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Extend the Auxiliary Water Supply System to all of San Francisco

Letter from Dick Morton to Jake’s Nature News

Before the City starts adding population to the West Side of SF, they need to expand fire protection system that we have been waiting for. Sprinklers will not do much if the water pressure does not back them up

Jake, I live next to the heavily Blue Gum forested Pine Lake and Stern Grove. For years, I have been concerned that the fire in the forest would send flaming Blue Gum bark strips blowing onto the nearby houses jeopardizing life and public facilities and businesses. Should a fire occur in the Blue Gum forest I have told my neighbors that we need to get up on our roofs to hose down any burning embers. Their potential for conflagration in other neighborhoods such as Glen Canyon, McLaren Park, Golden Gate Park, the Presidio is real.

I chaired the SPUR Disaster Preparedness Task Force where I learned about the firefighting Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS). I am now an advocate to expand AWSS to all of San Francisco, including my Parkside/Sunset neighborhood.

I agree with you, we are “unaccustomed” to thinking in terms of conflagration.  You are correct San Francisco is “run by bureaucracies, which, by definition, are unaccustomed to thinking in terms of the unpredictable” – a conflagration.  Our bureaucracies, PUC and FireDepartment, continue to demonstrate a lack of urgency and preparedness for devastating fires. You should be greatly concerned by the San Francisco lack of unlimited firefighting water resources.

There have been two Civil Grand Jury reports, two emergency bond measures and numerous other calls to action to expand the Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS), a high pressure, independent firefighting capability utilizing unlimited water supplies – saltwater.

The existing 1913 AWSS is largely confined to the northeast quadrant of the city. That leaves substantial swaths of 15 vulnerable non-AWSS neighborhoods without conflagration fire protection which could arise from a Blue Gum fire, major fires and most importantly, an earthquake.

The emergency bond measures have been largely used to repair and upgrade the existing 1913 AWSS. 15 vulnerable neighborhoods have waited for decades to have the same level of fire fighting protection as AWSS neighborhoods.

The PUC and the Fire Department continue to ignore the necessity to expand AWSS pipes, pumps and support connections to saltwater. Burn baby burn is the operative city response for vulnerable neighborhoods such as most of the Richmond, Sunset, Ingleside, the Portola, Excelsior, Bayview and Hunter’s Point.

RELATED:

The Truth about SF’s Water  by Nancy Wuerfel
Neighborhood fire preparedness needs to be considered as the State sets the future water plan…(more)

 

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Walton calls out Breed for her attacks on the Board of Supes

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excpert

Simmering clash between the mayor and the supes breaks into the open after Breed attacks the board for asking tough questions of her department heads.

The Mayor’s Office has been attacking and refusing to work with the Board of Supes for some time now. Mayor London Breed refused – for no apparent reason – to spend the money the voters approved for rent relief. She threatened to go to the ballot if she didn’t get everything she wanted, immediately, on (of all things) parklets.

Her public comments about the supes have been just this side of hostile. One board member recently told me the relations between the two branches of government have been “toxic.”

All of that broke out into the open Tuesday…

Ginsburg has been all about privatizing the parks for years now; his role with a private contractor that may be linked to an ongoing corruption scandal is the public’s business…(more)

The public must insist o knowing how City Hall is working and the only way to do that is to do that is to shine a light on the process. Supervisor Walton has made it clear that he is going to assist the Board of Supervisors in their efforts to not only conduct studies and investigations, but to inform the pubic of their findings.

 

 

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Town Hall Report on Opening the city streets and action items:

People have asked for more extensive notes on the details that were discussed at the June 2 Town Hall on Opening the Streets.
Most of the issues discussed are explained by reading the petitions linked here: https://www.discoveryink.net/wp/petitions/
The speakers requested that we sign the petitions, write letters, and make public comments at two meetings that were held last week. Chris Prima, introduced the San Francisco Driver’s Union group on nextdoor and invited people to join. https://nextdoor.com/g/dpr1kbsxx/
First meeting was a budget item for an equity study on the effects of closure of JFK, as requested by Shamann Walton. Some of us requested an independent third party be involved in the study with no ties to the departments or the Parks Alliance, that is under great scrutiny regarding various pay to play and other questionable practices the non-profit is pushing. Read the particles about the Park’s Alliance on 48hills and Mission Local if you want details on the allegations. Some people must have gotten that message about an independent study because the matter was raised by one of the Rec and Park Commissioners at the second meeting.
Second meeting was a joint meeting between Rec and Park and SFMTA that addressed the closing of the Great Highway. This was marathon meeting that lasted for 6 hours with hundreds of public comments on the closure. The supervisors will have the last say on the closing.
Link to that meeting: I suggest you cut to the end of the meeting to hear the comments by Rec and Park Commissioners and SFMTA Board members, or read the attached notes.
Recording of the June 10 joint Rec and Park and SFMTA Board Meeting:

Download notes on the meeting: 6-14 updates.

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Huge Victory for SF Public Bank!

via email:

SF Board of Supervisors Passes Reinvest in San Francisco
Supes Vote 10-0 for a SF Public Bank!

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors took a giant step for public banking June 15 by voting 10-0, a veto-proof majority, to pass the Reinvest in San Francisco Ordinance, legislation introduced by Supervisor Dean Preston to rebuild the COVID-devastated economy with a public bank.

Reinvest In San Francisco builds on years of work by the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, former Supervisors John Avalos, Malia Cohen and Sandra Lee Fewer, and many others who see the need for a municipal bank to counter the concentrated power of Wall Street banks. This legislation will result in San Francisco redirecting a portion of the city funds from “too big to fail” banks into the hands of community banks, credit unions and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) that invest to benefit SF communities.

The Process for Starting the Public Bank

Reinvest in SF sets up a Working Group which will develop the plan for establishing our bank. Last year, an extensive report by the Budget and Legislative Analyst on a Municipal Bank for San Francisco recommended a phased-in transformation of City banking by beginning with a non-depository municipal financial corporation (MFC). Lending by the MFC will finance loans for small businesses, affordable housing and sustainable infrastructure enabling a smooth transition into a public bank. The Working Group will produce a business plan for the Board of Supervisors that will be sent to State regulators for approval.

Once chartered, under the rules of The Public Bank Act (AB857) signed into law last year, SF will have its own municipal public bank. As a depository bank, it will be able to leverage its capital multiple times in loans, greatly expanding its lending capabilities.

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Parking lots kill. They also just saved lives.

Opinion by Joe Matthews  : bakersfield – excerpt (also ran in SF Chronicle)

Friends, Californians, fellow drivers, stop honking your horns and lend me your ears…

California officials — all honorable — tell us that parking consumes huge amounts of property that might be used more productively for business, housing, or transit. Abundant parking encourages people to drive more. And more driving means more accidents, more injuries and deaths, and more pollution and greenhouse gases…

I know… anti-parking policies are well-intentioned. And yet, I stare into the bleak future of the California parking lot, and feel a strange sadness. Parking lots have been, for all their faults, good and true friends to our communities too…

And have not parking lots provided utility, even life-saving service under COVID? Think how many more people might have died if our state didn’t have so many large parking lots — from Petco Park-adjacent lots in San Diego to the Cal Expo and State Fair lots in Sacramento — to turn into mass testing and vaccination sites. Hospitals used their lots to set up tents for patients during COVID surges. Communities turned parking lots into tent cities to shelter the homeless safely, and temporarily, with the virus spreading…

You could even say parking lots saved democratic politics, as election rallies became drive-ins. Might our fair state still be slurred daily by President Trump, without the dedicated service of so many parking lots to Joe Biden’s campaign?…(more)

The sentiments echo mine when I heard about the plans to build on top of the visitors’ parking lot at General Hospital. My first concern was where are they going to set up emergency triage tents when they need them. This was years ago, before they did. I suppose the next step is to close down streets to set up tent or set them up in parks. There is a real need for open space around the hospitals and there is a need for parking and vehicle access during a major catastrophe.

When you read emergency evacuation plans, the first order of business is to pack your personal vehicle with all the essentials you can, and save room for people and pets. The larger the vehicle is, the higher off the ground, and the more metal it contains, and the stronger the engine is, the better your chances are of making it out under dire circumstances. A 4-wheel drive truck is not a luxury vehicle during an evacuation.

 

 

 

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Supes to vote on public bank plan

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

The Government Audit and Oversight Committee passed unanimously a plan that could lead to a public bank in San Francisco, and the item will come before the full board Tuesday/15.

The concept has been years in the making, and the bill by Sup. Dean Preston would set up a committee of experts with the task of drafting plans for a municipal bank within one year…

There are lots of options on how the bank could operate and what it could do. That would be worked out by the panel. The bank could, according to the supes Budget and Legislative Analyst,…

Both models feasible and could operate profitability. We recommend that the City establish a non-depository MFC, at least initially, for lower operating costs, bigger impact, and no requirement for FDIC approval…(more)

This is great news. I did not know about that option.
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Senior Building Inspector Under Investigation in San Francisco

socketsite – excerpt Having admitted to accepting a previously unreported loan of $180,000 from Freydoon Ghassemzadeh, whose family operates SIA Consulting and development, a San Francisco Building Inspector that signed-off on a number of SIA Consulting’s projects in San Francisco is now under investigation and has been placed on administrative leave. According to J.K. Dineen at the Chronicle, Senior Building Inspector Bernard Curran failed to disclose the $180,000 loan until after being questioned by the City Attorney’s office in conjunction with the ongoing investigation into corruption within San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI), wasn’t clear with respect to his plans for paying back the loan, and appears to have provided sign-offs on SIA Consulting projects that were outside of the district he oversaw…(more)
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CDFW Takes Proactive Measures to Increase Salmon Smolt Survival

cdfgnews – excerpt

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is taking the proactive measure of trucking millions of hatchery-raised juvenile Central Valley fall-run chinook salmon this spring to San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and seaside net pens due to projected poor river conditions in the Central Valley. The massive trucking operation is designed to ensure the highest level of survival for the young salmon on their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean…(more)

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Zoning changes could put a hurt on Black homeownership

By Badly Barber : wired – excerpt

I am a Black grandparent, homeowner and member of the Altadena Town Council. I grew up in a single-family home, and my husband and I have lived in our house in Altadena for more than two decades. Homeownership helped my family build wealth and provide stable, quality housing, and gave us our piece of the American Dream. But state and local politicians are threatening homeownership among the Black community by damaging single-family zoning laws…

Our homes have been sanctuaries that people know they can always return to, and we plan to pass our homes to our children so they can build wealth. We also are very engaged in our community because we have a vested interest as homeowners. Our homes, in a real way, give us political power and a voice at the table.

But state and local elected officials in California–and across the United States– now seek to alter single-family zoning so that big developers can rush into middle- and working-class communities of color, demolish single-family homes and build pricey, market-rate apartments in their place. That dangerous agenda is playing out in California through Senate bills 9 and 10, which would gut single-family zoning and open the door for predatory developers — many of whom are regular campaign contributors to state and local politicians…(more)
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Plans for a public bank could take a big step forward this week

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
Plus: More taxpayer money going to settle police misconduct cases. That’s The Agenda for May 31 to June 6.
 

The Board of Supes is poised to take the next step toward creating a public bank in San Francisco.

The Government Audit and Oversight Committee will consider Thursday/3 a measure that would set up a committee with a mandate to develop a working municipal banking plan within one year…(more)

and… via email form SF Public Bank…

SFPBC Gearing Up for SF Reinvestment Hearing June 3rd!

Continue reading “Plans for a public bank could take a big step forward this week”