Category: News

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SF challenges PG&E’s power moves

By Joshua Sabatini : sfexaminer – excerpt

Utility uses expensive hookups to discourage public power use\

The contentious relationship between PG&E and San Francisco has grown more tense, with the energy company now seeking to impose costly new requirements for The City to use its grid to deliver publicly-owned Hetch Hetchy power to city projects and even street lights.

The City lost a dispute earlier this year before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over similar requirements the utility imposed in recent years on projects like schools, affordable housing and pools. The City has since taken the matter to court.

But now PG&E has filed a Sept 15 proposal with FERC to make the costly hookups a requirement going forward as part of the wholesale distribution tariff, a set of rules for how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission can use PG&E’s grid to serve The City’s own power customers. The SFPUC delivers over the grid greenhouse gas-free hydroelectric power produced by Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite…

PG&E has said it will now no longer offer the less expensive secondary service hookups but will support existing secondary service as long as there are no upgrades…(more)

 

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Misusing taxpayer dollars for campaigns

By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt

California’s local officials routinely use taxpayer dollars for ballot measure campaigns, even though it’s illegal. One agency just got fined.

Four of the 12 measures on California’s November ballot were placed there by the Legislature.

Let’s assume that legislators had also appropriated $100 million in taxpayers’ money for campaigns to persuade voters to approve the four. It would have been an outrageous and likely illegal misappropriation of public funds under several laws…

The only agency that even expresses interest is the state Fair Political Practices Commission, because anyone who spends money on political campaigns is supposed to file reports on their activities.

Occasionally, the FPPC has penalized miscreant local agencies, the latest being Los Angeles County, which in 2017 spent a million dollars for an ill-disguised campaign to pass Measure H, a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax..

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association complained about the use of public funds, but as usual, the county’s district attorney refused to investigate. The organization filed a lawsuit and complained to the FPPC.

Last week, it was announced that county officials had agreed to a settlement — without admitting liability — and a $1.35 million penalty...

Using public funds to pass ballot measures is also illegal at the local level. Government Code Section 54964,..(more)

In San Francisco we have the FBI investigating various illegal uses of public employees time and public funds being funneled through community benefits programs  and non-profits. It turns out the community that is benefiting from these programs is a very elite community comprised of  friends of the City Family that doles out the contracts to a limited few supporters of the City Family program.

It took the FBI years of investigating to bring charges on actions that city authorities turned a blind eye to for decades. The best we can do is recommend some reading of the Marina Times articles that are covering the minute details of the cases as they unfold, starting with “Friends with Community Benefits“, by Susan Dyer Reynolds.

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U.S. attorney hits SFPUC with subpoena as SF City Hall corruption investigation widens

By Dominic Fracassa : sfchronicle – excerpt

Federal officials served the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission with a sweeping subpoena last month, demanding numerous records and documents that appear to draw the agency into the widening City Hall corruption scandal touched off by the arrest of former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru in January.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office issued the subpoena on June 15, according to a copy obtained by The Chronicle on Friday.

The subpoena suggests that federal investigators are interested in examining contracts the commission awarded to several companies, some of which have previously been linked to alleged schemes traced back to Nuru in investigations by the FBI and the City Attorney’s Office…

The federal subpoena specifically demands all communications “related to any LED light installation contracts” between commission employees and Walter Wong, Washington Wong, the relative with the business registration, and their affiliated companies. The City Attorney’s Office previously filed a subpoena directly to Alternate Choice in February…

They also ordered the agency to produce any commission audits from 2010 to the present related to trips taken by Kelly and Ellis…

Kelly’s wife is City Administrator Naomi Kelly, Nuru’s former boss…(more)

This is getting to be a rather extensive list of City Hall power players. Who will turn up next in the net?

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Jane Morrison, lifelong activist, dies at 100

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

She was an urban environmentalist before anybody knew what that meant — and a hero and mentor to many.

Jane Morrison, who was an urban environmentalist before anyone knew what that meant and a central part of the progressive movement in this city for more than half a century, has died at 100.

I got the news from John King at the Chron, who sent me an email asking if I wanted to say anything about someone who was already an legend in local politics when I arrived at the Bay Guardian in 1982…

Every year, well into her 90s, she would call me and inform me that I would be speaking at the San Francisco Tomorrow holiday party. It wasn’t a request, really – it was a piece of information. Of course I would be there; Jane told me I would.

She was funny, determined, a proud member of the progressive wing of the San Francisco Democratic Party going back to the 1950s, a former journalist, a community organizer and agitator, a Depression-era Oklahoma farm girl who never forgot what it meant to sacrifice for the greater good…(more)

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WeWork Accused of Abandoning San Francisco Development Project

By Malathi Nayak : bloombergquint – excerpt

Bloomberg) — WeWork was accused in a lawsuit of reneging on a pledge to invest $450 million in a San Francisco development project that was supposed to showcase the WeLive communal living initiative.

Parkmerced Investors LLC sued the troubled co-working startup Thursday in New York state court, saying it abandoned a promise to help build WeWork-designed apartments and communal living space with media rooms, hot tubs and activities such as happy hours and yoga classes. Parkmerced Investors is seeking at least $100 million in damages.

The sprawling Parkmerced neighborhood, flanked by a lake and the San Francisco Golf Club, dates back to the 1940s and now offers high-rise apartments and town homes spread across 150 acres. Over the years, the complex has had backing from high-profile investors including the late real-estate billionaire Harry Helmsley and Fortress Investment Group.

The lawsuit comes after WeWork sued Parkmerced Investors in March in the same New York court, claiming it didn’t meet financing conditions for the deal and refused to return a $20 million exclusivity fee to complete the equity investment in the project…(more)

How stable is a project that relies on WeWork to succeed? The current tenants of the existing affordable garden apartments at Parkmerced are watching the corporate investors preparing to demolish their homes fight over millions, after they spent millions for the right to tear it down. The infamous State Supreme Court case overturned a ballot initiative voters fought for to protect the office housing balance that made the city a freedom loving comfortable highly popular cultural icon. Since that case was settled, San Francisco has been tuned into the golden goose that everyone wants a bite of. The city is being picked to the bone by greed and the corruption that it breeds. Hopefully the investors will eat each other and leave the residents in peace.

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Homeless crisis: Newsom proposes ditching environmental review when converting hotels into housing

By Kevin Fagan : sfchronicle – excerpt

Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing that state environmental regulations be waived for cities and counties that want to convert hotels into homeless housing using federal coronavirus relief funding.

His plan was sent to the California Legislature on Friday to be added to the state budget negotiations, and if it remains intact it would eliminate a key tool opponents use to fight projects they don’t want in their neighborhoods. By law, the budget is supposed to be passed by June 15.

Before the pandemic hit this winter, the governor had said he wanted regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) eased for many types of homeless housing, and this current plan — sent in the form of a “trailer bill” addition to budget talks — narrows that ambition… (more)

A few people may explode over this, but, it sounds like the perfect karmic solution. Sort of a boomerang effect, correcting a major flaw in that turned housing into hotels and through many people out onto the street who were previously housed in those hotels. It could be like a happy homecoming to some, moving back into recently repaired rooms they were kicked out of. There are all kinds of possibilities here. Who might object?

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Tell SF Planning that the Balboa Reservoir Project Must be Postponed

The Commission must hear from you by Friday, May 22 to assure that CCSF will be preserved and protected.

Next Thursday, May 28, the SF Planning Commission will be deciding the fate of CCSF by ruling on the Balboa Reservoir Project. We recently asked you to write the Commission asking them not to approve the project. If you’ve sent a letter, thank you. If you haven’t, we hope you will. In the meantime…

RIGHT NOW we need your immediate help!

We’ve just learned that the City and developers were supposed to enter into written agreements with CCSF regarding parking, transit and roadway access through City College. But despite assurances that this would happen…it hasn’t.

We’ve been told for years that this project is a collaboration with CCSF. Yet there’s never been a written agreement with this assurance. The Planning Commission must not rule on a project that doesn’t consider the needs of City College! We need to stop this train before it leaves the station. The future of students at City College is at stake.

Please write the Planning Commission NOW and ask them to postpone the May 28 Balboa Reservoir Project Hearing until these important agreements between CCSF, the City, and the developers have been reached.

Thank you for all you do to save CCSF.
Public Lands for Public Good

Copoy and past to Send Urgent Message to:
SF Planning Commission
commissions.secretary@sfgov.org;
joel.koppel@sfgov.org;
kathrin.moore@sfgov.org;
sue.diamond@sfgov.org;
frank.fung@sfgov.org;
theresa.imperial@sfgov.org;
milicent.johnson@sfgov.org;
aaron.starr@sfgov.org;

Be sure to Copy:
SF Board of Supervisors, CCSF Chancellor, and CCSF Board of Trustees
Matt.Haney@sfgov.org;
MandelmanStaff@sfgov.org;
Gordon.Mar@sfgov.org;
Aaron.Peskin@sfgov.org;
Dean.Preston@sfgov.org;
Sandra.Fewer@sfgov.org;
Hillary.Ronen@sfgov.org;
Ahsha.Safai@sfgov.org;
Catherine.Stefani@sfgov.org;
Shamann.Walton@sfgov.org;
Norman.Yee@sfgov.org;
dgonzales@ccsf.edu;
swilliams@ccsf.edu;
ttemprano@ccsf.edu;
bdavila@ccsf.edu;
ivylee@ccsf.edu;
alexrandolph@ccsf.edu;
jrizzo@ccsf.edu;
tselby@ccsf.edu;
studenttrustee@mail.ccsf.edu;
Sample email
Subject line:
URGENT: Balboa Reservoir Approvals Must Be Delayed Until

Dear Commissioner,
The City and Balboa Reservoir developers were supposed to enter into written agreements with CCSF regarding parking, transit and roadway access through City College. This hasn’t happened yet!

This project is supposedly a collaboration with CCSF. Yet there’s no written agreement with this assurance.

You must postpone the May 28 Balboa Reservoir Project Hearing until these important agreements between CCSF, the City, and the developers have been reached.

Please do not rule on a project that doesn’t consider the needs of City College. The future of students at City College is at stake!

Sincerely,

www.publiclandsforpublicgood.org
publiclandsforpublicgood@gmail.com

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State Legislature Continues Its Assault On Local Zoning Decisions

By Edward Ring : californiaglobe – excerpt

YIMBYs support legislation that mandates high density

With the introduction of the latest housing density mandate, AB 725 in the California state legislature, the battle between state control and local control in California intensifies. At the same time, the pandemic crisis and its economic consequences add additional complexity to an already complex issue.

The debate over California’s housing policies offers an unusual combination: vehement disagreement between two bitterly opposed groups, yet within both groups are factions holding thoroughly divergent political ideologies.

This probably should come as no surprise. California’s housing crisis, and the policies that created it, incorporate big, challenging issues: income inequality, how to treat the homeless, environmental protection, public finance. Libertarians and leftists, along with Republicans and Democrats, are lining up on both sides of the debate, confounding easy categorization…

Some of the bills that Livable California have opposed must be seen to be believed. AB 3173 (still active) provides incentives for developers to build 80 square foot “micro-units” – at least that’s a bit larger than the 70 square feet that the American Correctional Association recommends as the minimum size for a prison cell! SB 902 automatically up-zones single family areas to six units or more per parcel. AB 1279 designates “opportunity areas” where housing could be up-zoned to high rises accommodating as many as 120 units per half-acre….

The uncomfortable truth is that years of neglected infrastructure, defacto rationing, and urban containment legislation have already taken away much of the local control that would have allowed Californians to expand their cities and towns, and keep housing affordable.

Livable California, a genuine grassroots movement, has the potential to reverse this trend. If successful, they may eventually alter the policy driven economic conditions that prohibit lasting solutions.  The YIMBY movement, on the other hand, funded by billionaires, will never solve California’s housing crisis, because they aren’t questioning the doctrine of densification. But so what? Their donors will see their real estate portfolio investments soar into bubbleland, as they virtue signal all the way to the bank…(more)

COVID-19 has turned the tide against density in a way no one could have imagined. The media has taken a new view of the negative impacts of density that many have warned about as we see, first hand, how dangerous urban lifestyles can be. No where has the virus spread more rapidly than in large urban centers with major public transit networks that force close contact with anonymous strangers and long commutes. Transit directors know they cannot continue this way and it is time for the all city officials to get the same message that cities have to change if they are to survive.

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The Coming Age of Dispersion

By Joel Kotkin : quillette – excerpt

As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic remain uncertain. But one possible consequence is an acceleration of the end of the megacity era. In its place, we may now be witnessing the outlines of a new, and necessary, dispersion of population, not only in the wide open spaces of North America and Australia, but even in the megacities of the developing world. Much of this has been driven by high housing prices and growing social disorder in our core cities, as well as the steady rise of online commerce and remote working, now the fastest growing means of “commuting” in the United States.

Pandemics naturally thrive in large multicultural cities, where people live “cheek by jowl” and travel to and from other countries is a fact of international tourism and commerce. Europe’s rapidly advancing infection rate is, to some extent, the product of its weak border controls, one of the EU’s greatest accomplishments. Across the continent, cities have become the primary centers of infection. Half of all COVID-19 cases in Spain, for example, have occurred in Madrid while the Milan region, with its cosmopolitan population and economy, accounts for half of all cases in Italy and almost three-fifths of the deaths… (more)

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Sloat Garden Center likely to close for new mixed-use development

by Sasha Perigo : hoodline – excerpt
It’s been over a decade since plans to demolish the Outer Sunset’s Sloat Garden Center (2700 Sloat Blvd.) were first announced. Now, it appears that the proposed mixed-use development on the site — a neighborhood staple since the 1950s — may finally be happening.
On March 30, owner Dave Straus submitted dueling proposals for redeveloping the site to the Planning Commission. The first proposal calls for an 85-foot building with a total of 213 condominiums, 49 of which would be “affordable”—sold at prices below market rate (BMR).

At 125 feet tall, the other proposal is larger; it would have 283 condos, 85 of them affordable. In both cases, the units would be condominiums built for sale, not rental apartments. Market rate units are expected to start at $200,000. BMR buyers can apply for lower priced units through a lottery…(more)

No more gardens or plants in the city. Is that the future of San Francisco? We managed to save the Flowermart, sort of, yet, we lose the largest garden supply company in San Francisco? Wow! This truly is a goldrush where we plow over everything in site to erect the towers to the sky, a la Miami Beach.