News

By Glenn Rogers : westsideobserver – excerpt

ecently, in the November issue of the Westside Observer, there was an article, Plan to Protect Neighborhoods from Fire Abandoned, describing San Francisco as unprepared for another earthquake and fire. The source of the information was a former official who retired 10 years ago. That report did not take into account numerous improvements in technology and planning. The public should be aware of these advances. Graciously, on January 31, 2018, the SF Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and the SF Fire Department (SFFD), both agreed to discuss the article. At the meeting was the Assistant Deputy Chief Anthony Rivera. and John Scarpulla from the SFPUC. Fortunately, a great deal of progress has occurred in the last ten years…

CONGENIALITY: SFFD AND SFPUC:

Instead of these two agencies being at odds with each other, I found just the opposite. They explained that the SFPUC has countless water engineers and plumbers, while the SFFD does not. Furthermore, the SFPUC explained that they listen carefully to any request from the SFFD, since the SFPUC never fought a fire. This congeniality was sincere and heartfelt as these two agencies worked together to describe a plan they developed to fight fire in San Francisco…(more)

By Kathleen Ronayne : pressdemocrat – excerpt

SACRAMENTO — California water agencies that serve 27 million residents and 750,000 acres of farmland won’t get any of the water they’ve requested from the state heading into 2022 other than what’s needed for critical health and safety, state officials announced Wednesday.

It’s the earliest date the Department of Water Resources has issued a 0% water allocation, a milestone that reflects the dire conditions in California as drought continues to grip the nation’s most populous state and reservoirs sit at historically low levels. State water officials said mandatory water restrictions could be coming.

“If conditions continue to be this dry, we will see mandatory cutbacks,” Karla Nemeth, director of DWR, told reporters…(more)

How can California continue to grow the population during a major drought when we can’t support the people and crops we have now?

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The Board of Supes, by a veto-proof majority, approved a measure today to allocate $64 million to fund social housing.

Only Sups. Catherine Stefani, Myrna Melgar, and Ahsha Safai dissented.

The vote does more than set aside money to take vulnerable properties off the speculative market. It sends a clear message to the Mayor’s Office that the supervisors are close to unanimous in their position that money from Proposition I should be allocated to housing…(more)

By Jaxon Van Derbeken : msn – excerpt (NBC video link on youtube )

The Millennium Tower may be the most recognizable sinking building in the city, but one researcher says earth-based and space-based observations confirm the entire downtown area around it is sinking as well.

“I looked at every building in the Bay Area, so just under a million buildings,” said U.S Geological Survey research geophysicist Tom Parsons, who estimates that over the last century, 3.5 trillion pounds of development and human activity – including the subsidence tied to loss of groundwater — have led to an estimated settlement of three inches across the entire Bay Area.

“Clearly, the most density and the tallest buildings are centered in that downtown San Francisco area, and that’s where we see the most calculated cumulative settlement from all of those buildings together,” he said.

Turns out that at an estimated 686 million pounds, the Millennium Tower is the third heaviest building in the city. The top nine all weigh more than 300-million pounds, but the only one that’s leaning significantly is the Millennium. Groundwater loss from adjacent construction has been blamed for the problem by the tower’s developers, while geotechnical experts say the key is that its foundation is not rooted in bedrock…(more)

Too bad CEQA environmental reviews do not include a report on the foundations and that our local ordinances do not require that engineers who design foundations communicate with engineers who design the buildings they rest upon. Perhaps this is something our city authorities should consider doing as they build denser, higher and heavier buildings. The cumulative effects of the loss of ground water should concern them as well. Who among our city representatives will take it upon themselves to fix the problem in our seismically challenged city?

By Ida Kukura :sfist – excerpt

Image: WeDrawTheLinesCA.org

One of the many quirks of the proposed SF state assembly district boundaries is that if David Campos won his assembly race, he would not even live in the district he represents.

The completion of the 2020 U.S. Census sets off another bureaucratic process for 2021, that is, redrawing districts for Congress, for the state Senate, the state Assembly, and even the SF Board of Supervisors districts. In most states, these redistricting processes are handled by legislators in a raw political grab to entrench more partisan incumbents. In California, which effectively lacks a functioning Republican party, the redistricting is handled by a citizen committee called the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. And among their goals this year is to give the state’s growing Asian population more legislative power.

They released their first draft of the districts Wednesday. Under the proposed new boundaries, Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district would take up more of San Francisco, adding the southwest neighborhoods like Lake Merced. Scott Wiener’s state senate district would expand to cover a little more of South San Francisco. These are not huge overhauls. But the proposed new state Assembly districts are drawing criticism, as the Chronicle reports on complaints that they “create a white-majority district on the east side,” and “dilute the influence of Asian American, Latino, African American and LGBTQ residents.”…

“I think this map pisses everybody off a little bit,” longtime City Hall political consultant David Ho told the Chronicle. “This iteration is just straight-up offensive. I don’t see any group that would support this iteration locally.”…(more)

by Will Jarrett and Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt (includes interactive graphic)

In January, 2020, the first domino fell.

Mohammad Nuru, then the director of the San Francisco Department of Public Works, was hit with a raft of federal corruption charges and was accused of lying to the FBI – crimes that could see him in prison for up to 25 years.

At the time, U.S. Attorney David Anderson commented on the allegations by saying, “corruption is pouring into San Francisco from around the world.”…(more)

The SF Family graphic indicates the parties and their relationships so far released by the FBI who have been exposed by the media. There are some blanks in the chain who’s names are so far being withheld. Friends and associates of the named parties must be nervous.

Since the news of the deeply imbedded corruption DBI and the permitting Departments have been exposed by the FBI, the SF Board of Supervisors has taken on many investigations into the City Family as they consider how to fix the system that lead to the corruptions. They have their hands full. This week they considered the roll the Planning Department has and doesn’t have in determining the outcome of the construction projects that are going up and where enforcement and oversight are lacking.

Clearly the building system is failing when it relies on pay to play operators to handle such important details as engineering, contracting and inspections. How many buildings have been given the green light to open that were not properly inspected by qualified personnel?

Concerns have been rising since high levels of pollution at Treasure Island and Hunter’s Point were reported. The Millennium and Transbay Terminal disasters, the faulty steel and connectors turning up and the poor quality of steel and other mistakes made on SF expensive and public transportation systems are bringing to overfed, financially draining construction industry into full public light and the pubic is demanding action.

What are SF authorities going to do to fix the rotten building industrial complex that has been exposed as criminal to the core and unfair to the small property owners and businesses that have been over charged and sucked dry by the system?

The Supervisors Land and Transportation Committee held a hearing to give the new Planning Director an opportunity to describe what the roll the Planning Department plays in enforcement and consider how the department may do more. Judging from the discussion at the meeting this process is going to take a while.

We notice a lack of new cranes in the city? Could the exposures of corruption in DBI, and role they had in pay-to-play and fast-tracking the large projects be the reasons for the slowdown? We shall have to wait and see. Some of the data are astounding. Watch the program here to see what you think is going on: https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/39758?view_id=177&redirect=true Item #3