Politics

Peskin wins DCCC chair

2008-07-24T05:03:34Z

Before the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee voted tonight on its new chair, Chris Daly told me the vote was going to be 18-16 in favor of Aaron Peskin, the progressives' pick. I didn't doubt him. The play was going to be to elect Peskin temporary chair as the first order of business, before the public comment or chair election agenda items, and make it clear from the get-go where the votes were.

There was a mild and brief parliamentary scrum before the names of Peskin and Scott Wiener, last term's chair and the pick of the moderates, were put up for vote. Peskin won on a 18-16 vote.

"You have my word that I'm going to work my butt off and I'm going to do it with Scott," Peskin said during his acceptance speech before Wiener supporters reminded him he was only temporary chair and the real vote was still coming up. But I didn't doubt it was over.

I listened to the first speaker during public comment, Senator-to-be Mark Leno, sound conciliatory notes and praise the soon-to-be vanquished candidate he supported. And then I left as the speakers lined up at the microphone to make the case for their respective candidates, telling Daly to call me if the official vote wasn't 18-16.

I'll see your Embarcadero and raise you Market Street

2008-07-23T20:31:14Z

Scene from last month's ciclovia in Portland, Photo by Steven T. Jones

Sunday Streets, a proposal to bring to San Francisco’s Embarcadero the carfree ciclovias that have caught on in major cities around the world, became mired in the dysfunctional relations between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors after Fisherman’s Wharf merchants freaked out.

But even before the full board yesterday considered the resolution by Sups. Aaron Peskin, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Sean Elsbernd demanding the Aug. 31 and Sept. 14 events be postponed until a detailed economic impact analysis can be done, the Mayor’s Office had already announced the events would proceed as scheduled, critics be damned.

“The mayor’s position on Sunday Streets will not change. We will go ahead as scheduled,” Mike Farrah, head of the Office of Neighborhood Services and a longtime Newsom loyalist, told the Guardian on Monday.

In the face of that stand, and with Farrah and other event proponents promising to work with business community critics to massage the plan, Peskin opted to delayed consideration of his resolution until the Aug. 5 meeting. Yet Sup. Chris Daly (who supports Sunday Streets even though he calls it a Newsom publicity stunt) also decided to up the ante yesterday by introducing legislation to permanently ban cars from Market Street.

Farrah told me, “We are in no way afraid of an economic impact study,” believing that it will show the event to be a financial boon for the city and merchants, but he saw no reason to delay the events until the study can be completed. In fact, he said the first event should be part of that study.

When asked about the conflict yesterday, Newsom told reporters he's sympathetic to the concerns of business owners, but he still supports the Sunday Streets, which will close to cars for four hours per event almost six miles of roadway stretching from the Bayview Opera House to Portsmouth Square in Chinatown, opening the streets to bicyclists, skaters, pedestrians, dance troupes and a broad range of planned recreational activities.

Newsom told the story of his days running a restaurant he owned near Union Street and how he actively opposed shutting down Union Street for a parade, also concerned about lost business if motorists were inconvenienced, only to have one of his busiest days of the year.

"Change is difficult. It's always difficult,” Newsom said. “But I'm a business guy... a complaint against me is that I'm too pro-business."

Yet to listen to the business community representatives from Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf, who packed a hearing on the Sunday Streets resolution before the board’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee, Newsom’s proposal will hurt both business owners and employees.

“We just don’t want to have a beta test of a new program on one of the busiest days of the year,” said Karen Bell, executive director of the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefits District. “People want to drive down the Embarcadero. They don’t want to take side streets.”

Wharf restaurateur Steve Lebowski told the committee that his business drops off by 75 percent during the annual bike race in the area, hurting him and his employees. He decried what he said was a lack of outreach by the Mayor’s Office: “It’s been foisted on us and we’re being told what’s going to happen on a busy holiday.”

As for the lack of outreach, Farrah said the event was announced months ago, promoted in the media, and the subject of an extensive and expensive public outreach campaign. “It was no surprise,” he said. “Everyone knew this was happening.”

Susan King, a Green Party member brought in by the Mayor’s Office to help with outreach of the event, said at the hearing that the Bayview Merchants Association and many other affected business and civic groups were supportive of the proposal. “The only opposition we’ve really experienced is at Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39,” she said.

Frank Rescino, a third generation fisherman who works out of the wharf, said people will be discouraged from visiting them if they have to use detours and that will exacerbate already lean economic times. “Whenever you cut off the Embarcadero, you cut off the lifeblood of Fisherman’s Wharf,” he said. “We could really use that study before you put the last nail in our coffin.”

Even several labor leaders supported Peskin’s effort, a demonstration of his political acumen and perhaps a way for unions to curry favor with the management representatives they must negotiate with and poke Newsom in the eye. Tim Paulson, director of the San Francisco Labor Council, said the Sunday Streets dates should be postponed, “so that what people think will be high impacts in Fisherman’s Wharf won’t happen.”

But Sunday Streets advocates say critics are discounting the positive impact of the event and overplaying their fears.

“We’re not closing streets, we’re closing them to cars,” said Andy Thornley, program director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, noting that the events are expected to draw up to 10,000 people “who have money in their pockets.”

He noted that ciclovias have aroused business community doomsayers in every city where its been done – from Bogota, Colombia to Mexico City to Berlin and, most recently, Portland, Oregon – but it’s proven popular and enduring in each case.

“Every other city that’s tried this has found it has tremendous economic benefits, as well as tremendous health benefits and social benefits,” Thornley said.

“I really want to encourage the city to say yes to this and give it a chance,” said Cheryl Brinkman, president of Livable City, which is helping sponsor the events.

Progressive supervisors and activists noted what an odd turnout this conflict was, particularly after Newsom vetoed a far less ambitious street closure in Golden Gate Park, the so-called Healthy Saturdays proposal. But considering that idea came from the Board of Supervisors, and Sunday Streets was more or less Newsom’s idea (albeit one that was long on the wish list of the same carfree advocates who battled the mayor on Healthy Saturdays), maybe it’s not so strange after all.

No word yet whether Newsom will support the Market Street closure -- which former Mayor Willie Brown even pushed -- but seeing as it's coming from Daly, expect opposition from the Mayor's Office.

Bicyclists told to blame CEQA, not the city

2008-07-22T22:10:28Z

Bicyclists expressed their outrage, politicians offered their support, and bureaucrats said they’d do what they could to speed up the slow-moving environmental work on the city’s Bicycle Plan, which a judge says the city must complete before making any bicycle system improvements.
But for those seeking near-term relief to a stalemate expected to last at least another year found little solace during yesterday’s Land Use Committee hearing on the latest Bike Plan delays. Instead, they were offered a culprit: the California Environmental Quality Act.
The 38-year-old law was the basis for the legal challenge that led to a court injunction against new bike projects, and all involved with the plan note how perverse it is for the state’s premier environmental law to be holding up efforts to promote bicycling, an unqualified environmental good.
“It’s truly ironic that an activity that is inherently environmentally friendly is being challenged under an environmental law,” Planning Director John Rahaim, who moved here from Seattle last year, said at the hearing.

Fixes such as LOS reform, which would change how the city gauges traffic impacts associated with projects such as the Bike Plan, were offered support by Rahaim and other top officials, but even that effort has become mired in the same kinds of exhaustive CEQA-based environmental reviews that have stalled bike projects.
“I couldn’t agree more with how poorly CEQA is interpreted in this city,” Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who sponsored the legislation that got the Planning Department and Metropolitan Transportation Agency working on LOS reform, said at the hearing. “There needs to be uniform reform to LOS and CEQA.”
At a rally before the hearing, bicyclist advocates, business people and public health experts called for the city to do more.
“Mayor Gavin Newsom, we want to know what you’re going to do,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum said shortly after Newsom wanted briskly past the gathering and into his TownCar without comment. “City Attorney Dennis Herrera, we want to know what you’re going to do. To the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors, we want to know what you’re going to do.”
Beyond their pledges of support, all of those named have offered little that will greatly accelerate the process, prompting some bicycle advocates to try to take matters into their own hands.
Bicycle Advisory Committee member Casey Allen and a group of bicyclists have been working on a third party intervention in the lawsuit, hoping Judge Peter Busch will be swayed by their argument that hazardous sections of town constitute an immediate public health threat that warrants dropping the injunction. Allen said they will file their motion to intervene next month after completing legal work on it.
“There are other strategies that we’re working on too,” Allen assured the crowd from the podium. “We ask citizens to become directly involved in this battle.”
Many bike activists are frustrated that the City Attorney’s Office didn’t appeal the ruling and injunction on the Bicycle Plan, except for a limited and partially successful effort to allow bike-related improvements to the some of the most dangerous intersections, such as Fell and Masonic Streets.
But City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey told the Guardian that an unsuccessful appeal could have turned the limited ruling of one Republican judge into a statewide precedent that affected bike projects in each of California’s 58 counties.
“The danger is it risks writing bad caselaw where none existed before,” Dorsey said.
He disputed accusations that his office hasn’t made the injunction a high priority or that they’ve disregarded its impact to cyclists, saying they’ve worked hard on the case and are as frustrated by the verdict as anyone. But he said the problem is with CEQA, which doesn’t acknowledge the environmental benefits of bicycle projects and allows single plaintiffs such as Rob Anderson, who brought the case in SF, to tangle up projects for years.
“Dennis believes that if we’re really going to solve this problem, we have to work together…The injunction against the SF Bike Plan is the perfect example of what’s wrong with CEQA,” Dorsey said. “The real solution is in Sacramento. We need to reform CEQA.”
Yet until that happens or until the city can do legally defensible LOS reform or bicycle advocates can find some other way to end the injunction, San Francisco won’t see any bicycle improvements, which rally speakers said will hurt the city’s physical and economic health.
Mark Dwight, who founded Timbuk2, which makes popular bike messenger bags, and serves on the board of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, said, “Bicycling is an economic stimulus for the city of San Francisco…Bicycling is increasingly important for San Francisco’s number one industry: tourism.”
Naomi Bardach, a pediatrician at San Francisco General Hospital and UCSF, said bicycling is an important activity both for exercise and air quality. “This means the Bike Plan has great potential to improve the health of the city’s kids and adults.”
Sup. Gerardo Sandoval, who called the hearing, praised bicyclists who combating air pollution, global warming, and traffic congestion. "You are doing such a good turn for the city," he said. "People who drive should absolutely love you."

Weekly comments too good to pass up: "butt-to-nut"

2008-07-19T01:29:43Z

Damn, we just can't pass this one up. A commenter over at the SF Weekly's blog posted a message agreeing with Benjamin Wachs that there are some fine folks in the Midwest contrary to what so many San Franciscans seem to believe. I won't speak for rest of the newsroom here, but I agree with Wachs, too. I grew up in Tulsa and resent any implication that Oklahomans are somehow dysfunctional because popular pundits have encouraged the country to divide each state into two colors and thus make broad assumptions about millions of people. But there's a problem. Read the comment closely:

Posted at: July 17, 2008 10:54 AM
Dan says:
When San Francisco got too expensive in the late 90s, the ex and I took our freelancing selves to a small town in the Midwest. The generalizations made by the coasters were always amusing to read; our small town of about six thousand was populated by other refugees from big towns, artists and radicals and iconoclasts made it something of a weekend destination and arts center. These people had real cultural connections and credentials but very little of the pretension you'd find at, say, the Lexington (which, more than likely, is jammed butt to nut with a bunch of people who are actually from the Midwest and would be mortified if you found out). I found that we did travel more than when we lived in California. But that was mostly because we were still making San Francisco wages but paying small town Midwestern rent.

Wait. Huh? Wha? Are you talking about the Lexington in the Mission? You've been there before, right? Are you sure your parenthetical description of it is, uh, accurate? You're right about one thing, however. The Lexington, like so many other places in town, contains a lot of refugees from elsewhere who may actually be proud of where they came from but couldn't stand being treated like second-class citizens there anymore.

Judge denies SF Weekly motion for new trial

2008-07-19T01:19:35Z

Judge Marla Miller July 18th rejected attempts by the SF Weekly and its chain owner to overturn the Bay Guardian’s victory and $16 million jury award in a predatory pricing case.

The ruling on the defendants’ post-trial motions marked the end of the first full round of this legal fight and sets the stage for a shift to the California Court of Appeal. All that remains to be decided by Judge Miller is the Guardian’s upcoming motion for attorneys’ fees, which are expressly allowed to a prevailing party under the California Unfair Practices Act.

SF Weekly and Village Voice Media had asked Miller to overturn the jury verdict or order a new trial, and the company lawyers spent hours July 8th arguing that the evidence presented in a five-week trial didn’t justify the jury’s decision. And they claimed, in a laundry list of challenges, that Miller had issued improper jury instructions and erred in admitting evidence at trial.

Defense attorneys James Wagstaffe and H. Sinclair Kerr also tried to get the judge to overturn the 16-paper chain’s liabilty for any damages awarded by the jury. That would have left the Weekly as the only guilty party. VVM had admitted in earlier post-trial proceedings that the Weekly has a negative net worth and alone would be unable to pay the Guardian anywhere near $16 million.

Miller, with little comment, denied those requests.

In her "order denying defendants' motion for new trial" Miller stated:

"To the extent that the motion for New Trial is based upon the grounds of insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict (Civil Procedure Code #657(6) and excessive damages (Civil Procedure Code #657(5) the court has weighed the evidence and is not convinced from the entire record, including reasonable inferences therefrom, that the jury clearly should have reached a different verdict. To the extent that the motion for New Trial is based upon errors at law which Defendants contend occurred at the trial and were excepted to by them (Civil Procedure #657(7), the Court finds these contentions lack merit.”

The defendants have said they plan to appeal.

The case centered around the Guardian’s charge that the Weekly had for years violated California’s Unfair practices Act by selling advertising space below the cost of producing it for the purpose of injuring the locally owned, independent competitor.

Evidence presented at trial showed that the Weekly had consistently lost money, as much as $2 million a year, since New Times, now known as VVM, bought the paper in 1995.

The chain later bought the East Bay Express, and transformed it from a profitable paper to one that consistently lost money. Between the Weekly and the Express, VVM has lost some $25 million in San Francisco.

The evidence also showed that VVM’s executive editor, Michael Lacey, had vowed to put the Guardian out of business, and that Weekly advertising and business staff were instructed to try to take business away from the Guardian by below cost pricing, whatever the sacrifice in revenue and profits.

And while the VVM lawyers mounted a convoluted legal argument to claim that the parent company wasn’t legally liable for any damages, the trial showed that the senior executives at the Phoenix-based chain were not only aware of the predatory strategy but were active participants in enabling the Weekly to carry out its pervasive program of below-cost sales..

In fact, two senior officers, CFO Jed Brunst and Controller Jeff Mars, testified on the stand or in pretrial depositions that the SF Weekly would have gone out of business years ago if the chain hadn’t made a policy of shipping large sums of money from headquarters into the San Francisco operation to subsidize below-cost sales.

After the trial, jurors said they were convinced that VVM sought to destroy local competition. Juror Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that “it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly” and that “the predatory intent trickled down from the top.”

Although the VVM lawyers have 60 days to file their notice of appeal, there’s already some indication of what the chain will try to argue to the higher court. Even before the trial started, Andy Van De Voorde, VVM executive associate editor, who flew in from Denver to cover the trial for the Weekly, argued in his blogs that the California Unfair Practices Act was out of date and irrelevant. Referring to the act as a “depression era law,” (actually, the act dates back to 1913, California’s Progressive Era), Van De Voorde suggested that modern competitive markets made such a law pointless.

The law bars any business from selling a product or service below cost with the intent to harm a competitor or destroy competition. That prohibition has been upheld by many appellate court decisions, some as recent as the 21st century. The state Legislature has reviewed and even amended that part of the state code many times in recent decades, but has declined to make any fundamental changes in the protections afforded by the Unfair Practices Act.

And the trend toward chain ownership and consolidation of businesses in everything from coffee shops to bookstores and hair salons would seem to suggest that the need for a law protecting independent local merchants from predatory chains is greater than ever today.

That's certainly true for the news media: One company new owns almost every daily newspaper in the Bay Area.

Both before and after the trial, the VVM lawyers also argued that a ban on predatory pricing would violate the Weekly’s First Amendment rights. If the paper was forced to live within its means – that is, to raise ad rates and stop relying on big subsidies from the chain – Weekly managers might have to cut the size of the staff, thus reducing editorial coverage, the lawyers argued.

Two judges – first Richard Kramer, who handled pre-trial rulings, and later Miller – rejected that argument wholesale.

As the Guardian’s lawyers argued, newspapers have always had to follow basic business regulations – even when they might cost money that could have gone to editorial staffing. No newspaper has ever seriously tried to claim that labor laws, or environmental laws, or workplace-safety laws, or tax laws were a First Amendment violation.

Still, those claims may appear again in the appellate briefs.

Meanwhile, the costs to VVM and the Weekly will continue to rise: If the verdict is upheld on appeal, the chain will have to pay interest on the jury award, which is now accruing at about $4,300 a day. And at this point the Guardian has an additional statutory right to recover reasonable attorney’s fees, which could add a substantial amount to the current judgment of more than $16 million

The Guardian’s lawyers are Ralph Alldredge, Richard Hill and E. Craig Moody.

You can read the Guardian's key legal brief on the post-trial motions here. For a detailed history of the case, click here

DCC vote: Does Peskin have it?

2008-07-18T19:44:18Z

Chris Daly and Robert Haaland are reporting that Aaron Peskin has lined up the votes to become the next chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party.

It's been a long and contested fight, and Daly now says it's over, and that Scott Wiener, Peskin's opponnent, should essentially drop out.

But Wiener has no intention of backing down; in fact, he just told me by phone that he disagrees with Daly's claim.

"It's pure spin," he said. "I have more committed votes than Aaron does."

Peskin remains confident that he'll prevail at the July 23 meeting and that more than half of the 34 voting members are lined up behind him. As for Wiener's comment, he said: "On Wednesday night, one of us will be right and one of us will be wrong."

Of course, neither side is releasing a list of names, since there's still intense lobbying going on behind the scenes.

Should be a wild meeting.

Bad news for SF bicyclists causes bad blood at City Hall

2008-07-18T00:31:45Z

Advocates for bicycling, walking, and the creation of more carfree spaces were already in full battle mode this week over challenges to Sunday Streets, Mayor Gavin Newsom's plan to close the Embarcadero to cars for four hours each on Aug. 31 and Sept. 14. Then came word that the Bicycle Plan -- which the city must complete in order to lift a two-year-old court injunction against any bike-related projects -- is falling behind schedule once again.

The two unrelated setbacks will be the subjects of a pair of hearings at City Hall on Monday, events likely to fill their respective hearing rooms with angry bicyclists, angry business people, and angry political proxies of all stripes.
First up is a 10 a.m. hearing at the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee on a pair of measures by Sup. Aaron Peskin: one a resolution calling for detailed economic studies before the Sunday Streets events, the other an ordinance that would require board approval for new athletic events that require street closure.

Then the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has scheduled a 12:30 rally on City Hall steps before the 1 p.m. Land Use Committee hearing, which will include an update on the Bike Plan progress that was requested by Sup. Gerardo Sandoval after learning that work on the plan has fallen months behind schedule due consultants missing deadlines and other bureaucratic delays.

Judson True, spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, confirmed that work on the bike plan has slipped behind schedule, although he said the agency will still try to produce the draft report this fall as planned and keep the schedule on track for an approved plan by the middle of next year.
"It's a complicated environmental review and we have to make sure we do it right. It's a top priority at the agency," he said.
But SFBC director Leah Shahum said the plan hasn't gotten the attention or resources it deserves, particularly given the dangerous conditions facing a growing number of bicyclists. "Clearly, there's not been strong enough project management on this," she said. "It seems it has not been given the priority that they assured us in December that it would have."
Some bicyclists have even become increasingly critical of both the city and SFBC and there is talk of trying to do a third party intervention in the case, arguing that bicyclists are being endangered by the injunction even though they haven't been directly involved in the lawsuit. The SFBC is also putting pressure on City Attorney Dennis Herrera to see whether anything else can be done to allow some bike improvements (such as dealing with disappearing posts for locking bikes).
But it is the battle over Sunday Streets that seems to be producing the biggest political dramas under the dome. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi backed off his initial support for Peskin's proposal after hearing from supporters of Sunday Streets, and now Peskin is accusing Mirkarimi of hanging him out to dry (Peskin had some choice profanities for Mirkarimi, who hasn't responded yet).
Critics of the Peskin measures (the resolution is co-sponsored by Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier) accuse him of playing politics by seizing a chance to join with members of the business community to bash the mayor, but the unintended result appears to be a chilling of relations between progressives and their usual allies on the board as they line up to support Newsom, who they normally oppose.
"It's so clearly a political maneuver it's galling," Shahum said.
Yet Peskin said it's about process and Newsom's unwillingness to work with the board.
"The reason I did this is that the Mayor's Office did not consult with any members of the board whose district was affected," Peskin told me, adding, "There are approved ways to go about this and build consensus and get input and gauge what the traffic and economic impacts with be."
And one of those ways is hearings like those taking place on Monday. Make sure to arrive early if you want a seat.

A new poverty index

2008-07-17T19:14:34Z

This is so obvious that San Francisco ought to be signing on right away (and pushing the speaker of the house to make is happen).

SF Weekly bashes the left -- and misses the point

2008-07-16T23:02:08Z

I'm not surprised that Matt Smith is once again looking for ways to bash the left, and that the SF Weekly is once again looking for ways to attack public power. But Smith's latest piece is really screwy.

His thesis seems to be that the public-power movement is supporting the move to build city-owned power plants at the foot of Potrero Hill. Actually, that's completely wrong.

There's a measure headed for the fall ballot called the Clean Energy Act that would, among other things, move the city toward public power. But it has very little to do with the battle over the power plants.

The two cosponsors of the Clean Energy Act, Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, are on opposite sides of the power-plant issue. And even a cursory read of the Guardian blogs demonstrates that the activists are by no means of one mind on this.

The whole idea that the peakers were a public-power plot is pretty laughable, since NONE of the leading public-power activists had anything to do with the idea in the first place. (And later, when it came out of the SFPUC -- which again, has NEVER been a bastion of public-power activism) some of us liked the idea and some of us didn't.

And the Peskin measure that Smith talks about has nothing to do with public power either.

The challenge to Newsom...and all of us

2008-07-16T20:23:52Z

Photo from Portland's recent ciclovia by Steven T. Jones

It's not easy to create carfree spaces in automobile-obsessed California, even temporary ones, as Mayor Gavin Newsom is starting to learn. His proposal to create a carfree "ciclovia" along the Embarcadero from Bayview to Chinatown was already scaled back from his original proposal of three consecutive Sundays in August to the recently approved plan for four-hour events on Aug. 31 and Sept. 14.
Merchant groups from Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf lost their minds, screaming with fears of lost business even though motorists will still be able to access their tourist traps by car, and they'll be joined by thousands of people pedaling, walking and skating past their businesses during prime breakfast and lunch hours. And now members of the Board of Supervisors have added their voices to this shrill chorus.
I knew there would be outrage, and there has been opposition in every city where it's been tried (and it's ultimately become popular everywhere it's been tried). Unfortunately, Newsom has a history of caving in to overentitled motorists. So the challenge now for Newsom -- and for all of us concerned about climate change, public health, and the promotion of sustainable forms of transportation -- is to do what's right in the face of fearful proponents of the status quo.
Because creating eight hours per year of carfree space along the San Francisco waterfront is the least we can do.

Newsom didn't come up with this idea all on his own, although he says he brought it back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, where former London Mayor Ken Livingstone talked up the concept, which was pioneered in Bogota, Columbia. No, this was something already being pushed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF, and other local groups, representatives of which attended the recent Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland.
As Newsom's climate change director Wade Crowfoot explained to me, there was a broad coalition that has pushed this project, with lefty stalwarts Cheryl Brinkman and Susan King brought in to help with the outreach. "We've purposefully developed a broad coalition on this," Crowfoot said, noting that groups ranging from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to the SFBC have signed on.
Many of the lefties in that coalition were outraged this morning at reports that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi joined the Board of Supervisors effort to stop the events (or to delay them until after an economic impact study was done, which would kill the events for this year), but Mirkarimi told me that his name was included by mistake. "I'm actually not opposed. My name was added by mistake," he said. "This is a great idea, but the process has been horrible."
Mirkarimi said he agreed with Sup. Aaron Peskin, who is leading the opposition on behalf of the merchant groups in his district, that Newsom should have worked with the board on this idea and vetted it through groups such as the Small Business Commission. That's probably a fair point, and Newsom should be working more closely with the city's legislative body on many of his initiatives, particularly controversial ideas that seek to make San Francisco a more progressive city.
Yet this is an idea worth defending. As Gil Peñalosa, the father of ciclovias in Columbia, told me at the Portland conference, "There's always opposition to everything," particularly initiatives to challenge overentitled American motorists the way they must be challenged if we are to make real progress combating climate change and improving public health. But, he said, "At the end of the day, you were elected and you need to decide what’s best for the majority of the people.”

Don't kill the peakers -- yet

2008-07-15T23:16:04Z

A GUARDIAN EDITORIAL

The supervisors are meeting a day late this week, thanks to the San Francisco Examiner’s screw-up, which means that a key vote on the city-owned combustion turbines, or peakers, will probably come Wednesday, July 16. The mayor, with some environmental backing, wants the board to kill the city peakers and leave Mirant Corp, a private power company, with the responsibility of generating extra electricity in San Francisco during peak use periods. That’s the worst possible scenario.

We recognize the contradictions inherent in any city plan to construct new fossil-fuel generation plants. San Francisco ought to be moving away from any energy solution that increases carbon emissions, and if the city wants to simply ban any facilities that burn anything to generate electricity, we would by sympathetic.
But that’s not the choice here. The mayor (and Pacific Gas and Electric Company) want to continue using natural-gas-fired turbines to generate electricity in southeast San Francisco. They just want a private company, not a public agency, running the plants.

And we’ve seen no legally binding, written guarantee that Mirant will close its big, polluting Unit 3 under the deal.
There’s some dispute about whether Mirant will operate cleaner peakers than the city, but there’s no dispute about the fact that a private company will be far less accountable than a city department that will soon by run by commissioners who must be approved by the supervisors. And if the city kills the peakers, it will have no leverage at all over what Mirant might be required to do.

The supervisors need to leave their options open here and hold off on killing the public-power peaker plan until the public can see, review, and participate in hearings on binding agreements for the future of Mirant’s plant. As Potrero Hill activist Tony Kelly, who has been working on this issue for years, put it in an email to us:
“I have to emphasize that a vote in favor of the CTs tomorrow doesn't have to lock the city into the CTs; there's already an amendment to the ordinances giving the city an out in case another program (Mirant retrofit, or transmission only) turns out to be better. However, if tomorrow's ordinances fail, or are tabled, then the CTs go away as an option. That's the problem.

Because it really looks like the PUC will formally rescind the public CTs next Tuesday, in their last act of defiance and corruption; and that will kill the public CTs, and then Mirant holds all the cards to do whatever it wants to do from then on.”

Again: We’re open to a solution that involves neither the city-run peakers nor Mirant. But we've been around long enough to know that when the mayor, PG&E and a private power-plant owner are mucking around with energy policy, you have to be very, very careful before you trust what comes out of the discussion. We don’t trust Mirant for a second, and the supervisors shouldn’t give up the city's leverage too early.

The street-sweeping non-scandal

2008-07-14T23:06:47Z

Warren Hickle over at the argonaut is all in a tizzy about the prospect that mayor's budget reduces the regularity of mechanized street sweeping on the west side of town. But I have to agree with the commenters at sfist -- most neighborhoods would be thrilled to have those damn street sweeping machines gone.

Street sweeping is a tax on people who own cars but don't have enough money to have garages. That's mostly tenants. I'm all for getting rid of cars, and I'm all for taxing them, but the tax ought to be fair: Charge everyone who owns a car in SF a set fee a year, or even better, charge a fee based on the value of the car, so the rich pay more. Or levy a tax based on the weight of the vehicle (hits SUVs) or the gas mileage (ditto).

The sweeping is mostly a regressive way to bring in revenue for the city. I live in a part of town where we don't have any street cleaning program, and our streets are just fine.

Besides, it's kind of environmentally dumb: If you use your car once a week or less, isn't it better to leave it parked instead of starting it up every couple of days and driving it around to avoid the street sweepers?

I can see sweeping on Mission, 16th Street, Haight Street and other major commercial strips, but why would anybody on the west side be mad about losing a service that costs a lot, does little good and amounts to a bad tax?

Mirant plant staying open?

2008-07-14T20:20:08Z

San Francisco's proposal to install several combustion turbines, or "peaker" plants, in the southeast neighborhoods has created a firestorm of protest, particularly from environmentalists who don't want the city building any new fossil-fuel plants.

I get that. I also know that PG&E has its dirty little fingers in the public-policy pie. And that makes it more complicated.

The lastest proposal, which comes out of the mayor's office, calls for Mirant Corp. to retrofit its own peakers, clean them up, run them on natural gas, and put that power into the grid so the city doesn't have to build its own plants. The argument is that Mirant's peakers would be cleaner than the city's, and might run less often.

I've always thought that leaving Mirant in control is a terrible idea. If we want to tell the state that we aren't going to build any new fossil-fuel plants, then let's stick to it, and rely entirely on renewables (at the possible risk of brownouts in high-use periods). But I don't trust Mirant for a second -- and I don't think the mayor has any legal guarantee that Mirant will do what it says it will.

All that said, I got an interesting communication this weekend from Joe Boss, who's a Potrero Hill activist. He and Tony Kelly are worried that the Mayor and Mirant will wind up creating the worst possible scenario: The big Mirant plant, with its smokestack and pollution, will continue to operate for the forseeable future.

It's admittedly a bit of a speculative scenario, and a lot of things would have to go wrong for it to happen. (Among other things, Mirant, which loses its permit to use Bay water for cooling at the end of this year, would have to invest in a big new air-cooling system.) But it's worth putting out there as the supervisors prepared to decide on the fate of the city peakers.

You can read Boss's perpective after the jump.

By Joe Boss

Mirant of California is moving along a path that will ensure that Unit 3, the tall smokestack, 24-7 power plant, will continue to run well into the future. There is no reason to think that it will shut down permanently within the next 20 years. It will have a new water-tower cooling system installed to end the use of Bay water cooling, but it will continue to dump tons of PM 10 and 2.5's into our neighborhood. As a matter of fact, the PM emission will increase with the added particulate matter formed by the water tower cooling.

I have and will continue support both community choice aggregations and public power. Getting to those goals will be a long road. But we cannot allow ourselves to take our eyes off a real threat to all of the above elements and desires. Let's make sure the City owns and controls any fossil fuel generation in the City. Taking over PG&E will not touch Mirant!

Over the past eight years I have been very involved with the electric energy situation in the San Francisco Peninsula and the surrounding areas. The two motivations have been the shutting down of old dirty and inefficient generating facilities (Hunters Point and Potrero Power Plants) and to enable San Francisco to fulfill its acknowledge desire to replace fossil fuel generated power with clean renewable, particularly solar and wind.

The current proposal proffered by Mirant to convert the three diesel CT's to natural gas, promoted by Supervisor Alioto Pier and SFPUC' Richard Sklar, and directed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, is unfortunately a true environmental disaster for San Francisco and the Bay Area in the making. I will dismiss any conspiracy theories and accept that this is a very complicated matter and requires a great deal of knowledge and a complete understanding of the energy generation and delivery process. The initial report by engineering firm CH2MHILL is riddled with mistakes and unsubstantiated numbers and estimates.

After a very thorough investigation and working with the best and brightest people, the City, through its Public Utilities Commission and Department of Environment developed and adopted the Electricity Resource Plant in late 2002. The heart of the program was an Action Plan that called for closing the two existing in-city plants. It identified many new transmission lines feeding power from outside the Peninsula and within PG&E's local distribution system. It developed a very aggressive plan to build solar and wind generation, recognized the need for improving efficiency, and the peak load demand reduction.

The cornerstone to the plan was development of Combustion Turbines to serve as the dependable source of electricity needed to make all of the other elements of the plan successful so that we can drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. In 2004 the City accepted settlement of a price gauging law suit against Williams Electric, four state of the art 48 Megawatt combustion turbines and over $10 million in cash to pay for the certification (EIR equivalent) process. The siting of the new generators would shut down the Potrero Plant, and after 7 years, the City would gain full operating control. During the initial years, the City would aggressively work to build and acquire 140 MW of renewable energy and them combing that generation with the backup of the CT's, could gain the top dollars for the solar and wind generated electricity.

These CT's are absolutely in the best interest for the City for tremendous financial and land use reasons: the 24 acres Mirant Potrero site is a highly polluted brownfield that could be cleaned up and them be redeveloped at the same time the Port of San Francisco is executing a redevelopment of the 80 plus acres at Pier 70, on the north side of Mirant's fence line. This is the area directly south of the Mission Bay bioscience campus. The Mayor's own office of Economic and Workforce Development and the City's Eastern Neighborhood Planning well recognized the need to redevelop industrial land for new green tech businesses. The most logical place for that growth industry that would not displace good existing jobs and businesses is the Central Waterfront. So far so good.

But the Mayor Newsom, who has supported the development of the Electricity Resource plan, has succumb to the fear that ANY fossil fueled generation would be used to attack the Green Mayor in any future electoral endeavor. Even worse, he is not thinking of the unintended consequence of killing the CT project. Simply put, Mirant will not be able to retrofit the old machines they are offering as a "free" substitute for the City's CT's. By the time that is "figured out" the financing package and construction contract will have expired, and Mirant, who collects about $15 million in profit from the State, will own the only generation on this side of the Bay. They will spend over $80 million of rate payer money to build an air cooling system to replace the current environmentally and illegal Bay Water cooling system. It will be a legal "merchant' plant that will run for 20 or more years. This is not conjecture or fantasy. This is the unhappy ending we will accept if the CT project dies. Public Power will not change that. Community Choice Aggregate will not change that. And enforcement of the Raker Act will not change that, either. The only sure way to gain our own energy future is to build the CT's.

Newsom, Eric Jaye and PG&E

2008-07-14T04:55:51Z

The following is an email exchange between me and Nathan Ballard, the mayor’s press secretary, on the subject of the Clean Energy Act. It raises some interesting questions; I thought I’d just post it without further comment.

ME: Will Mayor Newsom be endorsing the Clean Energy Act?

NATHAN BALLARD: Check with Jaye.

ME: Thanks, I will. A private political consultant is now speaking for the mayor on policy positions?

BALLARD: I don't use public resources/time to comment about endorsements on ballot measures, candidate races, etc. Eric Jaye is Newsom's point of contact for the media on such issues.

ME: Interesting. How long as this been your policy? (And by the way, I don't think the Clean Energy Act is a ballot measure yet. It's still before the board of supervisors. So you can't speak for the mayor about his positions
on pending legislation?)

I'm also intrigued by the possibility of serious conflicts here. Eric Jaye is often involved in local political campaigns as a paid consultant. Should he be speaking for the mayor if he is getting paid to take one side on an issue?

BALLARD: Yes, I can speak for the Mayor on pending legislation. Once it's on the ballot, I probably shouldn't. Anyways, I don't know of any local legislation called the Clean Energy Act. Do send me the text and I'll see
if the Mayor wants to express an opinion to you about it.

As to your question about Eric Jaye, it sounds like you are suggesting that he is doing something wrong. I know and respect Eric, and so I know that you are on the wrong track. His professional ethics are unimpeachable. But
instead of spreading rumors about Eric through third parties, why don't you just pick up the phone and call him with your accusations? I am confident that he will be quite happy to set you straight.

ME: Eric Jaye informs me that since he is, in fact, working for PG&E in opposition to the Clean Energy Act, he has a conflict (as I had suspected) and can't speak for the mayor on this issue.

There was a hearing on the measure this week, and I'm sure the mayor is aware of it and what it entails. Can you let me know if he has taken a position or plans to?

Thanks for your help.

BALLARD: The Mayor says he is aware of this legislation and he is looking into it.

Newsom slaps down the Paul Reveres

2008-07-13T05:52:03Z

By John Bardis

Mayor Newsom has proposed some disturbing legislation. He wants whistleblower citizens to pay a $500 filing fee to exercise the right to request the Planning Commission to hold a public hearing on proposed construction projects that might violate the Planning Code.

What a shameful example of misguided legislation in San Francisco. It’s akin to the Mayor of Boston in 1775 requiring Paul Revere to pay a fee before he could ride to sound the alarm that “The British are coming!”

Instead of encouraging citizen participation in our democracy, the mayor is promoting a plutocracy. While residents in wealthier neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Sea Cliff will be able to afford this proposed fee increase, its imposition discriminates against citizens living in the less affluent neighborhoods.

A Request for Discretionary Review is a cornerstone of the planning process. Residents can exercise their right to request a public hearing on a proposed construction project that might violate the city’s Planning Code or Master Plan.

Years ago, there was no fee for filing a Request for Discretionary Review. In those days, civic leaders welcomed volunteers who gave freely of their time to provide an invaluable service for our city by monitoring proposed construction projects to ensure they complied with the law -- and blowing the whistle on developers violating the law.

Back then, all costs associated with processing a Request for Discretionary Review were logically and rightfully included as part of the fee charged for the filing of building-permit applications. City officials recognized that, since the submission of a questionable building permit application triggered the Request for Discretionary Review, it was only reasonable that the burden of all costs associated with the processing the request should fall on the developer.

This is not the case today. The city began requiring citizens to pay a fee for filing a Request for Discretionary Review, which presently is a ridiculous $300. And now Mayor Newsom has proposed to add insult to injury by increasing this fee by 67.5% to an absurd $500.

The mayor’s proposal penalizes less affluent citizens and neighborhoods by restricting their right to protest questionable developments by raising the financial hurdle for citizen participation. It discourages all citizens from participating actively in the city’s planning process by sending a punishing financial signal that their participation is not wanted.

On June 19, 2008 the Planning Department and Planning Commission ignored public protests over this fee increase and voted to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve it.

At its meeting on Tuesday, July 15th, the Board of Supervisors will take up the mayor’s misguided proposal. The mayor and our city officials should encourage rather than discourage and penalize San Franciscans – our citizen volunteer “Paul Reveres” who sound the alarm about possible code violations that make possible the lawful implementation of San Francisco’s Planning Code.

The Board of Supervisors should reject the 67.5% fee increase – if not the entire fee altogether! The Board should amend the legislation to recover any such costs associated with the filing of a Request for Discretionary Review by making an appropriate increase the fees charged for building permit applications.

John Bardis is a former San Francisco Supervisor and former President of the Coalition San Francisco Neighborhoods..