san francisco

San Francisco Reparations Committee Admits $5 Million Payment Has No Basis

March 3, 2023 By Evan Symon 4 Comments

‘The Committee’s credibility sunk to a new low today’

The San Francisco reparations committee announced on Tuesday that the controversial one time payment of $5 million per black resident’ reparations figure proposed in January has not mathematical basis, and is instead based on “what could represent a significant enough investment.”

In the last few years following the George Floyd incident, reparations proposals for African-Americans have popped up across the United States. Statewide, a Reparations Task Force was approved by the Legislature and Governor in the summer of 2020 and has been meeting ever since to create a recommendation on what reparations could be for Californians whose ancestors were slaves in the US before 1865. Last year, the task force limited the reparation proposal to descendants of slaves only instead of all black Californians, called for reparations to be given despite California being a free-state since it’s inception, and estimated that $569 billion is owed to black Californians.

With a looming deadline, the Task Force is struggling on eligibility requirements, compensation calculation, and numerous other issues. May have noted that even if a recommendation is formulated, there will be numerous legislative challenges, legal challenges, and other hurdles that would likely end any future reparations plans.

However, while the Reparations Task Force has been working on a statewide proposal, San Francisco formed their own committee, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee. Since being founded in 2020, the Committee has worked on what citywide reparations could possibly look like. As of Wednesday, the Committee currently defines those eligible in the city as being 18 or older, being listed as black or African-American on public documents for at least the past decades, and two or more of the following:

Having been born or migrating to the city between 1940 and 1996 as well as showing proof of at least 13 years of residency
Having been incarcerated due to the war on drugs or being the direct descendant of someone who was
Being a descendant of someone who was enslaved before 1865
Having been displaced between 1954 and 1973 or being a descendant of someone who did
Being part of a marginalized group who experienced lending discrimination in the city between 1937 and 1968 or in formerly redlined communities within the city between 1968 and 2008

While housing funds, job creation, and other benefits have been discussed as reparations within the city, the Committee recommended a controversial one-time $5 million payment per qualified black resident in January. The figure generated widespread criticism in San Francisco and across the country, with the Committee defending the figure by saying that the payment “would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy.”

Opponents pressed Committee members on how the figure was formulated and on what metrics they were using. Many compared it to the state plan and how open they were being with their process.

“The Task Force’s initial ‘$569 billion’ figure at least tried to show their work,” said legal adviser Richard Weaver to the Globe on Wednesday. “They based it on the housing wealth gap and how much black residents lost in the past due to different polices. Flawed? Very much so. Passable in the Legislature? Not with California’s budget. Laughable? Yes. But they at least showed how they came up with it. They showed their work.”

“San Francisco on the other hand has been shady. It’s good that they nailed down who exactly would be eligible in the proposal, but they never said how they arrived at that $5 million figure. It always seemed like too round a figure.”

“There wasn’t a math formula”

The figure was immediately lambasted, with local lawmakers explaining that the city did not have the money for such a reparations plan and would have to severely cut into city services or raise taxes to make it happen. However, the estimated figure remained. After weeks of demands by city residents, Committee Chairman Eric McDonnell finally revealed how the figure was calculated on Tuesday. According to McDonnell, it wasn’t.

“There wasn’t a math formula,” said McDonnell in a Washington Post interview. “It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed.”

The remark brought considerable outrage on Tuesday and Wednesday. While committee members attempted to defend it, saying that a price tag couldn’t be put on the horrors of slavery and discrimination, many simply noted that there was no justification behind the figure and failed to even try to give a basic estimate overview.

“This is just a bunch of like-minded people who got in the room and came up with a number,” said San Francisco Republican Party Chairman John Dennis. “You’ll notice in that report, there was no justification for the number, no analysis provided. This was an opportunity to do some serious work and they blew it.”

Others noted on Wednesday that support for reparations in the city has begun to evaporate even more as a result.

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, reparations, san francisco

‘We’re Not Victims of Circumstances’: Here’s How Mayor Breed Plans to Revive San Francisco

February 11, 2023 By Mallory Munch 2 Comments

Mayor London Breed laid out a vision for how to revive San Francisco in her annual State of the City address Thursday, pledging to tackle the city’s biggest challenges, including the housing crisis, public safety concerns and a struggling downtown.

Breed unveiled proposals to pump $25 million more into overtime for a Police Department struggling to fill vacancies and to revitalize downtown by lightening the tax burden on businesses, and reiterated her plan for how to build 82,000 homes in eight years.

The mayor painted a picture of San Francisco as resilient and stressed she was committed to its economic recovery and addressing its social issues as the city struggles nearly three years after the pandemic began. She spoke to a packed crowd of city officials, politicians and residents, who greeted her arrival with cheers.

“We are San Franciscans,” Breed said inside the glass atrium of a modern building in the Dogpatch neighborhood, which hosts a satellite communications company and tech human resources business. “We’re not beholden to past catastrophes. We’re not victims of circumstances. We are the captains of our own ship. We are the City That Knows How.”

Since her address last year, Breed’s had political wins and losses. While the city celebrated a drop in homelessness, it’s struggled to contain a lethal drug epidemic and open-air drug dealing, despite Breed’s efforts to do so in the Tenderloin. The moderate Democratic mayor clashed with more progressive supervisors over housing policy and the limits of her own power.

“The last few years have been tough, and our challenges ahead are even tougher: public safety concerns, a spiraling fentanyl crisis, empty offices, shuttered businesses, and profound learning loss among our kids,” Breed said from Pier 70, a once industrial neighborhood on the waterfront that’s being redeveloped. “I know we can overcome these, in part because, through four consecutive elections last year, our voters re-instilled every level of our government with a mandate to get the basics right, to put children before politics, to put results before posturing.”

Breed now has another year in office to show results after elections last year extended her term to January 2025. Voters also gave her the ability to pick political allies to fill vacancies after two historic recalls. In her speech, Breed praised two of her appointees, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and Supervisor Matt Dorsey, both of who won election in November, and new Supervisor Joel Engardio, who ousted a progressive incumbent, pointing out all three are focused on public safety.

“I’ve been waiting for help like this, for a long time,” Breed said.

What Breed didn’t have to wait on was control of the Police Department, whose chief she also appoints, to pursue her top priority of public safety.

More than a year ago, Breed promised to crack down on open-air drug dealing and use as part of her three-month emergency to tackle the overdose crisis in the Tenderloin. But critics took issue with her promises of a crackdown, calling it a second War on Drugs, and she struggled to make meaningful change, according to people who live and work in the neighborhood.

But tides shifted when San Franciscans, furious about crime, ousted progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who critics perceived as too lenient. To replace him, Breed picked Jenkins, who promised to balance criminal justice reform with accountability for repeat offenders, including drug dealers.

Over the past year, Breed has pumped money into the Police Department to help recruit and fill vacancies and has added community ambassadors downtown to deal with drug use and other issues. Many residents have welcomed changes, but some have accused the city of just pushing problems out of sight.

“I am not OK with open-air drug dealing in this City. Period,” Breed said Thursday. She stressed home and business break-ins also require timely responses, but the city needs officers to respond.

Breed announced Thursday she would introduce a $25 million budget supplemental to fund police overtime to get the department through the end of the fiscal year while it continues to try to hire new officers. The money — which the Board of Supervisors would need to approve — comes on top of the Police Department’s $713 million budget in fiscal year 2023, an increase of $50 million from the year before. The overtime will come out of the city’s $108 million general reserve.

Click here to read the full article on the San Francisco Chronicle

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Democrats, san francisco

SF Supervisor Says City’s $1.45B Budget Plan to End Homelessness Won’t Work

February 3, 2023 By Tim Johns 2 Comments

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman did not mince words during a sit-down interview with ABC7 News on Wednesday, talking about the city’s housing plan for the homeless.

Earlier in the week, Mandelman called on the Board of Supervisors to have a special meeting to discuss the report issued at the end of last year by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

“We spend a huge amount of money in this city, not solving this problem,” Mandelman said.

The report was meant to be a direct plan of execution after the Board of Supervisors voted in June of 2022 to have the city offer all homeless people in the city a safe place to sleep.

It suggests spending nearly $1.5 billion over the next three years in addition to the money already expected to be spent.

That comes out to about $70,000 per shelter bed per year, according to Mandelman.

“That just seems like way too much to me. It’s more than other communities spend on shelter,” said Mandelman.

Mandelman thinks some of what’s proposed is wasteful and says the city can get rid of encampments for less.

MORE: Homelessness count rises in California despite staying steady nationwide, report finds

And Mandelman certainly isn’t alone. He tells me that quality of life issues such as homelessness are a top concern for both city residents and businesses.

Randy Shaw is the director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

He says he agrees with many of Mandelman’s thoughts and believes the city should cut down on the red tape surrounding the issue.

MORE: SF closes Tenderloin Center. What’s next for 400+ people who received services everyday?

“We have an emergency situation. We don’t have the luxury to say, ‘Well this luxury over 10 years will be a better investment’. We got to get people housed now,” said Shaw.

Mandelman maintains that the city can end unsheltered homelessness on our streets with the right plan and funding.

Click here to read the full article at ABC News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Homelessness, san francisco

$5 Million for Each Longtime Black Resident? S.F. Has a Bold Reparations Plan to Consider

January 17, 2023 By Justin Phillips 10 Comments

A century after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and lamented how “the Negro still is not free.”

“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity,” he said during his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

King could have been describing today’s San Francisco, a 47-square-mile city that’s home to more than 60 billionaires and at least 7,000 homeless people, around 40% of whom are Black, despite Black people representing only 5% of the population.

Right up until he was assassinated in 1968, King argued that economic justice was integral to racial justice. The idea is at the core of a draft proposal the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee presented to city leaders last month.

The Board of Supervisors created the committee, also called AARAC, in December 2020, amid a national racial reckoning. The board’s legislation, while innovative, was also narrow, allowing city leaders to reject or outright ignore the committee’s work.

What happens next will show whether San Francisco politicians are serious about confronting the city’s checkered past, or are simply pretending to be.

While California was never officially a slave state, slaveholders were protected here, and the committee’s research reveals that segregation, systemic oppression and racial prejudice born from the institution of slavery had a profound impact on the city’s evolution.

In the 20th century alone, San Francisco was a Ku Klux Klan stronghold, barred Black people from settling in certain areas, kept them out of city jobs and demolished the Fillmore, a Black neighborhood and commercial district, leaving it vacant for decades.

“Centuries of harm and destruction of Black lives, Black bodies and Black communities should be met with centuries of repair,” AARAC chair Eric McDonnell told me. “If you look at San Francisco, it’s very much a tale of two cities.”

AARAC’s draft proposal includes a number of financial recommendations. There’s one that will especially get folks talking.

AARAC calls for one-time, lump-sum reparations payments of $5 million to each eligible recipient. The amount could cover the “the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy,” the draft states.

To qualify for the payments, residents must be 18 at the time the committee’s proposal is enacted, and have identified as Black or African American on public documents for at least 10 years. They may also have to prove they were born in the city between 1940 and 1996, have resided in San Francisco for at least 13 years, and be someone, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated during the war on drugs.

To put that in perspective, the state reparations task force, which will issue its own proposal is June, believes that Black Californians may be due $569 billion for housing discrimination alone between 1933 and 1977.

The wealth disparity is not the result of bad fortune. The period of urban renewal that began in the 1950s remains one of the most damning examples of how local government stole wealth from Black communities by razing them, and then ensured they never recovered. As AARAC’s report highlights, most of San Francisco’s formerly redlined neighborhoods — where residents were deemed ineligible for federal housing loans between 1933 and 1954 — are low-income neighborhoods undergoing gentrification now.

While San Francisco isn’t unique in having systematically distributed its riches along racial lines, the city’s status as a liberal bastion makes it a powerful testing ground for undoing these damages, AARAC vice chair Tinisch Hollins told me.

“This reparations process gives us a chance to look at the many ways, not just economically, that harm can and should be repaired,” Hollins said. “And even though San Francisco has passed policies that touch on the legacy of slavery, we have needed something that goes toward quantifying that harm.”

As for next steps, the committee will submit its final proposal to city leaders in June. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told me he hopes his colleagues will approve AARAC’s recommendations.

“There are so many efforts that result in incredible reports that just end up gathering dust on a shelf,” Peskin said. “We cannot let this be one of them.”

As King described in his “I Have a Dream” speech, America was founded by white men who wrote a fraudulent “check” that promised that all men would enjoy the “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Click here to read the full article in the SF Chronicle

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Legislature, reparations, san francisco

Oakland Voters OK Noncitizen Voting in School Board Races, but the Measure Might Never Go Into Effect

November 16, 2022 By Bob Egelko 2 Comments

Oakland voters say noncitizen parents or guardians of school-age children should be allowed to vote in school board elections. The issue now heads to the City Council — and after that, to the courts, which already are wrestling with a similar law in San Francisco.

Measure S, approved by 62% of the voters last Tuesday, would not immediately allow voting by non-U.S. citizens but would authorize such action by the City Council, which voted in June to place the measure on the ballot. Council members said noncitizens, including legal residents and undocumented immigrants, make up 14% of Oakland’s population and currently lack “representation in key decisions that impact their education and their lives.” About 13,000 are parents or guardians of children younger than 18.

The question now is whether the forthcoming ordinance conflicts with a long-standing provision of the California Constitution that declares, “A United States citizen 18 years of age and resident in this State may vote.”

A 2016 San Francisco ballot measure, the first in the state, allowed noncitizen parents to vote in school board elections, starting in 2018. This July, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer ordered a halt to noncitizen voting in the city, saying the constitutional provision allowed only U.S. citizens to vote and could not be overridden by a local government. But the state’s First District Court of Appeal put Ulmer’s ruling on hold while the case was on appeal and allowed noncitizens to vote for school board candidates last week.

The conservative groups that challenged San Francisco’s measure, the United States Justice Foundation and the California Public Policy Foundation, also filed suit to remove Measure S from the Oakland ballot. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Michael Markman denied their request in August, saying it was premature because the measure would merely allow the City Council to pass a voting-rights ordinance. Markman said at a hearing that he thought Ulmer was probably right in deciding the state Constitution allowed only citizens to vote, but also observed that the issue would most likely be decided by higher courts.

Attorney James V. Lacy, leader of the two groups, says he plans to file another suit, probably in December, to challenge the expected Oakland ordinance. Lacy has contended the local measures would allow citizens’ votes to be “diluted” by noncitizens. He also argued — and Ulmer agreed — that the state Constitution allows only U.S. citizens to vote.

In his ruling in July, Ulmer said the Constitution’s declaration that citizens “may vote” was intended to prohibit others from voting. If “may” was changed to “shall,” he said, all citizens would be required to vote, which is the law in some nations but not in the United States. And if the provision saying citizens “may vote” does not exclude noncitizens, as the city contends, Ulmer said it would also allow children or non-Californians to vote in local elections.

Eligibility to vote, the judge said, is a matter of “statewide concern” and is not subject to varying rules by local governments, even self-governing charter cities, which include both San Francisco and Oakland.

Appeals courts, and possibly the state Supreme Court, will have the last word on noncitizen voting. But the San Francisco case is back before Ulmer, and City Attorney David Chiu’s office is urging him to reconsider the state constitutional language.

The Constitution “does not say only citizens may vote,” and leaves the door open for greater eligibility in local elections, Deputy City Attorney James Emery wrote in a filing with Ulmer last week. “Charter cities may serve as laboratories of democracy demonstrating the benefits of noncitizen voting in local contests.”

Emery cited a 1992 state Supreme Court ruling allowing Los Angeles to provide city funds to candidates for local offices, despite a state ballot measure that prohibited public funding of political campaigns. The filing also offered appreciative statements from some noncitizen parents who had voted in San Francisco school board elections.

“For the first time in my life,” said Hwaji Shin, a lawful permanent resident and mother of a child in elementary school, “ I felt like I was a full member of the school community whose voice matters.”

Click here to read the full article at the San Francisco Chronicle

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, san francisco, Voting Rights

Pelosi & Kavanaugh Murder Plots Show Media Double Standard

November 1, 2022 By Michael Shellenberger 3 Comments

The same news media that mischaracterized psychosis as fanaticism in the alleged plot to kill Pelosi also downplayed the assassination plot against Kavanaugh by an abortion rights fanatic.

David DePape, the suspect in an alleged assassination attempt against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote a series of right-wing blog posts in recent weeks. “Many of the posts were filled with screeds against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people,” notes The Washington Post. “In one post, written on Oct. 19, the author urged former President Donald J. Trump to choose Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, as his vice-presidential candidate in 2024,” reports The New York Times. “In another,” wrote The Los Angeles Times, “he called ‘equity’ a leftist dog whistle ‘for the systematic oppression of white people’ and ‘diversity’ a ‘dog whistle for the genocide of the white race.’”

But the blog posts confirm my original reporting yesterday that DePape has been, for at least a decade, in the grip of a psychosis caused by mental illness and/or drug use. The Washington Post, to its credit, reports in the first paragraph that DePape’s blog was filled with “delusional thoughts, including that an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird” and that, as each post loaded, “a reader briefly glimpses an image of a person wearing a giant inflatable unicorn costume.” The New York Times acknowledged that, “mixed in with those posts were others about religion, the occult and images of fairies that the user said he had produced using an artificial intelligence imaging system,” albeit not until the 22nd paragraph.

And now the mother of DePape’s two children, Gypsy Taub, has publicly confirmed that DePape has experienced psychotic episodes. “He is mentally ill,” she told ABC7, “He has been mentally ill for a long time.” Taub said DePape disappeared for almost a year and “came back in very bad shape. He thought he was Jesus. He was constantly paranoid, thinking people were after him. And it took a good year or two to get back to, you know, being halfway normal.” However, it is not clear whether DePape’s psychosis is a result of an underlying mental illness, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or from the long-term use of drugs, particularly meth, which can result in psychosis and permanent changes to brain functioning. Taub’s neighbors, as I reported yesterday, said Taub herself suffered frequent bouts of paranoid psychosis and had repeatedly lied about them to the police.

Many people responded to my reporting yesterday by noting that DePape may have been psychotic but that the real problem lay with right-wing conspiracy theories. “But even if you believe he’s psychotic (which seems plausible),” wrote former New Yorker reporter James Surowiecki in response to my article, “why did his paranoid psychosis take as its object Nancy Pelosi? Because of the ubiquity of right-wing conspiracy theories and the demonization of Pelosi by right-wing media… We can certainly get rid of conspiracy theories being mainstreamed on cable TV and social media by high-profile pundits.”

But we can’t get rid of discussions of conspiracy theories because doing so would violate the First Amendment and, as I noted yesterday, psychotic people construct their delusions from whatever is in popular culture at the time to invent justifications for their actions. In 1981, a psychotic man named John Hinkley, Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan because, Hinkley said, he wanted to impress the actress Jodie Foster. Earlier this month, a man in Washington state shot two 40-something innkeepers because, he said, he heard the voice of Pope Gregory and John Paul say to him, “Are you going to let Bonny and Clyde do that to our family?”

And if mainstream news journalists are so concerned that political extremism is resulting in more violence against public officials, why did they, en masse, downplay the assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June? Where The New York Times has put the alleged Pelosi assassination attempt on its front page for two days in a row, it buried the story of the Kavanaugh murder plot on page A20. Three days later, none of the Sunday morning political shows, such as NBC’s “Meet the Press,” even mentioned the assassination attempt.

Today, “Meet the Press,” focused on the Pelosi plot and framed it as overly political, making no mention whatsoever of DePape’s psychotic delusions. “The chilling and violent attack on Paul Pelosi — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband — is raising fears of more political violence,” said its host, Chuck Todd.

Click here to read the full article in Substack

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Crime, Pelosi, san francisco

San Francisco Mayor Apologizes for Saying ‘A Lot Of’ Drug Dealers are Honduran

October 22, 2022 By Jonah Valdez 1 Comment

San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued an apology Thursday for comments she made that linked Honduran immigrants to drug dealing in the city, which drew condemnation from Bay Area Latino organizations and community members.

In clips from the hourlong interview at an Oct. 5 live event with public radio station KQED-FM that began to circulate on social media this week, Breed said a large number of those arrested for dealing fentanyl are Honduran.

“There are unfortunately a lot of people who come from a particular country — come from Honduras — and a lot of the people who are dealing drugs happen to be of that ethnicity,” she said, pushing back against criticism that law enforcement was racially profiling Latinos in the Tenderloin neighborhood.

“It’s nothing ‘racial profile’ about this,” Breed said. “We all know it. It’s the reality, it’s what you see, it’s what’s out there.”

In her written apology, Breed said that while trying to explain the situation in the Tenderloin, she “failed to accurately and comprehensively discuss what is an incredibly complex situation in our City and in Central America.”

“We do have significant challenges with drug dealing in the Tenderloin, and those challenges are impacting families that live there, including immigrant Latino families and residents who are living in fear,” Breed said. “As a proud Sanctuary City, we have an obligation to provide a safe space for our immigrant families to live and thrive. That includes ending open-air drug markets and hold drug dealers, regardless of ethnicity, accountable.”

During the KQED event, Breed was asked about how officials would address drug use and the estimated 1,700 overdose deaths in the city since 2020.

The videos circulated as Latino leaders and community members were still dealing with the shock of Los Angeles city leaders’ racist comments toward Black and Indigenous people, which were brought to light in leaked recordings a week earlier.

“The comments in L.A. hurt people in the Bay Area, also,” said Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, executive director of San Francisco nonprofit Central American Resource Center of Northern California. “And then to have this thing resurface with the mayor, it kind of added insult to injury with how our community is feeling in California overall.”

Dugan-Cuadra was among the Latino leaders who sat down with Breed this week to push for an apology and to convey the community’s disappointment and hurt.

She was concerned that Breed’s comments fed the xenophobic narrative of viewing immigrant communities as criminals, drawing parallels to former President Trump’s rhetoric. Dugan-Cuadra instead asked Breed to focus on solutions and preventive measures that address drug dealing and root causes of migration to the U.S. — such as poverty — rather than ramp up criminal law enforcement.

Breed said last month that she would be “less tolerant of all the bulls— that has destroyed our city.” She and Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins, Breed’s pick to succeed Chesa Boudin after he was recalled, have committed to a more aggressive approach of policing and prosecuting drug dealing and property crimes.

“I think any young person with migratory status whose only option to survive is existing in an underground economy is a reflection of our society,” Dugan-Cuadra said. “Young people should have more opportunities to fulfill their dreams, and shouldn’t be excluded and criminalized.”

Dugan-Cuadra also invited Breed to visit Honduras and Central America, so she can better understand the violent, impoverished conditions Hondurans and others are fleeing from. She said the mayor has been responsive and receptive.

Breed’s apology also included a pledge to support Dugan-Cuadra’s organization, CARECEN SF, which is opening a larger office near the Tenderloin. The nonprofit provides resources for Latino and immigrant families, including legal aid and representation in immigration and criminal courts.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: mayor, san francisco

S.F. is Spending $1.7 Million on One Public Toilet: ‘What are They Making it Out of — Gold?’

October 21, 2022 By Heather Knight 1 Comment

Celebration for S.F.’s $1.7 million toilet canceled after backlash: “The cost is insane.”

San Francisco politicians will gather at the Noe Valley Town Square Wednesday afternoon to congratulate themselves for securing state money for a long-desired toilet in the northeast corner of the charming plaza.

Another public toilet in a city with far too few of them is excellent. But the details of this particular commode? They’re mind-boggling, maddening and encapsulate so much of what’s wrong with our city government.

The toilet — just one loo in 150 square feet of space — is projected to cost $1.7 million, about the same as a single-family home in this wildly overpriced city. And it won’t be ready for use until 2025.

Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) secured the $1.7 million from the state for the toilet after hearing “loud and clear” from the community that families needed a bathroom. The plumbing is already there, added when the plaza was constructed six years ago, but there was never money for the actual bathroom. Until Haney stepped in.

The former San Francisco supervisor said the Recreation and Parks Department told him the going rate for one public bathroom was $1.7 million so he secured the full amount, not questioning the pricetag.

“They told me $1.7 million, and I got $1.7 million,” Haney explained. “I didn’t have the option of bringing home less of the bacon when it comes to building a toilet. A half a toilet or a toilet-maybe-someday is not much use to anyone.”

True, but instead we have a toilet-maybe-in-more-than-two-years that could have paid to house a family instead. So why is a public bathroom so insanely expensive, and why does it take so long to build? A joint statement from Rec and Park and the Department of Public Works, which will work together to build this extravagant bathroom, pointed to several reasons.

For one thing, the cost to build anything in San Francisco is exorbitant. The city is the most expensive in the world to build in — even topping Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York City. We’re No. 1! Even for places to go No. 1.

Like everywhere, construction costs have risen 20% to 30% in the past couple of years due to global supply chain issues and the rising costs of fuel, labor and materials. But like always, there’s a certain preciousness to the process in San Francisco. (Just look at the years-long, ongoing quest to design and manufacture bespoke city trash cans.)

“It’s important to note that public projects and their overall cost estimates don’t just reflect the price of erecting structures,” the statement said. “They include planning, drawing, permits, reviews and public outreach.”

For a toilet? Apparently so.

An architect will draw plans for the bathroom that the city will share with the community for feedback. It will also head to the Arts Commission’s Civic Design Review committee comprised of two architects, a landscape architect and two other design professionals who, under city charter, “conduct a multi-phase review” of all city projects on public land — ranging from buildings to bathrooms to historic plaques, fences and lamps.

The web-page describing that process states the point is to ensure “that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.”

Sorry, kid. I know you’ve got to go, but have you considered the context of the urban environment?

The project will then head to the Rec and Park Commission and to the Board of Supervisors. According to the city’s statement, it will also be subject to review under the California Environmental Quality Act. Then, the city will put the project up for bid.

“Once we start the project, we’ll have a clearer timeline, but we expect to be able to complete the project in 2025,” the statement read.

The city said the $1.7 million estimate “is extremely rough” and budgets “for the worst-case scenario due to the onerous demands and unpredictable costs levied by PG&E,” the possibility code requirements could change during the project and in case other unexpected circumstances come up.

The city is in a legal battle with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. over the city’s claim that the utility has slowed projects and forced them to be more expensive unless they obtain electricity directly from the utility instead of the city’s Public Utilities Commission.

The bathroom will be built by unions whose workers will “earn a living wage and benefits, including paid sick time, leave and training.”

“While this isn’t the cheapest way to build, it reflects San Francisco’s values,” the statement read.

I’m a union member myself, and of course the majority of our public projects should be union built. But does a $1.7 million single bathroom really reflect San Francisco’s values? I don’t think so.

The supervisors in 2019 approved a Project Labor Agreement between the city and unions that requires union labor for all “covered projects” — but this bathroom isn’t one of them because it’s not worth $10 million and it didn’t come from bond funding.

There are other, much cheaper options. I e-mailed Tom Hardiman, executive director of the Modular Building Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia, and asked him to guess what San Francisco was spending to build one toilet in 150 square feet of space.

“I’m going to guess high, I think, and say $200,000,” he wrote back.

I seemed to nearly give him a heart attack by telling him the actual figure in a subsequent phone call.

“This is to build one public restroom?” he asked incredulously. “What are they making it out of — gold and fine Italian marble? It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragically flawed.”

He then said he’d do some research and found a cheaper option within minutes. He said Chad Kaufman, CEO of Public Restroom Company, just delivered and installed seven modular bathrooms in Los Angeles for the same price San Francisco will spend to build one. These are not Porta Potties, but instead have concrete walls with stucco exteriors and nice fixtures with plumbing.

“There will be some onsite labor which absolutely can be union,” Hardiman said, pointing to crane operators, laborers and plumbers.

And, he said, they could be delivered in eight months.

Phil Ginsburg, director of the Recreation and Parks Department, said many park systems around the country use pre-fabricated restrooms, which are much cheaper — and he hopes San Francisco becomes more politically open to them too. The department has occasionally used them in the past — including at the Redwood Grove playground in McLaren Park — and it’s unclear why one seems off the table for Noe Valley.

Click here to read the full article in the San Francisco Chronicle

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: bathrooms, san francisco, unions

New Poll Finds San Francisco Voters Are Moving Back To The Center

October 15, 2022 By Evan Symon 6 Comments

Mayor London Breed has only a 36% approval rating compared to 64% disapproval

According to a new poll by the San Francisco Standard published on Thursday, voters in the city have moved back towards the center in the past few years following economic toil, massive political changes, rises in crime, and a growing number of homeless in the city.

A revival of tough-on-crime policies by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has particularly won over many in San Francisco compared to prior policies put in place by recalled DA Chesa Boudin and proposed policies by her main opponent in the DA race John Hamasaki. Jenkins currently holds a 56% approval rating compared to Boudin who under 30% earlier this year in May before the recall election. Also tellingly, Jenkins is currently winning against Hamasaki and fellow opponent Joe Alioto Veronese in polls, holding a double-digit point lead, albeit with over 50% of voters still not knowing who they would vote for.

Jenkins also proved to be one of the only entities and lawmakers in the city who had above a 50% approval rating. The Standard poll showed that Mayor London Breed has only a 36% approval rating compared to 64% disapproval. The Board of Supervisors fared worse, with only 23% of citizens approving of them compared to a whopping 77% disapproval rating. The San Francisco Public School system fared low as well with a 31%-69% approval disapproval split. The only entity to come close to approval was the SFPD, with a 41%-59% split.

SF public schools were particularly shown to be complex. While 69% of citizens disapproved of how they were being run, around 3 out of every 4 parents in the city disapproved of the schools. And these were encouraging numbers, as approval ratings had been even lower earlier this year prior to a school board recall election and subsequent reversal of many policies made under the former board.

Unsurprisingly, San Franciscans said that homelessness and crime were the top two concerns in the city. 63% of those in the city said that City Hall doesn’t know how to solve the homelessness issue, with 71% agreeing that the high number of unhoused people are making the city less safe.

Political reversals begin in SF

The new tough-on-crime prerogatives, some of which have seen judges being stubborn in going along with the new policies, such as a recent incident in which DA Jenkins tried to prosecute drug dealers for murder following drugs that they sold leading to overdoses, have also been seen as more positive. While judges in the city blocked that murder charge policy attempted by Jenkins, 69% of San Francisco citizens now approve of that policy according to the poll. Majority support was also found for forcing repeat drug offenders into treatment, a greater police presence in the city, and requirements for street vendors to have licenses.

Overall, while the poll still found many in the city to still be in favor of progressive and liberal policies that have defined the city for over half a century, commentators noted that the city seemed to have hit a peak in those values in the 2010s when the city was coasting on a roaring tech economy. Now, with crime rising, home prices dropping, and many tech and retail companies either reducing office space or leaving the city outright, many now are beginning to shift in a different direction politically.

“The poll should not come as a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar to the situation of the city,” explained Frank Ma, a former law enforcement official who now works as a security advisor for businesses in San Francisco and cities in the Peninsula, to the Globe on Thursday. “People just got fed up. And now we have a situation where some very liberal people who are lefter than left on some issues are suddenly asking for an expansion of the police or want some people out of office because of the things they did hurting the city or causing crime to go up.”

“We were bound to hit our peak in that regard at some time, but it took a lot of crime, open drug use, and the economy to turn here to finally get people to start fighting back against the endless reforms that only kept hurting the city. I mean, we had two major recalls this year oust very-left people. Many clients I have, who are very liberal and supported people like Boudin, have even asked me about the legality of rounding up homeless people and sending them to other cities like the Florida and Texas Governors have done with illegal immigrants sending them to New York and Massachusetts. There are people I know who marched in the George Floyd rallies and called for police defunding who then had a lot of break ins and are now demanding that the SFPD hire more officers.”

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, elections, san francisco

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Political reversals begin in SF

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