Category: Update

By Frances Dinkelspiel : berkelyside – excerpt

Since not all admitted students enroll, Cal will now have to tell 5,000 high school seniors there’s no place for them at Berkeley in the fall.

The California Supreme Court has turned down UC Berkeley’s request to postpone a drastic cap on enrollment for the fall, meaning that Cal will need to cut its incoming class by 3,050 students next year. This means 5,000 fewer high schoolers will be offered admission this month than the university had hoped…

On Aug. 23, 2021, Alameda County Judge Brad Seligman ordered UC Berkeley to toss out the EIR it did for the Upper Hearst project and start anew. He also ordered the enrollment cap.

UC Berkeley appealed that decision first to the Court of Appeal and then to the California Supreme Court. Both appeals were denies.

The Court of Appeal is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the matter in the coming months. No date has been set yet.

UC Berkeley has not yet started to do a new EIR on the enrollment increases, according to Cal officials…(more)

We hope the case will be published soon so we can review the comments and reasoning behind the decision.

By Bay City News : sfexaminer – excerpt

‘We are long overdue to reform our refuse rate setting process’

San Francisco voters in June will decide whether to reform the way garbage collection rates are overseen after the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved the ballot measure.

The measure would establish the City Controller as the refuse rate administrator, requiring the official to monitor waste collection expenses, revenues and rates.

The measure would also replace the City Controller with a ratepayer advocate to serve on the Refuse Rate Board in an effort to remove conflict of interests connected to the role as refuse rate administrator, city officials said.

In April, the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office reached a $100 million settlement with Recology, the company contracted by The City to handle waste collection, over excessive charges to customers.…(more)

sfstandard – excerpt

More than 800 Homes Remain Unfilled as Thousands of Unhoused Sit on Waitlist

https://youtu.be/-OYXrmZ2m9Q

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The mayor met with top hotel executives just as she was planning to deploy more cops to the neighborhood.

I know I’m not the only person who’s been wondering why Mayor London Breed suddenly decided in December to declare a State of Emergency in the Tenderloin.

The problems in that neighborhood have been going on for years. The city, including the Mayor’s Office, hasn’t done much about it. But all of a sudden, Breed decided that something dramatic had to be done.

The San Francisco Business Times this week offered a suggestion as to what’s going on:

Just before the holidays, the CEOs of the two companies with the most hotel rooms in San Francisco took a cross-country field trip here to meet with Mayor London Breed on the state of city streets. The meeting took place fresh off the blitz of high-profile burglaries in Union Square.

The CEOs, Jon Bortz of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust and Thomas J. Baltimore of Park Hotels & Resorts, described the previously undisclosed meetings in separate earnings calls within the last week. Collectively their companies own 14 hotels and 5,278 rooms in the city…(more)

RELATED:

Police chief has to back down, agrees to let deal with DA’s Office stay in place

SF Democrats overwhelmingly vote to oppose Boudin recall

By Adam Beam, AP : sfgate – excerpt

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — With California entering the third year of severe drought, federal officials said Wednesday they won’t deliver any water to farmers in the state’s major agricultural region — a decision that will force many to plant fewer crops in the fertile soil that yields the bulk of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables.

“It’s devastating to the agricultural economy and to those people that rely on it,” said Ernest Conant, regional director for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. “But unfortunately we can’t make it rain.”

The federal government operates the Central Valley Project in California, a complex system of dams, reservoirs and canals. It’s one of two major water systems the state relies on for agriculture, drinking water, and the environment. The other system is run by the state government…(more)

By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

The Laborers Local 261 and named plaintiffs Juan Rivera and Theresa Foglio-Ramierez today filed suit against the city of San Francisco, alleging that its workers were retaliated against after union members complained of rampant city corruption and favoritism.

The papers filed today allege that the retaliation took the form of denying workers proper working conditions and in the case of some, harassment and demotions.

These complaints were directed against the leadership of the Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco Public Works and City Administrator’s Office. Former PUC general manager Harlan Kelly and Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru have since been arrested and charged by the feds, with Nuru pleading guilty. Former City Administrator Naomi Kelly, Harlan’s wife, has resigned.

The suit alleges that workforce development programs were co-opted to hire friends of management to jobs they did not perform. Instead, the lawsuit charges, the work was actually performed by nonprofit workers and paid with public funds, which circumvented “the MOU which provided for minimum labor standards.”… (more)

By Tom Molanphy : 48hills – excerpt

Community demands excavation and removal of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard radioactive residue, with local oversight.

This past Saturday, while hundreds gathered in Golden Gate Park to pressure the city to keep cars off JFK Drive, a few dozen Bayview protestors asked once more for the City to remove radioactive waste from their doorstep.

“The Tetra Tech scandal was a tipping point,” Kamillah Ealom, BVHP Program Community Organizer for Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, said—citing the massive 2019 fraud case involving the cleanup of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, the country’s largest superfund site. “We know stuff was there. It was a cover-up.”

Saturday’s protest, complete with bull-horned Gospel songs of “Satan We’re Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down” and posters like “Stop Cancer Where It Starts: Pollution,” began at noon on Third and Evans. But the fight to clean up the shipyard started generations ago and remains one of San Francisco’s most powerful but buried stories. And that story is intertwined with San Francisco’s Black history…(more)

By Richard Knee : 48hills – excerpt

Upon learning that fellow good-government activist Bob Planthold had died, Maxine Anderson reminded associates of an old African proverb: “When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.”

Planthold died in his apartment on Jan. 27. He was 73. As of this writing, the medical examiner had not determined the cause of death. A funeral service is set for Friday, Feb. 11, at 2 p.m. at the San Francisco Columbarium, 1 Loraine Court.

Planthold forcefully and effectively advocated for the disabled community, especially when it came to public-transit access, government transparency and participation in the political process. He was the only person to have served both on San Francisco’s open-government watchdog commission, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, and on the city’s Ethics Commission,

“Bob’s was a rich, interesting library from which we were fortunate to borrow from time to time,” said Allyson Washburn, who chairs the steering committee of San Franciscans for Sunshine, a group hoping to strengthen the city’s government transparency laws. Anderson is one of a handful of people on the committee. (Reporter’s disclosure: I also am on the committee.)…(more)

By Al Saracevic : sfexaminer – excerpt

Conversions could revitalize S.F.’s troubled downtown district

So, lemme get this straight. We have an acute housing shortage in San Francisco. And our downtown office buildings are standing largely empty. Am I missing something here? Seems like a logical, common sense solution is staring us square in the face.

Let’s convert some office space into residential housing.

Before you take out your zoning rule book and start slapping me around, let’s talk this out. Sure, there are plenty of roadblocks. But we put a man on the moon. Surely, we can put a condo on Sansome Street.

This, by no means, is a new idea. Commercial real estate conversion and adaptive reuse have been urban planning catch phrases for decades, triggering avid support and rabid opposition at various times, for various reasons.

But I’m here to posit a simple truth: It’s time for San Francisco to give this idea serious thought. The pandemic has triggered many changes in our society. The shift in workforce behavior may be the most profound…(more)