Author: admin

By Sam Whiting : sfchronicle – excerpt

From her protected pier inside Gashouse Cove, San Francisco fuel dock operator Chrissy Kaplan can look 300 yards out to the breakwater and see her future. She doesn’t want to be there.

Kaplan is being permanently relocated from her location across from the Marina Safeway to make way for a basin remediation project that will require removal of her dock and up to 185 boat slips.

The joint project by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department will create a new city park that includes the 12 acres of water and excludes both power boats and the fuel dock. Remediation is scheduled to begin in 2026 and necessitates moving Gashouse Cove Marina Inc., which Kaplan has operated for 50 years, out of the East Harbor and down past Marina Green to a newly constructed West Harbor near the St. Francis Yacht Club.

But it isn’t the added wind or rougher water that will make it difficult to fuel boats bobbing in the tide that bothers her — Kaplan doesn’t see any way to relocate her 22,000-gallon fuel container, which is buried in two fiberglass tanks in a concrete vault beneath the parking lot outside the gate of the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

“There is no space to my knowledge that is secure enough to accommodate tanks in the West Harbor,” said Kaplan, who is 69 and took over the fuel concession when she was 19 and just out of Piedmont High School…

“It will be a calamity,” she said. “Everything west of our current location is on unstable ground.”… (more)

By Alec Regimbal : sfgate – excerpt

Two of California’s highest profile Democrats — Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Adam Schiff, the latter of whom is running for Senate — have recently rallied around the same excuse for keeping Sen. Dianne Feinstein in her seat through the 2024 general election.

Feinstein is a member of the highly important Senate Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees. Appointing judges to federal courts is something Democrats can do without support from Republicans, and Feinstein’s multi-month absence from the Senate earlier this year — the result of a shingles diagnoses and complications from that diagnosis — left the committee evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, who refused to advance any judicial nominees in her absence…

Their argument is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could attempt to block any Feinstein replacements from joining the Senate Judiciary Committee, effectively stalling Biden’s judicial nominees until the 2024 general election. According to a Wednesday report from Politico, Newsom — who was stumping for Biden in Boise over the holiday — forcefully made that point to a man who asked him to help push Feinstein out before her term ends next year.

“You think Mitch McConnell is going to seat another federal judge? Not a chance in hell. You better wish, you better pray, for her health,” he told the man, who, according to Politico, said he’d never considered that before backing away from Newsom…(more)

By Joe Garofoli : sfchronicle – excerpt

For decades, California politics has been dominated by Bay Area politicians, from Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and the Browns — Willie and Jerry — to Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom.

But a new generation of rising stars in their early 40s — led by the Inland Empire’s blue-collar Rep. Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, and Hollister’s Robert Rivas, who was raised in farmworker housing and sworn in Friday as the new Assembly speaker — want to give Californians who didn’t grow up on the elite coast a louder voice.

They represent parts of California where there are fewer wealthy, white residents and more people who are struggling to survive day to day in an increasingly expensive state.

Rivas, 43, took the oath of office Friday in Sacramento just a few feet from a longtime family friend, United Farmworkers Association cofounder Dolores Huerta, in an Assembly gallery filled with a dozen farmworkers, a nod to his roots — and Pelosi, eight former Assembly speakers and top state officials, a nod to his current power…

His Democratic colleagues elected him this year to the party’s third most powerful position — Democratic Caucus chairman — making him the highest-ranking Latino ever in the House. He has also been assigned a difficult task: to win back several Republican-held House seats in California. Doing so could be key to Democrats winning back the House in 2024. In mid-July, he will launch the California House Majority Fund, a super PAC that hopes to raise millions to flip red or purple districts like his.… (more)

By J.D. Morris : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco legislators have put the brakes on a project that would replace a single-family Nob Hill home with 10 townhomes after neighbors objected in part because they said the proposed complex would cast too much shadow on an adjacent public recreation center.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday overturned the city Planning Commission’s previous decision that the proposed redevelopment of 1151 Washington St. did not need an environmental review because it met the standard for an exemption under state law.

Opponents argued the site had contaminated soils that required closer study, and the townhomes would excessively shade the nextdoor Betty Ann Ong Recreation Center’s basketball courts and playground at their hours of peak use, among other concerns.

Supervisors sided with the critics in a 7-4 vote that sent the question of the project’s environmental impacts back to planning officials for further analysis…(more)

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By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Governor’s Office, in highly unusual move, lobbies local Planning Commission on Breed legislation.

In a highly unusual move, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Office is lobbying the San Francisco Planning Commission to approve a plan by Mayor London Breed that could lead to the wholesale demolition of existing housing on the West Side of the city.

Newsom’s Department of Housing and Community Development sent a letter June 16 to the SF Planning Commission urging support for the “Constraints Reduction Ordinance.”

That position is consistent with Newsom’s position on housing: The biggest problem, the governor insists, is that cities put too many rules on new development. His entire housing policy, such as it is, involves “constraint reduction.”

The letter, signed by Melinda Coy, who has the title of “proactive housing accountability chief” (I bet Newsom came up with that himself), states that…(more)

Read the article and comment if you can. Probably some well place letters to the editor may help. There is an effort to meet with supervisors to try to convince them that this is a big political mistake. The voters have already lost faith and trust in the government so removing more rights to participate in the future of the city will not endear them to the Mayor or anyone who supports less rights for citizens.

The San Francisco Standard – a live discussion about London Breed and the future of SF

Dear Reader,

Plenty of ink has been spilled about San Francisco’s problems. Less is understood about what drives the leader at the center of it all: Mayor London Breed.

From humble beginnings in one of the city’s toughest public housing projects, Breed’s life was deeply shaped by the crises now roiling San Francisco: drugs, poverty and mental illness. The Standard’s revealing, in-depth portrait of her improbable rise to power depicts a charismatic and sincere leader whose sharpest traits can cut both ways.

Over six months and through dozens of interviews with Breed’s friends, neighbors, colleagues and political adversaries, The Standard’s senior political reporter Josh Koehn unravels the mayor’s personal and political struggles as she faces perhaps her biggest challenge yet: solving San Francisco’s generational problems and winning over voters in a time of unprecedented upheaval.

At noon on Thursday, June 22, Senior Editor Annie Gaus and Koehn will host a live discussion of the story and what it reveals about Breed and the future of San Francisco. Please join us on Twitter Spaces and follow the @SFStandard and @Josh_Koehn to stay informed.

—Annie Gaus and Josh Koehn

Forgive repeats and please share:

6/29 10AM
STOP The Madness-Newsom’s CPUC To Give Approval Of 24 hour Robo Taxis In SF

fightbacksaveccsf13

by Griffin Jones and Eleni Balakrishnan : missionlocal – excerpt

San Francisco’s efforts to eradicate downtown open-air drug markets and reduce historic overdose rates ramped up in the last month with announcements that police and 130 sheriff’s deputies will be deployed to increase arrests.

The new push is part of an ongoing strategy that will, as of today, include the opening of an in-person Drug Market Agency Coordination Center near Civic Center to coordinate “engagement, enforcement, and treatment” of drug use and sales, according to the mayor’s office.

Will it work? It depends on the goal.

Interviews conducted by Mission Local with 14 public defenders, district attorneys, criminal justice experts and public health workers locally and around the country yielded a common refrain: Waves of arrests for misdemeanor drug crimes have been tried — and have failed.

That is, they failed if the aim of arrests was to curb addiction, reduce suffering and save lives.

However, some said, if the goal is to sweep drug use from public view, then there is an outside chance a wave of arrests could work…

Noting the effects of broken windows policing in New York City in the early ‘90s, a practice widely considered to be harmful by civil rights activists, Moskos said that, in testing the protocol first on the subway, the city found that the presence of cops alone was an effective damper on subway crime …(more)

RELATED:

Broken Windows Policy: https://guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/nypd/brokenwindows

By Jordan Parker, St. John Berned Smith : sfchronicle – excerpt
UPDATE: Police ID person of interest also sought in Oakland killing

As neighbors described a chaotic scene, San Francisco police searched for clues Saturday after a mass shooting injured nine people during a block party in the Mission District the night before…

The shooting, which police described as “targeted and isolated,” occurred shortly after 9 p.m. Friday during a block party to mark the sixth anniversary of Dying Breed, a store specializing in local clothing designs, graffiti supplies, and parties and events.

The SFPD later identified Javier Campos as a person of interest in the case. Surveillance video recorded a Mercedes associated with Campos fleeing the area of the shooting, and the gunfire came from the car, police said.

Campos, who police said has ties with Sureño gang members, has “numerous” firearms warrants from San Mateo and Alameda counties. He also has an outstanding arrest warrant for homicide in Oakland, police said…

A Cruise self-driving car wandered into the crime scene Friday night and appeared to block emergency responders as they aided the victims…(more)