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What did the director of Rec-Park know and when did he know it?

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The Government Audit and Oversight Committee will hold a hearing Thursday/5 on the allegations of financial mismanagement at the San Francisco Parks Alliance and the impact that’s had on city agencies.

Sups. Jackie Fielder and Shamann Walton called for the hearing, and have asked the Recreation and Parks Department, as well as the Parks Alliance, to appear and answer questions.

Among the issues that should, and I suspect will, come up: What role has Rec-Park Director Phil Ginsburg played in the management, direction, financing, and operations of the private alliance? What did he know about the current mess, and when did he know it?… (more)

UPDATE:

S.F. supervisor seeks to subpoena ex-leaders of collapsed parks nonprofit

By Michael Barba : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)

A city supervisor is seeking to subpoena the former leaders of the collapsed San Francisco Parks Alliance, compelling them to testify about the demise of a prominent and politically connected nonprofit that is the subject of multiple investigations.

Supervisor Shamann Walton plans to subpoena the Parks Alliance’s last CEO, Robert Ogilvie, and his predecessor, Drew Becher, as well as its former treasurer Rick Hutchinson.

His request for a subpoena, which needs approval from his colleagues, comes after the Parks Alliance began to wind down its operations this week ahead of a scheduled hearing on its collapse and outstanding debts to the city at a Board of Supervisors committee.

The hearing was supposed to be held Thursday, but has since been postponed…

The Parks Alliance was in the grips of a deepening financial crisis long before its decision to shutter. Its board chair, Louise Mozingo, admitted in a leaked email obtained by the Chronicle that the organization had misspent $3.8 million in restricted funds on its operating expenses.

The shutdown left small neighborhood groups around San Francisco that entrusted the nonprofit to safeguard their money unsure about the fate of their savings. Before all of its board members resigned and itsremaining staffers were terminated, the Parks Alliance hired an outside firm to liquidate its remaining assets through a process akin to bankruptcy...

“I want to know how the city will collect the outstanding dollars and how the Parks Alliance could get away with using city and organization resources for their own operations,” he said.

Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who joined Walton in his call for a hearing, still plans to introduce a motion Thursday calling for a full audit of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, including its long-running financial ties to the Parks Alliance, her office said.

The district attorney, controller and city attorney are investigating…(more)

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S.F. official knew imploding nonprofit was ‘cash poor.’ Should he have rung the alarm?

By Michael Barba  : sfchronicle – excerpt (audio)

Nearly a year ago, the city’s top park official received an ominous message.

The San Francisco Parks Alliance, the big and politically connected nonprofit that Recreation and Park Department General Manager Phil Ginsburg had relied on for years as a conduit for private dollars to fund public projects, was facing “dire cash flow shortages.”

The words came not from a whistleblower, but directly from the nonprofit’s then-CEO, who admitted the problem in a message to a key donor last June that was forwarded to the city. Ginsburg sought assurances from the Parks Alliance that the funding it held for his department was secure.

But it wasn’t until 10 months later that Ginsburg halted his department’s relationship with the Parks Alliance and alerted other city officials. By then, the group had misspent millions of dollars earmarked for specific projects to cover its operating expenses and was headed toward potential insolvency…

The district attorney, city attorney and controller are investigating, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has frozen the flow of funding between the nonprofit and all agencies. Supervisor Shamann Walton is holding a hearing on the crisis at City Hall next week, and Supervisor Jackie Fielder has called for a full audit of Ginsburg’s department and its financial ties to the nonprofit.

The Parks Alliance has served as a pass-through for big donors to help fund city projects such as the construction of a state-of-the-art tennis center in Golden Gate Park and the opening of a new waterfront park in the Bayview. It also acts like a bank for more than 80 small community groups around San Francisco that pay the nonprofit a small fee to collect donations and grants on their behalf and disperse the money when they need to use it to care for playgrounds, trails and other parks projects

Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, a longtime critic of Ginsburg and the Parks Alliance, said Ginsburg should have reported the organization’s financial problems months earlier to the mayor, the controller and other agencies that fund the nonprofit.

Peskin said Ginsburg had erred in protecting and championing the Parks Alliance for years, even after the organization in 2020 became implicated — but not charged — in an FBI bribery investigation. The nonprofit was used to funnel about $1 million from waste company Recology to disgraced former Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, who spent the donations on parties and merchandise for his staff.

“The public and the mayor need to know that this scandal was preventable and happened in large part because the general manager of rec and park was so closely tied to and invested in the Parks Alliance,” Peskin said. “If people are not held accountable, it sends a message to the public and to the rest of the government that there are no consequences.”…(more)

 I’m shocked! Shocked I say.” to hear that Ending Nuru’s reign at the Parks Alliance under a cloud did not end the corruption and abuse at the all to powerfully connected denounced non-profit. Ginsburg’s name popping up is no surprise. How could he have not have noticed that something was amiss with his department finances?

So many questions were never answered when Nuru left.

How much money was laundered through the agency that so many non-profits trusted to provide banking services for them?

Why were the investigations into Parks Alliance affiliates stalled after the Nuru incident was exposed?

How much momentum was lost by the switch between parties that cut off the initial FBI investigations based on complaints filed by whistleblowers?

How many cases were left out of the investigation? No doubt the successor to Nuru 1 cannot be far removed from the top of the power pyramid.

Has no one noticed that a lot of city departments and affiliates use the same PR firm? No one sees any conflicts during an election?

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Engardio Recall – Press Release

Department of Elections
City and County of San Francisco
John Arntz, Director

For Immediate Release:

SAN FRANCISCO, Thursday, May 29, 2025 – Today, the San Francisco Department of Elections announced the certification of the petition to recall Joel Engardio, Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing District 4. The petition, submitted on May 22, 2025, was determined to contain 10,523 valid signatures, above the required threshold of 9,911 signatures.

With the petition deemed sufficient, the Department will proceed with preparations for a special municipal election, which will take place on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, in accordance with San Francisco Charter Section 14.103. Only voters registered and residing in Supervisorial District 4 will be eligible to participate in this election.

San Francisco Department of Elections
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
City Hall, Room 48
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 554-4375
www.sfelections.gov

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Forum: Drones and Public Safety

By Dr. Kerr : westsideobserver – expert

Local anti-crime non-profit Stop Crime SF sponsored “Drones and Public Safety” forum on May 21st at the Northern Police Station on Fillmore Street. Some 50 people attended, including a handful of officers with SFPD’s drone program.

Following introductions by Anna Kearney, Stop Crime SF’s Development Director, and under the watchful eye of co-founder Frank Noto, we heard from officers from SFPD’s Real-Time Investigation Center. The 4 drone models currently in use were displayed, from a tiny 8-inch model to an imposing 26-inch device fitted with a speaker, heat-sensing camera, searchlight, and zoom optics. Attendees were treated to a drone flight demonstration that surveyed the station’s parking lot.

The Real-Time Investigation Team consists of Capt. Thomas Maguire and Lt. Scott Ryan in Strategic Investigations, Capt. Steve Jonas in Field Operations, and Sgt. Tony Suhrke. Dmitri Shimolin, CEO of SafeCity Connect, manages the City’s security camera network and collaborates with SFPD’s drone team.

Capt. Maguire believes that drones, license plate readers and security cameras are partially responsible for the recent decline in crimes. Last year, in collaboration with the Oakland PD, some 500 felony arrests resulted from real-time technology that integrated license plate readers, security camera networks, and drones”…(more)

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Mayor Lurie halts funding for S.F. parks nonprofit that misused millions

By Michael Barba, Accountability & Public Safety Reporter : sfchronicle – excerpt

Mayor Daniel Lurie ordered a citywide pause Friday on all public funding to the San Francisco Parks Alliance after the Chronicle revealed that the prominent nonprofit fundraiser for open space projects had misspent millions and is facing a criminal probe.… (more)

Two city supervisors have also taken action in response to Parks Alliance admissions that they misplaced 3.8 Million dollars of client funds, setting them up for yet another investigation. The last one ended with multiple city employees going to jail after money laundering schemes were revealed by zealous investigative reporters before the books could be hidden or fixed.

This time Parks Alliance has a lot to answer for, and forgiveness will not be likely.

Supervisor Shamann Walton has called for a hearing on the Parks Alliance, scheduled for June 5, while Supervisor Jackie Fielder is seeking a full audit of the city parks department and the Parks Alliance, its longtime nonprofit partner..(more)

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In wake of nonprofit’s implosion, Fielder calls for audit of S.F. parks department

by MARGARET KADIFA :  missionlocal – excerpt

Parks Alliance art for donor campaigns

District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder will today submit legislation calling for an audit of San Francisisco’s Recreation and Parks department.

The move comes after a nonprofit affiliated with the department, the Parks Alliance, has come under fire for possibly misspending at least $3.8 million in donations.

Both the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office have recently launched investigations into the Parks Alliance, according to the San Francisco Chronicle…

As a city department, Rec and Parks is a separate entity from the Parks Alliance. But, the Parks Alliance has often served as a conduit for private money to flow into city projects, operating like “a city account without city oversight,” as the controller’s office put it in a 2020 audit of the Alliance…

This isn’t the first scandal at the Parks Alliance. In 2020, the since-convicted and incarcerated head of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru, used a Parks Alliance account as his personal slush fund to underwrite boozy holiday parties. Nuru was in 2022 convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

The proposed audit of Recreation and Parks would not directly review Parks Alliance funding. The Parks Alliance was most recently audited in 2020 by the controller. The proposed 2025 audit would more broadly review partnerships between the department with nonprofit organizations, according to a press release from Fielder’s office… (more)

 

 

 

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The last Black building inspector in San Francisco

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Onaje Boone says he applied the building code fairly — and flunked builders who’d done poor work. He was abruptly let go with only weeks remaining in his probationary period.

Not long into his brief wondrous life as a San Francisco building inspector, Onaje Boone was taken aside by a higher-up. It was, to Boone’s recollection, a strange and terrible discussion.

Boone, 47, a former carpenter, a licensed contractor and a building inspector in both the public and private sector for more than a decade, was last year told there were issues with his report writing. Specifically: They were too detailed. If the rebar is good, just write Rebar Good.

This was not the sort of advice Boone expected to receive while being paid six figures to serve as a building inspector in a major city.

“The code calls for so much space, so much cleanliness of the area, a certain type of waterproofing,” he says, going into minute details about lap splicing and other matters of some importance in a town situated between two major earthquake faults.

“I write it specifically to what the code book calls out,” he continues. “Whatever was required was noted. I know how to write a report.”

For Boone, Rebar Good was not good enough. He continued to write reports his way. And do inspections his way: as in, failing people who didn’t meet the code. There were a few… (more)

The plan seems to be to let the problems fester for years and then jump up and “discover” hundreds or buildings were not properly built decades ago, Force the owners to pay for costly inspections and repairs now. Who was running planning and DBI back in the 1970s and 80s?

 

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The Bay Area has hundreds of below-market rate apartments sitting vacant

By Katalerico : mercurynews – excerpt

Some new moderate-income units offer little discount to market-rate rents. Some question whether we should prioritize building them at all

In April 2023, a new luxury apartment complex on Alameda’s waterfront, Launch, opened to renters, advertising views of the yacht club from its rooftop deck, poolside cabanas and a co-working lounge.

As required by Alameda’s inclusionary zoning law, the developer, Pacific Development, set aside 49 of the 368 units for low- and moderate-income households making between 50% to 120% of the area median income, $51,800 to $124,250 for a single person. The idea was to fill the complex with a variety of tenants, not just the kind of renters who could afford $3,000 a month.

Two years later, the results are mixed: units for the poorest tenants have filled, but all 19 designated for moderate-income renters — the so-called “missing middle” — remain empty, much to the frustration of the developer, Sean Murphy.

“The last thing we want to do as a developer is build housing units that sit vacant,” he said. “That doesn’t solve any social problems.”…(more)

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Supervisor Calls For Hearings Into Whatever’s Going On at Beleaguered SF Parks Alliance

By Joe Kukura : sfist – excerpt

The cancellation of the free movies in the park series may just be the tip of the iceberg of the financial problems of the SF Parks Alliance, and Sup. Shamann Walton is calling for hearings into why the group doesn’t seem to have money it should have.

We should start here by pointing out that the SF Recreation and Parks Department and the SF Parks Alliance are two different groups, despite having very similar names. SF Rec and Parks is a city department that manages SF’s public parks. The SF Parks Alliance is a nonprofit that organizes free movie nights in the parks, playground renovations, or giant Ferris wheels in parks.

And the SF Parks Alliance is able to take private donations that Rec & Parks, as an official city department, cannot legally collect themselves. Thus, the SF Parks Alliance also collects donations and grants for some 80 or so smaller neighborhood or “Friends of So-and-So Park” groups, helps these groups raise funds, and then “stores” their money like a bank so they don’t have to apply for nonprofit status themselves.

This all sounded like a noble arrangement, until the whole Mohammed Nuru scandal showed that Nuru was using the Parks Alliance as something of a slush fund for staff parties, merch, and shwag. That all blew over with Nuru now in prison, but new questions arose about the SF Parks Alliance after they laid off about two-thirds of their staff within the last six months, and their director abruptly stepped down… (more)

Looks like the Nuru curse never left the Parks Alliance. We look forward to a very detailed report on where the money went, including any funds that went into the recent ballot initiatives. We hope the PR and legal firms that represent most of the city departments and their close associates will be investigated as well.

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‘Dumpster fire’: In leaked email, S.F. Parks Alliance admits misusing at least $3.8 million

By Michael Barba, Accountability & Public Safety Reporter :
sfchronicle -excerpt (audio)

 

The San Francisco Parks Alliance, a major nonprofit with a long history of beautifying the city’s beloved public spaces, diverted at least $3.8 million earmarked for specific projects to cover its operating expenses as the charity rapidly imploded, the Chronicle has learned.

The stunning admission comes in an email sent Thursday by the nonprofit’s chair, Louise Mozingo, to one of its donors, in which the official described the financial crisis facing the Parks Alliance as “what a friend of mine would call a dumpster fire.”…

The revelations are spurring some of those impacted to call for a criminal investigation. One official on Tuesday called for a hearing at City Hall, and a number of the nonprofit’s partners have come together to try to save it.

The Parks Alliance has been viewed as a crucial supporter and fundraiser for everything from new parks to trail maintenance, gardening projects and habitat restoration in San Francisco. It has also hosted well-attended events, such as outdoor movie screenings, until recently. …

However, the Parks Alliance told Baker Street that its $3.8 million deficit in restricted funds that were used for other purposes includes “approximately $1.9M of Baker Street Foundation money for the Crane Cove project.”

“I think law enforcement should be involved,” Nicola Miner said in an interview Friday. “I think we’re past the point of this was some kind of mismanagement. $2 million that was supposed to go to the people of San Francisco is $2 million, that’s a lot of money.”

The district attorney’s office declined to say whether it is investigating.

The Parks Alliance, while helping funnel private dollars to city projects, also acts like a bank for more than 80 smaller neighborhood organizations around San Francisco seeking to raise money from donors. As a result, these groups don’t need to obtain nonprofit status on their own or hire financial staff to manage their books….

The nonprofit was said to owe an estimated $4.6 million, including $1.7 million to partners and service providers — the latter of which Mozingo described as largely small businesses. The organization owes an additional $1.3 million to $1.7 million to the city parks department for “executed projects” and $1.2 million for a bank loan.

As of Monday, the email said, the nonprofit had just $1.6 million in assets, with $1.2 million in cash….(more)

How much of Parks Alliance money was spent on PR and the Prop K campaign? Remember all those signs and graphics that were sprouting up touting the Great Parkway? Guess they will not be financing any of the anti-recall campaign.