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by Mike Ege : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí introduced legislation Tuesday calling on the San Francisco Police Department to implement regular foot and bike patrols to prevent retail and other crime in the city’s neighborhoods.

The legislation would also mandate annual Police Commission hearings to review foot and bike patrols as part of community policing plans. Safaí told The Standard that he has asked for a waiver of the board’s 30-day rule and hopes to have the bill first heard in October.

“Putting officers back on the street will support values of protection and community engagement, especially in areas of our city where crime is most visible and rampant,” Safaí said in a statement. “Deployment should be data-driven to truly address this citywide issue.

Under Safaí’s legislation, the police department’s regular patrols would have specific neighborhood beats based on a formula and maps developed by SFPD. The chief of police must also include information about the effort as part of the department’s annual budget…(more)

byMatthew Kupfer :sfstandard – excerpt

It happened like clockwork.
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order calling for swift action to expand insurance coverage options for consumers. Hours later, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara outlined what he termed “the largest insurance reform” in decades.

The regulation, to be drafted by the end of 2024, would allow insurance companies to use controversial forward-looking modeling in setting rates in return for covering more Californians living in areas with the most wildfire risk.

The strategy took direct aim at a rapidly growing problem in the state and a serious liability for political leaders: dwindling access to homeowners insurance.

Newsom took executive action after an 11th-hour bill to alleviate the state’s insurance woes died in the legislature earlier this month.

But the new strategy unveiled by Lara cannot legally alter California’s regulatory framework: Proposition 103, a powerful law passed by voters in 1988 that has governed insurance for over three decades. But it may undermine it…(more)

By Solar Rights Alliance – excerpt

What happened: Last year, the state lawmakers mandated a new, uncapped Utility Tax without any public discussion

• Last year, at the last minute and without any public discussion, the California Legislature passed AB 205, a large “budget trailer bill” that included a little-noticed provision for a Utility Tax. Here is how each legislator voted.
• AB 205 removed the existing $10 per month cap on Utility Taxes and mandated that a Utility Tax be imposed on all ratepayers. This new Utility Tax will have unlimited potential to grow.
• This Utility Tax would apply to all residential ratepayers of PG&E, SoCal Edison, and SDG&E, including customers of CCAs.
• AB 205 requires the Utility Tax to be based on income…(more)

RELATED:

Court agrees to hear lawsuit against NEM3 rooftop solar decision solarrights.org

By Opinion Columnist : pressdemocrat – excerpt (includes audio track)

Last week, and despite the popularity of Proposition 13, the California Legislature passed two proposed amendments to the California Constitution that rip huge holes in that iconic taxpayer protection overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1978.

But here’s the good news. These anti-homeowner bills must be approved at a statewide election and, given the anger from thousands of constituents who flooded the Capitol with calls, letters, and petitions, the two measures are likely headed for the defeat they so richly deserve.

These two bills, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 and Assembly Constitutional Amendment 13, are both serious threats to Proposition 13, although for two different reasons.

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 is a direct attack on Proposition 13 that would remove the taxpayer protection of the two-thirds vote of the electorate required to pass local special taxes. If this measure is enacted, local taxes for “infrastructure” – defined so broadly as to be meaningless – could pass with just 55% of the vote instead of the 66.67% margin as required by Proposition 13. This makes it easier for local governments to raise taxes so California’s already stressed taxpayers will end up paying billions more.

Because ACA 1 repeals language in Proposition 13, even the most dishonest politician can’t argue that it leaves Prop. 13 unharmed. But ACA 13 is a different type of assault that doesn’t directly alter Prop. 13’s language. But the harm it inflicts is just as bad. Here’s how.

ACA 13 is a devious attempt to prevent taxpayers from protecting Prop. 13. It aims to derail the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act (TPA), an initiative constitutional amendment that has already qualified for the November 2024 ballot. TPA restores Proposition 13 protections that have been eroded by the courts and it is supported by a large coalition of taxpayer, business, and property rights organizations…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Four-hour parking rules would mean eviction. Why isn’t Breed pushing the obvious solution?

An item described as “various routine parking and traffic modifications” doesn’t usually generate hours of powerful testimony from homeless people and their advocates at the Municipal Transportation Agency.

But this week’s meeting involved a plan to create four-hour parking rules on streets near Lake Merced—which would amount to eviction notices for a community of recreational vehicle dwellers who have been living there for several years…

But there’s actually a pretty simple, easy solution: The city could provide a safe parking space in the area, a lot where the RV dwellers could remain until there’s decent, acceptable affordable housing for them.

Melgar told me she’s been working on this for more than two years. There’s money in the budget for it.

But the Mayor’s Office has been delaying and delaying and bringing up obstacle after obstacle. “There’s no reason we can’t do this quickly,” Melgar said. “We did it during Covid.”

For more than an hour, people who lived in the RVs (mostly Spanish speakers) and a long list of advocates asked the panel not to evict the residents. As Erick Arguello, who works at Glide’s Center for Social Justice, said, “this is the only thing they have.”…(more)

We heard from people in District 11, how well the safe parking project worked when the neighborhood groups became involved at the CSFN September Town Hall.

Vehicle Triage Center youtu.be

by Josh Koehn : sfstandard – excerpt

Days ahead of his expected announcement to run for mayor of San Francisco, Daniel Lurie filed campaign paperwork Thursday afternoon with the city’s Ethics Commission.

The founder of the anti-poverty nonprofit Tipping Point, who is also an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, is scheduled to deliver a speech Tuesday in which he will officially announce his campaign to challenge Mayor London Breed in the November 2024 election. Over the last several months, Lurie has been holding private gatherings since the spring to rally support for his candidacy.

An email sent earlier this month to close friends, family and supporters advised them to save the date for a special announcement on Sept. 26. The location of that event has still not been announced…

Polling suggests Breed could be vulnerable to a challenge in next year’s election, as more than three-quarters of residents feel San Francisco is going down the wrong track. Supervisor Ahsha Safaí has already filed papers to run and reported raising $149,000 in the first two months of his campaign …(more)

By John Barned-Smith : sfchronicle – excerpt

Longtime San Francisco politico Quentin Kopp has filed a ballot measure to amend the City Charter to have district supervisors elected in what is essentially an at-large process.

Longtime San Francisco politico Quentin Kopp has proposed a ballot measure that could dramatically upend the city’s Board of Supervisors — and the way voters choose who sits on it.

Last week, he filed a ballot measure to amend the City Charter to have district supervisors elected in what is essentially an at-large process.

The ballot measure would make all registered voters eligible to vote for candidates in specified districts, he said…

Kopp and his supporters will need to get signatures of more than 49,000 registered voters, or secure the votes of six city supervisors, by this November, to get the proposal on the ballot in March 2024. If it makes it on the ballot and ends up getting passed, it is likely to be challenged in court, experts told the Chronicle…(more)

From hjta.org

Taxpayer Protection Initiative Qualifies for 2024 Ballot – Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association hjta.org

Taxpayers scored an important victory in February when the secretary of state announced that the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act has successfully qualified for the November 2024 ballot.

A late push for extra signatures, with an assist from thousands of HJTA Members who volunteered their time, was key to collecting a total of 1.4 million raw signatures, enough to exceed the required minimum of nearly 1 million valid signatures of registered voters needed to qualify.

“The Taxpayer Protection Act was written to restore a series of voter-approved ballot measures that gave taxpayers, not politicians, more say over when and how new tax revenue is raised,” explained HJTA President Jon Coupal. “Over the past decade, the California courts have created massive loopholes and confusion in long-established tax law and policy. The Taxpayer Protection Act closes those loopholes and provides new safeguards to increase accountability and transparency over how politicians spend our tax dollars.”

Some of the measure’s key provisions include:

• Require all new taxes passed by the Legislature to be approved by voters
• Restore two-thirds voter approval for all new local special tax increases
• Clearly define what is a tax or fee
• Require truthful descriptions of new tax proposals
• Hold politicians accountable by requiring them to clearly identify how revenue will be spent before any tax or fee is enacted

The initiative, backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association together with the California Business Roundtable and the California Business Properties Association, would close loopholes by amending the state constitution, overriding any conflicting court rulings that were based on a disputed interpretation of the constitution’s current language.

One such State Supreme Court ruling, in a 2017 case known as California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland, has led to decisions in lower courts declaring that some local taxes for special purposes had passed, even though they received less than the two-thirds vote required by Proposition 13. If the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act is approved by voters, many of these taxes would have to go back on the ballot again and would expire unless approved by a two-thirds vote.

For more information on this important initiative, visit RightToVoteOnTaxes.com.

By Tim Redmond :48hills – excerpt

Breed’s plan, drafted with little community input, would do nothing for the city’s affordable housing needs; supes aren’t going along.

Mayor London Breed is proposing some pretty sweeping new rules to make it easier for for-profit developers to make money building housing in San Francisco. But nobody from the Mayor’s Office showed up at the Board of Supes hearing today, leaving a lone planning staffer to answer questions that in many cases he had no qualifications or authority to answer.

Neither of the supes co-sponsoring the bill, Matt Dorsey and Joel Engardio, was there for the start of the hearing, and they sent no staff to the hearing and then left for another appointment…

Aaron Starr, the director of legislative affairs for the Planning Department, had to represent both his agency, which had its own comments on the measure, and Mayor London Breed, who offered a long list of last-minute amendments

Sup. Dean Preston said that he had reached out to the Mayor’s Office, and “we were told that nobody would be here.”

It was, Sup. Aaron Peskin said, a “strange dynamic,” unprecedented in his more than 14 years in public office.

That was just the start to a hearing overwhelmingly dominated by community and tenant groups strongly opposed to the mayor’s approach…(more)

CSFN may consider writing a letter on this one. It is obvious that the bill removes more citizen’s rights and reduces affordable options for developments in San Francisco. These are questionable actions for city leaders who want the city to be a shiny example of world peace and prosperity on the world stage. Who is running this show that is driving residents and businesses out of the city while selling it off the highest bidders?