Category: Update

By J.D. Morris and Roland Lee : sfchronicle – excerpt

A San Francisco commissioner who created a controversial planned tour that intended to show attendees downtown’s worst “doom and squalor” resigned from his city position on Monday.

Alex Ludlum is stepping down from the city’s Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure after emails affiliated with the so-called Downtown Doom Loop Walking Tour indicated he had organized the event, which was canceled shortly before it was supposed to occur over the weekend.

“I regret that my attempt to bring attention to the deplorable street conditions & rampant criminality in my neighborhood has been misconstrued as a mockery of suffering individuals. Satire is a poor way to address the grave issues we face as a city,” Ludlum wrote in a letter to Mayor London Breed, which he provided to the Chronicle. Breed appointed Ludlum to the commission last year…(more)

Another Breed Appointee bites the dust. Loses faith in the fate of San Francisco.

By Liz Lindqwister : sfstandard – excerpt

San Francisco ethics watchdogs have long urged the city to adopt tighter restrictions on gift-giving practices that have in the past opened the door for corruption. Now, the city will take the issue to voters.

The Ethics Commission voted on Aug. 18 to place a package of anti-corruption measures on the March 5, 2024, election ballot. The news comes after two delayed efforts to bring a corruption-related ballot measure to voters, first in the June 2022 special election and again on the Nov. 8, 2022, ballot.

“Our city residents and dedicated public servants alike expect and deserve a city government that works to promote the public good, not personal interests,” said Ethics Commission Vice Chair Theis Finlev. “Reformed conflict of interest laws and increased training for city officials can help ensure that governmental decisions are made on a fair and impartial basis.”…(more)

Something is happening at the Ethics Commission. They are finally giving the residents the right to vote on a package of anti-corruption measures after years of attempts to do so. Maybe they are overwhelmed by the number of cases.

By St. John Barned-Smith : sfchronicle – excerpt

Prominent San Francisco engineer Rodrigo Santos, who has pleaded guilty to bank fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion charges as part of a wide-ranging federal corruption probe, was sentenced Friday to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

Santos has pleaded guilty to charges that he stole money from clients through check fraud and improperly influencing a senior building inspector by having clients donate money to the official’s favored rugby club.

Prosecutors wanted 51 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Santos’ attorney Randall Knox had requested a sentence of just over a year in prison.

At the beginning of Friday’s hearing, Senior District Judge Susan Illston said she was inclined to sentence Santos to 30 months, as the probation department recommended.

“You had everything going for you — but I find the offenses set out here to be very, very serious and very destructive,” Illston said. “The effect of fraud on city and county of San Francisco was substantial.”…(more)

by Sam Whiting : sfchronicle – excerpt

A summer of simmering San Francisco neighborhood resistance to a plan to build a new small boat harbor in front of the Marina Green boiled over into a protest outside a community meeting on Wednesday.

Members of the recently organized citizen group Keep the Waterfront Open gathered outside the meeting hosted by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department at Moscone Rec Center.

The plan was to carry signs, march and chant at the entrance to the meeting in the old gymnasium on Chestnut Street. Around 75-100 energized people showed up, some with signs in hand — though they forwent the march, and the chanting was done mainly by two 8-year-old girls, Siobhan Butler and Carolyn Wong, president and vice president of the Earth Club at their school.

“Save the cove!” they chanted loudly, alternating with, “Clean the cove!”…

Some of the more adamant protesters are still fighting a $190 million settlement reached in 2021 between the city attorney and PG&E to pay for the cleanup. Homeowners along Marina Boulevard claim that the cleanup plan is insufficient for remediating both the boat harbor and the property beneath their homes…(more)

by Garrett Leahy :sfstandard – excerpt

A feud between a property developer and a city official may squash housing plans for a dilapidated old San Francisco movie theater.

The conflict centers on a local supervisor’s plan to designate the Alexandria Theater as a historic landmark, which the property owner says will cause development costs to skyrocket, making it impossible to complete the project—and leaving the theater in its blighted condition.

Development plans for the theater have fallen through before. Now the city and restoration advocates are seething at the thought of the failure of another project that could transform the theater into much-needed San Francisco housing if completed…

Woody LaBounty, head of San Francisco Heritage, a nonprofit that seeks to preserve San Francisco’s unique architecture, said his organization has pushed for the theater’s redevelopment for at least 15 years. The local historian said he’s tired of seeing the Alexandria Theater in a state of disrepair and wants to see it redeveloped.

“The whole idea was housing in the back, and swim center in the front,” LaBounty said. “At what point are we supposed to believe that the owners don’t have the money to build it because it’s a historic landmark? The owners have had two approved projects, and they haven’t done anything.”…(more)

By Megan Fan Munce : sfchronicle – excerpt

The developers behind a controversial project to build a 50-story condo building in San Francisco’s Sunset District have sued the city, claiming that officials misinterpreted and violated a state law meant to incentivize affordable housing.

California’s Density Bonus Law (DBL) is designed to incentivize the construction of low to moderate income housing by allowing developers to build more housing units in a project than local regulations normally allow if they agree to make a larger percentage of those units affordable housing.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the San Francisco Superior Court, the developers, 2700 Sloat Holding, which owns the site, argues that the city is misinterpreting the requirements of the law and also violating it by requiring developers to pay certain fees…

San Francisco Planning Director Rich Hillis said he had not reviewed the exact details of the complaint, but said he believes the developers of the project have misinterpreted how far beyond local regulation the density bonus law allows developers to build.

“It kind of defies logic that you could take a site that has a 100-foot height limit, apply a 50% bonus to it and somehow get a 560-foot tower,” Hilles said. “We think they’re wrong in their interpretation of what’s allowed under the zoning.”…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 498hills – excerpt

Rafael Mandelman and Joel Engardio have been among the most outspoken foes of a federal court injunction prohibiting the city from criminalizing unhoused people…(more)
And

Why We’re Suing the City: An open letter to Sups. Dorsey, Engardio, and Mandelman
By Jennifer Friedenbach…(more)

By Timothy Karoff : sfgate – excerpt

A beloved farmers market’s tenure in U.N. Plaza is nearing an end.

City officials have elected to move the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market, a staple of Civic Center for 42 years, to the nearby Fulton Street parking lot, making room for a skate area, chess boards, pingpong tables and Teqball (a sport similar to table tennis) tables, according to a press release from the farmers market.

The market will move one street over to Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde on Sept. 3, and construction of the recreation area is set to wrap up in November. The decision is an attempt at revitalization, with hopes that a vibrant hub of activity will make the area safer, as U.N. Plaza is known as a site for the sale and purchasing of drugs…

“Nobody has a food access program as large as ours,” Steve Pulliam, the market’s executive director, told SFGATE. “Certainly not in California. We have the numbers to prove that.”

Pulliam cited a host of issues with the new location. Compared to the U.N. Plaza location, Fulton Street’s space is limited. He pointed out that in the new location, vendors won’t be able to park their vehicles behind their stalls, leaving them exposed to smashed windows and break-ins. This also puts merchandise at risk, since some vendors use their vehicles to store extra produce…(more)

Why not just have the market extended to more days of the week? Or do some activities that don’t disrupt it on the off-days. Does anyone really think this is going to stop the activities around the BART station?