Category: Action

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Cal. solar proposal follows right-wing ALEC model

By Meteor Blades : dailykos – excerpt

The California Public Utilities Commission decided to postpone the vote scheduled for today on its hotly contested proposal that would boost the electric bills of customers with rooftop solar installations. The proposal would greatly lower the rate of compensation utilities pay for electricity fed to the grid from owners of the state’s 1.3 million rooftop solar installations under its “net energy metering” policy. It would also charge them a big “grid participation fee.”

The voting delay is probably because the proposal—NEM 3.0—is being reworked as a result of intense public reaction. It should be. As it stands, it almost certainly would slow the adoption of rooftop solar that ought to be accelerated. If adopted, the proposal would make ripples coast to coast. As Gov. Gavin Newsom has said, more work needs to be done.

Countless celebrities, prominent officials, activists, a Republican ex-governor, and big and little media have all weighed in on the matter. Over nearly a year, the changes in net metering have been fiercely debated. However, one group never seems to get a mention. That’s the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) funded by oil and chemical billionaire Charles Koch.

ALEC has been out to throttle distributive—that is, small-scale, decentralized—energy for more than a decade. Its first target were the states’ renewable portfolio standards mandating a certain percentage of electricity be generated from renewable sources by a certain deadline. That campaign pretty much failed, so another tack was developed. Since 2012, ALEC’s renewables-busting target has been net metering. To roll it back, the council has written model legislation that seems in part to be the work of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), an association of investor-owned utilities. What CPUC developed looks very much like that model…(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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Golden Gate Park’s main drag has been closed to cars during the pandemic. The fight over its future is heating up

By Heather Knight : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco’s leaders love arguing vociferously over pretty minor issues, but 54 years of fighting over how often cars should be restricted from one stretch of one road in one park must be some kind of record.

John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park first went car-free — the eastern stretch of it, anyway — on Sundays in 1967. Supporters have wanted the closure expanded ever since and did get some Saturdays added to the mix, but they have repeatedly run into arguments from museum officials and others that a full closure would prevent people in cars from reaching their destinations.

Finally, the city closed JFK Drive to cars every day during the pandemic, a silver lining in a miserable year. In a city coping with dozens of traffic deaths annually and in a world facing a major climate crisis, keeping it that way permanently seems like a very tiny, very needed solution…
But the fight has taken a surprising and heated turn with Supervisors Shamann Walton and Ahsha Safaí recently tweeting simultaneously that they want JFK Drive to reopen to vehicles now that the pandemic is subsiding. They argued that people of color can’t access the park because of the closure, and Walton, in an ensuing editorial, called car-free JFK Drive elitist, segregationist and an example of “recreational redlining.”…(more)
There are hundreds of miles of bike paths and pedestrians paths in the park where cars do not drive. The roads are for the cars. The park is a family place for groups to visit and cars are the way most groups travel, especially now, when hate crimes are prevalent.
People who do not drive should not design streets for cars. Their “calming efforts” are creating angry drivers and angry drivers are not safe drivers. They angry and confused. If there is an uptick in accidents, that is an indication that the pilot projects are flawed.
My personal rant for the week: When SFMTA gets around to figuring out how to run a Muni system that does not involve bunching 5 Muni 22’s along a 3rd street lightrail served street, we may expect them to start figuring out how to return service that they removed to serve the Chase Center.
Log in and comment or write a letter to the editor if you feel strongly about this. Or, call or comment on one of the many “live” meetings that will not doubt be reviewing this for a while. Not keeping up the Cancalendar lately, but, links to some of the meeting agendas are here: https://cancalendar.wordpress.com/agendas/
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Supes move to open more hotel rooms for homeless

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Legislation could set up another confrontation with Mayor Breed, who wants to wind down the hotel program.

Now that the Biden Administration has agreed to pay for it, five supervisors are moving to expand the city’s shelter-in-place hotel system to get and keep homeless people off the streets.

The bill would mandate that the city keep 2,200 hotel rooms open, and allow people still living on the streets to move in as current residents exit to other forms of housing…(more)

Someone needs to figure out a way to deal with the system that determines eligibility for rental assistance that people who need a little support to pay their rent we would have less people “falling through the cracks” ending up on the street. Next we need to investigate the unaffordable “affordable” rents that automatically increase, while market rate unit prices are falling. The subject was recently covered by CBS news: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/02/08/some-san-francisco-affordable-housing-units-renting-for-more-than-market-rate-units/

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Advocates propose model for community-based response to homelessness

By Ida Mojadad : sfexaminer – excerpt

Plan to divert calls from police could save as much as $11 million, group argues

Community advocates unveiled a plan Tuesday that they say would reduce police responses to homelessness and save millions annually — if it is fully funded.

Under the Compassionate Alternative Response Team proposal, or CART, calls related to homelessness and behavioral health would be rerouted from police and first responders to a new hotline with a 24/7 staff of social workers behind it. It would be implemented by a non-government organization and staffed with people who have experienced homelessness themselves.

Presented by a coalition of community groups, Police Commission members and city departments on Tuesday, the plan recommends CART staff to respond to calls with dispatch codes regarding a mentally disturbed person, well-being check, select sit/lie violations, trespassing, aggressive panhandling and suspicious people…(more)

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Mill Valley’s RHNA Methology Letter Calls for a Stronger Response

By Susan Kirsch of Mill Valley : marinpost – excerpt

This letter is written to the Mill Valley Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Councilmembers, but it may apply to any of our local civic leaders who are considering how to deal with the RHNA number conundrum, made more obviously out of touch with reality by the large exodus of citizens from California this year.

The end of the land rush has come to the state, due to a number of factors, but, our government officials can’t get past their old methods of creating financing through growth. Read the letter here and consider how you may apply the information to your community…(more)

Review the investigative report by The Embarcadero Institute, entitled “Double Counting in the Latest Housing Needs Assessment” (September 2020)…

“Use of an incorrect vacancy rate and double counting, inspired by SB-828, caused the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to exaggerate by more than 900,000 the units needed in SoCal, the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.”

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SF Supervisor Seeks to Restore Oversight of Homeless Shelter Contracts Amid Corruption Scandal

By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez : kqed – excerpt

In the name of expediting construction of homeless shelters, San Francisco Mayor London Breed in March 2019 asked the Board of Supervisors to relinquish its oversight of the contract process.

The argument was, if Public Works could simply award shelter construction contracts faster, people living in dire circumstances would be moved off the streets months earlier — saving crucial time.

But it didn’t quite work out that way.

The lack of oversight allegedly allowed former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru to grant more than $1 million in homeless shelter construction contracts to Walter Wong, a permit expediter who was arrested by the FBI last month and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to engage in money laundering, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Nuru was also arrested by the FBI in January on public fraud charges.

Now, Supervisor Aaron Peskin said he will introduce legislation Tuesday allowing the Board of Supervisors to regain oversight and ultimate approval over homeless shelter construction in the city…. (more)

Since the FBI investigation started long before March 2019, it appears that there was already a lack of oversight in place long before the Mayor’s actions took place. If anything, the government has been in the business of removing government and public notice oversight of pending plans and projects for years. Perhaps it is time to slow that train down by stopping some of the state legislative efforts to speed it up. We understand there are 14 state bills being analyzed now by the Planning Department. Details on 9 of those bills are here: https://www.livablecalifornia.org/act-now-3-2/

The SF Planning Dept. is reviewing 14 state bills and will publish their analysis by end of day on Thursday July 16th.  They will give a presentation on this legislation at the July 23rd Planning Commission hearing.

The analysis document should be attached as a background document for the Planning Commission agenda for that meeting. https://sfplanning.org/

The Dept will be looking at the following bills:

Some of the bills we are tracking:
https://discoveryink.wordpress.com/ca-bills/ca-bills-2020/

AB 725
AB 1279
AB 1436
AB 2345
AB 2580
AB 3040
AB 3107
SB 288
SB 899
SB 902
SB 995
SB 1085
SB 1120
SB 1385

 

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Do NOT Re-Zone the Balboa Reservoir!

Stop the sale of public land, or at last continue the decision.
Tell SF Planning Commission: Do NOT Re-zone the Balboa Reservoir!

Thursday, April 9,  1PM – agenda
SF Planning Commission Meeting  Videoconference and Call-in
Stream the live meeting: ww.sfgovtv.org
A public comment call-in line number will be provided on the Department’s webpage http://www.sfplanning.org and during the live SFGovTV broadcast.

Agenda Item 16b:  Consideration of Initiation of “General Plan Amendments” for the Balboa Reservoir Project. This 315 page document contains amendments to the Balboa Park Station Area Plan (2009). If the Commission approves the Initiation of the General Plan Amendments meeting, they could schedule a hearing as early as April 30th to take action, such as re-zoning the land.

Currently the reservoir land is zoned as “P” (Public) which does not allow private use of public property. Re-zoning it to “Balboa Reservoir Special Use District” would allow privatization. Additionally, this proposed re-zoning would allow the current 40 feet height limit to be increased to 78 ft.

These decisions pave the way for the construction of the Balboa Reservoir Project. Please consider sending comments to the Planning Commissioners: commissions.secretary@sfgov.org
See Contacts and talking points. here