years, decreasing to $2,793,000 for the next ten years.” The BLA concludes, explaining that approval of the proposed resolution is a Board policy decision because it adds up to a total General Fund cost of more than $100 million.

 According to the BLA report, Amy Lee, SF Redevelopment Agency deputy executive director, the requested $70 million in tax increment bonds would be sold in late March 2011, “such that no debt service payments would be required in FY 2010-2011.

 The BLA also notes that if the Board approves the proposed resolution, the net effect of each property tax dollar expended for tax increment that is provided to SFRA would result in a reduction of $0.57 on each dollar from the city’s General Fund.

“In other words, for each tax increment dollar provided to SFRA, the City would no longer have to provide payments to other tax entities,” the BLA observes.

These entities include the city’s Children’s Fund, Library Preservation Fund, Open Space Acquisition Fund, and the General City Bond Debt fund, the Community College district, the San Francisco United School District, BART, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which total approximately $0.43 of each property tax dollar.

It’s because of these property tax dollar equations that the annual cost to the city’s general fund for proposed increased debt service would rise, if the Board approves today’s Redevelopment resolution, by more than $100 million over the next 30 years.

And as local Democratic Party chair and former Board President Aaron Peskin explains, there’s nothing much the Board can do about the deal today, but they might want to reconsider getting into more deals like this at Treasure Island and beyond, in future.

“A deal is a deal is a deal,” Peskin said. ‘So, there’s nothing the Board could do differently, but that’s $3.648 million that otherwise would be going into the General Fund, and it’s a sign we should pay attention to, when considering Treasure Island, as deals like this will continue to impoverish the General Fund.”

 “Even though they deny it has nothing to do with Gov. Jerry Brown’s pending legislation to eliminate redevelopment agencies, I have never seen something scheduled so quickly,” Peskin added, noting that the Board’s agenda is published Thursday evening or Friday morning, but this item wasn’t on that agenda, hence the need to publish a separate notice.

Meanwhile, Treasure Island’s final environmental impact report has been released, and the way the current plan looks, will forever alter our view of the Bay.

“It will have enormous impacts on services for the City and traffic for the entire Bay Area,” Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, told the Guardian.

On April 7, a joint session of the San Francisco Planning Commission and Treasure Island Development Authority will be meeting to consider certifying the EIR, but Arc is asking for an extension of two more weeks to provide the public with 42 days for review.

“Fourteen additional days for public review is a very modest request for a project with such significant impacts yet, the City has thus far refused,” Bloom notes.

A meeting of Mayor Lee and Bloomberg’s minds

Mary Magee
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Mayor Ed Lee described New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as “a model of mine” as the two men exchanged gifts in the Mayor’s Office, and reporters unsuccessfully tried to figure out which of the two men is taller.

Bloomberg gave Lee a box of golf balls, Lee gave Bloomberg a trolley bell, organic hot dogs, a lifetime membership to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the two men had a meeting of the minds when it came to the need for big cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Lee prefaced his gift giving by saying he intended to make Bloomberg an honorary citizen of San Francisco.

“Does that mean I’ll have to pay taxes?” Bloomberg quipped.
“If they go up, you’ll be the first to know,” Lee replied.

Bloomberg said it was “fun to talk” with Mayor Lee about energy conservation and environmental activism. “Things like the environment are things mayors have to deal with every day,” Bloomberg said, noting that cities account for 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

Bloomberg praised San Francisco for approving an ordinance that requires owners of non-residential buildings to make public how much energy each building consumes each year. The legislation is meant to improve energy efficiency in existing buildings, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy costs and create green jobs. It also requires commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet to conduct energy-efficiency audits every five years.

“Each can profit from each other’s experiences,” Bloomberg said, noting that because NYC has a more carbon efficient mass transit than most U.S. cities, its buildings are responsible for creating 80 percent of NYC’s emissions. 

Asked about a lawsuit that his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan reportedly triggered by installing a bike lane along the boundary of an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood, Bloomberg flashed a smile that didn’t suggest he thinks Sadik-Khan is now a PR liability for his administration.

“Change is difficult,” Bloomberg replied, acknowledging that there are “battles between those who drive cars and ride bikes.”

“Mass transit is the solution for every big city,” he continued. “And the bicycle is one of the answers, but they can be dangerous. Roads are not just for motor vehicles. They are also for bikes and pedestrians. The key is pedestrian safety.”

“Our transportation commissioner is very innovative,” Bloomberg continued, referring back to the reportedly embattled Sadik-Khan. “She therefore does come under criticism, but I should be the one taking the heat, not her!”

“Closing Times Square was one of the most successful things we’ve done,” he added, referring to another initiative that Sadik-Khan championed, in addition to installing bike lanes on crowded streets and proposing to shut part of NYC’s 34th Street to cars.

Asked for his impressions of San Francisco’s homeless problem, Bloomberg pointed out that he had just traveled straight from the airport to City Hall by BART, and therefore didn’t have a deep grasp of the issue locally. “I don’t know the specifics,” he said.

But he was happy to outline how New York set “a very aggressive goal” of reducing its homeless population that it then failed to meet it, in part because the economy tanked. “The numbers are down about 13 percent each year,” he said, noting that he hasn’t seen the 2010 statistics.  “But only a small number sleep on the streets,” he continued, noting that folks in NYC, “have to work to qualify for rental assistance.”

Asked to give Lee some mayoral advice, Bloomberg said, “The public wants elected officials who are genuine, who are doing things for what they think are the right reasons.

Asked to give Lee specific advice on how to stay out of trouble as the city’s top official, Bloomberg joked that Lee should move to New York until the end of the year, when his term as interim mayor expires. “But then he’d get into trouble for doing that,” he said. And then he and his coterie of security guards and photographers were out of the press conference and into the elevators, faster than a cabbie trying to beat a red light on a sweltering night in the Big Apple.

Census no surprise to outmigration taskforce

Mary Magee
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Census no surprise to outmigration taskforce

 “San Francisco is losing its black population faster than any other large city in the United States — and the trend is unlikely to stop unless the city takes immediate action.” That’s what the Guardian wrote in August 2008, when we covered a draft report that the Mayor’s African American out-migration task force produced.

But despite the taskforce’s dire warnings, the Mayor’s Office didn’t hold a press conference when the final report was published in 2009. Instead, it was quietly posted on the Redevelopment Agency’s Website, where you can still find it today tucked into the bottom lefthand corner.

And despite the report’s numerous recommendations, taskforce members say that little funding had been made available to turn their ideas into realities.
So, it comes as no surprise that San Francisco’s black population continues to shrink while that of Asian Americans and Latinos make big gains.
According to newly released 2010 Census figures, San Francisco’s total population grew by 3.7 percent to 805,235 in the past decade, the Asian and Latino populations each swelled by 11 percent, the white population shrank by 12.5 percent—and the black population shrank by 22.6 percent.

This means, San Francisco now has 337,451 white residents (42 percent of total population), 265,700 Asian residents (33 percent of population), 121,774 Latinos (15.1 percent of the population), and 46,781 blacks (5.8 percent of population).
In 2009, the out-migration task force, which used 2005 US Census and state demographic data, placed the city’s African American population at 1/16 of San Francisco’s total population, compared to its two largest minorities, Asians and Hispanics, which made up 1/3 and 1/8, respectively.

“We saw that the African American population has declined by 40.8 percent since 1990, and as a share of the population decreased from 10.9 percent in 1990 to 6.5 percent in 2005,” the AAOMTF’s 2009 report states.

(As it happens 6.5 percent of the population in 2005 translated into 46,779 black residents. So, while the black population appears to have grown by two people, when viewed as a share of the city’s entire population in 2010, it can be seen to have shrunk by 22.6 percent, reflecting a flight to the East Bay and other states.)

“That’s not enough people to fill Candlestick Park,” Fred Blackwell, executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, stated in 2008, during a presentation about the taskforce’s draft report. He cited a lack of affordable housing and educational and economic opportunity, severe environmental injustice, an epidemic of violence, and lack of cultural and social pride, as the reasons blacks were leaving.

But sadly not much has changed, including the frustration of local black leaders.
“We could paper the walls of this building with reports that have been made on this issue,” task force chair Aileen Hernandez said in 2008, pointing to similar studies that were done in 1995 and 1972, while fellow task force member Barbara Cohen said the draft recommendations “should have long ago been called the final recommendations.”

Reached by phone today, AAOMTF task force member Sharen Hewitt recalled how she and London Breed called for the creation of the taskforce, only to see many crucial recommendations ignored.
“We called for the creation of the taskforce in face of an imminent threat to the sustained presence of African Americans in San Francisco, especially low-income residents,” Hewitt said. “The taskforce’s draft report did not capture 80 percent of the discussion.”
Hewitt says a key flaw was the absence of a “real plan to address the fate of  African Americans who live in subsidized low-income housing.”

Fellow AAOMTF task force member Regina Davis, director of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, agrees that a lack of action didn’t help.
“Today’s numbers could have looked different based on actions,” Davis said.
She hopes that today’s increasingly dire financial system will be a call to action.
“Especially with the threat of the elimination of redevelopment agencies, because a lot of the housing for low-income folks is jeopardized in ways we haven’t experienced for three decades,” she said. “People are understanding that this is a market they haven’t seen before.”

Davis remains optimistic that the 2010 Census figures will galvanize folks.
“I’ve been mystified why people haven’t protested the war more,” she mused. “Maybe they will now that dollars they have taken for granted aren’t on the table. And maybe they’ll start to realize that tax cuts cost money. I don’t know where folks get the notion that tax cuts are free.”

Other AAOMTF members say the whole taskforce process was very discouraging for those who worked so diligently to find solutions.

”After all that intense work, we were all left with no notable action taken, (At least no action that I am aware of),” wrote AAOMTF member Larry Saxxon in an email. “At the least, the report should have been released to the general public for their review and feedback. It left me questioning the motives for the process from a political point of view.”

Saxxon said that because of feeling a great deal of dissatisfaction with the AAOMTF’s Education Committee’s findings, he and fellow taskforce member Barbara Cohen wrote a minority report on the needs for greater educational services for the African American community.

In their report, Cohen and Saxxon noted that there was a need to increase awareness and advocacy for African American students who are classified as special needs students.

And in his email, Saxxon noted that as an African American and an active advocate for the African immigrant community, he strongly suggested that AAOMTF include the presence of the African immigrant community in the final report as this was the only known incoming source of Blacks arriving in San Francisco. 

“From the statistical data that we had access to, we know that the African immigrant comprises, at a minimum, of 10 percent of the overall African American presence in San Francisco. This 10 percent is only counting those that are documented.  When we view the ratio of undocumented African immigrants… that number increases considerably! Sadly, that fact never manifested in the final report.”

“This is an issue that is very dear to my heart, as I too feel like an endangered species as an African American man and father trying to survive, and indeed thrive, in San Francisco,” he said. “The prospects seem to get dimmer as the months and years go by.”

Saxxon was pleased Mayor Ed Lee “did at least acknowledge the nature of
the problem and also by his alluding to the fact that some concerted action
needs to be taken.”

And it’s true that Lee has signaled a commitment to the African American community through his support for Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, which kicks in March 25. (The AAOMTF identified jobs, as well as housing, education, economic development, cultural and social life, and public safety and quality of life as key policies and practices that can “help stem the outflow and even entire more African-Americans to make a home and establish roots in San Francisco, while making them feel like an integral part of the City’s stability and vibrancy.”)

But will Lee take other significant steps to stem the outflow in his ten remaining months in office (assuming he doesn’t throw his hat into the ring of the mayoral race, after all?) And will the plight of the city’s African American community even become an issue in the 2011 mayoral race?

Don’t miss the free MUNI youth bus pass!

Mary Magee
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Don’t miss the free MUNI youth bus pass!

If you do down to the BART station at 16th and Mission today (Thursday) from 3-5 p.m., you’ll see banners that read ‘Get Your Free Fast Pass.” The PR blitz is the work of the MORE Public Transit Coalition, which is conducting a series of community bus pass clinics in the Mission, the Bayview and Chinatown in the coming weeks to help low-income families apply for free MUNI youth passes. 

Last week, at the urging of the MORE Public Transit Now Coalition and Sup. David Campos, the MTA Board approved the Youth Lifeline Program, which will provide 12,000 low-income youth with free MUNI bus passes in April, May and June.

But to access the free bus pass program, low-income families need to fill out an application and return it to the MTA Office. As a result, community organizers are setting up the bus pass clinics to inform low-income parents and students about the program and to help them to apply.

“We fought hard to get these free bus passes,” Gloria Esteva of POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) said in a press release. “Now we want to make sure that children get these passes in their hands and don’t have to worry having bus fare in order to make it school each day.”

More than 20,000 transit dependant students in San Francisco rely on public transit to travel to and from school daily. But last year, the price of the Youth Fast Pass doubled from $10 to $20.

“We take the bus everywhere we go,” Un Un Che from the Chinese Progressive Association. Said. “My family depends on MUNI to get to school, to work, to the doctor.  Buses are not a luxury; they are a necessity.”

A similar clinic will be held in the Bayview on Monday March 14 at the Mandela Plaza at the corner of 3rd Street and Palou. A second clinic will be held in the Mission on Thursday March 17 and a second in the Bayview on Monday March 21. Future clinics are planned for Chinatown, though dates are not yet available. But applications will be available at all locations in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and assistance will be provided in all three languages.
 Organizers note that while the program is a positive step, the 12,000 passes still fall short of meeting the need for affordable public transportation in San Francisco.
 
“We know that next year the city plans to continue to cut yellow school buses,” POWER organizer Beatriz Herrera said.  “We need a permanent program that will ensure that our children can travel safely around the city, get to school each day, and meet their basic transit needs.”

Is David Crane just another Kochhead?

Mary Magee
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Is David Crane just another Kochhead?

This week the Chronicle majorly attacked State Sen. Leland Yee, claiming Yee tried “to distort the words” of billionaire investment banker and UC Regent David Crane on collective bargaining.

The Chron’s attack came on the heels of Yee’s attempt to block Crane’s UC Regents confirmation. And Yee’s attempt to block Crane came in response to an op-ed Crane wrote for the Chron titled “Should public employees have collective bargaining rights?”

In its counter-counter attack editorial this week, the Chronicle accused Yee of falsely claiming that Crane had “called for an end to collective bargaining rights for California teachers, nurses, firefighters, university employees and other public sector worker.”

“What the former adviser to Gov.Arnold Schwarzenegger did was present a history of collective bargaining in California and explain how a 1977 law had changed the balance of power by giving public employees power over their compensation and benefits,” the Chronicle stated. “Crane did assert that extending collective bargaining to employees who already have civil service protections ‘serves to reduce benefits for citizens and to raise costs for taxpayers. Anyone who would argue with that fact has not been paying attention to what is happening with state and local budgets lately.”

The Chronicle finished by praising Crane, who is currently a lecturer on Public Policy at Stanford University and is reportedly working with former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to form a task force to examine current state budget practices. Crane, the Chron asserted, has “long been widely respected as a teller of inconvenient truths about the rising costs of public-employee pensions and benefits. He should not be silenced – or misquoted by opportunistic politicians. The Senate should vote to confirm him as regent.”

Now, when Schwarzenegger appointed Crane as a UC Regent in December 2010 as one of his last acts as Governor, the Sacramento Bee described Crane as Schwarzenegger’s “chief public employee pension critic.” But here in San Francisco, the Chron didn’t bother to flesh out Crane’s history of employment, campaign contributions, prior statements on collective bargaining, and financial investments.

Maybe it was because these public records reveal Crane to be less a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and more of a Bushocrat, an ultra-rich investor who supported G.W. Bush through two elections, and repeatedly frames the collective bargaining rights of government employees as an obstacle standing in the way of pension reform and budget balancing.

Campaign finance records show that in March 1999, when Democrats were trying to hang onto the White House in the wake of Clinton’s sex scandals, Crane gave $1,000 to Bush. And in June 2003, just three months after Bush invaded Iraq on a false pretext, Crane saw fit to give Bush another $2,000.

The good news? Crane didn’t support Sarah Palin and John McCain in 2008. But he did donate $7,200 to Republican Tom Campbell’s unsuccessful 2010 bid for US Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat. And here in San Francisco, Crane was one of several billionaires who wrote big fat checks last fall in support of Measure B, which sought to curb the pension and health benefits of city workers, most of whom will make a fraction in their lifetime of what Crane rakes in each year from his widely diversified financial portfolio.

Crane’s 2009 statement of economic interest shows he has over $1 million invested in Farallon Capital Partners, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, many of whose investors include top university endowments.

Crane also has over $1 million invested in Acacia Partners, over $1 million in Bislett Partners, over $1 million in Kensico Partners, over $1 million in Semper Vic Partners, over $1 million in Berkshire Hathaway, whose CEO is Warren Buffet, over $1 million in the HCP Absolute Return Fund, whose Board includes Warren Hellman, and up to $1 million in Hall Capital Management, whose Board includes Hellman and Gap heir John Fisher. Crane also owns several million dollars stake in real estate investments, and has sizeable stock in Wells Fargo, Chesapeake Energy, Microsoft, Google, Pangloss Oil, Whole Foods Market, M&T Bank Corp., IBM, American Express, WalMart and Exxon.

And he gets income from Acacia Partners and Babcock & Brown, where he was a former partner from 1979 to 2003. While at Babcock, Crane reportedly brokered a controversial jet-lease deal between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Singapore Airlines that allowed Schwarzenegger to defer taxes on millions of dollars. And in 2004, Crane went to work for then Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger as special advisor for Jobs and Economic Growth. The Terminator returned the favor by appointing Crane to the California Commission in Economic Development and the California High Speed Rail Authority. But Crane was rejected in Senate confirmation proceedings for a position on the board of California State Teachers Retirement System.

Now, clearly it’s not a crime to be a billionaire, even though the way some folks make their billions is criminal. But you have to wonder if UC really needs another ultra-rich Regent on its Board. You also have to wonder why the wealthy Crane sought reimbursements of $2,812 from UC in 2009, if he cares about saving the state money.

And Crane has made plenty of statements about collective bargaining rights and pension reform in recent months that seem to frame government employees as the bogey men, not just in California, but across the entire nation.

Take his April 2010 comments to the Los Angeles Times: “State legislators are afraid even to utter the words ‘pension reform’ for fear of alienating what has become — since passage of the Dills Act in 1978, which endowed state public employees with collective bargaining rights on top of their civil service protections — the single most politically influential constituency in our state: government employees,” Crane said.

Or what he said in August 2010 to the Fox Business Network: “Even if you took care of every one of these spiked above the iceberg level pensions in California, you would not take care of the pension problem in California, which is true of virtually every state in the country, at least those where, you know, government employees have collective bargaining rights,” Crane said

In December 2010, he told the L.A. Times that the year 1978, ”wasn’t notable just because of Proposition 13. That was also the year public employees gained a power Franklin D. Roosevelt had warned against: collective bargaining rights.”

“California hasn’t been the same since,” Crane continued. “Public workers have gained at the expense of private workers as government spending was redirected from infrastructure and education to higher salaries, pensions and other benefits.”

And in his Feb. 27 Chronicle op-ed, Crane claimed that, “The battle in Wisconsin is not over collective bargaining rights generally but rather the appropriateness of those rights in the public sector ”

“Collective bargaining is a good thing when it’s needed to equalize power, but when public employees already have that equality because of civil service protections, collective bargaining in the public sector serves to reduce benefits for citizens and to raise costs for taxpayers,” Crane continued. “Citizens and taxpayers should consider this as they watch events unfold in Madison.”

As of today, letters are circulating in Sacramento opposing Crane’s confirmation. And Sen. Ted W. Lieu (D-Torrance), Chair of the Labor and Industrial Relations Committee in Sacramento, has already signaled his opposition.

“I cannot support someone for the powerful post of UC Regent who continues to perpetuate the myth that collective bargaining caused our state economic crisis and has a fundamental misunderstanding of how our state budget operates,” Lieu said in a statement. He noted that in the Chron op-ed Crane claimed that because of collective bargaining, “general fund spending on higher education, parks and environmental protection was flat or lower.” 
“As a matter of historical fact, that is false,” Lieu countered. “ Our general fund spending generally declined because of a national economic recession.  The recession was not caused by collective bargaining or public sector unions, but by private sector, out of control Wall Street firms at the time.”

“The specific reason our general fund spending sharply declined was because the person Mr. Crane advised, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, reduced the Vehicle License Fee and replaced it with . . . nothing,” Lieu continued. “As a result, the state general fund lost over $5 to $6 billion in revenues per year for every year Mr. Schwarzenegger was in office.  The VLF reduction has resulted in a total loss of over $30 billion to the state, an amount in excess of the current California budgetary shortfall.  How conveniently Mr. Crane forgot to mention that critical fact when it doesn’t suit his ideological assault on public sector unions.”

“Now that Mr. Crane senses his confirmation may be in jeopardy, he attempts to marginalize his own Op-Ed by releasing a new statement saying he really didn’t mean to attack all public sector unions, just those who happen to have statutory civil service protections,” Lieu added. “For those in Ivory Towers that distinction may have some academic meaning, but for everyone else in the real world that is a distinction without a difference. Civil Service protections do not prevent employees from being terminated or laid off, they provide standards for government to follow when firing or disciplining employees. Such protections do not guarantee appropriate wages or benefits, nor address a plethora of other issues, such as workforce safety issues.”
 
“Mr. Crane’s Op-Ed also discusses political spending by public sector unions, “Lieu concluded. “In his world view, political spending by the California Teachers Association is inappropriate, but the massive political spending by the Koch Brothers would presumably be acceptable. I cannot, and will not, support someone for the post of UC Regent who blames public sector employees, such as teachers, for somehow being responsible for our economic crisis or the resulting decline in general fund spending.  We need UC Regents who are interested in solving problems, not those who twist historical facts to suit an ideological agenda.”

So, as I wait for Crane to return my call, I’ll leave you with something reporter Peter Byrne, who authored the award-winning investigative series ‘Investor’s Club” How the Regents of the University of California spin public funds into private profit,” said to me yesterday when I asked him about the wisdom of putting investment bankers on the UC Regents Board. “Putting investment bankers in front of a plate of $63 billion is like putting a pound of hamburger in front of a bunch of feral cats. They are going to eat it. It’s in their nature.”

So, would confirming Crane be like adding another feral cat to the mix? Is he just another Kochhead? Or is he just maligned and misunderstood, as the Chron vehemently implies?

Waste not

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Waste not

sarah@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has delayed consideration of a city waste disposal contract while officials investigate a broad range of questions ranging from logistical considerations to whether to break up Recology’s current garbage collection monopoly.

Is it feasible to move the city’s entire infrastructure for waste and recycling to the Port of San Francisco? Would it be more sustainable to barge or rail the city’s trash directly from the port rather than drive it across the Bay Bridge to Oakland every day? Considering that recyclables get shipped from Oakland to Asia anyway, why not send them by barge rather than truck? Or is that idea just an empty gesture since recycles, mostly paper products, consitute only 10 percent of the waste stream?

Some of these questions are being studied as part of a survey the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) is trying to complete by April, others as part of a longer-term investigation by the Department of Environment (DoE). At LAFCO’s Feb. 28 meeting, commissioners requested a survey of how other jurisdictions in the Bay Area procure trash collection, hauling, and disposal contracts.

Although the studies differ in scope and duration, both were triggered by a Feb. 3 Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) report that revealed that the annual cost to ratepayers of San Francisco’s waste system is $206 million. Yet only the $11 million landfill contract is being put out to competitive bid (see “Garbage Curveball,” 02/08/11).

The BLA report revealed that a 1932 ordinance intended to address territorial disputes around trash collection and transportation in San Francisco ultimately gave Recology (formerly NorCal Waste) a monopoly on all post-collection recycling, consolidation, composting, long-distance transport to landfills, and waste disposal contracts. The report triggered a political firestorm by recommending that the city replace existing trash collection and disposal laws with legislation that would require competitive bidding on all waste contracts and that rates for residential and commercial trash collection become subject to Board of Supervisors approval.

Faced with these recommendations, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee asked Feb. 9 for a two-month delay on DoE’s proposal to award Recology a 10-year contract to dispose of San Francisco’s municipal solid waste at Recology’s Ostrom Road landfill Yuba County when its contract at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill expires.

DoE officials predict the WM contract will expire in 2015. But company representatives estimate the contract will last much longer, based on reduced volumes that San Francisco has been trucking to Altamont.

Sup. John Avalos, a LAFCO commissioner, requested that the LAFCO study include a map to give folks “a visual” of landfill locations throughout the greater Bay Area. “And there’s been an interesting discussion about the use of barging,” Avalos said, pointing to the flotilla of barges involved in building the Bay Bridge, which could be repurposed when that jobs ends. “A new maritime use could help the port raise revenue and reinvigorate other maritime uses on its property.”

At that point in the hearing, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the vice chairman of LAFCO, floated his “alternative barge plan,” under which only recyclables would get sent across the Bay to Oakland. Noting that he has met with Port Director Monique Moyer and Office of Economic and Workforce Development staff, Mirkarimi said that “the port is not equipped to deal with solid waste. But it is equipped to deal with recyclables, so this is something we should pursue.”

But Sup. David Campos, the chairman of LAFCO, clarified that the survey should still include a study of barging all trash. “Barging is complicated, but this is about providing basic information,” he said.

Records show the port reached out to DoE in 2009 with a letter that identified rail (but not barging) as an environmentally sustainable mode for moving waste from the city to its next landfill site.

In a June 23, 2009 letter to the DoE, Moyer and David Gavrich, president and CEO of the SF Bay Railroad (SFBR), stated that “rail directly from the port can not only minimize environmental impacts, it can provide an anchor of rail business for the port and a key economic development engine for the Bayview-Hunters Point community and the city as a whole.”

Recology’s trucks currently collect and haul about half the city’s waste to its recycling center, which sits on port-owned land at Pier 96. After the recyclables are offloaded for processing, the trucks haul the rest of the garbage through the Bayview and back onto the freeway to Brisbane, where it is loaded onto bigger trucks that haul the trash over the Bay Bridge each night to WM’s Altamont landfill near Livermore.

“It would seem most efficient to not double- or triple-handle the waste but to put it directly onto rail at the port instead,” Moyer and Gavrich wrote in 2009. “Collection vehicles could then go directly back out onto their routes, reducing time, fuel, emissions, and traffic impacts.”

The pair noted that SFBR and its affiliate Waste Solutions Group have used rail to haul more than 2 million tons of waste directly from the port in the past 15 years, using gondolas and 12-foot high municipal solid waste (MSW) containers on flat cars. They included an aerial photo showing Recology’s central recycling facility at Pier 96 and the extensive rail infrastructure and barge options that surround the facility.

But DoE never got back to them, Gavrich recalled last week as he fired up a SFBR locomotive and rode the rail tracks that crisscross the 20-acre port-owned facility that lies between SFBR’s outfit, Recology’s Pier 96 recycling facility, and the bay that is currently home to idle barges and rail cars that sit rusting a stone’s throw from the economically depressed Bayview.

“All that’s needed is two to four acres for an excellent transfer station,” Gavrich said. “Barge and rail access could not be better. It’s just waiting to be developed.”

In February, DoE officials told the Budget & Finance Committee that they had looked into and rejected barging as an option. But it turns out they did not conduct an official study. “There hasn’t been a study to date,” DoE’s Assmann said March 7, when the Guardian requested DoE’s barging report. “We had a discussion about it, but no formal policy.”

Assmann noted that DoE asked waste management companies that bid on the city’s landfill disposal contract to include a barging option. “But nobody did,” Assmann said, referring to Recology and Waste Management, the two finalists in the city’s landfill disposal contract bid process.

Assmann said DoE is currently doing a long-term study into three transportation and facilities options for waste using port facilities: the first option would involve moving the entire infrastructure for waste and recycling to the port. The second would be to use the port as a transfer facility for garbage, and truck, barge, or rail haul garbage from the port. The third would involve barging recyclables only from Pier 96.

Assmann notes that the majority of infrastructure for the city’s waste system is at Recology’s Tunnel Road facility on the San Francisco-Brisbane border, a situation he claims would make it impossible to design, permit, finance, and build new facilities at the port before 2015.

But Barry Skolnick, WM’s vice president for Bay Area operations, told the Guardian that 2016 is a more realistic estimate of the landfill expiration date. “At the current disposal rate, we do not believe San Francisco will exhaust its disposal volumes under the existing Altamont landfill contract until 2016 at the earliest,” Skolnick said. “There is plenty of time for the Board of Supervisors and LAFCO to explore best practices and options for its collection, recycling, composting, transferring, and residual waste disposal services.”

Skolnick noted that WM discussed extending the Altamont contract at the Budget & Finance Committee hearing and the LAFCO hearing, and is proposing to extend the city’s current contract by several years.

“We are preparing a proposed three-year extension of the disposal agreement for San Francisco’s review this week,” Skolnick said. “The extension would involve a price increase for disposal but less than the disposal rate offered under the proposed Recology rail haul to Ostrom Road in Yuba County. The three-year extension would provide disposal at the Altamont until 2019 or 2020.”

But Assmann noted that Recology, which currently pays the port $1 million a year to lease Pier 96, wants to expand its Brisbane facility on Recology-owned land. “We have offered to analyze [the Brisbane expansion] option,” Assmann said, estimating that a new transfer facility would cost $40 to $60 million, while a new integrated facility would cost $200 to $450 million.

“If the infrastructure moved to the port, that would have big positive implications for the port,” Assmann said, acknowledging that the port would lose money if Recology relocates entirely to Brisbane. Plus, Brisbane might demand fees from a new facility, he noted. “But consolidation would save ratepayers money in the long run because the operation would become more efficient.”

Unlike the LAFCO study, DoE won’t have its report ready by April, when the city needs to decide on the landfill contract.

“Our proposal is to look at the bigger picture,” Assmann said. “If the board approves Recology’s landfill contract, we’ll still go ahead and do it. The board can always delay its landfill decision. But this looks at infrastructure the landfill agreement won’t impact.”

DoE recommends working with Recology to implement a pilot program to barge recyclables from Pier 96 to the Port of Oakland as it studies long term infrastructure options including locating infrastructure at the port, Assmann said. DoE also recommends that the proposed plan to award Recology the landfill contract and facilitation agreement remain the same “since our analysis shows (and the port concurs) that all options for utilizing the port for any kind of landfill transportation would require a permitting process that would last a minimum of five years and a total timeline of at least seven to nine years.”

So far, the landfill contract has not come before the full board because of delays and continuations at the Budget & Finance Committee. As Judson True, legislative aide to Board President David Chiu, recently observed, the process over the last few months has raised more questions than answers, including unexpected angles such as how the port can be better utilized and the implications of the 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance. “We need to get these answers before we can move forward,” True said. “We all have a lot of work to do before we can figure out what’s best for the city and pick a path.”

But Gavrich hopes history doesn’t repeat itself and that Chiu shows some leadership on the garbage contract hornet’s nest. “There are so many compelling reasons and benefits for the city — but that hasn’t stopped the city from doing the wrong thing in the past,” Gavrich said. Gavrich pointed to 2007, when all members of the board except Sup. Chris Daly voted to give the sewage sludge contract to Recology even though its bid was $3 million higher than the competitor, S&S Trucking.

A Dec. 14 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article by Robert Selna quoted Mirkarimi as saying that a key reason for awarding the contract to Recology was that it was a union company. “That’s the elephant in the room,” Mirkarimi said, framing the board’s decision to go with Recology as being about “the devil we know.” Selna recently left the Chronicle to work as Mirkarimi’s legislative aide.

Mirkarimi’s recent suggestion that LAFCO explore barging recyclables as a pilot program has Gavrich worried. “Saying let’s explore simply barging recyclables makes no sense. It’s a fraction of what makes barge/rail haul economically viable.” Gavrich said. “It would put a greater burden on the ratepayer than the economic and environmentally inefficient system they have in place at Pier 96. The port should get the deal. It would be a cash cow.”

Accusations against SFPD officers impact D.A.’s race

Mary Magee
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Accusations against SFPD officers impact D.A.’s race

The decision by San Francisco prosecutors to drop a drug case that involved four of six plainclothes officers currently under investigation for illegally raiding residential hotel rooms and then lying about the busts in police reports, came one day after the Public Defender’s Office released videos that contradicted police reports in two separate cases. And it’s thrown another curve ball into the D.A.’s race, which veered into weird and uncharted territory the minute former Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed the city’s top cop George Gascón as SF’s next D.A.

The D.A.’s Office and the San Francisco Police Department have both announced that they have launched internal investigations into the SFPD officers after video footage from busts at the Henry Hotel in December and January was released. And D.A. spokesperson Erica Derryck sought to clarify that the D.A.’s office dropped the case because of ongoing investigations into the alleged misconduct, and that the D.A.’s investigation is independent of SFPD.

“As the District Attorney’s Office of this County, we are conducting our own, independent investigation into this matter,” Derryck said. “If there is criminal wrong-doing found it will be handled accordingly. Our Justice Integrity Unit will conduct an independent investigation to determine if any criminal conduct has occurred. This is separate from any SFPD investigation. Our Trial Integrity Unit will examine on a case-by-case basis, what, if any, cases may be affected by this investigation and the alleged conduct of these officers.”
 
But former Police Commissioner David Onek, who is running against Gascon in the D.A.’s race this fall, called for a completely independent investigation, citing the conflict of interest created by Gascón’s investigation of alleged officer misconduct that occurred during his tenure as San Francisco’s top cop,
“There is a clear conflict of interest when our current District Attorney investigates potential criminal activity that took place at the SFPD under his watch,” Onek said. “The foundation of a safe city is earning and keeping the public’s trust. And that requires calling in outside agencies when this trust will be undermined by a conflict of interest, such as the one presented by these facts.”

“Whatever decision Gascón now makes, he will highlight to the public his conflict of interest as the former police chief,” added Onek, who is the founding executive director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. “If he decides not to charge the officers, the public will question if he did so to protect his former officers or his former administration. If he decides to press charges, the officers themselves will ask if he is doing so because he is a candidate for office and feels the need to show a tough attitude towards his former department. In the interest of justice, former chief Gascón should recuse himself and his agency from investigating the SFPD  in cases that occurred when he was chief. If you are conducting a fair investigation, you not only review the conduct of individual officers, you also explore if this alleged conduct was the result of issues with training and supervision. No fair investigation of these facts can be conducted by the individual responsible at the time for that training and supervision.”

Redevelopment debate full of bum choices

Mary Magee
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Redevelopment debate full of bum choices

At the Potrero Hill Democratic Club’s debate about Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to ax local redevelopment agencies to balance the state’s $26 billion deficit, folks attempted to evaluate if redevelopment agencies are essential for job creation and community revitalization, if reform, not total destruction, is possible, and if bum choices are all we have to look forward to.

The Chronicle’s Marisa Lagos, who moderated the debate, noted that redevelopment agencies were created over 60 years ago to create economic development opportunities by borrowing against future tax increases that agencies think they can create.

 “That’s a fancy way to say ‘borrow against future taxes,’” Lagos joked, pointing to the Candlestick Point/Hunters Point Shipyard project as an example of an ongoing project, and the Yerba Buena project as an example of a completed success.

 “The Governor is arguing that when the state is cutting schools and other essential services, this is not the best use of tax dollars,” Lagos stated.

 Panelist Olson Lee, deputy executive director of San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency, pointed to affordable housing as evidence of the agency’s positive impact.

 “I think Redevelopment is important because of the good things it has done,” Lee said, pointing to 11,000 units of affordable housing that the agency helped build in the city.

 Panelist Carroll Wills, the communications director for the California Professional Firefighters, said “many wonderful projects” have occurred under Redevelopment. But he pointed to what he called “a decade of tricks and games,” on the part of Redevelopment agencies as one reason why the state is in a fiscal crisis that threatens firefighters’ jobs.

 “Concrete does not trump core services,” Wills said, arguing that it’s not clear that many affordable housing projects would not have been built without redevelopment aid

Arc Ecology’s Saul Bloom accused Gov. Brown of “short-circuiting” what could have been an important statewide discussion about redevelopment reform, with his bombshell suggestion in January to eliminate redevelopment agencies entirely

 “I’m sympathetic to the argument that Redevelopment takes money away from core services,” Bloom said. “But what do we do to replace it? And is economic development versus core services a false choice?”

Lee pointed to Mission Bay as further evidence of Redevelopment’s success.

“It was considered a brown field, and through development, it’s much different,” Lee said, noting that 20 percent of tax increment financing goes to the General Fund to pay for redevelopment infrastructure. “Clearly the university would not have been there. It was an opportunity to place UC there and generate economic opportunities.”

 Wills argued that Redevelopment Agencies are a luxury we can no longer afford, even as he acknowledged being unfamiliar with local redevelopment projects.

“At best, redevelopment moves around the pieces,” Wills said. “It doesn’t increase economic development and it doesn’t necessarily pay for itself.”

Bloom noted that developments like Mission Bay are dependent on large institutions, like the University of California, which can’t be forced to implement city laws like local hire.

And he said he found it “disappointing” that there wasn’t much more of a dialogue around the plans to redevelop Candlestick Point and the Shipyard, despite the fact that the city held hundreds of meetings over the past decade.

“It was more a case of, Here’s our idea, tell us what you think of it,’” Bloom said. “Perhaps if we had invited the nation’s largest industrial developer, instead of the nation’s second largest home developer, we would have had a different dialogue.”

 Lee replied that the Shipyard has been under discussion for 15 years.

“It’s a very large project, the largest in the Western United States,” Lee said. “It’s a brownfield, though I know Espanola will say it’s a Superfund site,” he continued, as Bayview elder Espanola Jackson bristled under her hat, and the audience wondered if Lee meant that the US E.P.A. somehow got it all wrong.

Lee further shocked audience members by saying Treasure Island was not a redevelopment project (leading Bloom to clarify that Treasure Island is under the jurisdiction of the local Treasure Island Development Authority, if not the SF Agency).

“People felt they wanted economic development at the shipyard,” Lee continued, noting that the neighborhood suffered after the Navy withdrew from the shipyard in the 1970s. But he did not mention that major bones of contention around the redevelopment proposal, centered on plans to build 10,000 mostly market-rate condos, a bridge over an environmentally sensitive slough, the taking of a chunk of the community’s only major park, and no proof that thousands of promised jobs will materialize.

Wills noted that most local redevelopment commissions are peopled by the members of each municipality’s city council, a situation he believes leads to a lack of accountability. But members of the audience, including this reporter, noted that San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency consists entirely of mayoral appointees, who, unlike elected officials, can’t easily be voted off the proverbial island.

It was at this point that panelist Calvin Welch, a longtime housing activist, showed up at the debate, apologizing for being late, but blaming his tardiness on being on a phone call with Sen. Mark Leno to discuss Brown’s redevelopment proposal.

And from there, the conversation veered towards discussions of what could happen to existing redevelopment projects if Brown goes through with his elimination threat.

 Lee noted that if projects simply had a disposition and development Aagreement (DDA), but Redevelopment was no longer there, there would be no project financing. “The devil’s in the details,” Lee said. “Because if you don’t have bonds, what’s the point of having an agreement.”

 Wills opined that Gov. Brown’s proposal has “a vehicle to roll back the bum’s rush” of projects that local municipalities have been trying to push across the finish line, ever since Brown dropped his Redevelopment elimination bomb in January.

 Welch went off on a historical riff about how the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) was met with controversy and outrage until 1988, when Art Agnos was elected mayor, and brokered a deal under which SFRA could do tax increment financing, provided the majority of funds were used for affordable housing.

“It became a finance agency to build infrastructure and affordable housing,” Welch said, noting that attempts to build out Mission Bay around commercial offices and high rises failed, until the Agency used tif to redevelop the site.

 “But mark my words, Lennar is going to come out of this just fine,” Welch added, reminding me of a recent comment that former Lennar executive Emile Haddad reportedly made that suggests Haddad believes the California housing market is poised for a rebound.

(The article outlined how Haddad sold 12,000 acres in California for a $277 million profit at the housing market’s peak four years ago, reacquired it at half the price in 2009, and is now saying it’s time to build in his new role as CEO of FivePoint Communities Inc., which is developing four new master-planned communities with a combined 45,000 residences at Newhall Ranch north of L.A., the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County, the Candlestick Point/Hunters Point shipyard and Treasure Island  in San Francisco, with investors including Lennar, Michael S. Dell’s MSD Capital LP, Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Development Co. and Rockpoint Group LLC. “I don’t want the party to show up and I’m not dressed,” Haddad, 52, reportedly said in a recent interview. “When the market says ‘I’m here,’ we’ll be one of the few that can deliver inventory.” 

(The Haddad article, which appears to be a non-bylined reprint from Bloomberg News, also claimed that Hunters Point sales are set to begin by late 2012 with prices starting at $525,000, as the Navy continues its cleanup of the 700-acre site. And that the plan now calls for as many as 12,000 homes, 3 million square feet (of commercial space and a new stadium for the 49ers. And that 7,000 homes may eventually be built on Treasure Island and adjoining Yerba Buena Island, under terms of a final development agreement that may go before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for approval in May, with units averaging  $800,000 and reaching up to $2 million, according to Lennar V.P Kofi Bonner.)

And during the Potrero Hill Dems debate, Bloom noted that the Treasure Island plan is being “sped up” and that the Board is expected to vote on the plan as soon as possible. “But since these plans were not bonded before January [when Gov. Brown took office], what’s the point of speeding up the process?” Bloom asked.

“We’re basically seeing a brick wall,” Welch interjected. “There are virtually no funds for permanent affordable housing in San Francisco.But Jerry Brown is not going to commit financial hari kari. Every major developer of market rate housing will come out just fine, because of state actions, not because of a local vote. Deals are going to be made. It’s the question of affordable housing that’s our challenge. You’re gonna be stuck with public housing, as it is, unless there’s affordable housing financing.”

 Wills claimed that Prop. 22, which voters approved last November, “created a mechanism so rigid,” that the state’s only option was to eliminate redevelopment. “Basic services are dying on the vine,” he said. “We can’t afford to give developers subsidies.”

 Lee noted that SFRA built thousands of affordable units over the years that saved the city thousands in terms of core services it would otherwise have to provide. “Affordable housing is so basic, you can’t do things we take for granted if you are living under a freeway,” he said.

 Bloom suggested Redevelopment could do a better job of economic development, including the creation of permanent and sustainable jobs, like his proposal to create maritime uses at the Shipyard—something not entertained under the city’s Shipyard plan.

 Welch connected the dots between the taxpayer revolt that led to Prop. 13’s passage and the current fiscal woes of municipalities unable to raise taxes on commercial development. “That’s a killer,” he said, noting that housing costs more to build and maintain than it generates property taxes, especially if it’s family housing. ‘It’s those damn kids,” he joked.

Welch noted that Gov. Brown used redevelopment money to enable market rate development in downtown Oakland when he was mayor of Oakland—and claimed that Brown equated affordable housing with crime, at the time.

“We love Brown better than Meg Whitman, but it’s 2011 and we face bum choices.”

Community advocate Sharen Hewitt, who heads the C.L.A.E.R. project, asked if the panel thought San Francisco could be a “demonstration model” for using Redevelopment funds to build 50 percent affordable housing.

Welch said conversations have “already happened” between Mayor Ed Lee and Gov. Jerry Brown that have led him to believe that, “all of San Francisco’s redevelopment projects will be made whole, affordable housing will be protected and Brown will be committed to a San Francisco model.”

“It’s like the film Casablanca, when people are shocked to find out that gambling is going on in a casino,” Welch said. “People are shocked to find out that capital talks in a capitalist system.”

 Espanola Jackson asked Welch what will happen to the shipyard development, in face of a lawsuit that POWER brought that’s due to be heard March 24.

“The shipyard plan has a political function,” Welch said, noting that it was the result of a citywide vote in 2008. ‘We opposed it, but we lost. The structure of that deal flows from the vote.”

 City College Board member Chris Jackson expressed frustration that the Redevelopment conversation had devolved into a housing conversation.

“Mission Bay is all about biotech, but who works at UCSF?” Jackson said, noting that Redevelopment, as a state-funded agency, does not have to agree to the city’s newly approved local hire law.

Welch acknowledged that there has never been a study to determine the tipping point required to lift the Bayview out of poverty.

Lee admitted that Redevelopment’s focus has been housing, “because San Francisco is such an unaffordable city.” But he claimed that SFRA had a “much more aggressive program on local hire than the city, for many years.” Noting that SFRA has tried to attract restaurants and food establishments to Third Street, over the years, Lee said, “It hasn’t been something we’ve been particularly successful at.”

Welch opined that the “skills and abilities of the San Francisco community are far greater at stopping projects and protecting neighborhood character, but we can’t figure out how community-based organizations can employ their own people.”

 And then it was time to go back out into the cold March wind and try to wrap our minds about the true meaning of “bum choices” in 2011.

Yee plans to block Crane’s UC Regents confirmation

Mary Magee
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Yee plans to block Crane’s UC Regents confirmation

Citing UC Regent David Crane’s op-ed in the Chronicle, in which Crane questioned if public sector workers should have collective bargaining rights, Sen. Leland Yee says he wants to stop Crane’s UC Regents confirmation and protect the vital services provided in our communities by public employees.”

In his op-ed, Crane argues that “collective bargaining for public employees in California changed the balance of power and – most importantly – gave public employees power over their compensation and benefits.”

But Yee, who is running in the San Francisco mayor’s race this fall, counters that the only public employees at the UC that have any real power over their compensation are the top executives.

“The Regents consistently cater to the elite and ignore their unionized workers – nurses, janitors, technicians, bus drivers, teaching assistants, and others,” Yee stated. “Collective bargaining is vital in addressing this disparity and fighting the unconscionable acts of UC administrators.”

Crane, who identifies as a Democrat, was an adviser to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed him to the Board of Regents during his final days as governor. And Crane awaits final confirmation to the Board of Regents by the Senate.

But Sen. Yee and a bunch of community members and public employees hope to block Crane’s confirmation, starting with a noontime rally in San Francisco on Friday, March 4, at UC’s Medical Center at 513 Parnassus Avenue.

“UC Regent David Crane recently took his cue from Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and called for an end to collective bargaining rights for California’s teachers, nurses, firefighters, university employees, and other public sector workers,” Yee stated in a press release. “While the Regents approve million dollar contracts for their top administrators, David Crane wants to take away the rights of working class families. It is time for Regent Crane to put away his Wisconsin playbook and come down from his ivory tower.”
 
“While the Regents have approved million dollar contracts for their top administrators, they allow many UC workers and their families to live in poverty,” Yee continued. “Now, Regent Crane wants to take away their only avenue to earning a livable wage and a respectable retirement – their collective bargaining rights.”

Yee notes that UC service workers wages’ can be as low as $13 an hour. That 96 percent of these workers are income eligible for at least one of the following public assistance programs: food stamps, WIC (women, infants, and children), public housing subsidies, and reduced lunch. That many work two or three jobs to meet their families’ basic needs.  And that all this is happening against a backdrop in which the UC Board of Regents has consistently provided double-figure raises to their top administrators. 

Yee cites the “retention salary adjustment” for UCLA Medical Center CEO David Feinberg, whose salary was recently increased by an additional $160,300 per year to $900,000.  The Regents also voted to award Feinberg an additional $250,000 annual retention bonus. And if you add in his annual Medical Center incentive payment, Feinberg’s annual compensation is more than $1. 3 million. UC President Mark Yudof also pulls in over a million annually, when salary, housing, and benefits are factored in.

 

Local hire victory party a political who’s who

Mary Magee
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The atmosphere at the local hiring victory party that Laborers Local 261 held at its Union Hall this week  was positively elated. Beer, wine and yummy pupusas flowed, commendations were made, and live drumming gave the event a playful edge. And it didn’t hurt that the place was crammed with political candidates, past, present and future, as San Francisco gears up for a a mayor, D.A. and sheriff’s race, this fall.

Sup. David Campos, who hasn’t thrown his hat in the mayor’s race, at least not yet, described the mood as “exciting.” “Who would have thought a year ago that we’d be having this victory,” Campos said, crediting fellow progressive Sup. John Avalos and the community for “great legislative work.”

Sup. John Avalos, who isn’t showing signs of running in the mayor’s race despite his legislative victories, saw implementation and resistant building trades as the biggest hurdles, moving forward. But he felt city departments will lead the way in showing how to implement the new law, when it kicks in March 25. “The San Francisco PUC has shown that local hire can be successful,” he said. “The new PUC building is at 48 percent local hire across all trades.”

Avalos hoped the building trades will come to see local hire in a more positive light. “They need to understand that it’s good for this city, their unions and union membership,” he said.

Avalos noted that he recently met with members of the San Mateo Board of Supervisors to address concerns that SF’s local hire would lead to job losses in San Mateo.Just before Christmas, the San Mateo supes voted unanimously to urge Newsom to veto Avalos’ local hire policy, but it turns out they had been misled around the law’s impacts. ”I met with [County Sups.] Carole Groom and Adrienne Tissier and said, ‘We have a huge misunderstanding,” Avalos said, noting that Jerry Hill’s recent grandstanding against local hire appears to be going nowhere.

Mayor Ed Lee, who insists he’s not planning to run for mayor in November, urged folks to focus on implementation of Avalos’ legislation.
“We are not just here to celebrate a legislative victory but the first jobs we create,” Lee said. “The world does not just turn by signing legislation.”

Board President David Chiu, who dropped by towards the end of the party with Sup. Jane Kim,Board President David Chiu, said he is “still thinking” about running for mayor, and acknowledged that the road to implementing local hire could be challenging. “But during this Great Recession, we have to do everything we can to make sure San Francisco residents get put to work, and local hire is an important part of that.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who has just announced that he is running for sheriff, linked high recidivism rates in San Francisco to the need to do a better job of hiring local residents. “We have a 70 percent repeat offender rate,” Mirkarimi said. “That’s 3 out of 4 folks.” Noting that there are 1800 parolees in San Francisco daily, Mirkarimi observed that if folks can’t get a job when they come out of the criminal justice system, they are way more likely to re-offend.

Bayview resident Deanna Rice, who got out of a federal penitentiary a year ago, and is still looking for work, said unemployment is another barrier in the way of her trying to regain custody of her kids, who are 9 and 10 years old.

Laborers Local 261 Business Manager Ramon Hernandez acknowledged that more work needs to be done to make local hire a go.
“We will try to do the best we can to get everyone on the same page,” he said

Local 261 Secretary-Treasurer David De La Torre said their membership is struggling and hurting, existing members and residents are not working
“Local hire is not about a sense of entitlement,” he said. “We gotta put people to work and build the local economy. It’s not about race. It’s about community, a disadvantaged community.”

Greg Doxey of the Osiris Coalition pointed to the economic benefits of local hire.
“If you hire local, people are going to shop two, three blocks from home, the economy will get stronger, they’ll be more tax revenue, and folks could even qualify to buy homes

CityBuild’s Guillermo Rodriguez praised the Board, department heads and Mayor Ed Lee “for getting together with labor” to pass Avalos local hire legislation.

But despite the happy vibes at the party, I left wondering if there is going to be adequate investment in workforce development side come budget time, if folks will try to game the system by using the address of locally-based subcontractors to establish local residency, and whether local efforts to sabotage the legislation are going to escalate now that the San Mateo Board no longer seems opposed to the law. But I also left knowing that folks like James Richards, President of Aboriginal Blacks United, have made it clear that if local hire doesn’t get  implemented, they’ll keep protesting until it does. So, stay tuned….

 
 
 

Paul Henderson denies D.A. deal with Willie Brown

Mary Magee
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Paul Henderson denies D.A. deal with Willie Brown

Paul Henderson doesn’t mince words when it comes to debunking the notion that Willie Brown helped him get his new job as Mayor Ed Lee’s public policy czar. Or that his decision to drop out of the D.A.’s race was in exchange for his new job.

“There was no deal with Willie Brown. I called and said, so do I get a check in the mail, a basket of fruit?” Henderson said, recalling his furious reaction to Brown’s claim, made in the Chronicle in January, that Brown and then mayor Gavin Newsom conspired to make sure Henderson was “taken care of,” in the wake of Newsom’s shocking announcement that he had appointed San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón as D.A.

“If there was a set up for me somewhere, I still have not got it. I didn’t get shit,” Henderson, who joined the D.A.’s office in 1995 and was said to be former D.A. Kamala Harris’ preferred pick to fill the D.A. post, after she won the state Attorney General’s race, last fall.

Instead, Henderson, who filed papers to run in the D.A.’s race in November, saw his plans blown out of the water when Newsom, in his last act as mayor, appointed Gascón as Henderson’s new boss. And when Gascón filed papers in the D.A.’s race the very next day, Henderson found himself in the unenviable situation of holding an at-will position in the D.A.’s office, while running against his boss in the 2011 D.A. election.

“ If there was any deal, it was for me not to lose my job,” Henderson added.  “And it’s the best decision for me. I really do care about public service.”

During his 16 years in the D.A.’s office, Henderson established juvenile drug and community justice courts, set up domestic violence and hate crime programs, and focused on rehabilitative, reformative, treatment-oriented alternatives to imprisonment.

He said his decision to join the Mayor’s Office is based on a long relationship with Lee. “I want to have a voice in the criminal justice system, and I’ve known Ed Lee independent of all this political business,” Henderson said, recalling that he worked with Lee to develop language programs in the D.A.’s office, so employees could take lessons and better interact with community members, victims and witnesses in court.

“I’m a third generation San Francisco resident, and the first generation not to grow up in the projects, though we lived opposite them,” Henderson continued, recalling how his mother is a Public Defender, his grandmother was a community advocate, and he went to preschool in Sunnydale. Those experiences gave him a strong sense of being connected to and serving his community from an early age, Henderson said.

And he soon found himself holding the highest position, as a gay and black, in the D.A.’s office in the 1990s.‘I was the first African American the D.A.’s office had hired in five years,” Henderson said, recalling how the department looked in 1995. “And look at it now,” he added, noting that since he took over hiring at the D.A.’s office, more gays, lesbians, Asians, Latinos and other minorities have been employed.

“I’m very aware of who I am and what I represent in this office,” Henderson said. “For me, it’s about creating an open door and having a voice at the table. Ed Lee has asked if I would be the liaison between national, state and local agencies collectively in his office. And this expands my voice and creates opportunities for all in San Francisco in ways that are exciting to me.”

Henderson said his new post will have a very different focus from the role former US Attorney Kevin Ryan played, during his brief tenure in the Mayor’s Office, under Gavin Newsom.“This will be about policy development, advice and implementation, and it will be more reflective of marginalized communities,” Henderson said. “So, I don’t want these communities being misled into thinking, ‘oh, he got a hand out.’ This was not a hook-up. I earned my place here.”

“The truth is that you have access to me because I am in this position,” Henderson continued. “And I hope it’s transformative for the city and the community. Because I did not get shit. There is no Paul Henderson pay-off. I’d be happy to tell you if I’d sold out. But no. I knew Ed independently. He knows my heart, trusts my judgment and reputation. This has nothing to do with Willie, Gavin and Kamala. Unless it did, and they are all tricking me. In which case, they should at least tell me, so I can credit them. But the truth is, I’ve worked so hard, and if I’ve become ‘the Man,’ then I’m at the table for the community. I’m not the person who took a pay out, got a hook up, a cushy deal, so I will go away, to silence my voice.”

Henderson notes that he has not given up his political aspirations, despite all that went down recently. “If it’s not my time right now, I still have political credibility and a profile in the city that isn’t going away “ he said, noting that he raised $65,000 in 28 days, just before Christmas, with no staff, immediately after a statewide election. “That speaks to how much support I have. Obviously I was disappointed that I wasn’t appointed D.A. But I’m not dead, and I’m trying to move in a direction that expands my voice.”

Henderson says his new role won’t change him and he’ll remain accessible to gay, black, Chinese, Samoan, immigrant, low-income, Latino and other marginalized communities.“I have a lens that most city leaders don’t have,” he said, noting that he was homeless and slept in his car when he was going to law school. “Ad now I can affect policy. Many folks feel the criminal justice system happens to you, and over 80 percent of victims are people of color and poor people. But who speaks for and represents them?”

Henderson drops out of D.A’s office and race, SFPD Chief turned D.A. Gascón appoints DeBerry as new chief of staff

Mary Magee
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I wondered what Willie Brown was talking about when he wrote that making sure that D.A. office insider Paul Henderson was “taken care of” was one of only two details to be worked out, following former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s shocking last-minute appointment of former police chief George Gascón as the next District Attorney  And now I think I found out: Henderson, who was former D.A. Kamala Harris’ chief of administration and her preferred pick, announced yesterday that he is dropping out of the D.A.’s race and will serve as Lee’s public safety czar.

Henderson starts his new job March 8, meaning 15 months has passed since former U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan resigned from the Mayor’s Office of criminal justice—leaving everyone unsure what Henderson’s new post entails, and whether it comes with a staff and/or a budget.

Henderson says his new job includes involvement in the Taser debate, the next police chief selection, and assessing how budget cuts impact public safety. And he certainly didn’t publicly let on that he was anything but delighted about this latest twist in the ever evolving race to be the next elected district attorney.

“I’m excited about helping our Mayor shape this new position and about what we can accomplish under his leadership to enhance public safety in the City,” Henderson, who is  reportedly backing Gascón in the D.A.’s race, told the Guardian.

But Henderson’s move brings us back to the other detail Brown referred to in January, namely, “assessing the odds of Gascón winning the D.A.’s race in November.”

Currently, David Onek, a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice and served in the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice under Newsom and Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Sharmin Bock, are the only remaining contenders. And while little has been heard from Bock since she filed in January, Onek has been doing all he can to stay relevant, including holding house parties, raising money, calling for transparency in the D.A.’s Office around officer-involved shootings, and interviewing criminal justice experts as part of his Criminal Justice conversations podcast project in Berkeley.

Onek’s latest interview is with Michael Romano, co-founder of the Stanford Three Strikes Project, which represents folks serving life sentences under the Three Strikes law for minor, non-violent offenses – such as stealing a pair of socks. “Addressing the flaws in the Three Strikes law will protect Californians while also having a positive impact on our state budget.” Onek observed in a campaign email. “According to the California state auditor, non-violent third strikers will cost our state at least $4.8 billion over the next 25 years – almost $200 million per year.”
 
Onek also noted that the next few months are crucial for his D.A. campaign, “to build strong partnerships between law enforcement and the community.”
And the challenge for anyone who is not part of the Brown- Newsom machine to remain viable in the D.A.’s race were illustrated afresh yesterday when Gascón convened a 30-minute press conference at the Hall of Justice to announce he is reorganizing his staff to focus on cutting the backlog of homicides and other felony cases–and was replacing Henderson with Cristine DeBerry, who was deputy chief of staff under Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Ed Lee.

Gascón said the reshuffle was a product of six weeks talking to prosecutors, court officials, defense lawyers and others in the criminal justice system. And so far it has led to David Pfeiffer being named as heads of special operations, Sharon Woo as head of operations, Eugene Clendinen as chief of administration, Braden Woods as chief of the criminal division, Lenore Anderson as chief of collaborative courts, Maria Bee as chief of victim services, June Cravett as head of the white collar division, Jim Crisolo as chief of investigations and Jerry Coleman as chief of the Brady, appellate and training division.

Gascón said he doesn’t foresee immediate layoffs in the department, which has a $39 million annual budget. But he warned that if he is required to cut his budget by 10 percent, as Mayor Lee has requested of all departments, he’ll have to lay off the equivalent of 18 prosecutors.
“Hopefully, we’ll be spared that,” he said. “As it is, we have so much unattended business.”

Gascón blamed the crushing deficit in the D.A.’s Office on budget constrictions over many years, as he used a Power Point slide show to illustrate how the department had less funding in 2008 than in 1986 (if numbers are adjusted for inflation).
“It’s why we had problems in the past and why we are doing this reorganization,” he said, claiming that a significant lack of training in the department has caused “a poor performance in court,” and that there is only one paralegal for every 9 attorneys, on average.

Gascón said it took 3-4 months to process most felony cases, and up to 3 1/2 years to bring a murder case to trial, under the office’s previous configuration.  “By that time, memories have faded, and people are not showing up,” he said.
(D.A. press spokesperson Seth Steward clarified today that Gascón’s claim that “only one out of every 26 misdemeanor cases” was in fact a misstatement, and that the D.A. is working to provide a more accurate analysis.)

Gascón also announced that he is rolling out a makeshift community court system in the next few months, in which alleged perpetrators, victims and three mediating members of the public would work to find a solution, which could be community service.
‘So you can roll the dice and be prosecuted or go to the community court,” he said. “We believe we can take 20 percent of our work load, which is about 1,000 cases, and run it through this system.”

He also claimed that instead of spending $1,200 to $1,300 in the court system, these cases would only cost $300, and that the Tenderloin Community Justice Center will stay in place, under the reshuffle.
 “My goal as Chief was the make San Francisco the safest and largest city in the United States, and that continues to be the goal,” Gascón concluded.

 

Protest this weekend in support of Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco uprisings

Mary Magee
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Protest this weekend in support of Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco uprisings

There’s a protest this weekend in San Francisco, in support of folks in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, and other Arab popular movements as they struggle against dictatorships and repressive governments.

Folks are invited to meet Saturday, February 26 at 1 p. m. at the U.N. Plaza at Market and 7th Street in San Francisco for a march that will feature 20 organizations, including Arab Resource and Organizing Center and American Friends Service Committee. [Update: Just got a call from ANSWER Coalition to say they did not approve the inclusion, by protest organizers, of their name as a feature organization at Saturday’s protest, because they do not agree with some of the wording in the protest organizers’ press release.]

“Across Arab nations popular movements for governmental, social, and economic change are arising daily since the start of 2011, with people going to the streets in the thousands and millions,” states a press release from march organizers. “ In many cases, these popular movements are being met by extreme use of force at the hands of governments and dictators whose repression has been supported by foreign assistance from the US.  The most horrific of this repression has been witnessed internationally through social media broadcasting from Libya and Bahrain, where hundreds of innocent protesters have been massacred.”,p.

Organizers note that thousands of Bay Area residents demonstrated solidarity over the last month in support of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, and now they are inviting folks to turn out in solidarity with the people of countries who are mourning those who have lost their lives in this struggle for democratic ideals, and in standing with those who continue to come out into the streets despite brutal repression.

“We are marching in San Francisco to support one another as Libyans, and as Arabs who are all fighting for freedom. We are demanding that governments around the world end their complicity with Gaddafi that has kept him in power for 42 years, and take a firm stance against the brutal repression of our people.” Wafa, a Libyan-American educator and activist, said in a press release.

“For the past week, tens of thousands of Libyans have been marching and demonstrating to put an end to 42 years of dictatorship, poverty, unemployment, and torture at the hands of the ruthless Gadaffi regime,” protest organizers stated. “The people of Libya continue to make history, struggling to defend their country and demand a real end to Gadaffi’s regime, following in the footsteps of their brothers and sisters in Tunisia, Egypt, and in tandem with Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Iran, and all nations fighting for freedom.”

Time to start building a cold frame

Mary Magee
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4
Time to start building a cold frame

No, I’m not talking about Democrats building shelters against the big chill that the Republicans are trying to bring down on public sector workers, and the impact of that push on folks engaged in pension reform debates in San Francisco. Instead, I’m looking at the possibility that snow could fall at sea level around San Francisco this weekend for the first time in 35 years–and wondering if gardeners need to start worrying about protecting crops and plants that don’t like icy climes.

Hardy winter vegetables and bulbs typically do fine under a warm blanket of snow. But a lot of folks in the Bay Area start growing stuff in January and February that’s not cut out for snow.
 
I’ve read that you can use empty coffee cans, milk jugs with the bottom cut out, or sandwich bags as makeshift plant protection, provided there’s enough space in these containers for your plants to breathe. But just as I was planning to raid the recycle bins, Adam, a fellow gardener and Guardianista, pointed out that such measures won’t withstand high winds, and that if I’m serious about protecting buds and blooms, I should consider building a cold frame

Hmm. Maybe I’ll get around to buying untreated lumber, fastening it with galanized screws, pounding wooden stakes into the ground, and battling sheets of plastic film, all before Saturday’s threat of snowflakes. Or maybe I’ll simpy pop sandwich bags over my plants by torch light Friday night.. Or say a Hail Gaia, and hope that my plants survive regardless, just like they did last week’s hail storms.

And I suspect the snow won’t last too long here, unlike the East Coast, where, as the Farmers Almanac notes, native tribes called the February full moon, which occurred Feb. 17 this year, the Full Snow Moon, since the heaviest snows usually fall in February.  In fact, reading the Farmer’s Alamanac made me recall the 12 years I spent shoveling snow in eastern Canada, and I’m once again reminded just how good we have it here. at least on the weather front.

“Some tribes also referred to it as the Full Hunger Moon or Little Famine Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult,” the Farmer’s Almanac observes. “Forced to gnaw on bones and sip bone marrow soup for sustenance, the Cherokee named it the Full Bony Moon.”

The Celts called February’s moon the Moon of Ice, the Chinese named it the Budding Moon in anticipation of spring. Here in the Bay Area, maybe we should call our February moon, the Full Hail Moon, since that’s what fell from the skies last week.

Meet the new boss

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Meet the new boss

news@sfbg.com

The Guardian hasn’t been invited into City Hall’s Room 200 for a long time. Former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who frequently criticized this newspaper in his public statements, had a tendency to freeze out his critics, adopting a supercilious and vinegary attitude toward any members of the press who questioned his policy decisions. So it was almost surreal when a smiling Mayor Ed Lee cordially welcomed two Guardian reporters into his stately office Feb. 15.

Lee says he plans to open his office to a broader cross-section of the community, a move he described as a way of including those who previously felt left out. Other changes have come, too. He’s replaced Newsom’s press secretary, Tony Winnicker, with Christine Falvey, former communications director at the Department of Public Works (DPW). He’s filled the Mayor’s Office with greenery, including giant tropical plants that exude a calming green aura, in stark contrast to Newsom — whose own Room 200 was sterile and self-aggrandizing, including a portrait of Robert Kennedy, in whose footsteps Newsom repeatedly claimed to walk.

When it comes to policy issues, however, some expect to see little more than business-as-usual in the Mayor’s Office. Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, a progressive stalwart, said he sees no substantive changes between the new mayor and his predecessor. “It seems to me that the new administration is carrying forward the policies of the former administration,” Peskin said. “I see no demonstrable change. And that makes sense. Lee was Willie Brown and former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s handpicked successor. So he’s dancing with the guys that brought him in.”

Sup. David Campos, viewed as part of the city’s progressive camp along with Peskin, took a more diplomatic tack. “So far I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve seen,” Campos noted. “I really appreciate that he’s reached out to the community-based organizations and come out to my district and done merchant walks. I think we have to wait to see what he does on specific policy issues.”

But while Lee has already garnered a reputation for being stylistically worlds apart from Newsom, he still hews close to his predecessor’s policies in some key areas. In our interview, Lee expressed an unwillingness to consider tax-revenue measures for now, but said he was willing to take condo conversions into consideration as a way to bring in cash. He was unenthusiastic about community choice aggregation and dismissive of replacing Pacific Gas & Electric Co. with a public-power system. He hasn’t committed to overturning the pending eviction of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council’s recycling center, and he continued to argue for expanding Recology’s monopoly on the city’s $206 million annual trash stream, despite a recent Budget and Legislative Analyst’ report that recommended putting the issue to the voters.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who met Lee in 1980 through the Asian Law Caucus, said Lee would be facing steep challenges. “It’s a fascinating political karmic outcome that he is now our appointed mayor. He didn’t seek it out, as he says, but the opportunity he has now is to focus his efforts on fixing some of the problems that have gone unaddressed for decades, pension reform being one of them. I think he realizes he has a limited time to achieve things of value. The question I and others have is, can he do it?”

 

THE RELUCTANT MAYOR

Lee identified as a non-politician, patently rejecting the notion that he would enter the race for mayor. In meetings with members of the Board of Supervisors at the end of 2010, he said he didn’t want the job.

Yet while vacationing in Hong Kong, Lee became the subject of a full-court press. “When the lobbying and phone calls started … clearly they meant a lot to me,” Lee told us, adding that the choice “was very heavy on my mind.” He finally relented, accepting the city’s top post.

Although rumors had been circulating that Lee might seek a full term, he told the Guardian he’s serious about serving as a caretaker mayor. “If I’m going to thrust all my energy into this, I don’t need to have to deal with … a campaign to run for mayor.”

Adachi offered an interesting take on Lee as caretaker: “Somewhere along the way, [Lee] became known as the go-to guy in government who could take care of problems,” Adachi said, “like the Wolf in Pulp Fiction.”

Sounding rather unlike Harvey Keitel’s tough-talking character, Lee noted, “One of my goals is to rebuild the trust between the Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors. I think I can do that by being consistent with the promises I make.”

Lee’s vows to keep his promises, mend rifts with the board, and stay focused on the job could be interpreted as statements intended to set him apart from Newsom, who was frequently criticized for being disengaged during his runs for higher office, provoking skirmishes with the board, and going back on his word.

The new mayor also said he’d be willing to share his working calendar with the public, something Newsom resisted for years. Kimo Crossman, a sunshine advocate who was part of a group that began submitting requests for Newsom’s calendar in 2006, greeted this news with a wait-and-see attitude. “I’ve already put in a request,” Crossman said. “Politicians are always in support of sunshine — until they have to comply with it.”

 

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Pointing to the tropical elephant-ear plants adorning his office, Lee noted that elephants are considered lucky in Chinese culture. With the monstrous issues of pension reform and a gaping budget deficit hitting his mayoral term like twin tornadoes, it might not hurt to have some extra luck.

Pension reform is emerging as the issue du jour in City Hall. A round of talks on how to turn the tide on rising pension costs has brought labor representatives, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, billionaire Warren Hellman, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, labor leaders, and others to the table as part of a working group.

Gabriel Haaland, who works for SEIU Local 1021, sounded a positive note on Lee. “He’s an extraordinarily knowledgeable guy about government. He seems to have a very collaborative working style and approach to problem-solving, and he is respectful of differing opinions,” Haaland said. “Where is it going to take us? I don’t know yet.”

Lee emphasized his desire to bring many stakeholders together to facilitate agreement. “We’re talking about everything from limiting pensionable salaries, to fixing loopholes, to dealing with what kinds of plans we can afford in the health care arena,” he noted. Lee said the group had hashed out 15 proposals so far, which will be vetted by the Controller’s Office.

A central focus, Lee said, has been “whether we’ve come to a time to recognize that we have to cap pensions.” That could mean capping a pension itself, he said, or limiting how much of an employee’s salary can be counted toward his or her pension.

Since Lee plans to resume his post as city administrator once his mayoral term has ended, he added a personal note: “I want to go back to my old job, do that for five years, and have a pension that is respectable,” he said. “At the same time, I feel others who’ve worked with me deserve a pension. I don’t want it threatened by the instability we’re headed toward and the insolvency we’re headed toward.”

 

BRACING FOR THE BUDGET

If pension reform is shaping up to be the No. 1 challenge of Lee’s administration, tackling the city budget is a close second. When Newsom left office, he passed Lee a budget memo containing instructions for a 2.5 percent reduction in most city departments, part of an overarching plan to shave 10 percent from all departments plus another 10 percent in contingency cuts, making for a bruising 20 percent.

Lee said his budget strategy is to try to avert what Sup. David Chiu once characterized as “the typical Kabuki-style budget process” that has pitted progressives against the mayor in years past. That means sitting down with stakeholders early.

“I have opened the door of this office to a number of community groups that had expressed a lot of historical frustration in not being able to express to the mayor what they feel the priorities of their communities are,” Lee said. “I’ve done that in conjunction with members of the Board of Supervisors, who also felt that they weren’t involved from the beginning.”

Affordable-housing advocate Calvin Welch said Lee’s style is a dramatic change. “I think he’s probably equaled the total number of people he’s met in six weeks with the number that Newsom met in his seven years as mayor,” Welch said.

Sup. Carmen Chu, recently installed as chair of the Budget & Finance Committee, predicted that the budget will still be hard to balance. “We are still grappling with a $380 million deficit,” Chu told us, noting that there are some positive economic signs ahead, but no reason to expect a dramatic improvement. “We’re been told that there is $14 million in better news. But we still have the state budget to contend with, and who knows what that will look like.”

Sup. John Avalos, the former chair of the Board’s powerful Budget Committee, said he thinks the rubber hasn’t hit the road yet on painful budget decisions that seem inevitable this year — and the outcome, he said, could spell a crashing halt to Ed Lee’s current honeymoon as mayor.

“We are facing incredible challenges,” Avalos said, noting that he heard that labor does not intend to open up its contracts, which were approved in 2010 for a two-year period. And federal stimulus money has run out.

 

DID SOMEONE SAY “CONDO CONVERSIONS”?

Asked whether he supported new revenue measures as a way to fill the budget gap, Lee initially gave an answer that seemed to echo Newsom’s inflexible no-new-taxes stance. “I’m not ready to look at taxes yet,” he said.

He also invoked an idea that Newsom proposed during the last budget cycle, which progressives bitterly opposed. In a conversation with community-based organizations about “unpopular revenue-generating ideas,” Lee cautioned attendees that “within the category of unpopular revenue-generating ideas are also some that would be very unpopular to you as well.”

Asked to explain, Lee answered: “Could be condo conversion. Could be taxes. I’m not isolating any one of them, but they are in the category of very unpopular revenue-generating ideas, and they have to be carefully thought out before we determine that they would be that seriously weighed.”

Ted Gullicksen, who runs the San Francisco Tenants Union, said tenant advocates have scheduled a meeting with Lee to talk about condo conversions. Thanks to Prop. 26’s passage in November 2010, he said, any such proposal would have to be approved by two-thirds of the board or the voters. “It’s pretty clear that any such measure would not move forward without support from all sides,” Gullicksen said. “If anyone opposes it, it’s going to go nowhere.”

Gullicksen said he’d heard that Lee is willing to look at the possibility of significant concessions to renter groups in an effort to broker a condo conversion deal, such as a moratorium on future condo conversions. “If, for example, 1,000 TICs [tenants-in-common] became condos under the proposal, then we’d need a moratorium for five years to minimize and mitigate the damages,” Gullicksen explained.

More important, some structural reform of TIC conversions may be on the table, Gullicksen said. “And that would be more important than keeping existing TICs from becoming condos.”

Gullicksen acknowledged that Lee has the decency to talk to all the stakeholders. “Newsom never attempted to talk to tenants advocates,” he said.

 

GREEN, WITHIN LIMITS

Lee’s two children are in their early 20s, and the mayor said he takes seriously the goal of being proactive on environmental issues in order to leave them with a more sustainable San Francisco. He trumpeted the city’s green achievements, saying, “We’re now on the cutting edge of environmental goals for the city.”

Leading bicycle activist Leah Shahum of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition had praise for Lee on bike issues. “I’m really encouraged by his very public support of the new green separate bikeways on Market Street and his interest and commitment to creating more,” she said. “I believe Mayor Lee sees the value of connecting the city with cross town bicycle lanes, which serve a wide range of folks, including business people and families.”

Yet some proponents of green causes are feeling uncertain about whether their projects will advance under Lee’s watch.

On the issue of community choice aggregation (CCA), the ambitious green-energy program that would transfer Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers to a city-run program with a cleaner energy mix, Lee — who helped determine rates as city administrator — seemed lukewarm. “I know Mr. [Ed] Harrington and his staff just want to make sure it’s done right,” he said, referring to the general manager of the city’s Public Utilities Commission, whose tepid attitude toward the program has frequently driven him to lock horns with the city’s chief CCA proponent, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi.

Lee noted that CCA program goals were recently scaled back. He also said pretty directly that he opposes public power: “We’re not in any day getting rid of PG&E at all. I don’t think that is the right approach.”

The controversial issue of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council Recycling Center’s pending eviction from Golden Gate Park still hangs in the balance. The Recreation and Park Commission, at Newsom’s behest, approved the eviction despite overwhelming community opposition.

Lee said he hadn’t looked at the issue closely. “I do know that there’s a lot of strong debate around the viability, what that operation attracts and doesn’t attract,” he said. “I had the owner of HANC here along with a good friend, Calvin Welch, who made a plea that I think about it a bit. I agreed that I would sit down and talk with what I believe to be the two experts involved in that decision: Melanie Nutter at the Department of the Environment and then Phil Ginsburg at the Rec and Park.” Nutter and Ginsburg supported HANC’s eviction.

Welch, who is on the board of HANC, noted that Lee could be swayed by his staff. “The bunch around Newsom had old and bad habits, and old and bad policies. In dealing with mayors over the years, I know how dependent they are on their staff. They’re in a bubble, and the only way out is through a good staff. Otherwise, Lee will come to the same conclusions as Newsom.”

HANC’s Jim Rhoads told the Guardian he isn’t feeling reassured. “He said he would keep asking people about it. Unfortunately, if he asked his own staff, it would be a problem because they’re leftovers from Newsom.”

Speaking of leftovers, Lee also weighed in on the debate about the city’s waste-management contract — and threw his support behind the existing private garbage monopoly. Campos is challenging a perpetual waste-hauling contract that Recology has had with the city since 1932, calling instead for a competitive-bidding process. When the Department of the Environment recommended awarding the city’s landfill disposal contract to Recology last year, it effectively endorsed a monopoly for the company over managing the city’s entire waste stream, at an estimated value of $206 million per year.

The final decision to award the contract was delayed for two months at a February Budget & Finance Committee hearing. Campos is contemplating putting the issue to the voters this fall, provided he can find six votes on the Board.

“I know that Sup. Campos had given his policy argument for why he wants that revisited,” Lee said. “I have let him know that the Recology company in its various forms has been our very dependable garbage-hauling company for many, many decades. … I feel that the company has justified its privilege to be the permit holder in San Francisco because of the things that it has been willing to do with us. Whether or not we want to use our time today to revisit the 1932 ordinance, for me that wouldn’t be a high priority.”

 

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

In the last week of 2010, Avalos pushed through groundbreaking local-hire legislation, without the support of then Mayor Gavin Newsom or his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, who wanted Avalos to back off and let Newsom takeover the task.

With Lee now in Room 200, things appear to be moving forward on local hire, in face of misleading attacks from Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), who wants to make sure no state money is used on local-hire projects, presumably because the building trades are upset by it. And Kawa, whom Lee has retained as chief of staff, doesn’t really support the legislation. Indeed, Kawa’s presence in the Mayor’s Office has his detractors believing that the new boss in Room 200 is really the same as the old boss.

“I feel like things are moving forward in the right direction around local hire, though a little more quietly than I’d like,” Avalos told the Guardian. Avalos noted that he is going to hold a hearing in March on implementing the legislation that should kick in March 25.

Welch said he believes that if Lee starts replacing staff wholesale, it could indicate two things: he’s a savvy guy who understands the difficulties of relying on Newsom’s chief of staff Steve Kawa for a budget, and he’s not ruling out a run for mayor.

“If I was in his position, the first thing out of my mouth would be, ‘I’m not running.’ I think he’s very focused in the budget. And it’s going to make or break him. But if he starts overriding Kawa and picks staff who represent him … well, then I’d revisit the question of whether he’s contemplating a run for mayor, say, around June.”

Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

Mary Magee
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Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

With all eyes on Wisconsin, local labor leaders are suggesting that Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s proposed retirement/health plan reforms are really Tea Party initiatives, even as Adachi threatens to place another Measure B-like initiative on the fall ballot if city leaders can’t agree on a fix for the city’s fiscal problems

Last fall, Adachi started a war with the local labor movement when he placed Measure B on the November ballot. Measure B proposed increasing employee contributions for retirement benefits, decreasing employer contributions for heath benefits for employees, retirees and their dependents, and changing rules for arbitration proceedings about city collective bargaining agreements,

Measure B ultimately failed, but not after both sides spent a ton of cash. And now labor is refusing to have Adachi sit in on their pension reform talks with Mayor Ed Lee, former SEIU President Andy Stern is describing the fight in Wisconsin as a ’15 state GOP Power grab,” and SEIU Local 1021 leader Gabriel Haaland is pointing to Wisconsin as a reason for excluding Adachi from pension reform talks

“Adachi’s obviously scapegoating a group that’s part of a national agenda,” Haaland said, noting that in the states where Republicans gained statehouse control in 2010, there’s talk about eliminating collective bargaining, and ending defined benefit plans and paycheck protection.

“The problem is that pension reform has been blowing on the anti-public sector worker winds that are blowing in Wisconsin and other states, whether progressives want to acknowledge it or not,” Haaland continued. “There is a reason that Adachi got so much money last year, and the corporate interests behind him are part of this effort to bash public sector workers.”

Prop. B’s campaign finance records show the campaign raised $1.125 million in 2010, and that the lion’s share came from wealthy individuals.

Billionaire venture capitalist, former Google board member and Obama supporter Michael Moritz gave $245,000. Author Harrier Heyman, Moritz’ wife, donated $172,500. financial analyst Richard Beleson donated $110,000. George Hume of Basic American Foods donated $50,000. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s former economic policy advisor David Crane gave $37,500. Philanthropist Warren Hellman donated $50,000. Republican investor Howard Leach, who co-hosted a Prop. B fundraiser with former Mayor Willie L. Brown, gave $25,000. Investor Joseph Tobin gave $15,750. Maverick Capital partner David Singer gave $15,000. JGE Capital Partners donated  $15,000; Bechtel owner  Stephen Bechtel Jr gave $10,000: Matthew Cohler, a general partner of Benchmark Capital, donated $10,000; the California Chamber of Commerce donated $5,000 and philanthropist Dede Wilsey gave $1,000.

But records also show that Measure B opponents, which included San Francisco Firefighters, SF Police Officers Association, SF First Responders, the California Nurses Association, United Educators, San Francisco Gardeners, San Francisco Teachers, Library Workers, laguna Honda Workers, donated over $1 million in their successful bid to squash Adachi’s reform. And that just about every elected Democrat, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, then mayor Gavin Newsom, Sheriff Mike Hennessey, and Board President David Chiu, came out against Adachi’s original plan.
 
Haaland acknowledged that the argument could be made that the progressives’ version of the hotel tax didn’t pass and less attention was paid to the district elections last fall, because labor focused primarily on defeating Adachi’s Measure B.

“But at the end of the day, we did get the real estate transfer tax and we defeated Measure B,” Haaland observed. “So, we need to keep fighting anti-worker pressure. It’s challenging times, but I feel like the connections need to be made.”

Adachi was swift to refute Haaland’s claim that his Measure B pension reform is and was a Tea Party initiative.
“What’s not been reported is the fact that there are all these people supporting pension reform who are progressive Democrats,” Adachi said, pointing to Moritz, Crane and former Board President and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez, who all supported Measure B last fall.

“You are talking about saving basic services and that’s a progressive cause,” Adachi continued. “You might argue that pension reform isn’t a progressive solution. But then you are saying that the needs of one group of workers are subservient to the needs of other workers. And even if you raised every tax in the city, you’d not be able to keep up with pension and healthcare costs.”

“Even if we could raise parking tickets to $200 a pop, and tax folks who make more than $100,000 a year, that still wouldn’t solve the problem, because the problem is so huge,” Adachi added. “When you look at this crisis, you can’t simply redbait and say, you are a Republican, or Sarah Palin. Matt Gonzales has always spoken for progressive values, but because he supports pension reform, he’s suddenly a member of the Tea Party? At a certain point, it begins to become absurd.”

Haaland countered that he’s  “challenged by the notion that thousands show up in Wisconsin to fight some of the same people behind Measure B, but our discourse has lowered to whether or not Jeff Adachi is a good guy.”

And Adachi expressed doubt that Mayor Ed Lee can come up with a suitable pension reform plan.

“I’ve heard Lee say there has to be a solution involving pension reform and underfunded healthcare benefits that would save $300 million to $400 million in annual savings, and that corresponds with the solution he needs to come up with to close the budget deficit,” Adachi said.

Adachi said that he has met with Lee on his own to discuss pension reform, but the new mayor did not list specifics.
“He didn’t tell me what his plan was,” Adachi said, “The Prop. B supporters have a plan, but Lee did not ask what that was. But he said he sincerely wants to solve that problem, and that his preference would be one ballot initiative that everyone would agree on. And I fully support a solution that is going to truly solve the problem. I’ve always believed it’s important for the public to understand the gravity of the situation. For too long, it’s been the elephant in the room and there hasn’t been enough public information.”

Adachi said he had a beef with the idea of “groups of labor unions holding meetings at City Hall and deciding who can participate.”

“It’s also troubling that there is no information publicly available about what the ideas on the table are, no explanation of how they got there, and no documenting of the extent of the problem,” Adachi continued. “And that’s what got us here in the first place: a lack of transparency, and voters being asked to weigh in without the full information.”

Adachi said he has an upcoming meeting with Lee, the Department of Human Resources and Sup. Sean Elsbernd about pension reform that is separate from the working group that includes labor and philanthropist Warren Hellmann.

And Elsbernd told the Guardian he believes the pension reform process would go smoother if Adachi were at the table.
“I have no problem with Jeff at the table, it makes sense to have him there to avoid two ballot measures,” Elsbernd said.

Elsbernd added that it was too early to cite numbers when it comes to talk of capping pensions.
“It’s a mistake to pick a number right now because you don’t know what it’s worth,” he said, noting that the pension reform working group has sent a bunch of different scenarios to retirement actuaries to crunch the numbers to see how much they would save the city.

“I can see a case being made for asking the highest paid city workers to contribute higher amounts for healthcare benefits,” Elsbernd said. “But I’m not sure that’s equitable on retirement benefits, though I could see a situation where safety pays more, regardless, because they have better pensions.”

Onek to SFPD Chief turned D.A. Gascon: release records of officers cleared in shootings

Mary Magee
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3
Onek to SFPD Chief turned D.A. Gascon: release records of officers cleared in shootings

Calitics has a revealing letter from David Onek, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, a former member of the San Francisco Police Commission and a candidate in the 2011 District Attorney’s race, demanding greater transparency from the D.A.’s office when it comes to explaining why officers have been cleared in officer-related shootings.

“After spending my career working to identify and implement the most effective public safety strategies, I have seen one constant – the community is safest when the police and prosecutors earn and keep the public’s trust,” Onek writes in a letter that is guaranteed to turn up the ante in an already intriguing race. “That’s why I read with real concern that the San Francisco District Attorney’s office would not produce reports related to officer-involved shootings pursuant to a recent public records request from NPR-affiliate KALW.”

(The KALW report shows that the person in the D.A.’s office who penned the letter denying its request for records was Paul Henderson, D.A. Kamala Harris’ chief of staff and her preferred pick as replacement D.A. before Gavin Newsom appointed former SFPD Chief George Gascón as his last act as mayor, shocking just about everyone except Willie Brown, especially when it came out that Gascón used to be a Republican and is not philosophically opposed to the death penalty. And while Gascón, who was registered in recent years as decline-to-state, promptly turned around and registered as a Democrat, he also filed papers in the D.A.’s race that cite the phone number of notorious campaign attorney Jim Sutton.)

In his post on Calitics, Onek notes that as a former Police Commissioner, he was briefed in closed session on the details of officer-involved shootings, and he often heard complaints from community members about how little public information was released about officer-involved shootings.
“This lack of transparency breeds distrust,” Onek observes.

Onek acknowledges that in all officer-involved shootings, the DA’s office conducts an independent review to determine if there is criminal liability, and that if such liability is found, the DA presses charges, which are public. “But when the DA determines that there is no liability, it is equally important that the DA publicly explain the reasons for its decision,” Onek states.

In short, he believes the D.A.’ office should issue a very detailed report on every officer-involved shooting in which it does not file charges and should make the report publicly available on its website. “The report should detail the facts, the law and the reasons for the decision not to file charges,” Onek says, arguing that complete transparency would make the job of police and prosecutors much easier by building trust between law enforcement and the community, making it more likely that community members will work in partnership with police and prosecutors, and that victims and witnesses will come forward to testify.

“Publishing detailed reports that clear officers when they acted within the law can dispel public misconceptions about what actually happened,” Onek concludes. “Of course, officers’ privacy rights need to be respected and investigations cannot be compromised. But once an investigation is complete, and an officer has been cleared, it is imperative that the District Attorney’s office share its findings with the public. “

And as Onek points out, this standard is already in place in communities in California. “The District Attorney’s office in San Diego, hardly a bastion of liberalism, actually lists these cases on its website,” Onek states. “Many other counties – including Los Angeles, Orange and Fresno – also make them matters of public record and available on request. Building trust with the community is the key to enhancing public safety. Let’s not violate that trust by refusing to release documents that the public has the right to see.”

I’ve got a call into D.A. Gascón’s office to learn more about the rationale for denying KALW’s request, and I’ll be sure to post his reply here, so stay tuned.

Adachi and Ballard’s pension reform gloves come off

Mary Magee
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64
Adachi and Ballard’s pension reform gloves come off

Yesterday, I talked to Public Defender Jeff Adachi about the latest efforts to address pension reform in San Francisco. Readers may remember that Adachi roused the ire of the labor unions last year, with the ultimately unsuccessful Proposition B. At the time, most folks felt Adachi’s measure didn’t have a snowball’s chance because it asked public employees to bear the brunt of the city’s ballooning retirement and health plan costs. Yet, they all praised Adachi as a great city leader who has been on the right side of many other battles in this city’s rich political history.
But the pension reform issue hasn’t gone away, and now that Adachi is threatening to introduce another measure this fall, the gloves have apparently come off, as witnessed by a Bay Citizen article that reported that union leaders don’t want Adachi to be part of a pension-reform working group at City Hall
In that Bay Citizen article, Nathan Ballard, who served as communications director for former Mayor Gavin Newsom from 2007 to 2009, said, “Inviting Jeff Adachi to our talks would be like inviting Sarah Palin to speak at the Democratic convention.”
The Bay Citizen characterized Ballard as “a Democratic strategist who has been involved in the working group since its inception.” And it noted that Mayor Lee had reached out to Adachi—an effort that it framed as a “complicating move.”
But it didn’t get Adachi’s thoughts on Ballard’s comments. So, I asked Adachi how he felt about being compared to Sarah “Moose in the headlights” Palin.
“It’s ironic that a spokesperson from Burson-Marsteller, which is headed by Republican operatives such as President Bush’s former press secretary (Dana Perino) and represents some of the most reactionary corporate interests, such as USA Blackwater, is accusing me of being a Republican for trying to solving our city’s pension crisis,” Adachi replied, referring to the fact that Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations firm, appointed Ballard as a managing director in March 2010.
“This is a company that is known for representing the worst corporate criminals in modern history,” Adachi continued. “They organized a campaign against civil rights in Argentina, supported a government massacre in Indonesia and tried to justify the killing of over 2,000 people in India’s Bhopal disaster. You have a hired mouthpiece, Nathan Ballard, who’s been paid $50,000 out of union member dues deciding who can attend meetings at City Hall. “
Asked for his thoughts on Adachi’s response, Ballard replied, “Burson-Marsteller employs talented operatives from both sides of the aisle. Although I won’t speak to the specifics of Jeff Adachi’s allegations, Burson is well known as the world’s go-to firm for crisis communications, and that tends to involve handling high-stakes disputes for controversial clients. As a criminal defense lawyer, Jeff Adachi should resist the temptation to assign blame to an advocate for accusations made against a client.”

So, buckle your seats, ladies and gentlemen. The pension reform battle is ON. And if the exchange posted above is any indication, it’s only going to get uglier

Green Bay Packers’ Desmond Bishop drops in on Lee

Mary Magee
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3
Green Bay Packers’ Desmond Bishop drops in on Lee

So, there I was sitting in the Mayor’s Office with fellow Guardian reporter Rebecca Bowe waiting to see Mayor Ed Lee when in walks Green Bay Packers linebacker and D10 native Desmond Lamont Bishop, who helped win the Super Bowl XLV, this month.

Turns out Bishop was there to see Lee, shortly before D10 Sup. Malia Cohen honored Bishop during the Board’s Black History month commendations’ ceremony.

We didn’t get a chance to interview Bishop (he was whisked into Lee’s office super quick), but Bowe and I surfed the web while waiting for our appointment with Lee and soon learned that Bishop was born in San Francisco on July 24, 1984, is 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighs 238 pounds, and was at Cal in 2005/06, before being drafted by the Packers in 2007, where he wears jersey number 55.
 
Cohen later confirmed that Bishop was born in Hunters Point and went to Visitacion Valley Junior High, before going to high school in Fairfield, and then returned to San Francisco to attend City College before heading to the University of California.

“Desmond is also deeply involved in his community,” Cohen said in a press release, which notes that Bishop started the Desmond Bishop Football Camp and participates in programs to help kids to be healthy and learn to read, including the Boys and Girls Club.“The Bishop family moved to San Francisco over 50 years ago, and Desmond’s grandfather still lives in Bayview Hunters Point.”

Too bad we didn’t have a chance to get Bishop’s autograph, but hopefully next time…

Garbage curveball

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Garbage curveball

sarah@sfbg.com

A newly released report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst has thrown a curve ball at the Department of the Environment’s proposal to transport the city’s garbage by truck and rail to Yuba County for disposal in Recology’s Ostrom Road landfill.

Recology’s proposal would kick in when the city’s disposal contract with Waste Management’s Altamont landfill reaches its 15 million ton limit, which is anticipated to occur in 2015, or beyond (see “A tale of two landfills,” 06/15/10). But as that much-anticipated proposal finally comes to a Board of Supervisors committee on Feb. 9, the debate has suddenly been significantly broadened.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report recommends replacing existing trash collection and disposal laws with legislation that requires competitive bidding on all aspects of the city’s waste collection, transportation, and disposal system. It also recommends that the Board of Supervisors require that refuse collection rates for both residential and commercial services be subject to board approval, and that competitive bidding could result in reduced refuse collection rates in San Francisco.

The annual cost to ratepayers of the city’s entire refuse system is $206 million, but only the landfill disposal contract, worth $11.2 million a year, gets put out to competitive bid, the BLA observes.

Debra Newman, an analyst with he BLA, told the Guardian that she has been asked why she brought up all these issues in advance of the Board’s Feb. 9 Budget and Finance committee hearing to discuss the Department of Environment’s recommendation that Recology be awarded the disposal contract. The company already has a monopoly over collection and transportation of waste in San Francisco thanks to an 79-year-old voter-approved agreement.

“Our position is that this is the only opportunity to address these issues with the board because of the way the city’s 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance reads,” Newman said. “This is the only vehicle we would have because nothing else is going to come to them. The residential rates don’t come to them, the commercial rates don’t even come to the Rate Board. This is our chance to discuss the whole kit and caboodle of waste collection, transportation, and disposal.”

The BLA’s Feb. 4 report notes that “Unlike water rates charged by the SF Public Utilities Commission, neither residential or collection rates are currently subject to Board approval, under the city’s 1932 refuse ordinance.”

Residential rates are approved by the director of Public Works, unless such rates are appealed, in which case they are subject to the approval of the city’s Rate Board, which consists of the city administrator, the controller and the SF Public Utilities Commission director. Recology sets the commercial rates, which are not subject to city approval.

Voters previously rejected two attempts to allow for competitive bidding for refuse collection and transportation (Prop. Z in 1993 and Prop. K in 1994). And the BLA observes that if the Board doesn’t go to the ballot box, it could ask DoE to analyze costs and benefits of using Recology to collect refuse, and using a separate firm to provide transportation, if that firm can avoid transporting refuse through San Francisco’s streets.

Under the never-ending waste ordinance that the city approved during the Great Depression, 97 permits exist to collect refuse within the city, and only authorized refuse collectors that have these permits may transport refuse “through the streets of the City and County of San Francisco.” Due to a number of corporate acquisitions, Recology now owns all 97 permits and so has a monopoly over refuse collected in and transported through the streets of San Francisco.

But the BLA report was unable to identify any portion of the city’s 1932 refuse ordinance that governs the transport of refuse that does not occur through the city’s streets.

“Therefore, it may be possible for a second firm, other than Recology, to transport refuse after it has been collected by Recology, if that second firm’s transfer station was located either outside the city limits or was located near marine or rail facilities, such that refuse from the transfer station to the city’s designated landfill could avoid being transported through the streets of the city and county of San Francisco,” the BLA states.

“These are nuanced issues and they’ve evolved,” Newman observed. “All we are doing is trying to help the board try and decide what to do on this matter. We are saying that the current approach is a policy matter for the board, and recommending that the board submit a proposal to the voters to amend the refuse collection and disposal ordinance.”

The BLA report comes 15 months after the city tentatively awarded the new landfill disposal agreement to Recology to deposit up to 5 million tons of waste collected in San Francisco in Recology’s landfill in Yuba County for 10 years. The award was based on score sheets from a three-member evaluation panel composed of City Administrator (now Mayor) Ed Lee, DoE Deputy Director David Assmann, and Oakland environmental services director Susan Katchee.

The trio scored competing proposals from Recology and Waste Management, and awarded Recology 254, and WM 240, out of a possible 300 points. Lee’s scores in favor of Recology were disproportionately higher than other panelists, and the BLA notes that the largest differences in the scoring occurred around cost.

The BLA concluded that the city’s proposed agreement with Recology was subject to the city’s normal competitive process, “because the landfill disposal agreement is the sole portion of the refuse collection, transportation and disposal process which is subject to the City’s normal competitive bidding process.” And it found that because the transfer and collection of the city’s refuse has never been subject to the city’s normal bidding process, approval of the proposed resolution is a policy decision for the board.

But while DoE’s Assmann has said that California cities must maintain a plan for 15 years of landfill disposal capacity, the BLA notes that such plans can include executed agreements and anticipated agreements. And WM officials confirm that Altamont has capacity for 30 to 40 years. This means the board need not rush its disposal decision.

The BLA report comes against a backdrop of intense lobbying around Recology’s proposal. Records show that in 2010, Alex Clemens of Barbary Coast Consulting recorded $82,500 from Recology, and Chris Gruwell of Platinum Advisors recorded $70,000 from Waste Management to lobby around the city’s landfill disposal contract.

And now both firms continue to press their case in face of the BLA report.

“Folks are trying to cloud the issue,” Recology’s consultant Adam Alberti, who works for Sam Singer Associates, said. He claims the BLA report concludes that Recology’s proposed contract is the lowest cost to rate payers, saving an estimated $130 million over 10 years, that Recology’s green rail option is the environmentally superior approach, and that the city’s contract procurement process was open, thorough, and fair. “In short, the process works—and it works well,” Alberti said. “The rate setting process is an important subject, and one the board should review, but the one before the board now is a fully vetted contract.”

Alberti claimed that contrary to the conclusions of the BLA, which found commercial collection rates are significantly higher in San Francisco than Oakland, Recology’s rates are cheaper than Oakland—once you factor in Recology’s recycling discounts.

Waste Management’s David Tucker said the BLA report “raises lots of good questions.”

“We have said from day one that transportation was a component of the request for proposals [for the landfill disposal contract] that no other company other than Recology had an option to bid on,” Tucker said. “Had we been able to bid on the transportation component, our costs would have been lower.”

Tucker believes that no matter who wins the landfill contract, the BLA report points to a lack of transparency and openness under the city’s existing refuse ordinance.

“Up until this time, no one has been able to understand the process,” Tucker said. “If the Budget and Legislative Analyst has shown that there are some inconsistencies in the statements made by the Department of the Environment, if the process has slight flaws, then the whole process from the request for proposals to the pricing needs to be revised. And time is on the City’s side. There is no need to rush into a decision. Yes, our contract with the city is ending, but our capacity at the Altamont clearly goes into 2030 and 2040. So, this is an opportunity to toss out [Recology’s] proposal and start again.”

Asked if Recology is planning to rail haul waste to Nevada, once its Ostrom Road Yuba County landfill, Alberti said that the city’s current procurement process prohibits that.

“Will that be around next time? I don’t know,” he said. “Recology’s first goal is reducing waste, and managing it responsibly. We believe rail haul is an integral part of that.”

And he insisted BLA’s report should not be connected to Recology’s disposal contract.

“Recology believes that the system is working very well, as evidenced by the fact that it’s yielded the best diversion rates, lower rates than average, and has an open and thorough rate-setting process set by an independent body,” he said. ” We feel the recommendations are separate from the matter-at-hand. But if the board so chooses to have this debate, we’re anxious and happy to be part of that discussion.”

David Gavrich, CEO of Waste Solutions Group, which transports waste by rail and barge from San Francisco, praised the BLA report for “finally peeling back the layers of the onion” on the city’s entire waste system. Gavrich notes that in June 2009, he and Port Director Monique Moyer advised DoE of an option on a piece of long-vacant port property that offers direct rail and barge transportation of waste and could result in tremendous long-term savings to ratepayers.

“But we never got a reply to our letter,” Gavrich said. “Instead, DoE pushed forward with Recology’s trucking of waste to the East Bay, the transloading of waste from truck to railcar in the East Bay, and the railing of waste east to Yuba County.”

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, which sits on the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee, is concerned that the city is considering enlarging Recology’s monopoly, without calling into question the reform of the 1932 charter.

“I don’t think these two questions should be disconnected in the way they are in the proposal to award Recology the landfill disposal contract,” Mirkarimi said. “The city and the DOE are very defensive about this and have a well laid-out defense to show that they followed the letter of the law in awarding this contract. But that leads to a secondary set of concerns: namely are we getting the best bang for our bucks, and is there something less than competitive about the current process.”

Mirkarimi admits that Recology has been committed to many of the city’s environmental policy advances. “But that’s aside from the larger question of what this mean in terms of institutionalizing further the expansion of a monopoly,” he said. “Our utilities are governed by monopolies like PG&E. So, should we be going in the same direction as 1932, or thinking if we want to diversify our utility portfolio?”

Black history, local hire, living color

Mary Magee
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31

City Hall kicked off its annual Black History month celebrations with a talk by Los Angeles philanthropist and former Xerox Corp. VP Bernard Kinsey about the importance of debunking myths about the absence of blacks in American history. And Mayor Ed Lee, who had just met with five dozen unemployed black construction workers from the Bayview, revealed how, when he was growing up in the projects in Seattle, his neighbors were black, and an African American named Darnell was one of the most loyal patrons of the restaurant that Lee’s father was trying to make succeed.


“And when my dad suddenly died of a heart attack, Darnell was the first person to offer my brother a job at his gas station,” Lee said. “So, this is not just about recognizing African American history, but recognizing what they did for us, and  making sure that no there are jobs and we protect the family structure. I know what it is to be helped by the African American culture.”


Lee’s recollections of Darnell came less than an hour after he met with Aboriginal Blackmen United, a group that represents unemployed construction workers in the Bayview, to discuss how its members can get hired at UCSF’s $1.5 billion hospital complex at Mission Bay and other local building sites.


At that meeting, ABU President James Richards thanked Lee for getting UC to clarify the details of its voluntary local hire plan at the Mission Bay hospitals.
But he warned that the fight is just starting. “We’ve got the unions to deal with,” Richards told Lee, referring to the reality that the unions also want their members to get work at the UCSF site.


Lee said he’d do his best to help.
“The African American community in San Francisco has not got its fair share,” he said. “I can’t say that everyone in the room is going to get a job, but I’ll open up doors and do my best.”


And then Lee confirmed that local hire is one of his top five priorities.
“My top priorities are the budget, pension reform, the America’s Cup, finding a good police chief and local hire,” he said. “I said that directly to every union leader yesterday. Some unions will be there, others will resist.”


ABU’s Richards said the need to have a G.E.D. to get into the city’s ob training programs is a barrier to employment for many in the Bayview.
“We have a lot of people, who are not able to get into CityBuild because they don’t take folks anymore who don’t have their G.E.D,” he said.


And he warned that the city’s black community is in crisis.
“I know there is a budget crisis, but this is a life crisis,” Richards said. “Young people are dying and it’s not even newsworthy any more.”


Lee suggested ABU work with the City to avoid the need to hold protests at construction sites in future,
“Let’s plan together, so you don’t have to go to all the sites,” Lee said. “I am for people getting their GED. But if someone has evidence that they are making an attempt to get their GED, we need to reward that with jobs. So that the GED is not a barrier, it’s a hope.”


And then Lee was off to attend his next round of meetings, which included the city’s Black History month event, where speakers noted that during Bernard Kinsey’s career with Xerox, he helped increase the hiring of blacks, Latinos and women,


Kinsey told the audience that he and Shirley Kinsey, his wife of 44 years, share a passion for African-American history and art. And that their world-famous Kinsey Collection, which contains art, books and manuscripts documenting African American triumphs and struggles from 1632 to the present, is currently on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C, and a number of pieces are at the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society. He noted that the posters of African Americans in the Civil War were reproductions of some of the art in those exhibits. 


Sup. Malia Cohen noted that about 200,000 African Americans participated in that war. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who represents the city’s Western Addition, where redevelopment triggered massive displacement of the black community in the 1960s, noted that eight members of the current Board of Supervisors, who selected Lee as the city’s first Chinese American mayor, are people of color.


“This is true representation,” Mirkarimi said, noting that the fact that the city’s African American population continues to drop (reportedly down from 6 percent to 3.9 percent, according to the 2010 Census) to “is a reminder that even the most forward-thinking cities have a lot of work to do.”


And Kinsey urged African Americans to start describing their ancestors as “enslaved.”


‘It will change how you look at your ancestors,” he said, “You don’t have a clue about what they sacrificed to get you to where you are today. We don’t tell you the ‘ain’t-it-awful’ story about slavery. We tell you the story of how we overcame.”


“You need three things for a successful life,” Kinsey added “Something to do. Someone to love. And something to look forward to.”


Kinsey said he and his wife have espoused two life principles, ‘To whom much is given much is required” and live “A life of no regrets.” And then he told a story about an eagle who was raised by a chicken.


The eagle ended up ashamed of his feathers, because the chickens never told him he was an eagle because they were afraid he’d end up ruling the barnyard.“He even grew up ashamed of his daughters,” Kinsey said.


Eventually, the eagle met another eagle, who told him the truth. “You ain’t no chicken,” the other eagle said.


“And this is the message,” Kinsey said. “Don’t think chicken thoughts, or dream chicken dreams. Think like an eagle.”


He warned the audience to be careful of buying into myths that would have them believe that African Americans played no role in building the U.S.
“There are stories that made America and stories that America made up,” Kinsey said. “And too often, the myth becomes the choice.”


And then he concluded by expounding on “the myth of absence.”
‘”African Americans are not seen, not because of their absence, but because of the presence of a myth that prepares and requires their absence,” Kinsey said. “And the manipulation of the myth changes the color of the past. It’s no accident that the dominate images from the past are white. And many of us have swallowed the pill.”


 


 

Division of labor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Division of labor

sarah@sfbg.com


In the wake of a three-day protest by unemployed workers outside UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital construction site — and under pressure from city leaders — UC officials have announced voluntary local hiring targets at the $1.5 billion complex.


Targets start at hiring 20 percent of the project’s workers in San Francisco during 2011 and increase that by 5 percent each year until the hospital complex is completed, UCSF news director Amy Pyle told us. But she denies that UC was pressured into its decision. UC is a state agency that is exempt from local rules when it builds facilities for UCSF and other campuses.


“Our voluntary goals are not a result of their protest,” Pyle insisted. “We have been aware of the local hire concerns since before they were protesting.”


The protests have focused on the need to hire workers for southeast San Francisco, where unemployment rates are the highest in the city, particularly among the city’s African American population.


“Of course we are looking to be good neighbors and hire people from an area we know has been hard hit,” Pyle said, clarifying that under the University of California’s hiring program, “local residents mean people who live in San Francisco generally.”


Mission Bay Hospitals Projects executive director Cindy Lima said uproar at the site stemmed in part from perceptions that lots of work is available now, but she said that isn’t true.


“Job opportunities should ramp up in May, but right now, they are installing structural piles,” Lima said. “So if there is an opportunity for a carpenter or a laborer to get decks built, we call the union.” UC’s voluntary local hire announcement came after Mayor Ed Lee urged UC officials to formalize a community hiring plan for Mission Bay, and Aboriginal Blackmen United (ABU) president James Richards agreed to call off his group’s protest outside UC’s Mission Bay hospital complex, at least for now.


ABU member Fred Green, an unemployed construction worker who has lived in the Bayview for 50 years and has five children, said the protesters tried to remain peaceful. “But an empty belly makes you do strange things,” Green said. “If there’s enough work for everybody, why should we be stuck at home while someone comes into my community and takes food out of my kids’ mouths?”


Troy Moor, who has lived in the Bayview for 47 years and has two kids, speculated that if ABU blocked both gates to the project, it would cost UC thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity. “Here at the front gates, we are visible. But we figure that if by next week, nothing is happening, we’ll start making them lose money,” he said.


Michelle Carrington is a 58-year-old flagger and operating engineer from the Bayview who has been unemployed for 10 years. She said Dwayne Jones, who worked in the Mayor’s Office and helped her graduate from Young Community Developers, was “working to try and get us jobs.”


Jones, who is now with Platinum Advisors as a consultant to DPR Construction, UC’s prime contractor at its Mission Bay site, put in an appearance on day three of ABU’s protest. But he said his work with DPR had nothing to do with the ABU protest.


“UC is very committed to maximizing local hire where we can,” Lima told the Guardian. “It’s unfortunate there is a protest because it gives the sense we haven’t been working with the community when in fact we have been working with the Mayor’s Office, CityBuild, and every stakeholder interested in this project, including ABU.”


Richards said ABU mounted its protest to challenge UC’s claims that it has hired more local residents at the site. They were also angry over a flyer that encouraged residents interested in working at the site to sign up with the San Francisco Workforce Collaborative, in partnership with Rev. Arelious Walker’s BayView Hope Community Development Corporation, feeling as if the UC was trying to divide their community. Walker did not return our calls for comment.


“We were with Walker when he was fighting the Nation of Islam’s attempt to stop development at the shipyard, so it hurts so bad to see this,” Richards said. “Never again will we stand by and let people come into the southeast community and take our jobs. We’re going to fight until the end. If the community doesn’t work, no one works.”


But even as UC announced its voluntary Mission Bay goals, community advocates pressed UCSF to set higher targets, citing the city’s failure to attain 50 percent local hire goals under San Francisco’s decade-long policy of seeking to hit that goal.


Joshua Arce of the Brightline Defense Project said he is glad Lee expressed support for Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, “but we are waiting to see if he implements the law as written or a watered-down version.”


Then-Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed Avalos’ legislation to become law without signing it, bowing to the veto-proof 8-3 majority that approved it. But in a 12/23/10 letter explaining his position, Newsom recommended modifications to accommodate the concerns of the building trades, whose members come from across the Bay Area.


“I know the passage of this policy has created high expectations among some residents of San Francisco,” Newsom wrote. “The city owes it to them to implement this policy in a way that will result in a successful program that is fiscally responsible and reflects the best thinking of the many stakeholders invested in San Francisco.”


But with Newsom moving to Sacramento, California Assembly member Tom Ammiano and Sens. Mark Leno and Leland Yee are urging legislators to support San Francisco’s newly approved local hire law as approved.


In a Jan. 25 letter that Leno and Yee signed, Ammiano encouraged Bay Area officials to work with the city to explore mutually beneficial “reciprocity agreements” in which local cities would support one another’s programs “aimed at providing disadvantaged job seekers opportunities in the construction sector.”


“In neighborhoods like the Bayview, the Mission, and the Western Addition, the promise of jobs — particularly living wage construction jobs — has been an unfulfilled promise for generations,” Ammiano wrote.


But in a Jan. 28 press release, UC officials clarified that “as one of 10 campuses of a statewide constitutional corporation and public trust,” UCSF is not subject to Avalos’ mandatory requirement and is prohibited from adopting mandatory requirements based upon residency.


Instead, UC promised to do more community outreach and try to carve out financial incentives to encourage contractors to hit UC’s targets at Mission Bay.


Lima said the hospital complex is a historic opportunity to put as many San Franciscans to work as possible. “We have set an ambitious hiring target but we recognize that the economic activity generated by the project can significantly benefit our neighbors and local residents,” she said


After his Jan. 27 meeting with UC, Richards told ABU members that “when DPR needs someone for a job, they’re gonna call Dwayne Jones, and then Dwayne will let us know. There are hundreds of jobs, but I don’t know if they are in every trade. So, I feel good. But not so good that I can say that 10 carpenters will be hired tomorrow. There’s not enough need for that right now. But the work that’s there, when they call, you’re going to know it.”


Lima said UC’s meeting with Richards was “positive”.


“We clarified some misunderstandings and made some progress,” Lima said, noting that work at the site will become increasingly available starting in May. “Our goal is still to create jobs for San Francisco residents and make this project happen. We are continuing to try and match people who need to go to work with available job opportunities. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people in this city who are out of work and a lot of groups with different intentions in mind and we get tangled in that process.”


Lima vowed to work closely with DPR Construction and major subcontractors to ensure qualified local residents — including those from neighborhoods closest to the site — can access the construction jobs. And she promised that results will be reported regularly and the size of the workforce will increase steadily, peaking with 1,000 workers in 2012.


“We are mindful that while these goals challenge us, they are also within reach,” Lima said, noting that UCSF has been engaged in creating job opportunities in the construction trades for San Franciscans since 1993. “Our success will depend on the participation and commitment of the broader community and the trade unions.”


UC’s move comes less than two weeks after Lee announced at the annual San Francisco Labor Council Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast that one of his top priorities is implementing Avalos’ mandatory local hire policy.


Lee’s comments suggest a different approach from Newsom’s, but it’s still not clear whether Lee intends to follow the “critical steps” that Newsom felt the city should take “to ensure the responsible and successful implementation of Avalos’ legislation.”


Arce said he was happy to see Lee address the issue at the MLK Day event. “Lee said that if we are using local dollars to create local jobs, those jobs should go to local workers,” Arce recalled, noting that the following week Lee started to coordinate with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and CityBuild to engage community stakeholders and lay out a road map to implement Avalos’ legislation.


“They set a deadline of March 25 as the target date by which the language of Avalos’ mandatory legislation must be included in all public bids and contracts,” Arce said. “And it’s our understanding that Mayor Lee called UC Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann directly on the morning of Jan. 27 [before ABU’s Richards met with UC officials] to ask that UCSF formalize a community hiring plan for Mission Bay as soon as possible.”


Avalos said he was “very encouraged” by Lee’s remarks. “To say that at the Martin Luther King Labor Breakfast was a big deal,” Avalos said, noting that the building trades were also in the room. “I feel Ed Lee wants to implement the legislation how it is written. He needs help doing that. He needs to create a process to make it happen, and I believe the folks who helped draft the legislation will be ready to do that. That’s not to say that this couldn’t go wrong, but I feel pretty confident that he will implement as strong a local hire model as possible.”

Happy Lamb’s Milk Day

Mary Magee
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According to my trusty old Farmer’s Almanac, the Celts knew Feb. 1 as “Imbolc,” or Lamb’s Milk Day,  because it signaled the beginning of the lambing season. And though I didn’t see any lambs today, I did encounter a rambunctious herd of City Grazing’s goats nibbling on mallow plants in the pasture between the SF Bay Railroad and the cement recycling plan. And City Grazing founder David Gavrich and a goat called Petunia were happy to give me a fine impromptu demonstration of how to control weeds in industrial areas in an environmentally friendly way, while some of the rest of the herd got a little, shall we say, frisky. And that’s a sure sign that spring is on the way (even if it felt like it was already summer, two weeks ago), no matter what the Groundhog says tomorrow, Feb. 2, when he is scheduled to pop out of his burrow and, if it’s sunny and he sees his shadow, indicate that we are in for six more weeks of winter.
 
“Celts also knew Feb. 1 as Brigantia, [who became St. Brigid in Christian traditions] named for their female deity of light and in recognition of their Sun being halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox,” my Farmer’s Almanac states. “A sunny day betokened unwelcome snow and frost until Lady Day [March 25]. Clouds portended warmth and rain that would thaw out the fields and have them ready for planting. Our Groundhog Day is a remote survivor of this belief.”

In the Bay Area, Groundhog Day seems even more meaningless than Lamb’s Milk Day, given that our temperatures are positively balmy right now, especially compared to the East Coast, where folks are dealing with freezing rain and facing more snow in the coming weeks. So, perhaps it’s worth focusing on the fact that it’s also a new moon tomorrow (Feb. 2). This means you won’t be able to see the moon for a couple of days. And that the goats won’t have any moonshine to help them in any frisky noctural adventures. But when the moon becomes visible again, it should look like a thin silvery smile at twilight. And, if you’re lucky, you may be able to see the dark portion of the new crescent moon glow, as part of a phenomenon known as earthshine.

“This occurs because 38 percent of the sunlight that strikes Earth bounces back into space; some of this earthlight bathes the lunar surface,” my almanac states. “About 10 percent of that light bounces off the lunar surface (which is not very reflective) to create the visible glow (earthshine) on the Moon’s dark side.”

Either way, Feb. 1 will have daylight for 10 hours and 20 minutes. This means we are midway between the winter solstice, when days were only 9 ½ hours long, and the spring equinox, when the days will last for over 12 hours. If you were a farmer—or a goatherd that would be significant. And the folks at City Grazing told me the only reason there have no baby goats this year is they got the billy goats fixed after last year’s bumper crop of 32 goat kids! But if you’re not into goats or earthshine, Feb. 2- 18 is one of the best sets of fishing days for 2011, again, because the moon will be between new and full. Enjoy.

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