Is Jeff Adachi Now Public Enemy Number 1?

By George Wooding

Public Defender Jeff Adachi has been unofficially declared public enemy number one by San Francisco labor unions and City politicians.
Adachi had the audacity to place Proposition B, “The Sustainable Employee Benefits Reform Act,” on the November 2 ballot, against the will of City unions and local politicians.

If passed, Proposition B will force City union employees who are now paying nothing towards their retirement to make an annual retirement contribution of 7.5% of their income. [Editor’s Note: In the 1990’s, the City picked up paying retirement contributions for employees in lieu of giving them raises.] Police and firemen will have to increase their annual retirement contributions from an average of 7.5% to 10% of their base pay. Proposition B will also require that City employees who are now paying 25% of their dependents’ health insurance benefits to pay 50%.
City unions believe it is their right to negotiate pension contributions, salaries, and work rules with City Hall. Adachi altered this time-honored relationship by going directly to San Francisco voters with a ballot petition. He needed 46,000 valid signatures to place Proposition B on the ballot; he collected 75,614 signatures

The success of Adachi’s petition effort has scared the hell out of City politicians and unions for the following reasons:

1) Adachi went directly to the voters with his argument;

2) He did not bother negotiating with the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor’s office, or the unions;

3) He showed that one individual with enough financial backing ($314,295 in donations) working with volunteers can place a measure on the ballot;

4) San Francisco voters are prepared — even eager — to take benefits away from the unions; and

5) City politicians would be wise to start respecting the opinions of San Francisco voters over the opinions of union bargaining teams.

City government has always been San Francisco’s biggest industry. Our City of 844,466 people employs 37,277 full- and part-time employees — a ratio of one employee for every 22.7 residents. The cozy relationship between City government and its “recognized” bargaining unions is complex. Union-supported candidates are usually elected to office; in return, many City labor unions enjoy preferential access to elected officials, favorable contracts, work rules, and pro-union legislation.

The government/union relationship has generally been good for elected officials, good for City labor unions, but extremely expensive for under-represented San Francisco voters. If our elected officials won’t represent the citizens’ interests, ballot petition measures may soon become the method-of-choice for giving citizens a seat at the labor negotiation table.

The citizens of San Francisco support City labor and have been very generous. During the past 25 years, voters have approved initiatives — such as 2002’s Proposition H, which increased the maximum pensions for police and firefighters from 75% to 90% of their base salaries — that have either increased City employee benefits and pensions, or favorably changed how union salaries are negotiated.

We may have been too generous.

For many, but not all, job classifications, San Francisco has the highest-paid City employees in the country. The City can no longer afford the high salaries and unfunded benefit packages of City management, and safety employees such as firefighters and police.

Mayor Newsom—whose salary is $250,903 is only 29th on the list of highest paid City employees. Top earner, Charles Keohane, a former deputy police chief who earned $516,118 retired last year, cashing out stored up vacation sick days and comp time.

San Francisco’s pension problems are being caused by our highest-paid City employees. Between 2003 and 2009, the payroll for City employees earning over $90,000 annually has grown from $314.1 million, to $1.48 billion, increasing the number of employees earning over $90,000 from 2,918 to 11,981, a 9,063 increase. High-salaried employees represent one-third of the workforce, but consume 56% — $1.5 billion — of the City’s $2.7 billion annual payroll. The City has failed to limit excessive management salaries.

These salary figures do NOT include the additional 32%–36% annual health care and retirement benefits each high-paid worker receives. A $90,000 per year employee with benefits is actually costing the City over $120,000 per year.

The average San Franciscan working in the private sector is making approximately $74,000 per year, and many private-sector workers have to pay their own health care and retirement. Another 43,000 San Franciscans are currently unemployed. The City payroll, pension, and benefit packages are no longer self-sustaining.

The Double Standard San Francisco has been trying to reduce city salaries on the backs of its lowest-paid workers by demanding permanent salary and benefit concessions. Entire job categories — such as clerical secretaries and Recreation and Park Directors — have been eliminated in some City departments. Job standards have been changed to allow higher-salaried workers to replace lower-paid workers. Lower-paid union jobs are being replaced (privatized) by non-union workers who work for less money and fewer, if any, benefits. Job positions are no longer filled, or are turned into part-time, non-benefit jobs. Meanwhile, the higher-paid safety employees have taken temporarily-deferred salary increases, no permanent cuts in salary, and few job cuts.

Top City managers have agreed to furloughed work days and have been asked to voluntarily reduce their pay (very few volunteered for this salary sacrifice). Deferring salary increases into future years does not reduce the City’s pension liability.

In 2009, the 17,508 city employees earning less than $60,000 in base pay (excluding overtime) were reduced by 1,966 employees, cutting $70.8 million from the City payroll; at the same time, the City added 779 employees earning over $90,000, for a payroll increase of $115 million. The City used the money gained from permanent salary concessions (cuts) from lower-paid workers or eliminating their positions entirely, to hire the 779 higher-paid workers. In San Francisco, this is alternatively called “pension reform,” or “balancing the budget.”

Former Mayor, Willie Brown, an expert in back-room deal-making with City unions, said it best in his January 3 Chronicle column:

“Over the years, the civil service system has changed from one that protects jobs to one that runs the show. The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians, pushed by our friends in labor, gradually expanded pay and benefits to private-sector levels while keeping the job protection and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages that pay ex-workers almost as much as current workers. Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most office holders.

“But at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact that 80% of the state, county and City budget deficits are due to [increasing] employee costs.

“Either we do something about it at the ballot box or a judge will do something about it in Bankruptcy Court. And if you think that I am kidding, just look at Vallejo,” Brown wrote.

What Willie Brown didn’t acknowledge, is that Vallejo went into bankruptcy proceedings in large measure due to raises and benefit packages awarded to firefighters, police officers, and management employees that amounted to unfunded liabilities, not raises to clerical and lower-paid non-safety City workers.

The City’s cost of pension fund contributions and health insurance for active and retired employees has seen an 85 percent-change increase over the past five years, from $419 million in fiscal year 2004–2005 to a budgeted $776 million in fiscal year 2009–2010. In 2010, the City faced a $483 million budget shortfall and is expecting a $789 million budget deficit in 2011.

The City’s cost of pension fund contributions and health insurance for active and retired employees is projected to exceed $1.1 billion by fiscal year 2012–2013. The City needs to address these pension problems immediately, and address the $1.48 billion paid for $90,000+ annual salaries.

Jeff Adachi is right in trying to reduce San Francisco’s skyrocketing pension costs and unfunded health care costs. Someone in City government has to be brave and responsible.

Unfortunately, Adachi tried a shotgun approach that applies to the lowest-paid workers as well as to the highest-paid workers. The $90,000 per year employees can afford Adachi’s pension reform, but the lowest-paid City workers can’t. According to Catherine Dodd, director of the City’s Health Service System, “An employee using the City’s Kaiser Permanente plan for them and one dependent would see their monthly premium rise from $9 to $249. Employees enrolled in the Blue Shield plan would see monthly health care premium for them and one dependent nearly quadruple, from $121 to $473.”

This is what the 2009–2010 Civil Grand Jury wrote in its June 2010 report, “Pension Tsunami, The Billion Dollar Bubble” summary: “The Grand Jury is concerned that the public may conclude from our findings that all city workers receive excessive retirement benefits or gain from abusive pension practices. This is simply not true for the vast majority of city workers. The typical public servant who goes to work every day to serve the public will receive a modest pension after many years of service to the City. The Grand Jury and the public should be grateful for the dedication and hard work of a majority of city employees.”

If Adachi had just gone after the $90,000+ employees, he would win in a landslide. Even some of the City’s lower-paid workers might have quietly supported this pension reform. The San Francisco public is suffering through financial hard times. We love our firefighters and police — and don’t love our high-priced city bureaucrats — but we can no longer afford all of you.

If Adachi’s Proposition B fails and the City fails to implement “real” pension reform for higher-salaried workers, it won’t be hard to find 46,000 valid signatures for the next pension reform initiative aimed directly at City employees earning $90,000+ salaries.

We’ll prefer this before following Vallejo’s bankruptcy trajectory. Just ask Willie Brown.

Feedback: wooding@westsideobserver.com

Sept. 2010

A Parks Commission Gone Wild

By George Wooding

San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Commission has long proved citizens have the right to be heard — but not listened to.

Anyone testifying before the seven-member Recreation and Park Commission (RPC) about keeping our park lands as natural open spaces should expect, in return, glazed looks, yawns, furtive texting, and attempts to appear to be listening thoughtfully. Whatever your issue may be, long before the RPC starts taking public testimony, it has already decided what it will do.

Welcome to San Francisco’s version of pre-scripted Kabuki theater.

The RPC’s new mantra is to make the Recreation and Park Department (RPD) financially self-sustainable through the creation of revenue-generating projects, events, and privatization of our park facilities. If you want to stop and smell the flowers, it’s the RPC’s job to approve making you pay for the privilege. This is completely sad, because the RPC was originally created to represent the citizens and be our advocates to the RPD and the Mayor’s office. Now, no member on the RPC listens to the public and all they want is our money.

San Francisco’s rubber-stamp RPC meetings are just a symptom of the Mayor’s Office having the power to select all seven RPC members. If you have friends in high places, or if your union or non-profit makes a major donation or concessions on your behalf, or if you personally make a large donation to Gavin Newsom, you, too, can be on the Commission. Citizens with little money and no political connections to Gavin Newsom on their resume need not apply to join this exclusive club.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is sponsoring a November ballot measure — a City Charter amendment —designed to break the Mayor’s stranglehold over the RPC’s selection process. Mirkarimi’s amendment would change the appointment power so that the Board of Supervisors would appoint three RPC members, the Mayor would appoint three, and one member would be appointed jointly.

Let’s take a look at recently-appointed RPC president Mark Buell’s qualifications for the job. According to the Secretary of State’s campaign finance database, prior to being appointed to the RPC last January, Mark Buell donated $4,743.93 and his wife Susie Thompkins-Buell, the former owner of Esprit Clothing, donated $25,900.00 (the maximum allowable) during October 2009 to Mayor Newsom’s campaign to become Governor. On January 19, former RPC president Jim Lazarus suddenly resigned after seven-and-a-half years of service. Following his appointment to the RPC and becoming the RPC’s president just days later (a highly unusual coincidence) Mark Buell donated $6,500 twice and his wife donated $6,500.00 twice (in March and May 2010) to Newsom’s Lieutenant Governor campaign — for total giving of $56,643.93. Lazarus must have skipped making campaign donations.

Mark Beull’s RPC resume commendably lists him as a native San Franciscan, a graduate of UCSF, and a decorated Vietnam Veteran. Buell’s resume goes on to state “He has spent 35 years in both public and private real estate development.” This is a great resume for someone who is trying to develop San Francisco’s parks, attract investment capital, privatize park services, increase private donations, and create park enterprises that will compete with private businesses. If we want to turn Golden Gate Park into a Six Flags theme park, Mark Buell is probably the perfect man for the job.

At a recent Recreation and Park Commission meeting, it was difficult to listen to Commissioner Gloria Bonilla’s tortured speech about her concern for the environment, before she finally arrived at the “But, the RPD needs the money” part of her decision. Perhaps a new condition for RPC appointments should require acting lessons, since the RPC’s decision was never in doubt. Commissioner Larry Martin droned on about how the public needed to accept “change” for a pro-development decision. President Barack Obama hasn’t used the word “change” as often as Larry Martin did that night. Martin, a one-time, high-ranking Transportation Worker’s union official, was appointed by Mayor Newsom in 2007 and has absolutely no recreation and park experience listed on his official Commission resume.

If having no practical recreation and park experience is seen as a plus by the Mayor’s Office, current RPD director Phil Ginsburg is uniquely qualified for his job. Mr. Ginsburg served as a San Francisco Deputy City Attorney from 2000–2004 as the City’s chief labor negotiator, served as head of the City’s Department of Human Resources from 2004–2007, and was Mayor Newsom’s Chief of Staff from 2007–2008. On July 7, 2009 Ginsburg was appointed by Newsom as the RPD’s new General Manager, with absolutely no previous experience in managing park or recreational facilities. “Phil Ginsburg is a skilled manager and a natural leader who loves this city and our parks. We are lucky to have Phil on the job, and we expect great things from him as he leads this department into a new era,” said Mayor Newsom.

The “new era” mentioned by Newsom is based on a simple premise: The public pays for the parks, the RPD controls use of our parks, and then the public is charged again when they use park services. This is called privatization.

The RPC members routinely approve Rec and Park Department requests, whether for charging fees, decreasing Rec Center staff, or turning our parks into landscaped flea markets. Commission members simply did what Mr. Ginsberg and the Mayor’s office wanted them to do. The right decision for RPC members will always be to do what Ginsberg and Newsom want them to do. Fortunately, concerned neighbors and environmental groups who care more about parks remaining as natural parks than becoming “financial cost centers” are fighting back by challenging the RPC’s rubber-stamped attempts to make a profit.

No member on the current Mayor-controlled RPC ever has a differing opinion. An analysis of the last 21 posted commission meeting minutes (1/15/09 – 2/18/10) revealed that 100% of the 130 agenda items presented to the RPC were approved and 97.6% (127) of the commission votes were unanimous.

According to Supervisor Mirkarimi, his RPC appointment Charter change initiative “Will bring additional diversity and accountability to the Recreation and Park Commission.” Mirkarimi isn’t saying that RPC members appointed by the Board of Supervisors would be more qualified than Commissioners appointed by the Mayor. He’s saying that the Commission members will represent different points of view than the current RPC members appointed exclusively by the Mayor. Many people and neighborhood groups who love nature have been pushed aside, ignored, and disenfranchised by the current RPC’s and RPD’s “financially self-sustainable” mission. It would be nice to have an accessible Commission represented by many points of view, rather than just the Mayor’s point of view.

Supervisor Mirkarimi’s RPC appointment initiative merits consideration and public approval. If San Francisco voters want to bring the Commission back into balance and make the Commission represent San Franciscans, rather than representing the Mayor, we need to support Mirkarimi’s Charter amendment and have it placed on November’s municipal ballot. Let’s allow San Francisco voters to decide.

Please contact the offices of this legislation’s seven sponsors — Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos, Chris Daly, Sophie Maxwell, Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos — and show your support for the RPC appointment Charter amendment.

It will be the first step in reversing the Kabuki theater we now have at the RPC, and in regaining control of our parks.

George Wooding, President, West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Feedback: wooding@westsideobservor.com

July 2010

Vote NO on A On June 8

Your vote is important, and matters.

By George Wooding

Proposition A — San Francisco School Board’s “School Facilities Special Tax” — is the most destructive and divisive measure on the June 8 ballot. This Proposition is only “special” because it forces property owners to subsidize the public education costs of City renters. Quietly snuggled among Statewide energy measures, politician and judge races, and controversial City propositions, Proposition A is almost guaranteed to be overlooked by San Francisco voters.

Proposition A is a 20-year parcel tax that will cost homeowners $32.20 and landlords $16.10 per unit annually. City renters who comprise 65% of the population and have at least 36,500 of the 56,200 children attending public schools will not pay a penny. This new Prop A bond will fund unspecified school maintenance projects and seismic upgrades; without specificity, why should voters approve it? Approximately $7 million will be collected annually, but it will take a two-thirds majority (66.3%) vote to pass Proposition A.

Is this taxation without representation? Everyone loves children and wants all kids to have a wonderful education, even empty-nester homeowners. But why should property owners be asked to pay everyone else’s school tax bill?

The 2008 Quality Teacher & Education Act (QTEA), another recent parcel tax that helps pay for school teacher’s salaries, will cost each property owner $205.51 this year. Once again, the 65% of San Francisco’s population who rent and have many more school children will not pay a penny. Please note the QTEA parcel tax was passed by exactly 70% of the voters. This year’s Proposition A parcel tax WILL also probably be passed by approximately 70% of voters. Property owners will likely end up paying at least $237.71 more annually than renters for city schools.

San Francisco cannot stop the School Board from issuing bonds or taxes. Ever since the passage in 2001 of State Proposition 39, school boards have been allowed to place their own parcel taxes and school bond measures on the ballot. San Francisco’s School Board no longer needs the City’s permission to add school taxes and bonds onto City municipal election ballots. School board bonds only need a 55% approval from the electorate, not the usual two-thirds majority. Proposition 39 dictates that school bonds will only be used for repairs, construction, or replacement of school facilities and classrooms. Proposition 39 also stipulates no property tax limits, and has no provision to pass property tax increases onto renters. Additionally, school bonds cannot be used to pay salaries or operating expenses.

By adding Proposition A to the ballot, the School Board is severely hurting the chances of the passage of San Francisco’s Proposition B, a $412.3 million Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bond also on the June 8 ballot. Proposition B has been planned by the City for at least the last five years and is part of San Francisco’s scheduled capital improvement plan. San Francisco’s financially strapped voters are not in the mood to approve two separate revenue-generating measures. In the mind of voters, schools and children’s education are much more important than seismic retrofitting of fire stations. If Proposition B fails, the School Board will be largely responsible.

The SFUSD is also contemplating a much larger parcel tax for the November election based on the passage of the 2004 Proposition H Public Education Fund. The November parcel tax is rumored to be as high as $400 annually per homeowner. The SFUSD has neither confirmed nor denied this amount. Per Proposition H, The City agreed to an annual $60 million General Fund school set-aside in fiscal years 2009 through 2015. San Francisco had lots of money in 2004, but has a $483 million deficit today. When the Proposition H fund was created, its language stated that the last five years of General Fund contributions would be adjusted for the estimated decrease in the City’s discretionary funds. Needless to say, the SFUSD will not be receiving $60 million annually for each of the next five years. So, once again, the SFUSD will be placing another parcel tax on November’s ballot aimed directly at property owners. Not only will the November school board parcel tax fail, it will cause every other City revenue measure requiring a two-thirds vote on the November ballot to fail.

It’s hard to say if the San Francisco School Board is foolish, desperate, or both. The SFUSD has an anticipated $113 million deficit over the next two years and will receive only limited State funds. On May 21, the SFUSD even sued the State of California claiming that the State had failed in its constitutional obligation to support public schools. California currently has minimum education funding levels at about 40% of the State budget. There are multiple reasons that the SFUSD’s parcel tax model is no longer viable:

• We are living in a bad economy.

• Contrary to popular belief, homeowners are not wealthy. Many homeowners are either under-employed or unemployed. There are over 47,000 unemployed people in San Francisco (nobody knows what the real number is).

• Most retirement funds are down approximately 30%.

• Property owners are helping elderly parents and have kids in private schools or college.

• People who purchased a house within the last three years are paying extremely high property taxes, while their homes have often declined in value by over 15%.

• Homeowners are aging. Any homeowner over the age of 65 is exempt from paying the school parcel tax. This means that actually less than one third of the population will end up supporting the entire population by passing Proposition A.

• San Francisco’s renter population does not pay its fair share of public education.

• Proposition A will not provide enough money to solve problems it is intended to address. Does anyone really believe that $7 million a year will fix the SFUSD’s infrastructure?

• Proposition A does not specifically stipulate how, where, or when this new parcel tax money will be used, or what accountability measures will be utilized.

• It is unlikely that homeowners will approve two separate school parcel taxes in one year.

• A poor track record of oversight: This new Proposition A is replacing a 1990 infrastructure parcel tax that just expired. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, approximately $38 million of the $150 million collected over twenty years was misappropriated and spent on administrative and non-teaching salaries.

The traditional parcel tax model that the SFUSD has relied upon is near collapse. Proposition A is the last parcel tax that homeowners and property owners can reasonably be expected to approve to continually pay. San Francisco renters — apparently the SFUSD’s sacred cow — need to step up and pay their fair share of the school budget.

No City revenue measures requiring two-thirds majority passage will likely pass, while having to compete with a school parcel tax in either June or November. The SFUSD needs to create a fair model to generate revenue from the entire city and …San Francisco needs to figure out a way to stop the SFUSD from contributing to the defeat of its revenue generating measures on the ballot.

George Wooding, President, West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Feedback: wooding@westsideobserver.com

June 2010

Déjà Vu: Tackling the Breach at Ocean Beach

By George Wooding

On January 11, 2010 Mayor Gavin Newsom declared “a state of local emergency to exist in connection with the severe erosion along the Great Highway, due to a series of large swells, windstorms and rain storms at Ocean Beach.” Parts of the Great Highway were slipping into the ocean, and parking lots at the bottom of Sloat Boulevard were disintegrating.

Yes, recent wind and rain storms eroded Ocean Beach, but this “emergency” was actually caused by years of City-deferred maintenance, inaction, and neglect. Much like what happened to the New Orleans levees, San Francisco has long known that parts of the Great Highway — especially the 3,000-foot section between Sloat Boulevard and Fort Funston — face being permanently washed away. It’s embarrassing that City officials have once again been caught off guard by a known and often recurring problem. Can anyone say “déjà vu”?

San Francisco’s problems with Ocean Beach are man-made problems.

San Francisco caused Ocean Beach’s beach-erosion problem by repeatedly increasing its size using landfill, and then building on the landfill. The current shoreline is a man-made extension. Between 1895 and the 1930’s the Ocean Beach shoreline was pushed at least two hundred feet seaward to promote urban development. Between the 1940’s and 1960’s, concrete debris, bricks, soil, and sand were used to increase the width of the beach and to form artificial bluffs. The City continued to increase the size of the beach through the 1980’s. The Pacific Ocean is now simply reclaiming the man-made beach and in-fill that has been extended into the Ocean.

The Real Problem

The City built the massive 16-year-old Lake Merced Sewage Pipe directly underneath (40 feet below) the Great Highway; it was completed in 1994 as part of the San Francisco PUC’s $200 million Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant. The Highway and parking lots were built on landfill the Ocean is now reclaiming. While the 14 foot diameter pipe was tunneled in harder native materials at elevations below the adjacent beach, it was located very close to the Ocean, below the southbound lanes of the highway. After ocean waves tore into the bluff that supports the Great Highway, the sewage pipe was just 10 yards — barely 30 feet! — from the ocean’s edge. Over 10 million gallons of Westside raw sewage and wastewater flow through this pipe following rainy conditions. The pipe takes sewage to the Oceanside Treatment Plant where it is partially treated and then pumped through an underwater pipe for release four miles out into the sea. As the shoreline recedes, there is a very good chance that the Lake Merced Sewage Pipe will either end up buried under the ocean floor, or exposed to the ocean.

Any rupture to the sewage pipe could cause a huge ecological disaster, involving millions of gallons of treated and effluent (partially-treated) sewage and liquid waste pouring into the ocean and onto the fragile coastline. Earthquake-induced liquefaction to the area may pose another distinct threat.

The president of the California Shore and Beach Preservation Association, Bob Battalio, who is a professional civil engineer, states, “The Ocean Beach landfill is not sustainable against the active shoreline. The real problem isn’t erosion, it’s that the City built crutial infrastructure on landfill and too close to the ocean. We once thought the Lake Merced Sewage Pipe was safe for the near term because of its low elevation and strength. Based on the City’s assessment of vulnerability, we were wrong.”

According to the Department of Public Works (DPW), some sections of ocean bluffs south of Sloat Boulevard have eroded by up to 70 feet just within the last year. The rock crown of the Southwest Ocean Outfall Pipe — part of the plant that discharges partially-treated wastewater four miles off shore into the Pacific Ocean — is also threatened by erosion. A 2009 report filed by the Pacific Institute shows San Francisco’s sea level rose eight inches during the last 100 years, but is expected to rise an additional four-and-a-half feet — yes, feet — by 2100 due to increases in ocean temperatures and melting ice sheets. Report calculations project that Northern California’s sandy dunes could retreat an average of 558 feet (186 yards) and cliffs could recede an average of 217 feet by 2100. Higher sea levels, coupled with high tides and fierce storms, will cause storm waves to make increasingly deeper inroads into the receding shoreline.

The City has responded to the latest Ocean Beach “emergency” by placing a 425-foot-long rock wall — approximately 12,000 tons of rock — south of Sloat Boulevard below the San Francisco Zoo. This rock wall is alternatively called a revetment or coastal armoring. The revetment starts at the base of the eroded beach area and extends up the cliff’s face. Ideally, sand will be added on top of the rock to increase the width of the Bluff. The Army Corps of Engineers — the same folks involved with the New Orleans levees — is continuing to dump sand near the coastal armoring hoping to create a beach and changing the ocean’s littoral (sand transport) current, but this “beach nourishment” approach is limited at this location because the Ocean’s littoral current is taking sand away from this section of shore; as the surrounding shores recede, this divergent zone is aimed directly at the Great Highway and the Lake Merced Sewage Pipe. This has the same effect as aiming water from a hose directly onto pavement 24/7.

The emergency Ocean Beach coastal armoring is a short-term, Band-Aid approach that will gradually fail. Coastal armoring can only be engineered to accommodate a certain storm size or rise in sea level. Coastal armoring of Ocean Beach requires regular monitoring and constant, expensive maintenance. Paradoxically, armoring is not as effective as natural shorelines at dissipating the energy from waves and tides. As a result, armored shorelines tend to be more vulnerable to erosion, causing increased erosion of adjacent beaches.

“As the sea rises, San Franciscans will be forced to decide: Should we adapt to the changing environment, or should we try to make it adapt to us? “

By the time the City actually develops a long-term plan for Ocean Beach, we may all be up to our knees in sea water filled with effluvium (odorous fumes given off by waste or decaying matter).

In July 1999, then-Supervisor Gavin Newsom voted with the unanimous Board of Supervisors by passing Resolution 698-99, which prohibited the expenditure of funds on the use of hard rock structures (such as rock revetment or seawalls) to stabilize conditions at Ocean Beach. This year, the City circumvented the Board’s 1999 Resolution by declaring an emergency and began expending funds on coastal armoring of Ocean Beach. The 1999 Board’s Resolution also called for the establishment of a long-term plan to address erosion at Ocean Beach.

In 2002, Mayor Willie Brown’s Ocean Beach Task Force issued Resolution 001-02-COE, which recommended supporting long-term solutions “through the planning partnership process.” The Mayor took three years before establishing, in 2005, the Ocean Beach Vision Council charged with developing a 30- to 50-year plan for Ocean Beach. The Vision Council must be wearing very dark sunglasses, since it blindly hasn’t even issued a draft report in the five years since being created. The DPW and the Recreation and Park Department are currently working on a plan with the Army Corps of Engineers. It is unclear how much of the Recreation and Park Department’s budget is funding the coastal armoring to protect City recreation and park land.

On April 19, 2010, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, with the support of Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, drafted a new Board Resolution requesting a “comprehensive planning process be re-established to develop long-term solutions to the erosion problems at Ocean Beach.” None of these attempts at long-term plans are either drafted, followed, implemented, or completed. Nothing changes except the eroding shoreline’s increased risk to the 14-foot-diameter Lake Merced Sewage Pipe and the Great Highway above it, and risks to the Southwest Ocean Outfall Pipe.

It’s time for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), the City’s private think tank, to bring all Ocean Beach stake-holders together to really draft a 30- to 50-year plan for Ocean Beach. SPUR has the connections, knowledge, experience, and vision to develop a realistic plan. SPUR’s stated mission is to promote good planning and good government for San Francisco. SPUR’s Executive Director, Gabriel Metcalf, states, “If SPUR is able to help with the master planning, our role will be to ensure that all the different viewpoints get heard and that the solutions are really working with the full technical information about the ecological processes.”

Coastal experts such as Mr. Battalio are recommending a gradual surrender of the coastline to the Ocean. They believe that: 1) Infrastructure such as the Great Highway and the Lake Merced Sewage Pipe may have to be moved away from coastal erosion hazard zones; 2) Coastal armoring and structural measures should be minimized, with all armoring and rubble to be removed as soon as practical; 3) A sand management plan needs to be developed where sand is placed to maintain the beach and dunes; 4) The natural ecology of Ocean Beach’s flora and fauna needs to be re-established; and 5) There should be extensive Ocean Beach monitoring and adaptive management. This should become the template for the City’s long overdue Ocean Beach management plan.

As the sea rises, San Franciscans will be forced to decide: Should we adapt to the changing environment, or should we try to make it adapt to us? No matter what we do, there will be consequences down the line. It’s time to decide the fate of Ocean Beach and San Francisco’s endangered infrastructure. San Francisco needs to immediately develop a realistic, long-term plan, before the 14-foot-diameter sewage pipe and the Great Highway only 40 feet above it collapse under the weight of inaction.

George Wooding is the President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Feedback: wooding@westsideobserver.com. More info: www.sfsurfrider.org/

May 2010

MUNI: Operators Salaries v. MUNI Riders?

by George Wooding

It is time for City voter’s to get on the bus and sign District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd’s Muni Reform initiative. The initiative will force Muni operators to negotiate their pay scale and work rules by using collective bargaining. Elsbernd’s initiative is simply asking Muni’s 2,000-member transportation workers union, TWU-250A, to negotiate salaries like almost every other City union.

Muni operators do earn their salaries. They are not overpaid. They have an incredibly hard job and they generally do it well, but the union must share the City’s financial pain. Jim Lazarus, the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce, states, “employees have to realize that they cannot keep getting paid the same when less money is coming in, without either cutting services to the public or laying off their fellow workers.” By failing to negotiate salary concessions, the union is demonstrating that the needs of the City, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), and Muni’s riders are less important to them than their own personal salary and benefit needs.

Currently, driver salaries are determined by a non-negotiable Charter amendment which guarantees that the base wage of Muni operators must be no less than the average of the two highest-paid transit agencies in the country. Muni operators are currently making $27.92 per hour and this rate will increase to approximately $29.52, a 5.4% raise. Meanwhile, San Francisco has an anticipated $522 million dollar budget deficit for 2010-2011, and 17,000 city employees were recently given pink slips. Mayor Newsom is attempting to impose a 37.5 hour work week, which is the equivalent of a 6.25 percent pay cut. A vast majority of rehired City workers will be taking pay reductions and not pay raises. Well over 1,000 employees will probably either be fired or forced into early retirement. Starting on July 1, 2010 Muni operators will receive at least an $8 million increase in pay.

The TWU-250A is willing to sacrifice jobs for increased salaries and benefits. In a sad dog-eat-dog twist, a large majority of senior operators are willing to sacrifice the operators with less seniority. So far, 400 SFMTA employees have received pink slips, including approximately 100 pink slips sent to drivers.

Irwin Lum, the president of TWU-250, who is a very smart guy, saw the handwriting on the wall. In mid-February, Lum tried to negotiate $15 million in Muni operator contract concessions, but his membership soundly rejected the cost-savings plan. Lum is still trying to negotiate union concessions, but it is too late — the public relations damage has been done. Smelling blood, the SFMTA and City politicians have tried to make TWU-250A the poster child for what is wrong with the SFMTA. When it comes to Muni, the financially broke SFMTA and local politicians have little to brag about and much to hide. The union makes a convenient scapegoat.

For over 40 years, Muni operator salaries were determined under a non-negotiable salary formula which kept transit operators among the highest paid in the country. The determined wage was used as a wage “ceiling” and operators could not make more than this salary average. In 2007, then City Supervisor Aaron Peskin desperately needed to pass Proposition A, The Clean Air and Better Muni Reform Act. To pass Proposition A, the City negotiated an idiotic deal with the union by making the determined-wage-average a “floor” instead of a ceiling. This meant that the union’s wage negotiations would now use the determined-wage-average as a starting point for salary negotiations. Proposition A supporters felt that Muni operators would negotiate away “bad work rules” by receiving larger salaries. Trapped in an ironic catch-22, the SFMTA has been too under-funded to offer higher salaries to TWU-250A operators and has not been able to negotiate away any of the union work rules. In 2008, 82% of TWU-250A’s rank-and-file members approved a contract extension through 2011 that included no work rule changes.

TWU-250A’s inefficient and expensive work rules are a large part of Muni’s budget problems. Muni’s operators are not required to call in sick/out every day that they will be absent. This makes it impossible for Muni to know if its daily scheduling will work. Drivers don’t have to work 40 hours a week to earn overtime pay. If a driver works over eight hours in a day, any additional working hours are considered to be overtime. Muni cannot hire part-time workers because they don’t have enough full time workers. This creates a situation where operators will work at peak times in the mornings and evenings with little to do through the middle of the day. The sacred six rule: in each of Muni’s six division there are six senior operators who only drive only one run per week (2 hours) and spend the rest of the work week doing union organizing.

Elsbernd’s Muni Reform initiative will give the union a healthy dose of reality by: 1) Resuming a “collective bargaining” relationship with TWU-250A; 2) Wiping-out automatic annual salary guarantees; 3) Insuring that Muni operator health benefits will be equivalent to other unions and a majority of City employees for at least the first contract year; and 4) Eliminating all existing Muni work rules and having them renegotiated.

The SFMTA is broke and is operating in a state of fiscal emergency. The agency cut 10% of Muni’s operating service last year and is planning to make another “emergency” 5-10% service cut on May 1. Parking ticket rates and garage rates will be increased. Residential parking fees will also be increased from $76.00 to $96.00 annually. The SFMTA will soon be trying to extend the hours of San Francisco’s parking meters throughout the City. The declared fiscal emergency will allow Muni to increase customer fares and fees without undergoing the usual State environmental reviews. The SFMTA board needs to close a $12.1 million deficit for the remainder of the fiscal year and faces a $103.7 million projected deficit over the next two years. Driver wages and benefits account for about 25% of the transportation agency’s $768 million annual operating budget.

Think about this: For a second time in the last twelve months, the SFMTA — in a “transportation first” City — is considering reducing services and increasing costs. Riders who are paying higher prices for less service and have other options will stop using Muni. People don’t want to get on Muni, they want to get off. Twenty percent of the SFMTA’s revenue comes from riders’ fares; approximately 34% comes from revenue generated by cars. The rest of Muni’s funds come from a State fuel tax and San Francisco’s General Fund. The SFMTA will receive $36 million from the State this year in transit funding and according to SFMTA Director, Nathanial Ford, Muni service may only be cut by 5% rather than the planned 10%. Governor Schwarzenegger has repeatedly borrowed or stolen from gas tax funds dedicated to transit. The SFMTA has lost about $179 million in State transit funding over the last three years. There’s a hole in this bucket that can’t be fixed.

Please support and sign Supervisor Sean Elsbernd’s Muni Reform initiative. The initiative will provide SFMTA’s management greater flexibility in making difficult budget choices by allowing the transit agency to prioritize services for riders over salaries for drivers. If you are interested in signing the petition, learning more about Supervisor Elsbernd’s Muni reform proposals, or volunteering to help collect signatures, please send an email to sean_elsbernd@yahoo.com.

George Wooding, President, West of Twin Peaks Central Council

April 2010

Will Kids Go to School In Their Own Neighborhoods?

by George Wooding

Parents throughout San Francisco are about to receive a big helping of “be careful what you ask for.” In the midst of its worst budget crisis, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is trying to overhaul its wildly-unpopular student assignment system for elementary and middle schools. Newly-developed admission policies will prioritize sending students to school(s) closest to their homes. The overhauled school assignment system is scheduled to be finalized in March.

After 28 years of social engineering, the SFUSD has come full-circle by finally determining that neighborhood children would benefit by attending their local schools. This simple change in admissions policy will help keep San Francisco children in their neighborhoods and keep schools at the center of their communities.

Under the three current SFUSD admissions proposals, a child’s home address will become one of the major criteria for determining which school they are assigned to attend. Children living in neighborhoods with good public schools will mostly attend good schools. Children living in neighborhoods with mediocre public schools will mostly attend mediocre schools. The SFUSD and the Board of Education will be responsible for determining the geographic boundaries or “zones” into which each school and neighborhood fall.

The selection criteria for school boundaries/zones will have more impact on the neighborhoods than the creation of the eleven Board of Supervisor districts. There will be winners and losers in this process. Some children will receive better educations than others and property values will rise in neighborhoods with good schools. Nobody knows how these borders will be determined.

There are three school admissions options being considered: First option, parents would be permitted to choose any public school in any newly-designated attendance area in which they live. Once a school is full, student applicant names would be placed into a lottery system. Academic performance would determine school assignments, with high- and low-achieving children being mixed. Second option, students would be kept in schools close to their homes. Parents would be allowed to choose other schools, but only if they have available vacancies. Third option, the SFUSD would segment San Francisco into large citywide zones. Students would be assigned to specific schools within a zone, but could express preferences for specific schools within a zone. The Board of Education appears to be favoring option three.

Prior to 1983, San Francisco school children mostly attended their local public schools with children from their own neighborhoods. Children who grew up in the same neighborhoods knew one another, and had a real sense of community, camaraderie, and belonging. Neighborhood schools were an integral part of their local communities. In a 1982 desegregation settlement with the NAACP, the SFUSD agreed that no school would have more than 45% of students from one ethnicity and that each school would have students from at least four ethnic groups. This was the beginning of 22 years of desegregation busing in San Francisco. Only a few lucky children were able to attend their local neighborhood schools, and rather quickly the schools and children became disconnected from their own neighborhoods. Little Joey would grow up attending a school miles away, never meeting the children who lived a block away. Schools became divorced from their neighborhoods.

In 1994, the Ho verses SFUSD lawsuit was filed, and eventually settled in 1999. This lawsuit settlement made it illegal to use any racial component in school assignments. To be in legal compliance, the SFUSD created a “diversity index,” giving students preference to schools based on social and economic factors, but not based on racial factors. The diversity index factored poverty, the mother’s educational level, English skills, home language, and academic performance of students at their previous school. Parents could apply to up to seven schools, and if there was space their child would get into one of those selected schools without being forced to use the diversity index. Under the diversity index system, children living near an excellent school have had an extremely difficult time being admitted to that school.

The SFUSD only applies the diversity index at schools with too many enrollment requests. A high-quality school has approximately 18 applicants for each
opening. Ironically, the diversity index increased choices for parents, but it has also resegregated many San Francisco schools — especially in poorly-performing schools that receive very few enrollment requests. Neighborhood children started congregating in schools with few enrollment requests, leading to resegregation. Much of the desegregation achieved from busing between 1982 and 2001 has been dismantled by the SFUSD’s diversity index admissions policy. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsap stated in 2005 that the SFUSD admissions system “has not achieved diversity in any meaningful sense. It has allowed, if not fostered, resegregation. The court has pleaded with the parties to fix the diversity index. They have not.”

Some Board of Education members have also blamed the new, high level of segregated schools on the current diversity index admissions system. Poorly-performing schools with few admissions requests have no built-in mechanism to ensure diversity of any kind. Stuart Biegel, a UCLA professor appointed to monitor the SFUSD’s desegregation efforts, found that in close to 50 of the SFUSD’s 113 schools, 60% or more of students in any grade were from a single racial or ethnic group.

San Francisco parents have had enough of the diversity index system, and are increasingly angry. Last year, 9,900 students (18%) failed to receive any of their seven school choices. Upset parents are either fleeing to private schools or moving out of town, leading to substantial lost revenue for the school district.

Complaints from parents; Board of Supervisors resolution #80935, which urges the SFUSD to reconsider the current school assignment system, and resolves that the SFUSD and the Board of Education should incorporate a geographic component in school assignments; and a 2008 Civil Grand Jury report which recommends that the diversity index be scrapped, contending that the SFUSD school assignment process is widely seen by parents as being unfair and factoring into San Francisco’s lower ratio of public-to-private school enrollments, all contributed to the demise of the diversity index admissions process.

The SFUSD’s new admission policies are only part of parents’ concerns. San Francisco public schools are facing an expected $113 million budget shortfall over the next two years, due mainly to a massive reduction in State funding. More than 900 city schoolteachers, administrators and staff are expected to receive layoff notices and many will not be rehired. Four-hundred school district positions, including 100 teachers, may be eliminated. Class sizes will be increasing; almost no summer school programs are being planned; the school year may be shortened; workers furloughed; and educational programs for art, music, libraries, and physical education will be downsized.

A good education is the most important gift we can give to our children. Revising San Francisco’s public school admission policies may put the school district back on the right track. Having children attend local schools will encourage the surrounding communities to support the schools through fundraising, donations, and volunteerism, and may slow the flight of families leaving the City or enrolling their children in private schools. San Francisco’s public schools need the support of the community now more than ever.

Contact the Board of Education quickly to comment on the three admissions proposals, but be careful what you ask for. We don’t need another helping of bad school assignment policies.

George Wooding, President, West of Twin Peaks Central Council

March 2010

Pastoral Meadows and Groves?

Paving Over Golden Gate Park

By George Wooding

Can it really be that America’s “greenest city” is actually going to convert 2.5 acres of grass fields — one-half of Golden Gate Park’s western edge — into synthetic turf soccer fields? The same City politicians who spawn “green” spare-the-air-days, sorted garbage recycling, bicycle plans, higher taxes, and gardens in front of City Hall are quietly promoting this completely anti-environmental, and ironically un-green, Recreation and Park Department (RPD) project.

Golden Gate Park is special and San Francisco government’s selective environmentalism is hypocritical.

Even worse news for San Franciscans who believe that the western edge of Golden Gate Park should remain in a natural state, the SF Public Utilities Commission will be building a $120 million water recycling facility sometime after 2013, which will be located adjacent to the soccer complex. The combination of the recycling plant and the proposed soccer complex should erase any pretense of the western edge of Golden Gate Park ever again being dubbed “natural.”

The proposed synthetic turf soccer complex violates the SF General Plan, the Park’s own Golden Gate Park Master plan (1998), and the National Register of Historic Places application (2004). All of these documents state that the western end of Golden Gate Park is to remain pastoral, characterized by meadows (real grass) and surrounded by groves of trees (real trees). The RPD’s synthetic turf soccer complex will have a larger footprint (473,000 sq. ft.) than Candlestick Park Stadium.

The RPD’s public project presentations only show that four synthetic fields will be built. After weeks of foot dragging by the City’s Planning Department, actual project approval plans were finally made public. The soccer complex plans approved by the Planning Department show that six soccer fields will be built, not just four. The City will add the other two soccer fields in the future. The enlarged synthetic soccer field complex will also feature 60 foot-high field lights, bleachers, new bathrooms with an adjacent concession stand, enlarged sidewalks, a maintenance building, and an expanded parking lot.

In their haste to get the Golden Gate Park synthetic fields approved, the RPD publicly misstated to several citizens groups and politicians that the synthetic turf proposal has a “California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption.” A valid CEQA exemption would mean that the RPD does not have to perform an Environmental Impact Review (EIR) on the project. But on January 19, SF Deputy City Attorney Kate Herrman-Stacy told the RPD that they do NOT have a CEQA exemption and they must submit additional environmental information for the project. This makes sense when you consider that each field will be made from 30,000 to 50,000 ground-up rubber tires and then covered with plastic grass. The RPD now needs to do a complete EIR on this project.

The RPD also needs community support to install synthetic turf fields. The neighborhoods surrounding the Potrero Hill Recreation Center and Rossi Playground both stopped the installation of synthetic turf fields at their parks.

On May 15, 2009, a form letter email was sent only to soccer players and coaches telling them to submit a form letter/petition supporting the GG Park synthetic soccer fields or they would not be built. Of course, many of the contacted soccer players signed petitions and wrote letters, including children and soccer players living outside of San Francisco. These petitions and emails supposedly fulfilled the RPD’s “community support” requirement. Unfortunately, almost all of the 800,000 people who live in San Francisco and do not play soccer were not informed about the project, nor were they invited to submit petitions as the soccer players were. The RPD finally started conducting community meetings in November, which they staged using RPD-invited soccer players and coaches. But RPD seems to have forgotten that Golden Gate Park is everyone’s park.

SF’s RPD’s newly-appointed General Manager, Phil Ginsberg (Mayor Newsom’s former Chief of Staff), is pushing hard for the synthetic turf fields to be installed. Ginsberg, appointed on July 7 after his predecessor, Yomi Agunbiade, resigned, claims that the installation of synthetic turf fields will increase field revenues, increase soccer field usage, reduce field maintenance costs by 75%, and save water, all at the same time. Ginsberg may be right about the water and the field usage, but the rest of his claims are debatable.

Well-maintained grass fields are much less expensive than synthetic turf fields, and preferred by most soccer players. According to the RPD’s single cost analysis, each field will cost $800,000 to install and $6,000 to maintain annually. The synthetic turf fields will have to be replaced every 10 years, at a cost of approximately $350,000 for each field. The report states that it costs $42,000 per year to maintain an existing grass field and about $50,000 per field every time the RPD wants to completely replace irrigation and turf. The current grass fields are in poor condition because the cash-strapped RPD failed to budget for renovating the fields for the past 12 years, since 1998.

The projected $9.9 million project costs will be paid for by the City Fields Foundation and money from the 2008, $185 million, Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks general obligation bond. The City Fields Foundation works with the City in a public-private partnership to help renovate sport fields with synthetic turf and field lighting installations. The City Fields Foundation and the RPD have renovated park fields at Garfield Square Park, Silver Terrace Playground, Kimbal1 Playground, and Crocker-Amazon Park.

The RPD and Ginsberg are falsely claiming that placing synthetic fields in the Park will be cheaper than the existinggrass fields over time because the field usage will almost triple, hoping we’ll believe revenue will also triple. Even with all of SF’s newly renovated fields and fee increases, the RPD’s athletic field permit revenue declined by over four percent last year. In 2007, the RPD increased its field rental rates from $25 per hour to $65 per hour, a 160% increase. The 100-year-old, 70-team SF Soccer Football League saw six teams leave the City league last year, and now the whole league is considering playing out of town because it is too expensive to play soccer in SF. Boxer Stadium has reportedly lost over $100,000 from teams changing venues. Desperate-for-money, RPD keeps increasing field fees, it may soon see many empty fields, especially between 6pm and 10pm.

Ironically, as the RPD attempts to pave over the west end of GG Park with artificial turf, they are also trying to implement a Park preservation fee that would be added to the cost of tickets for the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. RPD’s Ginsberg is also thinking about a new citywide parcel tax on City property owners. Ginsberg will soon find out that the passage of his synthetic fields project will cost him any chance of passing a property assessment tax dedicated to the Rec and Park Department.

There are many other parks and high schools outside of GG Park where synthetic turf soccer fields could be built. Locating synthetic turf fields outside the Park may increase the number of synthetic soccer fields in the City and still allow park soccer players to continue playing on a uniquely reusable and environmentally sustainable surface known as real grass.

This is a simple but contentious issue.

People who believe that sports recreation should be the main use of Golden Gate Park want the synthetic turf soccer fields and 60 foot-high field lights. People who believe Golden Gate Park should accommodate sports recreation but should remain as natural as possible, want better-kept grass fields and no lights.

If you are opposed to the placement of synthetic turf soccer fields and 60 foot lights in Golden Gate Park, please write to your District Supervisor, volunteer to help out, and go to www.sfoceanedge.org and sign a petition against the synthetic turf fields. Golden Gate Park is everyone’s park!

George Wooding

President, West of Twin Peaks Central Council

February 2010

Questions Laguna Honda Needs to Answer

By George Wooding

Policy decisions regarding Laguna Honda Hospital (LHH) are going on behind the scenes that Miraloma Park residents and the City’s voting public aren’t aware of, since the City doesn’t want to use the hospital for purposes presented to voters in 1999 to gain passage of the bond measure to rebuild LHH — and now doesn’t want to tell you about.

During the past ten years of planning and construction, LHH’s project scope has changed multiple times, including cutting 420 of LHH’s planned 1,200 beds, eliminating another 200 assisted living units for people needing a lower level of care, and chopping the Adult Day Health Center for elderly residents with dementias unsafe to stay in their own homes during the day, among other changes. Now, just four months before the new hospital is scheduled to open, LHH appears to be changing the type of patients it will serve, even though construction is all but complete. It’s not even clear whether LHH will continue to call itself a hospital, after spending almost $600 million to rebuild a facility with an initial $401 million budget.

When the City pitched the LHH rebuild bond in 1999, its entire advertising campaign claimed to be helping frail elderly and severely disabled San Franciscans. When 73% of voters passed Proposition A, they thought they were voting to rebuild a nursing home for indigent elderly and disabled San Franciscans. Now that the rebuilt hospital is almost completed, the Department of Public Health (DPH) is planning to add mental health and substance abuse patients at the eleventh hour.

LHH is not, and has never been, a psychiatric facility, and doesn’t have a psychiatric license. But DPH is actively planning to mix in a large number of younger, “behavioral health” patients with LHH’s current population of elderly adults with chronic, complex, and progressive medical conditions. (“Behavioral health” is defined as providing both mental health and substance abuse treatments.)

Heretofore, LHH admitted patients with physical medical conditions needing medical and nursing treatment or rehabilitation. Patients with secondary psychiatric problems were also treated, but their primary diagnosis had to be medical in nature for admission. LHH is once again contemplating discarding its long-standing “medical model of care” and embracing a psychosocial rehab, or “social wellness,” model of healthcare (which was introduced in 2003, but failed miserably in 2004) that relies less on medical doctors and more on psychologists, social workers, and nurses. What we really don’t know is what a “social model” of care even is, which nobody seems capable of adequately defining. This is one of the jargon-war terms that DPH’s administrators throw around whenever they want to claim LHH’s model of care is too “medical,” asserting “medical” is bad but that they know what is good for us.

This is the second time LHH has tried to add psychosocial programming at the expense of the elderly. In 2003, Mitch Katz, the Director of Public Health, overrode LHH’s admissions policy by sending a variety of younger, ambulatory patients from San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) to LHH. Katz claimed huge economic and political pressure to unload SFGH patients into LHH, dubbing the plan as a “flow project.” Back then, and still today, there has been stunning dishonesty with the public about the flow project, which appears to be a key component of Mayor Newsom’s “10-Year Plan to End Homelessness” by sweeping the homeless into LHH.

Many of the younger patients suffered from substance abuse or mental health issues, and elderly LHH patients were not only displaced out of the facility and dumped out-of-county, they were harassed and attacked by the behavioral patients. LHH staff members were attacked, a wing of LHH was deliberately set on fire, and there was another fire set at the Laguna Honda reservoir. LHH was completely unprepared for these new patients, since staff had little training and LHH employed only two security guards. No resources were allocated to manage these behaviorally-troubled, younger, male patients dumped into LHH with nowhere else to go.

Hospital conditions were so disrupted the U.S. Department of Justice became involved, mandating specific types of patient care and treatment to prevent “institutionalizing” behavioral patients. LHH doctors and patient advocates reached out to community neighbors, and neighborhoods such as Miraloma Park became so vocal that the Mayor ordered Dr. Katz to reinstate LHH’s pre-flow project admission policies, end the flow project, and resume LHH’s previous patient demographics, which the Board of Supervisors now monitors.

LHH is about to reinstate the 2003 flow project by adopting findings from DPH’s new “Ja Report,” which recommends rehabilitating behavioral health patients at LHH, reducing the number of LHH’s doctors, increasing behavioral health staffing, and expanding transitional behavioral health beds. The Ja Report states: “There is a great concern over patient and staff safety due to a mixing of high-level substance abuse and mental health patients with older lower-level patients in open units. We recommend some type of separation.”

Interestingly, the Ja Report didn’t consider the safety of surrounding neighborhoods. Its only mention of LHH’s surrounding neighborhoods was: “The Ja report recognizes that local neighborhood and community concerns have been raised regarding the role of LHH with mental health and substance abuse patients. However, it is critical that the appropriate balance be struck between neighborhood concerns and the necessity for LHH to respond to the needs of the entire city and DPH as a whole.” Actually this statement is a lie. Virtually no one in the surrounding neighborhoods is aware of plans for the “new” LHH, since LHH hasn’t held a public meeting with any neighborhood organization about its potential population changes and probably won’t, unless they are pressured to do so. Instead, LHH offers tours of the new facility, but won’t hold town hall meetings to discuss substantive changes to its patient population or accountability of its bond expenditures.

The Ja report wrongly claims LHH needs to improve its interdisciplinary care. This recommendation is a red herring, since in 1986, then Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s Blue Ribbon Committee on LHH recommended changing from LHH’s old “nursing model of care,” by increasing the number of certified nursing assistants, doctors, social workers, and activity therapists working more collaboratively as an interdisciplinary team with the nurses, and adding an Ethics Committee and a hospice program. LHH has been using an interdisciplinary model of care for over two decades, utilizing medical doctors as a central component. Since 1999, LHH has added 20 new positions in its physical medicine rehabilitation department, including physical, occupational, and speech therapists, and restorative care aides. The bottom line? Now, in the absence of a new Blue Ribbon Committee on Laguna Honda, the Ja Report recommends LHH add psychologists and remove (fire) its medical doctors. This would be a step backward to the uni-disciplinary nursing model of care the DOJ objected to in 1998.

The Ja Report raises the possibility that LHH’s license will be changed to a hospital-based nursing home to formalize SFGH’s control over Laguna Honda’s mission, ending any possibility that Laguna Honda will serve the elderly from all over the City. Indeed there are some who believe the Ja Report is designed to provide “cover” to allow Dr. Katz to unilaterally determine LHH’s role in providing behavioral health care, and once again change LHH’s mission using another flow project. This is something we all must watch out for and oppose.

San Francisco has inadequate discharge locations for behavioral health patients. In July 2004, DPH shut down San Francisco’s only long-term care psychiatric facility, the Mental Health Rehabilitation Facility (MHRF), closing 145 psychiatric beds. To defend its closure of the MHRF, DPH officials cited the 1999 U.S. Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision that “mental patients should be able to live in less restrictive community based settings, rather than in locked hospitals, if they are medically able to.”

The real challenge for DPH is the Chamber’s lawsuit settlement agreement. The 2007, Chamber’s agreement limits LHH to 780 beds (City officials deny this) and basically forces LHH to place residents back into the community as quickly as possible. The goal of the lawsuit is to keep patients from living in an institution, specifically not at LHH. Almost all of LHH’s behavioral health patients will come from SFGH. LHH, an institution which used to be autonomous, is now controlled by SFGH. Under Newsom, LHH has quickly become cheaper housing for indigent patients that SFGH needs to release but can’t place back in the community. Under terms of the Chamber’s settlement, many of these behavioral health problem patients should be placed directly back into the community and treated using community-based services. Unfortunately, the City has nowhere to house them and sends them to LHH, ostensibly for rehabilitative or “habilitative” treatment. After behavioral health patients have been “rehabilitated” at LHH, the City still has nowhere to place them in the community. Over time, LHH’s behavioral health population will expand at the expense of LHH’s geriatric patients too ill, demented, or recovering from strokes to be cared for at home.

The bed that once was used for grandma’s long-term care will now be filled by a behavioral health patient. Who will bring their mom or their grandma to LHH for stroke rehabilitation, knowing there are hundreds of younger, unruly substance abusers wandering around LHH’s campus?

As LHH stockpiles behavioral health patients, it will be in direct violation of the Chamber’s settlement agreement. LHH is becoming the safety valve for San Francisco’s indigent mental health and substance abuse patients. San Francisco voter’s never expected LHH would become a “behavioral health” hospital, and this isn’t why we voted for the LHH bond measure. What will happen to San Francisco’s geriatric and disabled patients needing long term care who can no longer be placed at the hospital and who can’t be cared for safely at home?

While City government has a strategic goal of increasing transparency and accountability, Mayor Newsom appears to be hiding behind the skirts of LHH’s new administrator Hirose, who offers tours, but not answers to compelling questions about LHH’s mission, policies, or bond spending.

To be a good neighbor and a responsible institution, LHH needs to immediately start talking with its neighbors about LHH’s future patient population plans. We don’t know what population LHH intends to serve when it opens just four months from now, and whether LHH will be serving geriatric patients with chronic medical illness, or psychosocial patients with mental illness and substance abuse needs.

We don’t need more broken promises over how Laguna Honda bond money is being spent. We do need greater transparency — and a new Blue Ribbon Committee for LHH — to address Laguna Honda’s unanswered policy questions.

George Wooding, President, West of Twin Peaks Central Council

February 2010

San Francisco’s Most Complicated Intersection

19th Avenue Corridor/Time Extended for Public Comment

If you have concerns about possible changes to the 19th Avenue Corridor, the deadline for providing comments on the Study has been extended an additional two weeks.
Public comments on the study will be accepted until 5:00 PM on Friday, March 12, 2010. Written comments should be addressed to: Rick Cooper, Senior Environmental
Planner, SF Planning Department, 1650 Mission Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA
94103.
The study and appendices may be found at: http://www.sfplanning.org/index.aspx?page=1570. If you have any questions about the 19th Avenue Corridor Study, please call 415‐575‐9027.

Traffic Nightmare Ahead:
St. Francis Circle $18 Million Project

by George Wooding

Get ready! In early March 2010, the City will start rebuilding St. Francis Circle, San Francisco’s most complicated intersection. The SF Metropolitan Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is hoping to complete the total rebuild by November 2010.

After decades of questionable traffic planning, political bickering, and planning revisions, St. Francis Circle is now shaped more like a twisted, double helix than a circle. Five roads — Junipero Serra Boulevard, Sloat Boulevard, Portola Drive, St. Francis Boulevard, and Woodacre Drive — converge at St. Francis Circle. Add three Muni lines, pedestrians, and bicyclists to the mix of vehicles, and you have a recipe for organized chaos at one of San Francisco’s most clogged intersections.

After 97 years of City and private developer “improvements,” St. Francis Circle will always be a traffic mess. Once the City decided to build it’s light rail tracks directly through the center of the Circle at ground level, the intersection was doomed to perpetual traffic delays and driver confusion. The new remodel will allow traffic to move more directly and faster.

The 40,000-plus daily drivers and the additional passengers of Muni’s K and M lines should be prepared for six months of lane closures, detours, and transfers to regular buses and shuttles. Long delays are expected. The K line is planned to be closed from May 14–31; both the K and M lines will be closed from June 1 to September 1. Project construction hours will vary from 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. seven days a week.

Most signal lights in San Francisco intersections typically cycle from green-to-red-to-green in approximately 60 seconds. St. Francis Circle’s traffic lights cycle every 105 seconds — making this the longest traffic wait in San Francisco. If you like to read, you’ll love going through this intersection next year, but people in a hurry should plan a new route, avoiding St. Francis Circle.

After years of minor patchwork maintenance, the City had to finally replace the aging Muni rails. The 30-year-old Muni rails have deteriorated to a point where they are starting to become unsafe.

To it’s credit, San Francisco has made the St. Francis Circle rail replacement a top priority. Project plans include new crosswalks, curb ramps, road pavement, traffic signals, Muni tracks and boarding platforms, improved pedestrian islands, and storm sewer systems.

The St. Francis Circle rebuild is anticipated to cost a total of $18.2 million. $14.6 million of the project funding (80%) comes from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) through the Section 5309 Fixed Guideway program, which distributes funds to regions based on an urbanized area formula. There is no state funding. The SFMTA’s $3.6 million (20%) share of project costs come from: 1) $2.2 million from the Proposition K sales tax administered by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, 2) $526,600 from bridge toll funds, and 3) $900,000 from the Department of Public Works.

The Evolution of St. Francis Circle

Jose Noe, a sheep rancher and the original owner of St. Francis Circle, was given a Spanish land grant in the 1800’s that incorporated the current Noe Valley and Twin Peaks area. Twin Peaks was called Pechos de la Choca, which translates literally to “the breasts of the Indian maiden.” Adolph Sutro purchased the Twin Peaks portion and planted trees to form a nature preserve called Rancho San Miguel. Sutro’s Eucalyptus and Monterey Pine forest spread from UCSF to Mt. Davidson and into St. Francis Woods.

After the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco looked to creating more housing. The new housing was based on a revolutionary new planning concept called the “Burnham plan,” which called for separated homes and respected the contours of the land, while providing for parks and large boulevards. Sutro’s heirs sold the property to the Residential Development Company (RDC), which was owned by Mason-McDuffie. In 1914, RDC and the Forest Hill Realty Company made an offer to San Francisco to improve, grade, and widen Corbett Road (today’s Portola Boulevard). The City agreed to this project and as part of the agreement, Market Street was connected to Portola Boulevard. The 1914–1915 City budget included funds to pave Sloat and Junipero Serra Boulevards.

All of this was in preparation for the opening of the Twin Peaks Tunnel and the push for scenic boulevards throughout the city for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. The developers, not the City, paid for the Twin Peaks Tunnel and the Market Street extension. The tunnel was completed in 1917.

When St. Francis Wood’s street plan was designed in 1912 it included a large roundabout called St. Francis Circle. This roundabout lasted only about ten years and was replaced with a small concrete section with trolley wires and a street light pole in the middle. In 1920, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Several muchly traveled boulevards meeting at this junction have made St. Francis Circle the scene of a number of accidents.” The City’s inadequate solution was to erect more traffic signs.

In 1947, some “safety islands” were put in place for pedestrians trying to make the long trip across the intersection. In 1951 even more of a redesign was done and the first traffic lights were installed. The speed limit coming down Portola in the 1950s was 55 miles per hour!

In a fateful March 2, 1914 letter written by Duncan McDuffie, the owner of RFD, he stated, “It has not yet been determined whether the trains from the tunnel should be carried across Sloat Boulevard underground, overhead, or on the surface, or what course the tracks will take after they reach Sloat Boulevard.” Sadly and unwisely, the City chose to run the Muni lines on the surface directly through St. Francis Circle, thus, creating one of the worst intersections in San Francisco.

Let’s hope the SFMTA’s $18 million rebuild of St. Francis Circle will make it much safer for everyone to navigate.

George Wooding is President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Special thanks to Woody LaBounty from the Western Neighborhoods project and Carolyn Squeri, President of St. Francis Woods.

December 2009

CITY CAR OWNERS PAY FOR MASS-TRANSIT

by George Wooding

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) plan to increase parking meter operation hours throughout San Francisco has been tabled — at least for the time being.

Nathaniel Ford, SFMTA’s executive director has said the agency will “discuss the plan extensively before moving forward.” Hasn’t the SFMTA paid attention to the citizen revolt that just overturned extending parking meter hours in Oakland? Is Ford not paying attention?

The plan to charge for parking meters on Sunday’s and up until midnight on weekdays in neighborhoods such as North Beach has been poorly received throughout San Francisco’s diverse communities. Not one merchant’s association or homeowner’s association in the City currently supports the parking meter extensions.

At their October 20 Transportation Directors meeting, a tired SFMTA Board of Directors listened to three hours of public testimony opposing increasing meter operation hours. San Francisco’s lower-income residents with cars testified that the plan was a regressive tax on the poor. Business owners and merchant’s associations testified about losing business. The Chamber of Commerce, Cammy Blackstone from District 4 Supervisor Carmen Chu’s office, homeowner’s associations, and residents of all political persuasions were united in their belief that the plan was poorly conceived, and would financially harm both residents and local businesses. Even Mayor Gavin Newsom — who appointed the SFMTA Board and hired Nathanial Ford — is against the SFMTA’s meter extension plans.

Not surprisingly, groups that don’t generally receive parking tickets or pay for parking, such as the San Francisco bicycle coalition and the Sierra Club, support SFMTA’s plan.

The meter proposal is more about generating money for the SFMTA than traffic abatement. In April the SFMTA tried to pass a “blanket” parking meter extension plan that would have arbitrarily increased the operating time of almost every meter in the City to 10:00pm. The Board of Supervisors fought the proposal and gave the SFMTA 90 days to come up with a more equitable plan. The resulting “Extended Meter Hours Study” was of course, the predictable and self-fulfilling current plan to extend parking meter hours. It’s no accident that the SFMTA is trying to generate parking revenue while they are flat broke.

District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd stated, “The SFMTA would be making a major mistake if it implemented any of these changes on a citywide basis. Extended meters may work for merchants and residents alike in some neighborhoods, but they could be a disaster in others. This should only happen through a far more extensive outreach effort, and the demonstration of clear and convincing evidence of neighborhood desires.”

The bottom line? San Franciscans who own cars are sick and tired of being punished for the financial failures of the SFMTA.

The SFMTA has a $741 million budget, but has a $129 million budget deficit. In a “transit first” city this is very bad. Muni is discontinuing routes, eliminating service to low ridership areas, and running fewer routes. The SFMTA is simultaneously increasing fare rates, parking meter rates, towing fees, parking garage rates, parking ticket rates, and increasing parking violation enforcement. Despite the infusion of an additional $25 million annually to Muni as a result of the November 1997 Proposition A “transit reform” ballot measure (and untold additional revenue the Board of Supervisors could dedicate to the SFMTA from gas tax, vehicle license fees, and other motor vehicle-related revenues) the agency is still going broke, even with its voracious appetite to keeping adding new sources of revenue!

Last year, the SFMTA collected $278 million for parking and traffic fees and fines (30% of its revenue), but collected only $153 million in fares (20% of its revenue). Worried that fare increases will lead to declines in ridership, the SFMTA has decided to go after car owners for more revenue. Car owners are ideal targets because they: 1) Supposedly have more money, 2) Need to be punished for owning a green-house-gas emitting vehicle, and 3) Might be convinced to start using mass transportation given the higher parking fees. In a “green” city it’s increasingly considered “bad” to own or use a car.

The SFMTA’s parking meter plan is projected to generate $17.2 million in total revenue, but a measly $8.8 million in net revenue. If Muni simply collected all of the fares from transit riders who evade paying their fares, it would collect an additional $19 million annually. The SFMTA’s plan also requires spending: 1) $2.7 million in Coin Collection labor costs, 2) $5.0 million for 48 full-time workers and 26 part-time workers, 3) $650,000 for maintenance and labor and 4) a one time $2.5 million charge for equipment and marketing — for a total cost increase of $10.9 million starting in 2010.. Expect actual costs to be about 30% over-budget. San Francisco Parking Control Officers (PCOs) are also afraid of working late at night. There have been several broad-daylight assaults on PCOs over the last three years, so the SFMTA will have to increase the safety of PCOs brave enough to work evenings

At an October 21 community meeting, City Attorney Dennis Herrera (who is rumored to be considering running for mayor) stated, “The approximate $9.0 million the SFMTA is hoping to gain is a drop-in-the-bucket. We shouldn’t nickel-and-dime people against their will. I hate the idea — it’s crazy public policy. I’m not in favor of it.”

The most insidious part of the SFMTA’s proposal is what you don’t see: It is planning to add/extend parking meters on many streets adjacent to shopping districts. So neighbors who live close to a merchant district may soon find a parking meter plopped in front of their house. On September 15, the SFMTA quietly passed by voice vote Section 10.15, which amends the Residential Parking Permit portion (Section 905) of SFMTA’s Transportation Code. The new language in Section 905 states: “Nothing in this Section is intended to limit the SFMTA’s ability to designate a Residential Parking Permit Area (RPP) on its own initiative.”

Heretofore, 50% of neighborhood residents had to vote in favor of adopting an RPP to create a new RPP district. The SFMTA has quietly given itself unilateral authority to create and extend unlimited RPP’s throughout San Francisco —with or without the consent of neighborhood residents, regardless of whether we (or the Mayor) like it or not!

The $76.00 annual RPP fee (and inevitable parking violation tickets that will result) should be considered a tax, not a fee. The original intent of Section 905 amendment was to allow the SFMTA to create RPP areas in commercial districts, along freeways, and near schools, but the amended language clearly gives the agency the right to create RPP’s almost anywhere throughout the City. The revenue generated from creating new RPP zones would be enormous, kicking the barn door wide open to further abuse.

San Francisco must develop a comprehensive transit plan for pedestrians, bicycles, buses, trains, and … yes, even cars. Ironically, the success of San Francisco’s mass transit system is completely dependent on cars. The SFMTA’s current policy mantra — cars are bad, but let’s nail car owners with as many fines and fees as we can — will backfire and end up hurting the character of San Francisco neighborhoods and local businesses.

The SFMTA needs to get its own financial house in order, before it kills the goose that laid their golden revenue egg. After all, if parking meter extensions were a disaster in Oakland, why does the SFMTA think it will play well in San Francisco?

George Wooding is President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council.

November 2009

Raiding the Parking Meters

by George Wooding

San Francisco’s new parking rates — higher parking ticket fines, new holiday parking rates and enforcement, and planned increases in parking meter operation hours — along with SF’s higher sales tax (at 9.5%), pack a double wallop hurting neighborhood businesses, shoppers, drivers, and neighbors.

When it is less expensive for shoppers to drive to jurisdictions with lower sales taxes and free parking, City and local business revenue is bound to plummet just when needed most.

On July 1, San Francisco raised parking meter rates fifty cents hourly throughout the City. Parking locally now costs at least $2.00 to $3.50 hourly. Parking meter citations recently increased to $50 – $60 and are being vigorously enforced. Although San Francisco officials claim increasing parking meter rates and tickets will help local businesses by creating more turn-over in neighborhood parking spaces, empty store fronts are sprouting up all over town.

Steve Dawson, the president of the Inner Sunset Merchants Association states, “There is no question that the higher meter rates and longer operation hours will impact local businesses by pushing customers to shopping malls where parking is free and ticket worries vanish.”

San Francisco’s parking control officers issue at least three tickets every minute. At minimum, two million tickets will be issued this year, generating over $100 million in parking revenue for the City. Some of this revenue goes to San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs the Municipal Railway, traffic control, and parking operations. The remaining revenue is returned to SF’s general fund.

None of the money is used to support local businesses, despite earlier legislation.

The SFMTA had a $129 million budget deficit this year, and will be extremely aggressive enforcing parking tickets and parking meter collections.

Although San Francisco claims its love affair with mass transportation, over 25% of SFMTA’s income comes from fees on automobiles; San Francisco couldn’t afford current mass transit without drawing heavily from parking revenue. This is no different than gambling money (the Lottery) being used to support education, or the tobacco settlement revenue dedicated to rebuilding Laguna Honda Hospital being used to balance the City’s — specifically, the Department of Public Health’s — budget. Without the revenue from punishing “bad for the environment, greenhouse gas-emitting San Francisco drivers,” MUNI would likely go bankrupt.

The City has done little to help businesses already suffering from the economic downturn. The final straw may be SFMTA’s current proposal to increase parking meter hours throughout the City. Reportedly, each neighborhood business district has been individually evaluated.

The length of meter operation times on West Portal will be increased from the current 54 hours per week, to at least 70. This includes Sunday’s and later-evening parking fees. Castro Street and Columbus Avenue will see operating parking meter hours balloon from 80 to 90 hours per week. The SFMTA is solely responsible for making these decisions and is planning to start implementing them next year.

The SFMTA is not justifying its fee increases to San Francisco’s 26,000 parking meters on a revenue-generating basis. Instead, it claims parking meter increases will be used to 1) Support commerce, 2) Help create availability, so that customers who drive can access businesses, 3) Allow the SFMTA to use time limits and prices to achieve “availability goals,” and 4) Reduce double-parking and circling. SFMTA spared not one word about generating revenue.

The SFMTA assumes that higher turnover at parking meters will equate to higher merchant sales. There is no data or studies that support this flawed assumption. In fact, Oakland just extended longer parking meter hours and stringent new parking rules on July 1, despite many merchants noting their business is down by thirty percent. Oakland shoppers opposed the new parking enforcement hours, fees, and rules — and have stopped shopping at Oakland businesses, favoring instead shopping in nearby retail areas with lower parking costs.

San Francisco politicians take note: Disgruntled Oakland business owners are threatening to recall the Oakland City Council over the higher parking fees. Quoted in the September 24th Chronicle, Grand Lake Theater owner Allen Michaan said, “Disgusted doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about our City Council. This is a public shakedown. It’s an extortion racket. I weep for Oakland and all the businesses that are going to close.”

Between 1947 and 1987, San Francisco and its local merchant associations agreed to share parking meter revenue collected in neighborhood shopping districts. The City placed parking meters throughout neighborhoods, promising merchants that collected parking revenue would be used to help local shop owners. Collected fees were to be placed in an “Off-street Parking Fund.” When the fund was first established it was agreed $1.5 million would go annually to San Francisco’s general fund and the remainder banked, until needed. Accumulated meter revenue was supposed to be used to build neighborhood parking garages and improve shopping districts.

But between 1987 and 1992, City politicians stabbed merchants in the back, looting all of the Off-Street Parking Funds (by at least $23 million) and placing the money into the City’s general fund.

In 1992, Stephen Cornell, the then-president of the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Associations wrote to Jack Molinari, then president of the Parking and Traffic Commission: “Our main concern is the taking of the Off-Street Parking Funds. Without going into much detail, we were very disappointed that Mayor Jordan took $4 million out, after Mayor Agnos took $6 million at the beginning of the fiscal year. We were really mad that $8 million was taken from the upcoming year. With no money in the fund, nothing can be done for our neighborhoods!”

Seventeen years later, the City’s promises to neighborhood business districts remain broken.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) — run by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors — just released an on-street parking management study that proposes introducing neighborhood parking benefit districts (PBDs). According to Board of Supervisors President, David Chiu, “The thrust of this study was really to emphasize that neighborhood-specific processes be set up before, parking changes are implemented. If there are parking revenue increases, the study is recommending that the additional revenues somehow be farmed back into the neighborhood where those revenues were raised.”

This is precisely what was taken away from neighborhoods in 1992.

Without any financial incentives, neighborhood merchant associations no longer support San Francisco’s higher parking meter rates. Why should they? These businesses have little to gain, and a lot of business to lose to competing jurisdictions.

Once you take the carrot away from the stick, all you have left is the stick.

George Wooding is President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council.

October 2009

Decaying Streets of San Francisco

by George Wooding

San Francisco voters should celebrate the downfall of placing a $368 million general obligation bond measure on the November 3 municipal ballot that had been proposed to repair City streets.

The Safe Streets and Road Repair bond measure would have set a terrible precedent for City government. San Francisco street repairs have always been budgeted from the City’s General Fund. General obligation bonds are not meant to pay for salaries, equipment, or maintenance projects, such as road repairs.

Bond financing is typically reserved to fund large, one-time capital improvement and infrastructure construction projects, such as buildings or dams. The Safe Streets and Road Repair bond would have cost San Francisco voters $368 million dollars in principal plus another $200 million in interest on the bond debt over a 20 year period. The actual road and sidewalk repairs would only have had a life-span of 12 to 20 years, assuming they would be properly maintained.

District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd is leading the fight for responsible annual maintenance of San Francisco’s roads and sidewalks. Elsbernd was instrumental in preventing the proposed $368 million street repair bond measure from being placed on the ballot. He wants road repairs and maintenance to be paid for directly out of San Francisco’s General Fund, not from borrowed funds. In his July 29 newsletter, Elsbernd stated, “I opposed this bond because I believe that our city has the financial means, but not the political will, to prioritize the maintenance and improvement of our streets.”

Why does San Francisco perennially have such bad roads and sidewalks? For years, the City has redirected a large portion of gas taxes and property taxes that have been earmarked for municipal road and sidewalk repair for other purposes. Reasonable people call this misappropriation of funds from intended uses.

In 1989, San Francisco roads had an average Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of approximately 78. On a rating scale of one through one-hundred, with a one-hundred PCI being the best, a 78 PCI was a good rating for San Francisco. Today, seven years into the Newsom administration, San Francisco’s roads have deteriorated to a PCI rating of only 64. (That’s a grade of “D.”) San Francisco’s roads have gotten so bad that if the $368 million road bond had passed, the City was only expecting to improve its PCI rating to 69 after the road repairs were completed — a mere five-point improvement.

San Francisco’s tax revenue could stretch much further if the City would simply maintain its roads properly. Cutting back on road repairs is a classic example of trying to save money in the short term at the expense of much greater costs in the long term. Roads with a 50+ PCI rating generally cost about $95,000 per block to repair. A road with a 25 PCI rating costs approximately $430,000 per block to repair.

Due to poor political leadership, San Francisco has accumulated a huge backlog of deferred road maintenance. San Francisco’s Department of Public Works (DPW) uses a Pavement Management and Mapping System (PMMS) to track the condition of City streets. The PMMS estimates 6,314 (or 50%) of San Francisco’s 12,517 road segments are in need of repair. This huge log jam of deferred road repairs is estimated to cost $439 million to repair. This is $71 million more than the proposed $368 bond measure, so much of the repairs would not have been funded, assuming voters would have approved the bond.

If the City does not repair these 6,314 segments within the optimal period of time, they may have to be completely reconstructed at five times the cost ($2.2 billion), rather than the $439 million repair estimate.

The City estimates it needs $39 million annually for road repairs in each of the next ten years just to maintain a citywide PCI rating of 64. During the past five years, DPW received an average of just $23 million annually for street resurfacing; this allocation represents only 59 percent of the $39 million needed annually. Between Fiscal Year 2010 and Fiscal Year 2015, the City projects a shortfall of $125 million for road resurfacing and repairs.

As deferred road maintenance problems continue to pile up — including gaping sink holes and frightening pot holes damaging our vehicles — San Francisco chose to borrow money for road repairs.

On May 5, the Board of Supervisors quietly passed Ordinance 74-09 unanimously, allowing San Francisco to borrow up to $42 million dollars for street improvements by issuing certificates of participation (COP’s) — without voter approval. The COP’s will cost the City $5.5 million to issue and $32.1 million in interest payments over a 32-year period through the year 2040. But DPW will only receive $33 million from the COP’s to fund street improvement projects, at a total cost to San Francisco taxpayers of $70.5 million. This means that only 46 cents of every dollar raised by the COP’s will actually be used on road repair and improvement projects. If San Francisco’s General Fund had paid directly for road repairs, 100% of each dollar would have been given to the DPW.

On August 12, the Board suddenly revised terms of the Ordinance. In order to qualify for changing the bonds to federally taxable Build America Bonds that conform with The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the City now claims many of the street repair projects first identified were incorrectly described as “repair projects.” Magically, they are being reclassified as “capital improvement” projects. The debt service repayment has also suddenly been switched from Gas Tax revenues to General Fund monies. Now rather than funding these projects directly from the General Fund, the General Fund will ironically be used instead to repay interest on borrowing money.

Laguna Honda Hospital will be used as collateral for the COP’s, despite the fact that the hospital isn’t included in any of the proposed street improvement projects.

Borrowing money to pay for street maintenance repairs is an irresponsible use and waste of taxpayer dollars.

The City should not have to float COP’s (borrow) to fund street repairs that the voters have already paid for. To both residents and tourists — our largest industry — the streets of San Francisco are a civic embarrassment.

Federal, state, and local infrastructure funds should be spent on purposes that were intended. For now and the foreseeable future, San Francisco’s bikers, pedestrians, motorists, tourists, and politicians will all face trouble navigating the dangerous, decaying streets of San Francisco.

George Wooding is President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council.

September 2009

Station 20—285 Olympia Way at Clarendon Avenue may be on the chopping block

Save San Francisco’s Fire Stations

by George Wooding

The Board of Supervisors has proposed budget reductions that would force the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) to close up 12 of its 42 fire stations. After intense negotiations, the SFFD will probably be closing at least three fire stations.

On June 1, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors received Mayor Newsom’s balanced budget proposal for Fiscal Year ’09–’10. The Board was “angered” Newsom proposed slashing support for the City’s Recreation and Park Department, and the Department of Public Health, by 12%–20%, in order to propose 3%–6% increases to public safety agencies such as the Fire, Police and Sheriff’s Departments.

The Mayor is trying to balance San Francisco’s $438.1 million budget deficit. His proposed budget tries to protect core City services and his proposals were not unexpected. Progressive members of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee have had six months to understand these anticipated cuts, but the Board let both their emotions, and special interest public health groups that have contributed heavily to their election campaigns, convince them to transfer $82.9 million from the Fire, Sheriff’s, and Police Departments budgets into the Health, Recreation and Parks, and Human Services Agency Departments in the Board’s alternative interim budget proposal. This $82.9 million budget shift is an unexpected slap-in-the-face to the City’s public safety agencies.

Making cuts to the SFFD budget is equivalent to making major cuts to public health. The SFFD is the first responder to almost all of San Francisco’s medical emergencies. 70 to 80 percent of the SFFD’s calls are medically related.

The Board’s Budget and Finance Committee originally proposed cutting $42 million to the Police Department, $23.7 million to the Fire Department, and $17.2 million to the Sheriff’s Department. Police Chief Heather Fong stated that these budget cuts might cause as many as 325 of the department’s 1,950 officers to lose their jobs. Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said that the cuts could result in the loss of 173 firefighters, and the closure of 12 of 42 fire stations. Hayes-White also warned of the possible reductions in response times to fires and medical emergencies.

On June 25, the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee relented and proposed a budget cut of (only?) $6 million to the SFFD. Hayes-White was quoted in the Chronicle as saying that budget cuts “will mean we will most definitely have to reduce or deactivate engine companies in addition to Station 35… It will be a challenge to meet mandated response times.”

The Budget and Finance Committee’s rash actions have now created a financial tug-of-war between public health, and public safety, agencies. Speaking at a June 16 firefighter’s rally, Newsom stated that the Budget and Finance Committee’s actions were so unplanned that they “had not even consulted the Board of Supervisors Budget Analyst before shifting funds.”

Brownouts: The Fire Department’s $285.6 million budget has been a tempting target for Supervisors Chris Daly, Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi, John Avalos, Sophie Maxwell, David Campos, and David Chiu. All seven of these Supervisors voted in favor of reviewing the closure, or limiting the use, of selected neighborhood fire stations. This reduction in fire protection is called a “brownout” and response times can be slower if a fire or injury occurs at the wrong place at the wrong time. These seven supervisors are playing “Russian roulette” with the public’s health and safety.

The Board of Supervisors escalated their attack on the SFFD by releasing a survey that showed San Francisco firefighters work only 48.7 hours per week — the lowest among 14 other nearby fire departments — but earned the third highest annual salary, at $98,670. Perhaps the Fire Department should conduct a survey examining why Los Angeles only needs five Supervisors to run L.A. (having a population of 9.8 million people as of July 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau), while San Francisco’s dysfunctional Board needs eleven Supervisors (in our City of only 809 thousand people, according to the Census Bureau). The Fire Department may also discover San Francisco has 11 Supervisors for its 46.7 square miles, while L.A. only has 5 supervisors for its 498.3 square miles.

Reasonable people agree that funding public safety is much more of a priority than saving a couple of bucks. In 2004, San Francisco experimented with brownouts and was able to save $6.6 million. After a decline in response times due to San Francisco’s unique geography, architecture, and population density, 57% of San Francisco voters passed Proposition F in 2005. Prop. F requires San Francisco to stop using brownouts and keep all San Francisco fire stations open with adequate staff. The measure also preserved the Fire Department’s core services of fire suppression, prevention, and life support. The Board of Supervisors’ attempt to reintroduce the possibility of brownouts flies in the face of the will of voters, public safety principles, and the very letter and spirit of Proposition F.

The Police Officer’s Association voluntarily made a wage concession with the City, handing back $16.7 million in deferments and monetary benefits over the next two years. The Firefighter’s Association, Local 798, is reportedly (as this is written at press time) voluntarily negotiating a similar wage concession/deferment package worth between $9.5 and $10.5 million in concessions to the City. Fire Chief Hayes-White and her Deputy Chiefs are giving back half of the 4% raise increases they were due to receive this year. Both the Police and Fire Departments were working under negotiated contracts, and weren’t obligated to open their contracts and make any wage concessions. Their unions, and management, came back to the table to help San Francisco balance its budget.

Beyond the obvious good works they continually perform, San Francisco’s firefighters have worked financially with the City. In fiscal year (FY) ’03–’04, firefighters agreed to pay their own member pension contributions in order to help the City, while satisfying the cost-sharing requirements under the Charter to gain a retirement improvement. In FY ’04–’05, firefighters voluntarily saved the City $3 million by deferring wage increases, and increasing their weekly working hours from 48 to 48.7 hours, on average. Last year, firefighter’s Local 798 agreed to reduce their holiday premium pay over a period of three years, which will yield current and future savings of $6.17 million for the City.

It was a stupid move to pit San Francisco’s health and human services against its public safety services. The Board will gain little from the drama they have created. The SFFD utilizes less than 7% of the City’s total budget, while public health and multiple related human services departments utilize 23% of the City’s budget, consuming over two-thirds of General Fund expenditures.

Unfortunately, San Francisco’s myriad public health and human services “entitlements” have become so large, cumbersome, and expensive, they must now bear the brunt of the 1,600 jobs that will be cut if the Mayor’s proposed budget is adopted. The Board of Supervisors should not make the Police, Fire and Sheriff’s Departments scapegoats for predictable financial failures in the so-called public health “safety net.”

San Francisco has a great Fire Department and we should keep it that way. Every City department, non-profit organization, and labor organization needs to reduce their operating budgets, but cutting San Francisco’s fire stations is a ridiculous short-term budget solution.

Supervisors would think twice about cutting San Francisco’s neighborhood fire prevention services if they thought their own house might one day be on fire.

George Wooding was recently elected President of the West of Twin Peaks Central Council.

July/August 2009

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