Get notified when it’s your turn for the COVID-19 vaccine. Starting Tuesday, January 19, sign up to get an email or text message if you live or work in SF:
https://sf.gov/get-notified-when-its-your-turn-covid-19-vaccine
Climate Change Is Turning Cities Into Ovens
By Matt Simon : wired – excerpt
A new model estimates that by 2100, cities across the world could warm as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius. It’s a deadly consequence of the heat-island effect.
Whichever side of the subjective city-versus-rural debate you’re on, the objective laws of thermodynamics dictate that cities lose on at least one front: They tend to get insufferably hotter, more so than surrounding rural areas. That’s thanks to the urban heat-island effect, in which buildings and roads readily absorb the sun’s energy and release it well into the night. The greenery of rural areas, by contrast, provides shade and cools the air by releasing water…
Climate change is making the urban heat-island effect all the more dire in cities across the world, and it’s only going to get worse. Like, way worse. An international team of researchers has used a new modeling technique to estimate that by the year 2100, the world’s cities could warm by as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius on average. For perspective, that figure obliterates the Paris agreement’s optimistic goal for a global average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C from preindustrial levels. In fact, the team’s figure more than doubles the agreement’s hard goal of limiting that global rise to no more than 2 degrees C…(more)
If we needed another excuse to add to the long list of reasons to slow urban growth this may be the most viable yet. We need to preserve all the green plants on the planet, not just the jungles in South America.
California First Appellate District Court of Appeal publishes its opinion in LC/CVP v ABAG
Posted by Bob Silvestri : marinpost – excerpt
On January 6, 2021, the First Appellate District Court of Appeal issued an Order Granting Publication of its opinion in the case of New LivableCA/Community Venture Partners v ABAG, stating that
“For good cause, the request for publication is granted. Pursuant to rule 8.1105(c) of the California Rules of Court, the opinion in the above-entitled matter is ordered certified for publication in the Official Reports.”
That means the opinion of the Court of Appeal is now case law. This opinion will have broad applicability and impacts throughout the state’s legal system. To put it plainly, this is a very big deal.
The significance of this reversal of the decision by the San Francisco Superior Court, to dismiss this case, and its publication cannot be over-stated. The Appeal Court’s opinion has now become case law and as such is the law of the land in California that will impact future Brown Act petitioners for years to come.
To read the appellate court’s opinion CLICK HERE…(more)
The safety of Treasure Island residents must be addressed
By Guest Columnist Robyn Purchia : sfexaminer – excerpt
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news-columnists/the-safety-of-treasure-island-residents-must-be-addressed/
“… It’s not surprising residents struggle to trust the Navy, which is why Supervisor Matt Haney called the hearing. After years of inaction, Treasure Island residents deserve transparency and accountability. They also could use a groundswell of action from San Franciscans who care about environmental justice and systemic racism…
“The health situation is pretty bad,” Carol Harvey, an investigative reporter who covers Treasure Island for the San Francisco Bay View National Black newspaper, told me.
At the upcoming hearing, Harvey plans to anonymously list residents’ health issues. She has photos of people’s painful skin rashes, pustules and lesions. She has reports of above average rates of miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects. Cancers and strokes are common. Bones break — an indication of radiation exposure. Family dogs have seizures.
Planning Commission to hear a bad UCSF deal
By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
Massive new development that violates historic agreements is drawing widespread opposition.
If you read the San Francisco Chronicle story about the UCSF expansion plans today, you might get the impression that the school has gone to great lengths to offer affordable housing, transportation money, and open space to the community – and that everyone thinks this is a fine idea:…
That’s not exactly accurate.
In fact, the deal that will come before the City Planning Commission Thursday/7 has considerable opposition, from neighborhood groups, affordable housing leaders, and the Sierra Club…
The “widespread support” that the chancellor described, and the Chron linked to, is almost entirely elected officials who favor more growth (State Sen. Scott Wiener) or don’t represent the district (Rep. Jackie Speier and Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, both from the Peninsula), or pro-development groups like SPUR and the Chamber of Commerce, or Yimbys. Check out the list... (more)
Gavin Newsom could be ‘undermined’ by Democrats in recall efforts, report says
By Eric Ting : sfgate – excerpt
The sixth attempt to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is rapidly gaining steam amid the worsening pandemic, a controversial new stay-at-home order and an unemployment fraud scandal.
It was previously reported by Politico’s Carla Marinucci that those close to the governor were growing “increasingly worried” about the recall efforts, and Marinucci’s latest report on the recall adds another twist.
After detailing the new Republican fundraising efforts behind the recall — while noting the challenges the GOP will face in a heavily Democratic state — Marinucci quotes a “Sacramento insider aligned with a major special interest group” who says, “We’ve gotten calls from Democrats who are already kicking the tires” on getting on the ballot in a potential recall election in 2021….(more)
She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired
By Scott Morris, Bay City News Foundation : propublica – excerpt
Alice Stebbins was hired to fix the finances of California’s powerful utility regulator. She was fired after finding $200 million for the state’s deaf, blind and poor residents was missing…
Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.
Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.
“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”…(more)
Clint Reilly, S.F. Examiner’s New Owner, Vows to Expand Paper’s Newsroom, Coverage
By Laura Wenus : sfpublicpress – excerpt (includes audio)
The soon-to-be owner of the San Francisco Examiner intends to grow the publication’s newsroom and expand its coverage, diversifying the perspectives in San Francisco’s news ecosystem.
Clint Reilly, a retired political consultant with a real estate and hospitality business who also owns two local magazines, is purchasing the Examiner and SF Weekly after the two papers were under absentee ownership for years. The company he and his wife Janet co-own, Clint Reilly Communications, is expected to take over in January.
“What’s happened in newspapers over the last decade, decade and a half, even 20 years, has been essentially a huge cutback in journalists and costs at the local level,” Reilly said. “As journalists have been laid off, so have the beats that they cover. And so the amount of coverage of local news has declined dramatically over the last 10 years.”… (more)
Report on the Wiener Town Hall
Posted December 22, 2020
There were some problems at the start, and Twitter crashed. Congress had just passed the Cares package, and much of the talk was about that, and about the vaccine regimen and unemployment problesms. He talked about emphases for the new legislative session: housing in general, extending the eviction moratorium, helping small landlords, reforming criminal justice (policing), and mental health programs, including safe injection sites. The legislature has a windfall for the state budget due to the stock market and other reasons; SF has a drug overdose epidemic to deal with; there are problems with the EDD payments, with the PG&E bankruptcy, and with the Homekey program. (No specific bills were mentioned)
He ended the hour by saying there would be more town halls in the future, with some great guest speakers…
Regards,
Charles
Hypocrisy in the local zoning debate
By Zelda Bronstein : 48hills – excerpt
Professors who argue that local regulations drive up housing prices appear to admit they have no credible data to back up that argument.
On December 1, 48hills ran my story about the California State Auditor’s dubious sortie against local land use authority, an incursion purportedly undertaken in behalf of greater housing affordability. While I’m waiting for the Auditor to respond to my Public Records Act request for documentation of her numerous claims, I want to call out the hypocrisy of three of the scholars cited in my story.
To illustrate the tenuousness of the Auditor’s attack, I observed that a growing number of academics are questioning the argument that “local constraints significantly hamper the provision of affordable housing.” I illustrated that interrogation with a few examples:…(more)
Government confusion, fraud and corruption are to blame for the high cost of building in San Francisco.
If we look at San Francisco’s building triumvirate, Planning, DBI and Permitting departments, that the public and small contractors must wade through we can see that the primary costs for building and remodeling in the city is not in government regulations. It is in government confusion, fraud and corruption. The sad thing is that is took the FBI t expose what many knew was going on for decades. This system is rigged. You must pay to play or get out of the game.