By Noah Baustin : sfstandard – excerpt

Richmond neighborhood resident David Jacoby was shocked Monday to discover that he and his neighbors had received $108 parking citations while their vehicles were sitting in their own driveways.

Their offense, according to the city, was blocking part of the sidewalk.

But Jacoby said that his Prius and the rest of the cars on his Second Avenue block were all parked exactly as they had been for the past decade, never before drawing the ire of parking enforcement.

“It seems a bit random and unwarranted and, frankly, unfair,” Jacoby said.

A few doors down, his neighbor Shari Johnston, also ticketed, was in disbelief that she was hit with a fine on her vehicle.

“It’s in our actual driveway that we pay for,” Johnston said…(more)

RELATED:

San Francisco invents new rules for ‘anti-homeless’ planters

SFMTA parking boss targeted minority neighborhoods, former deputy director alleges

Looks like the bosses need a new plan. When the permits to allow street furniture and planters come about, the issue of sitting down access is going to be a little hard to prove. More of this subject will be coming up soon now doubt. The next Mayor may have something to say about it. There is a long list of SFMTA employees who have filed complaints and those may expose even more problems in the department when new leadership takes over. These articles only show a tip of the iceberg.

By Noah Baustin and Michael Barba : sfstandard – excerpt

Frank Chiu walked away from his job as San Francisco’s first director of the Department of Building Inspection nearly 20 years ago.

Since then, he has worked as a permit consultant on construction projects that his brother—and two nephews—later inspected in their roles as city building inspectors, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest in a department that has been dogged by ethical issues.

Chiu, 66, and his son, Chris, work with contractors and architects who renovate offices in downtown high-rises. He helps them save time and money by ensuring that their building plans comply with the city’s notoriously complex codes. Chiu says his job getting the permits is done by the time his family members inspect the construction work on the projects. But outside observers say the situation creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest…(more)

It is the City Family Plan. Been working for decades. Squirreling away bucks to combat the negative feedback when the s**t hits the fan. Which it did recently.

By Joe Eskkenazi : missionlocal – excerpt

Ex-HR manager Stanley Ellicott, earlier charged with selling city-bought electronics, now accused of setting up bonus company to bilk SF

Ex-HR director Stanley Ellicott was arrested for a second time on March 21. He is facing 62 felony counts stemming from an alleged scheme to defraud the city of hundreds of thousands of dollars via a bogus company he established.

In January, San Francisco Human Resources manager Stanley John Ellicott was arrested and charged with a bevy of crimes, including purportedly selling electronics on the internet that had been bought with city money earmarked for earthquake supplies.

This morning he was arrested again and hit with more than five dozen charges — most notably allegedly ripping off some $627,000 from the Workers’ Compensation bureau he oversaw. San Francisco jail records reveal that Ellicott, 38, was booked at 9:07 this morning and is being held on $50,000 bail for his 62 felony charges.

He is accused of establishing a bogus company and using it to loot the very branch of the HR department that he was charged with keeping both technically and monetarily sound…

The January and March cases against Ellicott are unrelated. But it was the investigation into the former that led to today’s arrest and charging. In addition to allegedly selling high-end consumer electronics bought with emergency supply money, Ellicott was in January charged with participating in a larger municipal theft and kickback scheme operated by former Community Challenge Grant director Lanita Henriquez and former Gavin Newsom mayoral staffer, businessman and city fixer Dwayne Jones…(more)

RELATED:

City HR manager charged with selling tech gear — bought with quake supply money — on eBay

By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez : kqed – excerpt

As Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin mulls a run for mayor, how people view his opposition to market-rate housing would be both a strength and a vulnerability should he jump in the race.

That’s particularly true in San Francisco’s west side, a neighborhood replete with single-family homes where people have rallied against state laws that would allow more multi-story housing to be built. Peskin is sometimes viewed as a champion of saving neighborhood character from what residents consider to be outsize new construction.)

George Wooding, a neighborhood activist who lives just west of Twin Peaks, said neighbors are angry about Mayor London Breed’s “Housing for All Plan,” which would incentivize building taller, denser housing. He said they worry there isn’t enough parking or infrastructure to support the plan.

“That’s going to be one of the turning points of the mayor’s race on the west side,” Wooding said. “Anybody with a brain running for mayor is going to start attacking the density programs.”

San Francisco’s next mayor will steer the city’s future approach to housing.

Peskin is on one side of a divide in development philosophy between moderate and progressive Democrats in San Francisco. The moderates want the city to build, build, build to bring housing costs down. Progressives want the city to focus on building affordable housing while fiercely defending tenant protections…

“Government has a role to play. And a progressive mayor, I think, can do so much more to protect and enhance our existing residents and our existing small businesses,” Peskin said…

Eileen Boken, a west side advocate who frequently attends City Hall meetings, said her neighbors were “blindsided” by state Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposal to wrest housing approval control of Ocean Beach away from the California Coastal Commission…(more)

RELATED:

Petition to Oppose SB 951 and Keep our Pacific Coastline Free and Open.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/no-on-sb-951-keep-california-coastline-open-and-accessible-2

Peskin’s statement says it all..”We don’t have to destroy San Francisco to save it.”

This statement is profound and comes at a pivotal time. One may walk by many up-zoned empty projects lining streets of empty sidewalks fronting sad boarded up storefronts along streets that were “improved” by SFMTA. We have seen enough destruction already. Now it is time to fix the mess we find ourselves in. We need to restore San Francisco’s once safe friendly neighborhoods that we had before the bulldozers arrived. We need to fill all the holes in the streets and quit digging more. We need a respite from the dust and noise.

In may opinion, the candidates do not fall into left/right categories.

By Gabe Greschler :sfstandard – excerpt

In keeping with a campaign promise to nix legislation that blocks housing, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Thursday that she will veto a bill that tweaked density limits along the city’s Northern Waterfront.

In a letter, Breed wrote that the bill, authored by Board President Aaron Peskin, “passes off anti-housing policy under the guise of historic protection.” The Board of Supervisors approved the legislation in an 8-3 vote on Feb. 27…

The mayor’s veto pushes Peskin’s housing legislation back to the Board of Supervisors, who can override it with eight votes…(more)

What is the point in this? The bill was already passed with eight votes. Now they have to revote on it again to get the 8 votes to override her veto? What is the point? Does she plan to coerce supervisors into changing their votes? What has changed?

By Xueer Lu : missionlocal – excerpt

Supervisor Ahsha Safaí introduced a resolution at the Board of Supervisors today urging the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to address child homelessness by prioritizing families for shelter.

“In a city with almost 48 billionaires, it is unconscionable that we have children living on our streets when we have shelter beds that are vacant,” said Safaí, who wants the homelessness department to give families shelter or hotel vouchers the same day they make contact with city officials. Families who arrive at an access point, where families get referral to shelters and housing, should be allowed to extend their vouchers if there is no alternative housing or shelter, he said.

In addition, the resolution asks the city to create a multilingual public dashboard where families can monitor the shelter waitlist and their own progress in entering permanent housing…(more)

By Kevin V. Nguyen : sfstandard – excerpt
A group of schools are providing a test case in the city’s most troubled neighborhood.

When San Francisco was mired in “doom loop” talk last year, Mayor London Breed and some business leaders began openly calling for college students to save downtown. Young adults, the thinking goes, would populate struggling areas, reinvigorate the economy and help transform downtown from a 9-to-5 office community to a 24/7 arts and culture destination.

Just one block away from the worst drug corner in the city, the University of California College of the Law SF is putting that theory to the test…

The key to getting the Academic Village over the finish line is the concept that it will be shared by multiple universities.

“Had this been only for the law school, we would have met much more skepticism trying to finance this project,” David Seward, chief financial officer of the university, told The Standard. To pay for Academe at 198, UC Law SF secured $364 million in tax-exempt bond financing…(more)

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

More than $200 million goes for services city workers could provide much, much cheaper.

San Francisco has 3,747 vacant jobs—and has spent more than $211 million in the past two years filling some of those positions with outside contractors who charge far more than what city workers would earn, a new study shows.

And the vast majority of that money goes to big out-of-town companies—that is, it leaves San Francisco and does nothing to help the local economy…

The study, by analysts with IFPTE Local 21, which represents thousands of city employees, shows that the percentage of the city budget spend on local workers has dropped from 51 percent ten years ago to 46 percent today.

In some departments, like the scandal-plagued Public Works, the drop has been even more dramatic: DPW used to spend 35 percent of its budget on staff, and now it’s 26 percent.

In the meantime, DPW and the Public Utilities Commission have contracts worth more than $150 million on contracts with companies like AECOM, a giant engineering outfit based in Dallas, which paid its CEO $9.5 million last year.

AECOM charges the city far more than it would cost to fill that job with public employees:…(more)

It is not often you can connect two different stories under such a juicy title as this:

“Overpaid city contractors caught in corrupt schemes. Labor cries foul, threatens to strike.”

By Nuala Bishari : sfchronicle – excerpt

On Thursday, the Chronicle released the results of a poll that shed new light on the city’s mayoral race. Incumbent London Breed is lagging. Only 18% of people polled said they’d list her as a first choice, compared to former Mayor Mark Farrell at 20%, Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie at 16% and Supervisor Ahsha Safaí with 8%.

Of course, San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system doesn’t just count first-place votes. Looking at the second-place data, however, things get even worse for Breed. The mayor has fewer second-choice votes than Lurie or Farrell.

It’s still early; polls will likely shift as we get closer to the November election. But with a weak incumbent and her top challengers all representing the more moderate side of city politics, these numbers do raise a question: Could a progressive-leaning candidate jump in the race and win?

History certainly shows it’s possible, given the proclivities of ranked choice…

One potential candidate, however, was mentioned by people I talked to: Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin — a sometimes controversial figure, but one known both for his encyclopedic knowledge of San Francisco’s rules and regulations and his commitment to advocating for Asian American communities.

“There is a growing clamor to get Peskin to run,” Jeffrey Kwong, president of the left-leaning Harvey Milk Democratic Club, told me. “I think he’s one of the few people moderates can come over to. He has his ear to the ground like no one else. There’s a consensus among progressives that he has the policy acumen and administrative ability. He’s someone who’s able to get started on the first day of the job.”

Peskin has said he hasn’t ruled out a run. When I asked him about the Chronicle’s poll, however, he told me his focus is on “better policies.”

“I know we can make this city work for everyone, in every neighborhood. But to make our city safer, to bring everyone in-doors, to create an economy that works for the rest of us is going to take uniting around smarter policies — not dividing around increasingly bitter politics.”

That sounded awfully campaign-ish to me. This isn’t an easy race to jump into, especially with the enormous amount of money already pouring into the top candidates’ coffers. But there’s still time: The deadline to file isn’t until June 11…(more)