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Public Contactor Sentenced To Two Years In Federal Prison For Bribing San Francisco Public Official

Announcement by the Justice Department – Northern District of California

Defendant Bribed Former SF DPW Director Mohammed Nuru with Money, Meals, And Gifts – Including A Tractor

SAN FRANCISCO – Alan Varela was sentenced today in federal court to 24 months in prison and ordered to pay a $127,000 fine for a seven year conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud by bribing a San Francisco public official, announced Acting United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair. The sentence was handed down by the Honorable William H. Orrick, United States District Judge.

A federal complaint filed September 17, 2020, charged Varela, 60, of Orinda, and William Gilmartin, 61, of San Mateo, with bribery of a public official. In 1991, Varela founded ProVen Management, a Bay Area civil engineering and construction firm that engaged in large scale infrastructure projects. Varela and Gilmartin acted as the firm’s president and vice-president, respectively, during the conspiracy time period. According to the complaint, Varela and Gilmartin provided a stream of benefits to Mohammed Nuru, then the Director of San Francisco’s Department of Public Works (DPW), in exchange for favorable treatment of their business interests, including non-public inside information…(more)

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Scathing report on Dept. of Building Inspection faults years of toxic leadership, broken systems

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Second ex-DBI employee accused of taking a loan from a developer and then handling his projects — Mission Local tracks down his identity

The office of the Controller today released the seventh of nine eventual reports on city dysfunction and corruption — and, today, it was the Department of Building Inspection’s turn in the barrel.

The 56-page report tosses around terms like “nepotism,” “cronyism,” and “corruption — and that’s just on page 3. All told, the report read like a medley of the issues Mission Local has been focusing on, including the troubled projects at 555 Fulton and 2867 San Bruno, the saga of disgraced former senior inspector Bernie Curran — and the Department of Building Inspection’s disorganized electronic tracking system, which is rife with opportunities to alter or even delete files.

As the controller’s report put it today:

The department’s permitting and inspection system lacks system controls to ensure completed data is entered into the system and to prevent inappropriate after-the-fact changes to recorded inspection records…(more)

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The Housing Crisis Propaganda Machine

By: Sharon Rushton : marinpost – excerpt

Big Wall Street Investment Firms, Big Real Estate, and Big Tech have generated billions in revenue from residential real estate. To capitalize on their residential endeavors, they have successfully championed a self-serving false narrative about the housing crisis. Since these powerful industries shell out millions of dollars for marketing, lobbying, and campaign contributions, they wield great influence over politicians, government agencies, the news media, and the public at large. This influence has resulted in a sea change in residential land use policy and legislation.

This article does the following:

  • Demonstrates Big Wallstreet Investment Firms’, Big Real Estate’s, and Big Tech’s appetite for residential real estate;
  • Describes the “False Housing Crisis Narrative”;
  • Reveals the millions of dollars the Big Players are spending to influence political campaigns, legislation, and the press;
  • Shows that Big Wallstreet Investment Firms’, Big Real Estate’s, and Big Tech’s lobbying efforts have resulted in land use policy and legislation that augment their investments in residential properties;
  • Presents a more effective way to address California’s housing affordability challenge…

BIG WALLSTREET INVESTMENT FIRMS’, BIG REAL ESTATE’S, & BIG TECH’S APPETITE FOR RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE

Big Wallstreet Investment Firms, Big Real Estate, and Big Tech have become increasingly hungry for residential properties.

Rented homes have been a hot trade since investors made lucrative bets on foreclosed houses during the 2008-9 Great Recession. During the COVID-19 crisis, rents collected from commercial real-estate assets such as malls and offices took a hit, whereas most private residential tenants continued to pay up, according to the Wall Street Journal article entitled; “Property Investors Bed Down in the Family Home” [1]…(more)

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SB 10 Should Be Vetoed – PCL’s View Explained

Letter from the Planning and Conservation League and request for actions to encouarging the Governor Newosm to veto SB10.

PCL appreciates the continued efforts of Senator Wiener, and this bill’s multiple co-authors, to address California’s affordable housing crisis, but SB 10 misses the mark Amongst other concerns with the bill, our primary objection lies with the provision that would allow cities and counties to override local voter-approved initiatives in the enactment of SB 10’s provisions.

We sympathize with the need to revisit outdated voter-approved land use ordinances that inhibit inclusionary densification, but giving unilateral authority to jurisdictions to over-ride the constitutionally-defined power of the people is the wrong approach. Amendments made to limit this provision do not go far enough to address the sweeping implications this could have on all types of constructive voter-approved land use actions–including urban growth boundaries, inclusionary housing ordinances, and rent-control ordinances. SB 10 will undermine the voter-initiative power of the public, a fundamental tenet of a functioning democracy.

Judicial remedies already exist to invalidate outdated initiatives. The legislature has the power to preempt what the public can or cannot vote on by statute, but the legislature does not have the authority to alter the constitutionally defined power itself by statute. We believe SB 10 would be unconstitutional if enacted, and for this reason, we urge the Governor to veto this bill.

If this concerns you as well, please send a note to the Governor here:
https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

Formal letters can also be submitted to this address:
leg.unit@gov.ca.gov

Please feel free to use the wording above as a template for your comments

If you want PCL’s view on the rest of SB 10, read on:

Continue reading “SB 10 Should Be Vetoed – PCL’s View Explained”

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Campos takes first step toward state Assembly bid

By Tim Redmond : 4hills – excerpt

If Chiu becomes city attorney, his seat will be open for a special election.

David Campos—former supervisor, chair of the local Democratic Party, and current vice chair of the state party, announced today that he is forming an exploratory committee to run for state Assembly.

Forming the committee will allow him to start raising money for the seat…(more)

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Judge blocks—for now—massive UC expansion in Parnassus Heights

By Tim Redmond : 48hils  – excerpt

Temporary order saves historic murals and could force the school to negotiate with the neighborhood that its development project will impact.

An Alameda County judge has blocked the University of California from moving forward on its massive planned demolition and construction on Parnassus Heights.

Judge Frank Roesch approved Friday a temporary restraining order barring the school from any action that would threaten the historic Zackheim murals at Toland Hall….

Since that’s the main area that UC has been preparing for construction, the order in effect slows down a project that violates the school’s longtime legal promises to the neighborhood.

In 1976, UC made a binding promise to limit its footprint on Parnassus Heights—in the middle of a dense residential neighborhood—to 3.55 million gross square feet… (more)

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Colorado River, Lifeline Of The West, Sees Historic Water Shortage Declaration

by Kirk Siegler : npr – (excerpt) includes audio track and transcript

The first-ever shortage declaration on the Colorado River forces arid Western states to re-examine their relationship with resources many take for granted, drinking water and cheap hydroelectricity.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:  For the first time ever, the U.S. government declared a shortage on the Colorado River last week. That means states like Arizona that rely on the river for their water supply are seeing big cutbacks as a punishing drought continues in the west. The Colorado River and its tributaries are a lifeline to some 40 million people in multiple states, including in California, who rely on it for drinking water. The river also irrigates countless farms and generates lots of cheap hydropower. So a shortage on the Colorado is a big deal, and we wanted to hear more about that. We asked NPR’s Kirk Siegler to talk us through it. He covers the West and has been reporting on the Colorado River for years…(more)

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California Gubernatorial Recall Election – Frequently Asked Questions

Dr. Shirley N. Weber  Secretary of State

The California Secretary of State is responsible for overseeing recalls for state officers, including for constitutional offices (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, etc.), state legislators, and justices of the Supreme and Appellate Courts. Local recalls are overseen by county or city elections officials.

The recall process is outlined in the California Constitution (Article II, Sections 13-19) and the California Elections Code (Sections 11000-11110, 11300-11386).

The recall has been part of California’s political system since 1911. It provides a mechanism for the public to attempt to remove elected public officials from office before the end of their term of office. Before a recall election can be initiated, a certain number of voters must sign a recall petition within a specified amount of time.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS TOPICS

Qualifications & Filing Requirements for Replacement Candidates

A write-in replacement candidate must file a Statement of Write-In Candidacy with the county elections official of the candidate’s county of residence by August 31, 2021.

The Certified List of Write-in Candidates will be available on September 3, 2021…... (more)

So think twice before writing in a candidate.

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The Seas Are Rising. Could Oysters Help?

By Eric Klinenberg : newyorker – excerpt (includes audio track)

In New York, Kate Orff will use oyster reefs to mitigate storm surges.

n a windy afternoon in April, the landscape architect Kate Orff stood on the open walkway of a container crane, some eighty feet above the Red Hook Terminal, in Brooklyn, and the Buttermilk Channel, a tidal strait on the southeast side of Governors Island. Most places in New York City make it easy to avoid thinking about the rivers, canals, and ocean waters that form an aquatic thoroughfare for the global economy and surround the industrial corridors, office towers, and densely populated neighborhoods where millions of people have settled. This place is not one of them…

A great deal of Orff’s work addresses the inescapable fact that the Atlantic Ocean is rising, and coming for the land. She’s the founder of the design firm SCAPE, the director of the Urban Design Program at Columbia University, and the first landscape architect to win a MacArthur “genius” grant. She’s also at the forefront of an emerging approach to climate resilience that argues we should be building with nature, not just in nature. Its guiding principle is that “gray infrastructure”—the dikes, dams, and seawalls that modern societies use to contain and control water—is often insufficient, and sometimes destructive. Green infrastructure, by contrast, involves strategically deploying wetlands, dunes, mangrove forests, and reefs to reduce threats of catastrophic flooding and coastal erosion, while also revitalizing the land. This carefully designed “second nature,” the thinking goes, could be our second chance…(more)