Tuesday, January 17, 1 PM
SF gray Panther Zoom event
Here’s the next event in which we can all participate in: Save the date for this SF Gray Pather Zoom Event: Tuesday, Jan 17, 1 PM: Zoom Town Hall/Update on Laguna Honda Hospital and the intersection with treatment and shelter for San Franciscans in need….What’s happening? What promises are being kept? What promises are being broken? How can San Francisco be the best for all of us? All are welcome at this SF Gray Panthers January Meeting. Stay tuned for more. FOr more background, see bit.ly/LHH-ACTION Letters and comments are appreciated.
UPDATE: https://westsideobserver.com/news/longTermCare.htm
The Feds have NOT postponed the deadly discharges at Laguna Honda they are scheduled to begin again on February 2, 2023.
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Should JFK Dr. be closed forever?
John Rothman Show on KGO 810 taped podcast:
https://www.kgoradio.com/johnrothmann/ with Megan Bourne de Young Chief of Staff and Secretary to the Board of Trustees, and Richard Skaff, Executive Director of Designing Accessible Communities. Federal ADA issues are discussed and the public has some comments.
Supervisors are expected to have the final say. According to and article in SFist.com there are three Supervisors who support permanent closure. The Mayor has voiced support for permanent closure.
Thursday March 10 there is a rally to Re-open JFK Drive at 9 AM prior to a special joint meeting at 10 AM with Rec and Park and SFMTA. They are expected to vote on the closure after the public speaks on the matter. Stay tuned for more news as it developed. Please try to attend he meeitng and speak in person or call in to do so.
Remote Meeting Access: : http://www.sfgovtv.org/sfmtaLIVE or
https://www.sfmta.com/calendar/board-directors-special-meeting-march-10-2022 Please note the remote access call in numbers to join the meeting by phone: +1.415.655.0001
Cal. solar proposal follows right-wing ALEC model
By : 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)
How To Stand Up and Fight Back with Our Neighborhood Voices!
Training Video for circulators for Our Neighborhood Voices
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”
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/
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/
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)
Get Notified when it is your turn for COVID-19 vaccine
Get notified when it’s your turn for the COVID-19 vaccine. Starting Tuesday, January 19, sign up to get an email or text message if you live or work in SF:
https://sf.gov/get-notified-when-its-your-turn-covid-19-vaccine