News

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City Encourages Corporate Homeless Sweeps by Failing to Condemn Them, Critics Charge

By Nuala Bishari : sfpublicpress – excerpt

Mayor London Breed’s apparent toleration of an unsanctioned homeless encampment “sweep” by a corporate event company this month has led her critics to ask whether the policy of City Hall is to turn a blind eye to privatized harassment of people living on the streets.

The sweep, which occurred just past midnight on the morning of Sept. 10 outside the old Honda dealership on 12th Street, resulted in the disposal of eight people’s belongings. Peter Glikshtern, a partner in the event company, Non Plus Ultra, was captured on video coordinating the operation with a hired crew. Witnesses said they threw tents and bags containing human ashes, musical instruments, car repair parts and thousands of dollars in cash into the back of two trucks, which were later taken to the dump…(more)

 

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Sales Tax for Caltrain Improvements to Face Three Counties’ Voters

By Laura Wenus : sfpublicpress – excerpt (includes audio track)

an Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties will vote on Measure RR, a one-eighth-cent sales tax to be collected for the next 30 years, whose revenue from which would provide critical funding for Caltrain. While supporters say the rail service is at risk of shutting if the measure does not pass, this is not an emergency measure brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, which has cost Caltrain the majority of its riders. Opponents of the measure point to that decrease in ridership as evidence that the need for this rail service has dropped and say it may never recover enough to justify the tax. Opponents also say that a sales tax will disproportionately affect those already most hard-hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic…(more)

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Facility beside Great Highway

By Glenn Rogers

https://sfceqa.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/lakemerced1868.jpg

This historic picture of Lake Merced shows a stream along the location of the Great Highway today where the highway is planned to be abandoned and replaced with trails, parks and other amenities. This land was filled with soil before the road was built and is beside the the Sewer Facility. Therefore, all the land here is fill soil which is vulnerable to erosion and sea level rise. Therefore, the protection of this part of the coast from sea rise and Climate Change is dubious. In addition, this is the narrowest part of the coast along Ocean Beach. The extraordinary bad placement of the sewer facility here should be abandoned, in my opinion and moved to a place better protected.

Then, the large pipe that is parallel to the beach along the Great Highway is planned to be reinforced with a concrete wall to protect the pipe. This is another example of the failed policy of hardening the land beside the ocean beside the sewer facility which only caused increased erosion of the shore there. Better to move the pipe to a location underneath the Great Highway where the City will never allow the highway and the road to be lost to sea level rise. That would be on the east side of the Great Highway which protects hundreds of residences.

The proposed Ocean Beach Plan: https://sfplanning.org/ocean-beach, includes a video
Wednesday, September 30, 2020 There’s a scoping meeting for the upcoming EIR for this project. You can sign on to that meeting here: https://sfplanning.org/event/public-scoping-meeting-ocean-beach-climate-change-adaptation-project

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Plans for new Flower Mart in Potrero Hill approved

By Ida Mojadad : sfexaminer – excerpt

The famed San Francisco Flower Mart’s new home in Potrero Hill was approved Thursday after a contentious path to relocation.

The Planning Commission unanimously approved construction of a new wholesale flower market between 16th and 17th streets at Mississippi Street, across Interstate 280 from Mission Bay medical facilities.

Vendors at the nearly 100-year-old Flower Mart initially opted to return to their site at Sixth and Brannan streets after developer Kilroy Realty Group converted it into an approved mixed-use development. But, in between clashes over its temporary relocation, concerns emerged over the impact of traffic on the wholesale hub, which relies on truck and vehicle access…(more)

SFMTA has created a traffic nightmare downtown for businesses that rely on parking and deliveries to operate. Many are leaving town taking jobs with them. The Potrero neighborhood is able to accommodate the Flower Mart with easy freeway access and parking, so those jobs will be saved. Reuse of existing buildings will cut costs and limit the environmental impact. This is project is a good solution to a number of problems.
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The Office Will Never Be the Same

By Claire Cain Miller : nytimes – excerpt

That’s probably a good thing.

In the Before Time, Dan O’Leary, a director of business partnerships at a tech company, commuted two to three hours a day and flew on weekly business trips. He adhered to a strict schedule: His alarm was set for 5:30 a.m. to fit in a Peloton ride and shower before catching the train, and his workdays were jammed with meetings.

Since the coronavirus upended office life in March, his workdays have been very different, even idyllic. Sometimes he works from a picnic blanket in a park near his home in San Jose, Calif., or calls into meetings while on a walk….

Mr. O’Leary is among the most privileged workers. His job is secure, it’s easily done from home, he can afford the space and technology to do it remotely, and his company is supportive. He and his wife do not have children, so child care and school closures are not factors when working remotely.

He’s not alone: Many white-collar workers say their lives are now like Mr. O’Leary’s. They have adjusted their schedules to better fit their lives, and they’re enjoying it, according to a new, nationally representative survey by Morning Consult for The New York Times…(more)

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Misusing taxpayer dollars for campaigns

By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt

California’s local officials routinely use taxpayer dollars for ballot measure campaigns, even though it’s illegal. One agency just got fined.

Four of the 12 measures on California’s November ballot were placed there by the Legislature.

Let’s assume that legislators had also appropriated $100 million in taxpayers’ money for campaigns to persuade voters to approve the four. It would have been an outrageous and likely illegal misappropriation of public funds under several laws…

The only agency that even expresses interest is the state Fair Political Practices Commission, because anyone who spends money on political campaigns is supposed to file reports on their activities.

Occasionally, the FPPC has penalized miscreant local agencies, the latest being Los Angeles County, which in 2017 spent a million dollars for an ill-disguised campaign to pass Measure H, a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax..

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association complained about the use of public funds, but as usual, the county’s district attorney refused to investigate. The organization filed a lawsuit and complained to the FPPC.

Last week, it was announced that county officials had agreed to a settlement — without admitting liability — and a $1.35 million penalty...

Using public funds to pass ballot measures is also illegal at the local level. Government Code Section 54964,..(more)

In San Francisco we have the FBI investigating various illegal uses of public employees time and public funds being funneled through community benefits programs  and non-profits. It turns out the community that is benefiting from these programs is a very elite community comprised of  friends of the City Family that doles out the contracts to a limited few supporters of the City Family program.

It took the FBI years of investigating to bring charges on actions that city authorities turned a blind eye to for decades. The best we can do is recommend some reading of the Marina Times articles that are covering the minute details of the cases as they unfold, starting with “Friends with Community Benefits“, by Susan Dyer Reynolds.

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State tech failures hit home again

By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt

An embarrassing glitch in reporting COVID-19 infection data is the latest in a long string of state information technology failures.

While marking time as lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom wrote a book about how technology could transform government.

“I want to make government as smart as Google,” Newsom told an interviewer after the book, “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square and Reinvent Government,” was published in 2013.

While technology “is flattening major institutions” and transforming how Americans shop, communicate, research and keep abreast of current events, Newsom said “Government as an institution is not prepared for it” and is struggling even to keep decades-old systems functioning…(more)

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Supe. Stefani resigns from behavioral health board after raising questions over finances, PPP loan

By Joshua Sabatini : sfexaminer – excerpt

City investigating financial mismanagement allegations

Supervisor Catherine Stefani has resigned from the Behavioral Health Commission after calling for an investigation into the body’s fiscal agent for alleged financial mismanagement and later learning it may have also inappropriately secured a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.

Stefani began to serve on the Behavioral Health Commission as a Board of Supervisors appointee in January 2019, when it was then called the Mental Health Board. These bodies were established in counties throughout California under state law in 1957 to advise on mental health services… (more)

Sorry that I did not see this sooner. It raises more questions about how the city is handling the funds meant to heal the truly needy and mentally challenged people that the public is so upset about. It is good to know where the problems lie if we are to ever fix them. How can San Francisco be so cavalier with our public funds and keep coming to us for more bonds and higher taxes, fines and fees to support a system that is hiding millions of dollars and scamming for more.

If you haven’t yet seen the details on the Nuru case, you should follow it on marinatimes.com. It is disgraceful and the citizens should demand a legal remedy before asking the taxpayers to pony up any more money.  It appears to be safer in our bank accounts than in theirs.

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Scott Wiener challenged from left as Jackie Fielder tries to unseat him in SF

By John Wildermuth : sfchronicle – excerpt

Jackie Fielder, a 25-year-old activist and college lecturer, is mounting a surprisingly strong challenge to state Sen. Scott Wiener in an only-in-San Francisco contest that features a progressive incumbent and an even more progressive opponent…

Fielder collected a third of the vote in the March primary to set up the all-Democratic general election in the 11th State Senate District. The Mission District resident is attacking Wiener from the left, arguing that he has not been progressive enough to properly represent the district, which includes all of San Francisco along with Daly City, Broadmoor, Colma and part of South San Francisco.

“We need someone in Sacramento we can count on 100% of the time, not 50%,” Fielder said in an interview. “Now is the time for bolder changes.”…(more)