The event will be held November 9-November 15 (10am-5pm).  Both real estate offices will be collecting gently used coats and blankets to help San Franciscans prepare for the upcoming winter season.

Donations will be accepted at:

1 Daniel Burnham Ct 260-C
San Francisco Ca. 94109    Nov. 9- Nov. 13   (10am-5pm)
677 Portola Dr.
San Francisco Ca. 94127     Nov. 14- Nov. 15   (10am-5pm)

Summary of the November 3 Ballot

by Phil Laird

Tuesday, November 3 is the next opportunity for voters to tweak the City government. Races for Treasurer and City Attorney are races in name only since the candidates for both offices are unopposed. Just five measures—two charter amendments and three ordinances—will compete for voter approval, surprisingly few given the fiscal challenges faced by City, State, and national governments. Absent are the threatened measures to raise revenues through new taxes and property assessments: that these would fail quickly became apparent.

Also absent is a proposal for a $368 million dollar bond measure to pay for street repairs and improvements, withdrawn in part because of criticism that funds for such maintenance expenses should come from the General Fund. Still determined to spend the General Fund for other priorities, the City is now looking to Federal stimulus money to help pay for long-deferred maintenance of its streets and roads.

None of the five ballot measures are “burning issues,” so expect light voter turnout in November. Still, the propositions are not without consequence and are worthy of diligent voter scrutiny.

Measure A (Charter amendment) attempts to improve the budgeting process by initiating a “rolling” two-year budget cycle and a five-year financial plan. The idea is to maintain at least a two-year horizon for balancing revenues and expenses, even if the actual budget is revised each year. In addition, the measure requires that bargaining agreements with unions be concluded by May 15 in order to become effective in the fiscal year beginning in July. If such agreements are reached after May 15, they become effective only in the following fiscal year, thereby reducing the impact of these agreements on budget planning. While this measure can’t “fix” the City’s quixotic budget system, it will hopefully incorporate some so-called “best practices” of public finance.

Measure B (Charter amendment) removes language in the Charter specifying that each Supervisor shall have two staff members. Obviously this means that those Supervisors who need more than two staff members will be able to hire them, and that those Supervisors who don’t need more than two will be able to hire them anyway. In view of the enormous work load that Supervisors are asked to manage, an arbitrary limit of two staff members borders on the cruel and unusual. But to remove all limits is, to some observers, an invitation to return to the patronage abuses of the past.

Measure C (Ordinance) authorizes the Department of Recreation and Parks (R & P) to sell the naming rights to Candlestick Park and to use the proceeds to fund directors at recreation centers throughout the city. The popular after-school programs at Miraloma Playground are among those at risk of elimination as a result of cuts to the R & P budget, so the prospect of a reliable revenue source to pay for these positions is alluring. But if the Forty-Niners football team relocates to Santa Clara, how much value will derive from the naming rights to a vacant ballpark?

Measure D (Ordinance) creates a special sign district on Market Street between 5th and 7th Streets in the Tenderloin “that reflect[s] the arts and entertainment character of the district.” For years the City and business owners along Market Street have been trying to reinvigorate this blighted area east of UN Plaza. In more gilded times the theater district of San Francisco spanned the Orpheum on 8th Street, the Golden Gate and Warfield Theaters at 6th, and the Curran Theater on Geary, as well as movie palaces along Market Street. As part of the Mid-Market Redevelopment Plan, planners hope to link the downtown theater district and the Civic Center performing arts venues by a mid-market arts and entertainment area.

The proponents believe that the current planning code impedes that effort because of its strict limits on the quantity and type of advertising signage. The measure changes the code to create a Mid-Market Arts Revitalization and Tourism Special Sign District with new standards for signs and advertising consistent with the redevelopment objectives. Revenues from signage permits would, or could, be used to support arts and education programs for youth in the Tenderloin and South of Market areas. Proponents of the measure include David Addington, owner of the Warfield Theater, and Carolyn Diamond, Executive Director of the Market Street Association. Opponents, including San Francisco Beautiful (see below), warn of a proliferation of large billboards, neon signs, and other eyesores along Market Street.

Measure E (Ordinance), in contrast to the previous measure to loosen advertising rules, would tighten them. If approved, it would join earlier anti-advertising measures, mainly Proposition K from 2007, a planning resolution to prevent any increase in advertising in the City, including on City-owned buildings. Passage of Measure E would result in a prohibition of any new advertising on City buildings, and would further prohibit new general advertising on “street furniture” (i.e., benches, kiosks, news racks, and transit shelters) beyond what was contractually permitted in January 2008. The main proponent of this measure is San Francisco Beautiful, an organization whose mission is to rid the City of garish billboards, signs, and other advertising, and to preserve the character of our streets and neighborhoods for residents and tourists. Opponents argue that ads on kiosks, transit shelters, and other street facilities are minimally offensive and that the revenues are badly needed in these difficult economic times.

Beware of Scams!

by SFPD Ingleside District Captain Lazar and Lt. Louie Cassanego, in Captain Lazar’s Daily E-mail Message

Most street level con men prey on retirees and senior citizens, because most retirees have the time to be led into along winded scam and they have funds to steal. Dillinger was asked why he robbed banks. He answered, “Because that’s where the money is.” The same is true as to why con men target retirees. I suggest you contact your parents, neighbors and anyone who fits into this “target category” and warn them about these scams. As the fall season begins, we think of the new school year, football, Halloween, and early rainfall. This is the time of year when scam artists portraying themselves as independent roofers solicit work. Commonly, the suspects target senior citizens tending to their front yard or sweeping their sidewalk. They will drive up in a pick-up truck, and sometimes they will even have a tar kettle in tow. The suspect will offer a free inspection of the roof. During the inspection the suspect will walk around the roof and stomp his foot in a specific area. When the suspect climbs down the ladder, he informs the homeowner that the roof needs a little patchwork and the work would only take an hour. If the homeowner seems a little skittish, the suspect floats a cash deal with a “senior discount.” The suspect returns to the roof with brooms, mops and a bucket of tar. After a lot of noise and dust, the homeowner pays the suspect (usually between two and eight hundred dollars).It is discovered later that no work was done, except that some gravel was moved around.

If you are approached by an independent roofer, check for identification and see if he is licensed and bonded. You should note the license plate of the truck. You should also call a friend for advice. And above all, don’t allow him in your home. If you see a neighbor interact with an independent roofer, you should try to get the license plate and description of the truck first. If you wish, you can walk over and introduce yourself and offer to call your neighbor’s son or daughter for advice. In either case, if you feel the roofer is dishonest or you feel uncomfortable, call the police.

In a scam called a Jamaican Switch or Pigeon Drop, the criminals play on the victim’s vision of making a large amount of money in just an hour. There are usually two perpetrators. They can be men or women. One plays the role of an incidental “Good Samaritan.” Here is how it plays out:

The victim is walking to the supermarket, department store, or through a business district or coming from a bank. One suspect approaches the victim with the bait. The bait could be the lure of a large amount of cash, a winning lottery ticket or even gold bullion.

The suspect tells the victim, “I am new to the area, and I have fifty thousand dollars in my bag. I don’t trust the banks or anyone, but you look honest. I’ll pay you if you help me. What should I do?” The suspect opens the bag and shows the victim a large amount of cash. While the victim tries to offer advice, the second suspect walks up to the victim and the first suspect and says, “I happened to overhear your conversation. I think I have a solution to your problem.” The second suspect explains that he and the victim can put up good faith money to show that they are honest and wealthy enough not to cheat him. Once the good faith money is shown, the victim can deposit the fifty thousand dollars in his bank. They all agree.

The victim then goes to his bank, withdraws five thousand dollars, and proudly shows his good faith cash. The suspects do a quick slight-of-hand and then give the victim the bag of “cash.” The suspects excuse themselves and the victim makes a bee-line to his bank. Usually at this time, the victim begins to feel uneasy and thinks this was too good to be true. The victim looks into the bag and finds cut up newspaper. He turns around, but the suspects are gone with his five thousand dollars. The victims literally “left holding the bag.”

Bank tellers are trained about this scam. If the teller has a customer who withdraws a large amount of cash, especially when the customer rarely deals in cash, the teller will ask what the money is for or if he has been talking to strangers. Some victims actually respond by saying they’re going to Lake Tahoe for the weekend. Some suspects are so smooth that they get the victim to drive them to the bank and even to the victim’s own home. These suspects tend to hit an area two or three times then disappear. The best defense for this scam is to be informed and immediately call the police when propositioned.

Criminals are becoming creative in this age of technology. They are able to access a great deal of information through internet search engines if they can get a little critical information from the victim. They will use a simple phone call to get that information by posing as a bank manager, lottery official, or salesman.

For example, a victim receives a call from a person posing as a bank manager. The suspect states that he has been monitoring suspicious activity in the victim’s account and asks to confirm the victim’s name, account number, and social security number. The victim, in an attempt to be helpful, provides that information. The suspect thanks the victim for his or her help and says he will call again if there is a problem. The suspect then uses the information to withdraw funds from that account or charge purchases to that account, or opens a different account to leverage funds for purchases or for other fraud.

In another scam, a person poses as a lottery official or salesman. The caller tells the victim that he or she has won a large lottery prize or a free vacation. All the victim needs to do is to pay a processing fee. The fee ranges from one to five hundred dollars. The mailing address tends to be in the state of Florida, Canada, Great Britain, or Nigeria. The victim mails his or her check and waits for the winnings, but nothing ever arrives.

These calls usually arrive after your bank is closed, which is another clue that something fraudulent is going on, because the perpetrator is counting on your not being able to check the validity of his claims. Do not fall for this. Don’t give out any information over the phone. If you get a similar call from someone who claims to represent your bank, you should hang up and call your bank directly, even if you need to wait until the bank re-opens.

An elderly woman received a phone call from a person claiming to be her grandson. The caller somehow knew she had a grandson and knew his name. He told her that her grandson was in Canada and that the Canadian Police had found drugs in his vehicle. During the conversation, a person got on the phone claiming to be an officer and asked her to wire $2,950.86 to him for the bail. Over the next couple of days, the victim received additional calls from the “officer,” who asked for $2927 to get the car out of impound, $15,000 for a lost passport, and $2874 for lawyers fees. The elderly woman wired all the money to the suspect over a period of a couple of days after a couple of phone calls. I share this with you so that you may inform your family and friends to be aware of these scams. They happen every day.

You can aid in the capture of robbery suspects simply by being vigilant in your neighborhood. In most street robberies in the Ingleside District, a get-away car is involved. The victim hardly sees the car, because it is waiting around the corner from where the robbery occurred. So, if you happen to see one or two suspects run around the corner and quickly jump into a waiting car that then speeds away, you may have witnessed the tail end of a street robbery. Try to remember the license plate, make, model, number of doors and the color of the car. I know that’s a lot to ask, but the license plate is probably the most important item on the list. The description of the suspects is also helpful. You’ll know something is amiss when you see police cars suddenly saturating the area. You can call the police non-emergency number,553-0123, with your information, or if you wish to be anonymous, call our “tip line” at 587-8984.To receive Capt. Lazar’s daily e-mail message, which has crime reports, safety tips, public events, and other useful information, e-mail david.lazar@sfgov.org and request sign-up.

Get Involved in Your Neighborhood

by Robert Gee

You may have begun 2009 with a list of New Year’s resolutions—perhaps exercising more, eating healthy, saving money, or even finding a job. But did your resolutions include getting more involved in your neighborhood? Individuals like you are a major resource in our neighborhood of 2,200 homes. Many in our community give some of their time and energy to improve it. Perhaps you have a particular skill or knowledge to make tangible community improvements that can benefit the neighborhood, such as skills to change government policies for the betterment of our neighborhood. A terrific neighborhood plays a very important role in shaping and affecting our lives on a daily basis, and a neighborhood becomes and remains great because of a deep and wide sense of community. The more members in our community get involved in improving our neighborhood, the better. It pays to get involved, and just as important, to stay informed, because your neighborhood will be only as good as you make it. Often, people complain about a problem but do nothing to address it when it really is possible to offer input and have a significant and positive impact. Get active and involved and you will see the impact of your efforts on troublesome problems like crime, blight, graffiti, rundown properties, traffic, public transportation, lack of funds for parks in disrepair, code violations, etc. One of the best and easiest ways to get involved on the ground level is through the activities of the Miraloma Park Improvement Club (MPIC), through which you too can help improve Miraloma Park. Through collaboration with thumped, you can help our neighborhood speak with one voice and thus become even more effective in forming City policy and obtaining services.

You don’t have to be a great debater; an expert on public policy, zoning rules and city codes; or someone with friends in high public places. All you need is a passion to make your neighborhood better, and a willingness to dedicate a small portion of your time to achieving this. And there can be huge personal benefits: getting involved helps combat isolation, powerlessness, fear, and anger. Getting involved is the process of connecting with others, confronting real life challenges, striving for justice and giving something back to the community. For we are all members of the community, and when we give to improve it, we get back not only companionship and a sense of empowerment, but also the concrete improvements we bring out and the appreciation of our neighbors. Getting involved means making your voice heard. Diverse comments and positions on issues make for a strong community. Good citizenship is about more than voting or paying taxes. Embrace the idea that a community depends on an active and vibrant citizenry. Every neighborhood can always use a fresh face and ideas. Miraloma Park has 2,200 homes whose residents have potentially many great ideas, and the MPIC wants to hear from all of you. Are thinking of getting involved but not sure how to? We’re all so busy in our lives that you may think getting involved in your community could take a substantial amount of time. It really doesn’t. Some activities could take only a few hours every three months!

Getting involved in your neighborhood starts with getting to know your neighbors. Take a bit of time to say hello to your immediate neighbors, and start giving them a smile or a wave when you meet. Soon, you and your neighbors will begin talking and watching out for each other’s homes. These contacts are the basic building blocks for community feeling. Just looking out for one another will create a safer community. Then, start talking to those you pass by. Be out-going and step out of your box. This may be uncomfortable at first, but soon you will find yourselves surrounded by friends and involved in new activities. Then you can get to know your neighbors even better and build relationships. And you can find out what problems people see in the neighborhood and how you can help work on them.

For instance, a central neighborhood activity should be clean-up and beautification. This doesn’t mean having immaculate homes, yards, and streets, but making sure our neighborhood looks well cared for, which sends a clear message to those who might be looking for a place to do criminal activities.

If you see a neighbor who needs a little help, make it your family’s priority to offer assistance. Actions as simple as lending a tool, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, or picking up packages or mail when someone is on vacation, go a long way toward establishing relationships with others and sprucing up the neighborhood. If you don’t have time to participate in a big project, think about the 1 to 2 hour cleanup or a beautification project at the playground, or removing graffiti for an hour or two a week, or get interested and involved in legislation that might improve our quality of life.

By getting involved and helping to plan events, you will have a say, a part in the decision making process, and your voice will be heard. That’s the payback for giving back. Our community will thrive when people are willing to commit their time, energy and skills and talents to make things happen. As we take pride in our homes and community, our good reputation as a neighborhood, and thus our property values, will increase.

The Broken Window Theory
Continued presence of blight will eventually bring crime to a neighborhood. If evidence of neglect, such as accumulated trash, broken windows, and deteriorated building exteriors, remain in the neighborhood for a reasonably long time, people who live and work in the area feel more vulnerable and begin to withdraw. They become less willing to intervene to maintain public order (for example, to attempt to break up groups of rowdy teens loitering on street corners) or to fix deterioration. Sensing this, possible offenders become bolder and intensify their harassment and vandalism. Residents become yet more fearful and withdraw further from community involvement and upkeep. This atmosphere then attracts offenders from outside the area, who sense that the neighborhood has become vulnerable and a less risky area in which to commit crime. In brief, if you allow a neighborhood to look like no one cares about it, then criminals and other people who don’t care about their neighborhood will believe it, and move right in. So join in to help make your neighborhood better. Your participation will make a difference.

The San Francisco Bicycle Plan and Miraloma Park

By Jed Lane

The Zoning and Planning Committee of the MPIC Board has been watching the Bike Plan as it’s gone through the process, looking at its impact on our neighborhood. The proposals affecting us are for bike lanes on Portola Drive. Two options were proposed for these lanes. We wrote to the SF Municipal Transit Authority (SFMTA) stating our preference for Option 2, which called for a “sharrows” to be painted from Miraloma to O’Shaughnessy. A sharrows is a bike/rider and arrow emblem painted on the street surface to show that the lane is shared. (Share & Arrow = Sharrows).

Just before the Environment Impact Report (EIR) was accepted by the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors we noticed that the SFMTA had come up with a “Revised Option 2,” in which bikes would have a designated lane on Portola from O’Shaughnessy to Sydney. Sydney is the street across Portola from Fowler. To provide the designated bike lane, they plan to remove one of the left turn lanes from Portola to Fowler. This, we believe, will cause many problems.

Now, the two lanes divide left-turning vehicles into two lines: one to go left into the parking lot and the other to go straight on Fowler or right into the parking lot. Although their traffic study supposedly showed no significant impact on the level of service (LOS) of the intersection if there were only one lane, those of us who make the turn daily know that the two most common situations causing back-ups is when cars entering the parking lot on either side must wait for a car to pull out of a space in the lot or when the 36-Teresita is making a turn.

Thus, we believe that reducing the left turn to one lane will cause back-ups onto Portola. The time allotted for a left turn on each green arrow will not be sufficient to empty the lane so we will have to wait to turn left through multiple cycles of the traffic light. Drivers will go around vehicles going into the lot and approach the crosswalk with reduced visibility, increasing danger for pedestrians, especially high-schoolers, as they cross in the crosswalk. This was the situation before the DPT decided years ago, for reasons of safety, to divide the formerly single left turn lane into two lanes.

In all the years I’ve lived in Miraloma Park, growing upon Rockaway by the church, I have never have ridden bike on that block, and few bicyclists use the block now. But setting that aside, I’ve noticed that the church, the PG&E substation, and the new apartment building on Portola’s west side all have a sidewalk that is wider than usual and is used by very little pedestrian traffic. If, as the Bike Plan maintains, a sharrows is “too dangerous” for bikes in this block, then the reasonable solution would be to move the curb back and narrow the sidewalk in order to get the additional space needed for a designated bike lane, rather than to reduce the Fowler-to-Teresita turn lanes from two to one and compromise vehicular and pedestrian safety.

We residents will need to speak up and let be sure that MTA sees what we need them to see. If you have opinions on this issue and would like to weigh in, please do so on the streets and traffic area of the MPIC discussion board on the web at MiralomaPark.org, or e-mail the author at Jed@BVNIA.org.

Enlightened

Sitting on a platform
round and plump
Rinpoche smiles
rising
above the crowd
as the moon rises
above the trees

©2009, Dan Liberthson

NERT News

by Jed Lane, Mt. Davidson/Miraloma Park NERT Co-coordinator

I’ve been writing this column for a few years now and many new neighbors have taken Neighborhood Emergency Response Training (NERT) since I succeeded Phil Laird as Co-coordinator, working with my fellow MPIC board member Gary Isaacson. Gary has moved on and for the past few years I’ve been working with Bill Jeong.

Over the years I’ve learned that there is much more to being prepared, surviving and coming back from a natural or man-made disaster than the skills learned as a NERT. I am going to be changing the focus of this column to reflect the additional information I gathered. I will keep you informed of the upcoming NERT activities and share other information that I gather as a civically engaged Realtor.

Since 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, Loma Prieta being the event that launched the Marina Neighborhood Watch group to organize NERT with the SFFD, many remembrances are scheduled for the week leading up to October 17. The Bay Area is working on the “Big Rumble” for October17 and the State is working on the “The Great California Shakeout.” The Shakeout is scheduled for October 15 at 10:15 am. More information is available on the internet about how you can participate in either event. In my neck of the neighborhood, the Bella Vista corridor, we are having a street party on October 17. This will be part of the Bay Area’s Big Rumble event. We will close to through traffic on Bella Vista Ave from Teresita to Gaviota, set up a jump-house for kids, and bring out some BBQs, chairs and tables for the potluck food and beverages. This is our second block party in this section of Miraloma Park and everyone is welcome to join us. We started this annual event as a way to meet our neighbors, and this is a continuation of that tradition. We will also have information on how we can each “Prepare –Protect – Recover” when we are hit with the next large earthquake.

In coming issues this column I will discuss work the MPIC Safety Committee is doing to ensure that Miraloma Park is prepared to deal with a disaster and able to protect ourselves and the neighborhood and prepare for a speedy recovery. As always, questions and comments are welcome. Send them to Jed@JedLane.com or call me (415) 425-9810.

Sunnyside Park and Conservatory Being Readied for Community Use

by Andrea O’Leary

Completion of construction at the Sunnyside Conservatory has been delayed, so the historic structure is now expected to be open for public enjoyment around Thanksgiving. Therefore, the annual Pumpkin Carving event will not occur and a date for the re-opening celebration cannot yet be announced. The Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory (FSC) website at www.sunnysideconservatory.org will post further updates. The octagon building is taking on more and more character as paint and window details are put in place. The rooftop copper finial should be installed in early September and the interior chandelier will be glowing by early October. Appearance of the main entrance staircase, with fencing to follow, will indicate that completion is approaching.

Sunnyside Park Clubhouse renovation is substantially completed. After the Punch List time period for detail adjustments, the contractor will turn the site over to the Department of Recreation and Parks (Rec & Park). Sunnyside Park Families and Neighbors (SPFN) is proposing a simple but fun reopening event for the clubhouse in early October. When dates and activities are confirmed, SPFN will post notices and release the Park News. To receive it, sign up at SPFamilies@aol.com. Rec & Park is still planning a children’s Tiny Tot program in the Clubhouse. Because it will start after the official opening date for their fall programming cycle, it will be free of charge. The full fee will be reinstated for the winter session. SPFN and the FSC are planning a community meeting on the first available Monday after the Clubhouse is accessible to residents. The discussion will focus on the next steps to develop a 2007 collection of ideas from neighbors about programming and events at the two sites. Also discussed will be Phase III capital budget second surplus improvements to rekindle, prior to construction, stewardship for the two neighborhood gems, and the practicality of vying for funds from the five-million dollar 2008 park improvement bond measure “Community Opportunity Fund.”

Rec and Park, other City agencies, Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Bevan Dufty, and local neighborhood associations are being invited to fully participate in the meeting and examine how partnership opportunities can be nurtured toward the goal of making both park sites an integral and active part of community life.

Highlights: MPIC Board Meeting of September 3, 2009

Correspondence: Someone has been leaving notice of address-painting on curbs for a fee. This is illegal. Any resident finding such notice should report it to the police.

Membership: Efforts continue to reach out to neighbors who have never joined MPIC. Programs: Naturalists or historians would be good speakers for Thursday evening events this winter. Committee formed to plan a safety meeting with members of Police, Fire, & NERT, combined with a spring barbeque. Need events for children; ideas welcome. Miraloma School parents are applying for a grant to continue planting native and non-invasive plants around the school. Plans would include educational projects and sales by outside vendors. A letter supporting their application will be sent. Clubhouse Maintenance: Discussion about how to handle gophers on Clubhouse grounds. Traps will not be used; a motion passed to purchase owl houses to deal with gopher problem. Zoning and Planning: Zoning and Planning Committee walked through Miraloma Park with John Rahaim, Planning Director. He was impressed with the general beauty of our community and suggested planting trees in asphalt rather than on raised concrete areas to deter speeding. Planned new homes at Foerster and Los Palmos are still contentious for neighbors because lot sizes will be smaller than prevailing lot size in that area. Other: Met with police & principal of Miraloma School to discuss cars that speed and park in driveways when picking up students and drive the wrong way; police have promised ZERO tolerance. Discussed Bicycle Plan to return to one left-turn lane from Portola onto Fowler. Plans on how to oppose this modification are being formulated.

Miraloma Park Residential Design

Guidelines:
Adopted in 1999 by the SF Planning Commission to promote preservation of neighborhood character by encouraging residential design compatible with neighborhood setting, these Guidelines facilitate the complex process of permit application and design review and can prevent costly, time-consuming Discretionary Review proceedings. The Guidelines are at www.miralomapark.org.

Thursday, October 1, 7:00 pm: MPIC Board Meeting
MPIC Clubhouse, 350 O’Shaughnessay at Del Val

Saturday, October 17,  NERT City Wide Drill
See Newsletter for details

Saturday, October 17,  Bella Vista Neighbors Block Party
10 am to 2 pm between Gaviota and Teresita

Events in November

Tuesday, November 3 Election Day

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Tips for Safety

Results of the MPIC June Elections

NERT News

HELP WANTED!

From The Legal Files: Disclosure, Disclosure, Disclosure

In Praise of Simplexity

In Memoriam, Colonel Bud Wilson

Age (poem)

Contaminating the Gene Pool: Caveats for Planting Native

Highlights from the MPIC Board Meeting of August 6, 2009

Tips for Safety

from Lt. Louie Cassanego, SFPD Ingleside District, in Captain Lazar’s Daily E-mail Message

The Police Department has joined with SF Safe to produce a Crime Prevention Tips document to help people avoid becoming robbery victims. Some tips are:

Be aware of your surroundings at all times…pay attention to suspicious activities and persons.

Avoid using electronics, such as I-pods, which limit your awareness of your surroundings. Travel with someone, or travel when there are other people around.

Walk in well-lit areas and avoid dark alleys and deserted areas.

Remain alert before entering your vehicle or your home.

Park in a well-lit area, with plenty of pedestrians around.

When using public transportation, wait at stops that are well lit and know ahead of time when your bus is due. Also, pay attention to those who enter and exit the bus or train with you, as well as those waiting with you.

Limit the amount of valuables you carry and keep them in separate areas. Then, if you become a victim, your ID will remain with you.

Do not wear your handbag or purse across the body. Carry them under your arm and release them if they are grabbed. This will prevent you from being pulled to the ground.

Trust your instincts: if you feel uncomfortable or threatened, seek help. Carry and use a noise device to call attention to yourself in this situation.

If you thank any persons or activities are suspicious, do any of the following: change the direction in which you are walking, do not get off the bus or train, seek help, or call 911.

Try to remember anything that will identify the suspect. If a vehicle is involved, focus on getting the license plate number.

If you are robbed, stay calm and cooperate. Call 911 afterward.

Dial 911 for emergencies and (415) 553-0123 for non-emergencies.

If English is not your most comfortable language, tell the 911 operator what language you speak.

For more information on how you and your community can be safe, contact San Francisco SAFE, Inc. at (415) 673-SAFE or “http://www. sfsafe.org” \t “_blank” www.sfsafe.org.

To receive Capt. Lazar’s daily e-mail message, which has crime reports, safety tips, public events, and other useful information, e-mail david.lazar@sfgov.org and request sign-up.

 

Results of the MPIC June Elections

Elected or re-elected to 2-year terms on the MPIC Board of Directors, by a unanimous quorum vote, were Karen Breslin, Sue Kirkham, Gary Noguera, Kathy Rawlins, Thad Sauvain

(welcome to a new Board member!), and Dan Liberthson (also re-elected Corresponding Secretary). Joanne Whitney was not on the slate but was subsequently appointed Recording

Secretary by President Mike Naughton (she will be confirmed by membership vote at the first future meeting with a quorum). Thanks to Kathy Rawlins for her service as Recording

Secretary, which ended in June.

NERT News

By Jed Lane

SF Planning and Urban Renewal (SPUR) has estimated that a huge number of people will need housing after a large earthquake. In response to this and other disaster-related issues, a number of new initiatives in the City address neighborhood preparedness, survival, and resiliency. The Safety Element of the City’s General Plan calls for the SF Building Department to convene a panel of citizens, professional advisors, and building officials to look at what can be done to increase the number of buildings that will survive, allowing people to shelter in place rather than use refugee centers. This initiative is called the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS), and it would permit NERTs to train to a higher level. Assistant Deputy Chief Brendan O’Leary, in a presentation on loss of structures from fire, discussed plans for NERTs to train in fighting single-alarm fires using equipment cached around the City, and to manage volunteers. Current NERT training in disaster medicine, small excavation, cribbing, and extinguishing small fires is valuable, especially in reducing injuries and teaching more people to handle themselves well in emergencies. However, advanced training and equipment would help prevent the spread of fires, reduce demands on the Fire Department, and preserve more dwellings. To me, such training makes sense; however, my information about this plan comes from the CAPSS meeting and a conversation with Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White; NERT’s Advisory Board and Lt. Arteseros (NERT Program Coordinator) have not confirmed that the plans will become reality.

The Department of Emergency Management (DEM) is working on setting up neighborhood centers in the libraries, since their communication systems and back-up power make them good choices for satellite command posts. The DEM is also working on obtaining from retailers letters of intent to provide workers and citizens with needed equipment and supplies for free, pending reimbursement by the City, addressing a need NERT coordinators have tried to meet for years. Unfortunately, the DEM has not yet coordinated these efforts with NERT. As trained neighborhood responders, it is important that individual NERTs make every effort to be included in all initiatives the City undertakes. Trained persons from the Red Cross, the Fire Department, the DEM, private companies, or NERT, should all be afforded the equipment and direction required for coordinated work to save as many lives in as short a period of time as possible. Please join me in sending a message to Supervisor Elsbernd, Lt. Arteseros, and chief Hayes-White pushing for coordination across all emergency-response entities and for comprehensive training.

In October, many events are planned around the anniversary of the Loma Prieta and Northridge Earthquakes. NERT will have its annual citywide drill and there will be a statewide event, the “Big Rumble” (see http://thebigrumble.org/). For more information on these events, check the October Miraloma Life when it comes out. The City is promoting many neighborhood events on October 17, when the Bella Vista Neighbors will host their second annual block party from 10 am till 2 pm (Bella Vista between Gaviota and Teresita). This year’s theme is “Where Were You in ’89.” Please register for the NERT training and ask your friends and family to join you. “The life you save may be your own,” it is said, and I say, “you may have the honor to save someone else too.”

For more information or to check for upcoming NERT training sessions, please go to http://www.sfgov.org/site/sfnert_form. asp?id=24118 or call Jed Lane at 415-425-9810. 

 

HELP WANTED!

Earn Your Neighbors’ Gratitude and Gain a Plum Entry for your Resume The Miraloma Life needs volunteers to back up Dan Liberthson as Editor and to do layout/formatting and pre-publication work. Those interested in the back-up Editor spot should have some background in editing, and those interested in layout/prepublication should have experience with Adobe InDesign software. As you know, the newsletter is a 12-page publication that comes out in the first week of every month except July and August. Also needed are newsletter delivery persons (age 12-17 accepted, or retired adults, for this paid work). Please send email responses and/or questions to miralomapark@gmail.com or leave a message on our voicemail, (415) 281-0892. 

 

From The Legal Files: Disclosure, Disclosure, Disclosure

by Mary Catherine Wiederhold, Esq.

In 1983, Walter Samuelson and his wife bought a new condominium in Woodland Hills. The 3-story unit had a lower garage and a “bonus” room that Samuelson used as an office. Between 1983 and 1999, he observed intermittent flooding of the lower level. In 1986, the homeowners’ association (HOA) in his complex brought a lawsuit against the developer. It alleged design and construction defects in the units and in the common areas of the complex. In 1992, the HOA hired a flooring contractor to repair and waterproof the affected areas of the complex. The repairs were not effective, and the HOA filed a lawsuit against the flooring contractor. The lawsuit was settled in 1998. Samuelson knew about the lawsuit because he served as President and Treasurer of the HOA board from 1993 to 2001.

In 1999, the HOA hired a contractor to repair the affected areas in the complex. After this repair, Samuelson did not have any further problems with water intrusion in his unit. He knew, however, that the contractor’s repairs were not totally effective throughout the complex because the contractor had written to the HOA stating that their repairs were merely a “band-aid covering up existing garage and storage room walls” since the contract did not provide for more extensive repairs.

Samuelson and his wife lived in their home until 2002 when he sold the unit to Mr. and Mrs. Calemine. While the unit was in escrow, the Calemines had a home inspection service investigate the condominium. The inspection service noted “evidence of below grade leakage.” The Calemines also hired a termite inspection service. Their report noted “excessive moisture has damaged drywall and plaster at rear and left side of garage.” After receiving these reports, the Calemines contacted Samuelson for an explanation. He told them that he had had some water intrusion problems in the past, but after the HOA put in some drains the problem “had been fixed.” The Calemines closed on the sale and moved into the unit. In January 2005, their garage flooded. Then, for the first time, the Calemines learned of the old lawsuit against the developer and the flooring contractor.

The Calemines filed a lawsuit against Samuelson, the HOA and others. They claimed that Samuelson specifically failed to make “full and complete disclosures of past actions.” California law requires a seller to inform a buyer about “any lawsuits by or against the Seller threatening to or affecting this real property, including any lawsuits alleging a defect or deficiency in this real property or ‘common areas.’” Samuelson argued that the law referred only to information about pending lawsuits, and asked the trial court to rule in his favor based on a motion for summary judgment. The trial court did so, and the Calemines appealed.

The Court of Appeal held that Samuelson knew about the prior lawsuits and had a duty to disclose those facts. “Disclosure of the litigation would have enabled [the Calemines] to examine the details of those actions and evaluate their purchase in light of information including that the water intrusion had existed since the condominium was built, [and] repairs throughout [the complex] were twice ineffective.” Without Samuelson’s disclosure of the existence of the lawsuits, these matters were not within [the Calemines] diligent attention.”

The moral of the story is if you are selling your house, fill out the real estate forms carefully with your agent. In the event of uncertainty regarding disclosure, consult an attorney. It is better to pay an attorney for advice than to possibly be a party in a lawsuit.  

 

In Praise of Simplexity

An Essay by Phil Laird

The preamble to the California State Constitution consists of 27 words—followed by 35 articles on 110 pages, to constitute the third longest constitution in the world. The San Francisco City Charter contains over 70,000 words in 20 articles and six amendments. Contrast these documents with the U.S. Constitution, said to be the shortest of any sovereign state: just 7,620 words. Why is this admired document so concise, while our city and state charters are so bloated? Simplexity is much of the reason.

“Simplexity” is a neologism that describes a complex system assembled from simple elements. Computers, for example, are machines with millions of integrated components, but the components themselves are simple switches performing the symbolic logic operations taught in high school mathematics. Life itself, the largest, most intricate system we know of, arises from remarkably simple reactions in organic chemistry. Simplex systems are based on simple elements, but simplexity requires more than just simple elements: the system erected upon those elements is itself structurally simple—even if it surpasses by its size anyone’s ability to comprehend fully. A truckload of coat hangers typifies complexity; a computer exemplifies simplexity. Complexity is bad; simplexity is good.

While the concept of simplexity is simple to grasp, simplexity is not simple to achieve. Genius is often required to attain the simplexity that eludes others. Shakespeare, Dickenson, and Whitman, among others, proved that a few well-chosen words of poetry can have more impact than hundreds of pages of prose. The favored reference of American writers is a slim volume known by the last names of its authors, Strunk and White: in fewer than 100 pages the book manages to explain everything a good writer needs to know. And the book abides by its own famous Rule Seventeen: “Omit needless words!”

Simplexity has a mathematical basis, a measure known as (take a deep breath) the Kolmogorov Complexity. This measures the minimum possible size required to implement a system. Simplex systems approach this minimum size; complex systems are far larger than they need to be. Mathematics also explains why it is so difficult to achieve perfect simplexity: the problem of determining the Kolmogorov Complexity of a system is unsolvable, so you rarely know when you’ve achieved the state of ideal simplexity.

In their work mathematicians and scientists seek the most “elegant” arguments, those that prove a conjecture convincingly with most compact reasoning. The paradigm of ideal mathematical reasoning is Euclid’s proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers: a subtle but concise argument comprehensible to any high-school algebra student. Physicists regard the theory of Relativity as the “most beautiful” of physical theories, not because of its complexity but because of its simplexity: with two core (but deep) premises, the theory accounts for the known properties of space and time. For Einstein, simplexity was a reliable test of scientific validity. He defined simplexity as “as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

The quest for simplexity also pervades the arts. Architecture retreats periodically from immoderate ornament and sprawling forms into symmetry and measured variation: baroque gives way to neoclassical, Beaux Arts to Bauhaus, Frank Gehry to Renzo Piano. Bach, Mozart, and Brahms regularly chose the most basic of musical forms for their most profound moments. The “minimalism” of Philip Glass, the sculpture of Richard Serra, the novels of Hemingway all can be seen as efforts to capture and convey complex sentiments using elements that are as simple as possible but no simpler. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, still the most performed play in this country, strips away all theatrical conventions to depict the most routine events of life in order to reveal their significance. Mark Twain, in a letter to his editor, apologized that he didn’t have enough time to make the letter shorter. In mathematics, science, technology, art, music, and literature, simplexity characterizes the work of those who consummate the discipline.

In business school students learn that companies should have a clear mission and a concise strategic plan. Why then do companies like General Motors and AIG start out well but lose control to bureaucratic complexity? Social and legal structures grow from a small number of core principles established by consensus, such as consent of the governed, freedom of speech, and due process. So why do so many of these structures devolve into complex, ungovernable chaos? Why do the US Constitution and the California preamble swell into the federal tax code and the California constitution?

Charters that micromanage the affairs of the state come to be when people have lost faith in the ability of their leaders to govern. Our City and our State charters were products of the Progressive movement, when the corruption of Abe Ruef and the stranglehold of the robber barons led reformers like Hiram Johnson to decentralize government, distribute power broadly, and empower voters to change their Constitution through the initiative process. Consequently every proposition that passes with a simple majority of those bothering to vote changes the governing charter and makes it impossible for legislators to adapt the law to changing conditions. Proposition 13 passed in response to rising property taxes and the perception of excessive state and local spending. Thirty years later California’s finances are collapsing under the weight of the complexity wrought to circumvent the constraints of Proposition 13.

Simplex structures can often be revised without destroying their foundations; complex structures never can. Attempts failed in 1980 and 1994 to modernize and simplify San Francisco’s charter. Limited success in charter reform came in 1995 only after redesigning the entire administrative structure of the city and reducing the size of the document from 370 to 88 pages. But these efforts failed to correct a crucial flaw: the ease with which voters and officials can enact initiative measures. So our mayor and supervisors have little incentive to do the hard work of politics: negotiating, forming alliances, and legislating effectively. Instead they just litter the ballot. Interest groups with financial resources and a bloc of voters wage campaigns to amend the statutes in their favor. Term limits forcing politicians from office after two terms came about when voters decided that a small number of leaders had become entrenched and were no longer responding to their constituencies. Now our legislative bodies are led by green politicians unable to muster enough support to pass controversial bills.

The fate of complex systems is dire. General Motors exemplifies a company unable to restructure itself, even though Alfred Sloan’s organizational structure built G.M. into the largest corporation in the world and the textbook model of how to assemble a huge enterprise. Large software systems, including behemoth operating systems such as GE’s Multics, IBM’s MVS, and Microsoft’s Windows, grow larger and fatter until they can no longer be enhanced reliably and economically. (Windows Vista is a recent example.) In time they are supplanted by smaller, more nimble systems designed by software engineers who understand the importance of simplexity to the usability and longevity of their systems. The process of replacing dysfunctional government structures can fairly be termed revolution. Revolution need not be violent, but it replaces a failed or failing entity by one with an entirely new foundation. California may be facing a constitutional convention, from which a very different state, or even states, could emerge. As for San Francisco, whether voters have yet reached the point of total frustration with our city government, its numerous boards and commissions, and one city employee for every 28 residents, remains to be seen. It is too much to hope for government to be small. The best we can hope for, and work toward, is simplexity: as simple as possible, but no simpler.    

 

In Memoriam, Colonel Bud Wilson

A Personal Remembrance by Dan Liberthson

There are the facts and deeds: Colonel Elbert “Bud” Wilson, who died on July 23, was a US Airforce fighter pilot through 24 years and 3 wars, and received 17 medals and commendations; operated an antique clock shop on Beach Street; was a dedicated community activist, serving as President of the Greater West Portal Neighborhood Association, delegate to the West of Twin Peaks Central Council, and member of and delegate for the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods; ran for Supervisor in 2000; was a member and President of the Veterans Affairs Committee; and ardently supported neighborhood and wider causes he believed in, including reforming SF’s Planning Code to help preserve neighborhood character, saving the SS Iowa and Laguna Honda Hospital, and ensuring animal rights.

And then there is the spirit that accomplished all these deeds and left a lasting imprint in the minds and hearts of so many San Franciscans. I am proud to have counted Bud Wilson among my friends, and that’s what this tribute is about.

Though small in size, Bud was large in all other qualities except ego—a modest hero whose first thoughts were for country and community. He piloted war planes during three bloody conflicts, yet never told me stories of combat or medals won, only of his joy in flying (“there’s no feeling like it, Dan, climbing out of clouds into the clear blue!”); war’s devastation (“I can’t forget those poor Chinese—never seen people so beaten up and hungry!”); and camaraderie (smuggling good hooch for his superior officers and then enjoying it with them into the wee hours trying keep warm during a layover in Anchorage).

I knew Bud only in vigorous age, but I feel as if I knew him young, too, when he must have been like a bright, alert, bird, not intimidated by larger ones and always up for a companionable berry-eating party. Humor, compassion, empathy, friendship, and a love of all things fine—he brought these to life in his many facets: antiquarian and collector (amid his many clocks, I see him reverently handling my grandfather’s railroad watch); community activist (he could laugh with his opponents even as he tried to outsmart them, and enjoy the whole messy process); avid golfer and defender of the Harding Park course; admirer and protector of animals (watching our dogs wrestle, he broke into his inimitable roar of laughter when my muscular bitch got his big male down—“she’s got his number”; and he, his wife June, and his dogs never missed the Veterans Day doggie parade).

In political life, Bud, you nearly always knew when someone wasn’t on the level, but you were never afraid to admit when you’d blown a call. Ambling into meetings in your gray Greek fisherman’s cap (I had one too); hobnobbing with “the Bish”; graciously making no fuss about the gym built a few feet from your house because you knew the kids needed it; sharing our holiday dinner; relishing our dogs romping or good scotch or my Dad’s coin collection; crafting a letter of protest you’d asked me to help with—and in so many other memories you still live for me, Bud. It’s amazing that we connected—you a part-Cherokee veteran from the rural South and me a Jewish intellectual from New York who never saw military service—and a tribute to your broad reach and large mind that we did. I’m glad I shared a perch with you, Colonel, however briefly, and—Bud—I wish you happy skies.

 

Age

Sunsets need clouds
for full glory—
otherwise are ordinary. 

So, life’s complexities,
clouding youth’s shining,
color old minds with glory. 

©2009, Dan Liberthson   

 

Contaminating the Gene Pool: Caveats for Planting Native

by Jake Sigg

Note: Jake Sigg was an SF Arboretum gardener specializing in CA native plants and is now an active and leading member of the California Native Plant Society. This article is taken from the Growing Native Newsletter #59 (v.12, no.1, September/ October 2001), but remains relevant today. The conversational style derives from an interview that Growing Native editor Louise Lacey conducted with Chapter Conservation Chair Jake Sigg.–Ed.

Large-scale intervention to restore native plant areas can raise problems if strict attention is not paid to using local natives. For instance, CalTrans and environmental consultants have done all sorts of mitigation and revegetation for years. I think particularly of events in my back yard, San Bruno Mountain. In 1982, Congress passed an amendment to the Endangered Species Act that created habitat conservation plans (HCPs), and the first such was on San Bruno Mountain. From the beginning, it was compromised. Environmental consultants or subcontractors were hired, but the genetic stock that was used there for restoration was not appropriate for San Bruno Mountain. For example, they scattered seed of a red flowering form of bush monkeyflower, Mimulus aurantiacus, from Southern California in a misguided attempt to replenish the natives.

Now those genes are passing into the wild population of northern Californian Mimulus, resulting in all sorts of strange intermediate forms. Nobody knows what will be the long-term effects of this gene flow in the wild population, and since we don’t know, we shouldn’t be doing it. It’s genetic pollution, and that is what I am concerned about. The home gardener is a lesser concern to me. If a home gardener puts a bush monkeyflower from Southern California into his small garden on the slopes of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, and its genes pass into the wild population of bush monkeyflower, this may not be so serious for the simple reason that in time whatever genetic pollution there is will probably die out. The exotic monkeyflower bush is only a single plant among many native to the locality. But on San Bruno Mountain, massive seed sowing has caused genetic swamping, and all these foreign genes will overwhelm the local native population.

As another example, there’s been a lot of seed sowing of California poppies, and many of them probably come from those gorgeous, great big, deep-orange forms from Antelope Valley down in Southern California. They’re genetically different from what we have up here, where especially as you get towards the ocean you get smaller and yellower flowers. These may not be as showy as the Antelope Valley type, but they’re distinct, and we want to preserve this distinction. So when people sow poppy seeds all over the place, as they have been doing for many years, the gene pool is contaminated, and we don’t know whether that’s good or bad, or what the consequences will be. All we know is that it’s happening, and it shouldn’t be.

Human beings live their lives on very short time scales. Nature thinks in geological ages. The Earth has been through all sorts of climatic changes, where you have periods of several hundred years of drought, of warming, of cooling, of this, that, and the other variation. The genes for all the native plants have been sorted out over a very, very long time scale, and they’re finely tuned to their environment. When we introduce exotic genes to a locality like SF (exotic meaning not of this place, even if only a very short distance away, e.g., from Napa County or Monterey or the East Bay), they may do very well in the short term, but in the long term nobody knows what effect they’re going to have. They may weaken or even cause the extinction of a particular species over time as the environment changes.

This consideration brings in a lot of practical issues. For example, the Forest Service is looking now for strains of sugar pine that are resistant to white pine blister rust. If they plant thousands of acres of those trees, which would be grown from seed that is selected from resistant trees, we don’t know what other genes those trees might have. They might succumb to long-period droughts. They might succumb to freezing temperatures or warming or any of a zillion factors that Nature considers but human beings don’t have a clue about.

It’s this issue that weighs on my mind. I don’t want to appear overly strict with respect to the home gardener, whose occasional use of an exotic is, as I’ve mentioned, less important than mass programs, but even on that individual level, and particularly on the larger program level, I would like, wherever possible, to get people thinking in terms of preserving the genetic integrity of the local landscape. This requires people to care about and to know about their environment in some detail, and unfortunately we live in an environmentally illiterate society. As long as we are living in that society, then we’re apt to make bad decisions like those I’ve described because those with the power to create and carry out large-scale programs will not be aware of and sensitive to extremely local environmental differences.

One more example of potential genetic pollution would be in the Presidio of San Francisco, where the Army planted cultivars of Ceanothus griseus from the Monterey area, the ground -hugging ones called Yankee Point and Hurricane Point. The Army planted some of these cultivars along Lincoln Boulevard in the Presidio, and C griseus is closely related to the native C thyrsiflorus, the prostrate form of which lives naturally in the Presidio. As of today, no genetic damage is apparent. The reason for that is that ceanothus is a fire-dependent species and does not regenerate from seed except in the presence of fire or some other disturbance. So even though no immediately apparent damage has been done by several decades of these plantings, if there ever is a fire or a bulldozing or some kind of disturbance, then I think suddenly we’re going to find a lot of intermediate seedlings between the indigenous C thyrsiflorus and these C griseus hybrids or cultivars.

It would be good if people with home gardens would think in these terms if they live near a natural area. Even in San Francisco, we have quite a few natural areas around. They’re pocket sized, and they all require a lot of management, but they are still there, and we still have several hundred species of native plants. It would be good if people were aware of the fact that they ought to be augmenting the indigenous population, which is very, very small and beleaguered. If you plant another form of the same species, not only might those genes pass into the wild, which may or may not be much of a concern, but it might be that the native wildlife, which are adapted to the local variety, don’t find your plant particularly inviting or palatable.

I’ve been preaching this doctrine, but people have said, “Well, where can I get these plants? and I’d reply, “You can’t.” Obviously, that was a problem. So that’s why our local California Native Plant Chapter began its autumn plant sales, at which we offer only locally collected native plants. We hope that this idea will grow and people will become more sensitized to this issue and begin to use only local native plants. To find out about our next November native plant sale, please visit http:// www.cnps-yerbabuena.org/ on the Web.

Editor’s Comment: In keeping with the concept of planting local, the Native Plant Garden in front of the Miraloma Park Clubhouse along O’Shaughnessy Boulevard was designed with the help of Jake Sigg to contain only plant species and varieties local to adjacent Glen Park Canyon. This garden, supported by the MPIC and neighborhood volunteers, has recently been expanded and rehabilitated, and is due for another expansion in the Fall. Check it out!  

 

Highlights from the MPIC Board Meeting of August 6, 2009

by Joanne Whitney and Dan Liberthson

Correspondence: Member Rosalind Glazer wrote to thank the MPIC for its activities. Membership: Karen Wood, Committee Chair, reported that personalized letters were hand-delivered urging those who have never been members to join. Members who have indicated that they want to help in Club activities will be contacted. Events: The Bella Vista Neighbors will have a block party on Oct. 17 (see article by Jed Lane in this issue). Club programs in planning include presentations on Miraloma Park history and environs and a meeting about safety (featuring NERT, the SFPD, and other community resources), combined with a barbeque, in April 2010. Clubhouse Improvement/ Maintenance: The Clubhouse has a beautiful new paint job thanks to Board Members Cassandra Mettling-Davis, Sue, Kirkham, and Jim Ilardo, who worked on color selection and job coordination. Volunteers are needed to help with Clubhouse chores, such as distributing mail to appropriate Board members, light cleaning, putting out and taking in garbage cans, cleaning tables and chairs once monthly, etc. A motion was approved authorizing up to $500 for purchase and planting of additional native plants for the Club’s native plant garden. Board members have donated equipment and seeper hoses, as well as time for watering, weeding and general upkeep. More volunteers are needed. Zoning & Planning: The Committee is looking into concerns of neighbors about proposed subdivision of two lots on Bella Vista, with 3 new homes planned. Miraloma Life: Delivery persons are needed (a paid activity; age 12-17 considered or adult with spare time).

Article submissions are welcome. A new layout and design volunteer is needed (see ad in this issue). Traffic: The Board is concerned about the Bicycle Plan, which will reduce the double left-turn lane from Portola to Fowler to one lane in order to create a bike path. Congestion is feared. Board member Jed Lane will request EIR documents related to a simulation claimed in the EIR to have shown minimal impact. If this simulation was weak, MPIC may do our own study and petitions to the MTA to retain the 2 lanes for safety reasons. 

 

]]> http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-september-2009/feed/ http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/mt-davidson-hike-saturday-dec-20th-at-130-pm/ http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/mt-davidson-hike-saturday-dec-20th-at-130-pm/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:00:39 +0000 admin News and Notices http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/mt-davidson-hike-saturday-dec-20th-at-130-pm/ A View of San Francisco’s History from its Highest Point

You are invited to join Miraloma Park neighbor, Jacquie Proctor, author of San Francisco’s West of Twin Peaks, (http://www.MtDavidson.org/) on a guided tour of Mt Davidson on Saturday, November 21st at 1:30 pm. Explore the inspired history of San Francisco’s highest hill on this hike through our 38 acre nature preserve to the amazing view and gigantic monument at its summit.

The walk is free and sponsored by the San Francisco City Guides (http://www.sfcityguides.org/).  Trails can be windy and muddy.  Wear a jacket and sturdy shoes.  Meet at the 36 Muni line bus shelter at Dalewood and Myra.

]]> http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/mt-davidson-hike-saturday-dec-20th-at-130-pm/feed/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-june-2009/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-june-2009/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:00:05 +0000 admin Newsletter Archive http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-june-2009/

A Word From Captain David Lazar of Ingleside Station

Reminder: MPIC Annual Election

Glen Park Canyon Bird and Plant Tour a Wonderful Experience

The Housing Element: Planning Issues for All to Consider

Why Plan? What is the Housing Element and Where Is it Taking Us?

Miraloma Park Residential Guidelines

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macphotochromer

Legal Ease

Design Matters

A Word From Captain David Lazar of Ingleside Station

I am serving as your new Police Captain and would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is David Lazar and I am a 4th generation San Franciscan. I was born and raised in the City and I am a graduate of Miraloma Elementary. During my teenage years, I lived on Teresita Boulevard and in my twenties I lived on Rio Court. I now live less than a block outside Miraloma Park in the Forest Hill Extension and I consider this community my home.

This is my 18th year in the Police Department. During my career, I have been assigned to 8 police stations, 6 investigative assignments, and as the Lieutenant at the Police Academy in Diamond Heights. In my last assignment, I served as the Commanding Officer of the Homicide, Robbery, Gang Task Force and Special Investigation Divisions. I am fortunate to bring this experience with me to the Ingleside District.

It truly is an honor to have been selected by the Chief of Police to be the Commanding Officer of Ingleside Station. I have some big shoes to
fill in following both Captain Chignell and Captain O’Leary, who are great leaders and champion the concepts of community policing. Public Safety, quality of life, and problem solving are my priorities for Miraloma Park. I read every police report and I watch the activity closely in our community as it relates to crime and traffic. It’s important that I receive feedback from the residents and merchants so that I may make informed decisions as to deployment strategies. We have enjoyed having a lower crime rate lately and I will be focusing on traffic enforcement related to speeding and stop sign violations on Teresita Boulevard. You have some of the most dedicated, hard working police
officers in San Francisco.

The Ingleside Police District is the second largest district in San Francisco, with 6.5 square miles and 114,000 residents. We cover the
Miraloma Park, Diamond Heights, Bernal Heights, Outer Mission, Excelsior, Noe Valley, Sunnydale, and  Visitacion Valley neighborhoods. I served as a Sergeant at Ingleside Station from 1996 to 1999. Back then, there were 84 officers assigned to the station. We now have 125
officers assigned to Ingleside Station and I am grateful for the staffing.
The Department has been privileged to be the subject of several organizational studies in the last several months. The Police Executive
Research Forum was one of the consulting organizations which studied the SFPD. The studies included efficiency, staffing, foot beat, and
technology, to name a few. From these studies, the Police Department received approximately 350 recommendations, with 47 of those
recommendations set aside at the station level. The Department decided that Ingleside Station would be the pilot station to implement the recommendations, and when successful these new ideas would extend to the remaining district stations. Ingleside has now been the
Phase 1 Implementation Station for the last 6 weeks, and we are achieving our goals.

I look forward to working with the Miraloma Park Community and will be meeting at the Miraloma Park Improvement Club on June 4.* I hold a
monthly Police Community Relations Meeting, which is on the third Tuesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. The meeting is held in the community every other month. If you would like to subscribe to Ingleside Station’s daily newsletter, you may send an email to
sfpdinglesidestation@sfgov.org. I may be reached at 415-404-4030 or at david.lazar@sfgov.org.

*This refers to the MPIC Board Meeting; members may attend but to speak must ask in advance.

Reminder: MPIC Annual Election

As noted last issue, the Miraloma Park Improvement Club will hold its annual election for Directors and Officers on Thursday, June 18, 2009
from 7 to 8 pm, at the MPIC Clubhouse. The election will be part of an open-house social event with wine and tasty treats, which our District
7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd will attend. The theme will be “How Can the MPIC Better Serve Miraloma Park.” Please come, make your
suggestions to the Board, and bring your neighborhood and city-wide questions and concerns to Supervisor Elsbernd. As of May 1, on the
ballot for re-election as Director are current Directors Karen Breslin, Sue Kirkham, Dan Liberthson, Gary Noguera, and Kathy Rawlins.
Nominated to stand for election for the first time is Thad Sauvain. Dan Liberthson is standing for a repeat term as Corresponding Secretary.

Glen Park Canyon Bird and Plant Tour a Wonderful Experience

by Dan Liberthson, MPIC Board Member

On May 2, Allan Ridley, a former biology and ornithology teacher, and his wife Helen McKenna-Ridley, SF Botanical Garden docent, led 25
avid birders and plant spotters on a walking tour of Glen Park Canyon. A light rain fell—just enough to bring the birds out to bathe and hunt
bugs and to perk up the plants and flowers, and a plethora of natural beauty opened before us.

After examining a bulky great-horned owl’s nest in the fork of a eucalyptus, recently vacated by the adult couple and their newly airborne offspring, we met the thigmotropic (moving in response to touch) native sticky monkey flower, pollinated by bees and hummingbirds, and once used by the Miwok and Pomo tribes as an antiseptic promoter of healing in scrapes and burns. Hummingbirds zoomed: Anna’s hummingbird (the only Bay Area native) and the Allen’s and rufous types (both Mexican migrants), and we watched an Anna’s shake bugs from the foliage and grab them out of air. Cedar waxwings, an “eruptive” species that appears unexpectedly in flocks, flew among the treetops avoiding a landing red-tailed hawk, from whom they actually had little to fear, as red-tails eat only land animals like voles and mice, while red-shouldered hawks indulge in other birds and aquatic life (crabs, frogs) as well as land animals. So, red-shoulders nest near water, in this case the branch of Islais Creek that flows through Glen Canyon, while the red-tails prefer homes near open space.

Some chickadees nested in a hole made last year by a downy woodpecker (the smallest local woodpecker, a riparian or riverside-dwelling species) which had moved on to other quarters. Dominant in the fields were wild oats, a European species brought over by Spaniards to feed their horses. Like most exotics (non-native plants), wild oats are annuals, which for some reason outbreed the largely perennial natives, so that there are only a few native spots left in the City. Recently, though, the CA Native Plant Society has been restoring areas of native plants in Glen Canyon, and the Miraloma Park Improvement Club has expanded its garden of native plants from Glen Park Canyon (across O’Shaughnessy Boulevard), located in front of the Clubhouse.

Among plants, glistening with raindrops, we saw native elderberry and alder trees, California sycamore, coast live oak (scrub oak), horsetail
rushes, lupine (glorious blue covering the hillsides), wild radish (sparkles of violet and pink all around the canyon), rattlesnake grass (shake it and hear the rattle!), the lovely California golden-eyed grass, Missouri iris (elegant violet whorls), coffee berry (a laxative, containing
cascara), checker mallow, and soap lily (used by the tribes to stun fish and make soap and twine). A fiesta of birds foraged and fed their
offspring, including house finches, black-headed grosbeaks, pygmy nuthatches, Bullock’s orioles, white-crowned sparrows with their lovely
fluting song, Wilson’s warbler (“a great little bird,” commented Allan, “yellow with a black yarmulke”), ravens (wonderful aerial acrobats and
wind riders), Pacific Coast flycatchers, and bush tits (which build sock nets of spiderweb and lichen hidden in droopy trees).

“Rushes are round, while sedges have edges,” we learned, and eucalyptus flowers are a popular food source for many nectar-sipping birds, but their sweet liquid dries up and gets sticky, plugging bird beaks and nostrils, sometimes interfering with breathing and perhaps even killing the birds. For their expert and enriching introduction to all these plants and birds, which had passed unnoticed, or at least unnamed, as I walked my dog in Glen Park Canyon, and for a magical 2-hour nature tour, I thank Allan and Helen many times over. We all hope they will be back again next Spring.

The Housing Element: Planning Issues for All to Consider

From the Editor: In this issue of the Miraloma Life we devote considerable space to the important process by which the Planning
Department is creating the next Housing Element (HE), for which it has solicited public input in several outreach meetings. First, we offer an
article by Jed Lane, a student of Urban Design at SF State University, which explains the theory of the HE process in the broader historical
and governmental context. Next, we present a letter sent by the MPIC to Planning Director John Rahaim outlining the MPIC Board’s position
on the HE and supplying the neighborhood perspective the Department has solicited. We hope readers will contemplate these articles and
then present their own ideas to the Planning Department and to the Miraloma Life, to further a general discussion about the HE and
development of an optimal plan.

Why Plan? What is the Housing Element and Where Is it Taking Us?

by Jed Lane, Westside native, Miraloma Park resident

In 1969 the state legislature mandated that local governments “adequately plan to meet the existing and projected housing needs of all economic segments of the community.” Periodic Housing Elements (HEs) have addressed this requirement. San Francisco’s 1990 HE was
updated in 2004, but the 2004 HE, though accepted by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), was never
enforced because of a lawsuit brought by neighborhood groups over the lack of an environmental impact report (EIR). The courts ruled that
all impacts of the HE could not be “mitigated,” as the City claimed, and that an EIR was required. The City is preparing this EIR as the 2009
HE is being written. That both the 2004 and 2009 HEs are being worked on simultaneously is confusing to some, who ask “why not abandon the 2004 HE and just work on the 2009 HE?” The answer is that each new HE builds on the previous one: only the changes must be studied, discussed, and assessed for impact.

So why plan? The 1969 state law mandates that local governments describe how they will address the housing needs of all economic strata. Though the City is required to show the state that, via zoning and land-use policies embodied in the HE, SF has addressed projected
housing needs, the private sector actually will build the houses, which it cannot be forced but must be induced to do. The state HCD Department analyzes and projects the growth of the state in each region, and informs the regions of what they need to do. In the Bay Area, the regional entity is the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), which breaks down projected growth by city and county.
Negotiations do occur at this level, and ABAG will play a larger role in the future because regional transportation issues are now tied to land
-use policy.

Since the HE is a part of a General Plan tied to regional, state, and federal planning goals, overarching aspects affect HE proposals. A
driving force behind current requirements and planning is the need to address green house gas (GHG) emissions and related global
warming. A relatively new aspect of the HE links transportation to housing creation in an attempt to curb GHG. Each component of the HE will be more or less controversial to residents, groups, and neighborhoods, depending on how it impacts them. Understanding the reasons for HE provisions in the context of federal and state laws will promote more relevant public discourse.

San Francisco (with the Climate Action Plan of 2004) and the CA State Assembly (with AB32 in 2006) mandated reductions in GHG emissions, and the State Senate (with SB375 in 2008) put teeth into the laws, requiring that if regions don’t act to reduce GHG, they lose state and federal transportation dollars. A major emphasis resulting from these laws is reduction in carbon-fueled vehicle miles traveled (VMT), either by using alternative-fuel vehicles (leaving the responsibility of transportation up to the individual) or by improved mass transit.
The State likes the former option because it would not have to build adequate infrastructure and provide workable mass transit systems.
The latter plan would reduce GHG more, but would be most effective if ridership reached high numbers via increased density.

Urban centers in America grew as economic centers for trade or transit of trade. Originally, San Francisco, like Boston and New York, was
designed for walking, but later additions south of Golden Gate Park and west of Twin Peaks were designed for the auto, with easy parking in
front of houses and at daily destinations. Thus, our western neighborhoods stand to be impacted by efforts to reduce VMT, but these largely single-family housing zoned areas will need better service from MUNI to succeed in cutting VMT by getting people out of cars. I confess that I drive everywhere, but as a realtor I know that many people don’t want to own cars. Providing housing for such people on transit corridors without parking would meet their needs, assuming good mass transit, and allow for more units per structure with less height and bulk than if parking were required. The idea of “greater density” on transit corridors and at transit hubs is thus appealing to planners. Historically, planning was done from the top down (resulting in such redevelopment failures as Japantown and the Fillmore), but now a bottom-up approach is favored, so the Planning Department is organizing events around the City to discuss the HE and get public input. As HE proposals are discussed, it will be important to understand the motivation of the planners and the ramifications of the plans in order to have a productive dialog.

I believe cities should be dynamic and evolving, but this should happen with the help of informed citizens who delve into the issues and
understand the decisions. The planners are asking for community input because they need to know how people live in order to design better
living habitats. In this process, knowledgeable and respectful people will be listened to and those uninformed and disrespectful will be tuned
out. Planners moderate between government dictates, developers, and residents. They are also public servants who work for us and need
our help to know what’s important to our lives in our western neighborhoods, these “suburbs in the City.” Let’s work to afford the planners the thoughtful and accurate input they need to write the 2009 HE.

From the Editor: While recognizing the appeal to planners of the concept of “transit hub” or “transit corridor” development (referred to in Jed Lane’s article) as promoted by CA state law, the MPIC does not support the current concept of transit corridors as developed in 2004 HE, because in this document the transit corridor was defined so broadly as to encompass and open for extensive development large areas beyond the immediate major transit routes, potentially including areas such as the whole of the West Portal district and Miraloma Park’s
Portola commercial area. We believe add ional density and reduction in parking would be destructive to the existing neighborhood character
of these two traditional commercial venues in our area, and therefore undesirable. The Planning Department has given indications that in
the 2009 HE it will not emphasize the transit hub concept in the West of Twin Peaks but rather at or along major transit routes like the Geary
Muni corridor and BART stations. The MPIC Board believes this approach would help to preserve the residential and small commercial
neighborhood character of Miraloma Park and most of the West of Twin Peaks, while still affording progress toward reduced GHG. We
invite residents to tell us what they think about this issue by phone, email, or letter, using the contact information on the back page. The
MPIC Board’s views are stated in the following letter.

To: John Rahaim, Director, San Francisco Planning Department

Dear Director Rahaim:

Like most other West of Twin Peaks (WOTP) neighborhood and home-owner organizations, the Miraloma Park Improvement Club (MPIC), which represents about 2200 homes on the slopes of Mt. Davidson, wants to preserve our RH-1 zoning, which we see as essential to maintaining quality of life and property values in our community. In support of our zoning, we have in the past resolved to protect in our neighborhood the current height and mass limits, rigorous design review according to our Residential Design Guidelines, now Standards (adopted in 1999 by the Planning Commission), a continued ban on illegal units and no legalization of these units, the current NC-1 zoning of our Portola commercial district, and a 1 to 1 ratio of parking spaces to dwelling units, existing and new. Additionally, Miraloma Park and most WOTP neighborhoods are nearly 100% built, with little room for new housing permitted by the zoning we seek to preserve. Therefore, we would expect most housing developments to be planned for other areas that have more available land for new construction. The MPIC believes that most West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods are in agreement with us on these points. We are aware, however, that in other parts of the City the needs and desires of neighborhoods are different from ours, and we appreciate your request for input to the HE process from all neighborhoods. It is heartening and encouraging to us that the Department has recognized that neighborhood input is crucial to successful planning. For this reason, we are letting you know what’s important to our lives here in these West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods, and what positions we have taken.

We are aware that planners are subject to the requirements of state and city laws, including the new drive toward the reduction of green
house gases (GHG), fulfillment of ABAG-projected housing needs, and pressure from the developers who want to build the housing. We
believe that a balanced, thoughtful approach, with an attempt to plan for these demands while keeping in mind the character and desires of
individual neighborhoods, will strengthen the cooperative process between planners and the public in the development of a mutually
beneficial and forward-looking 2009 HE.

In the light of demands from city, state, and federal legislation, we urge planners to draft a realistic and practical HE that meets these demands for the required 5-year term of the plan without compromising zoning and quality of life in the West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods. While we realize that GHG reduction is imperative, effective and affordable public transit augmentation must precede policies promoting restriction on the use of personal cars. In citywide planning, the reduction and restriction of destination parking to induce increased use of public transit is fine in theory, but in our hilly neighborhoods that are poorly served by MUNI the effect of such planning will be isolation and
suffering unless MUNI service is increased to provide us ready and efficient access to the high-volume transit lines. Instead, what we see
now, due to budget constraints that show no sign of ending, is a further reduction in already insufficient Muni service, an increase in cost of both Muni and BART, and no plan (much less reality) to provide a means for our communities to function without as many cars and parking spaces.

The state and city have currently mandated GHG reduction, and as private citizens we may also support this, but neither the city nor the
state now, or for the foreseeable future, has the money to create a mass transit system that will help achieve this goal without seriously
impacting our quality of life. We ask the planners to recognize these hard facts and come up with a plan that mitigates the impact of
strategies mandated or adopted to reduce GHG.

Moving forward, while we, as involved citizens, work to protect our neighborhoods, we also will be scrutinizing the projected population and housing numbers from ABAG, as well as plans to meet those projections. We will also be actively working to be sure that the development community input is balanced by that of the residential, neighborhood community. In the past we have seen too much one-sided planning, but we now believe that the Planning Department is responsive to the community of residents, and we applaud the change and are committed to work with the Department to provide input and review of plans.—MPIC Zoning and Planning Committee

Miraloma Park Residential Guidelines

Adopted in 1999 by the SF Planning Commission to promote preservation of neighborhood character by encouraging residential design compatible with neighborhood setting, these Guidelines can facilitate the complex and often frustrating process of permit application and design review and can prevent costly, time-consuming Discretionary Review proceedings. The Guidelines are at www.miralomapark.org.

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macphotochromer

by Garrett Griffin (©2008, Garrett Griffin)

Unlike Hemingway’s fictional Francis Macomber, who traveled to Africa to hunt game, Francis Macphotochromer has only to go out the rear
door of his house where his backyard Serengeti lies before him. It beckons Francis, tempting him with opportunities for wild life hotography without all that dust, heat, pestilence, bad water, strange languages, and real dangers.

In Francis’ backyard, he has only to turn over a rock to discover a large Wolf Spider still cold and sluggish in the weak morning sunlight. With little movement from the spider, Francis aims and takes several shots, not with a .30-06 rifle with 220 grain bullets, but a digital Nikon camera and close up a lens. He turns, and there hovering before him is a beautiful butterfly. It lands on a geranium, and Francis pounces with his Nikon, capturing an image of the brown beauty. He looks up in time to spot a mature red-shouldered hawk lift off the branch of a eucalyptus tree. Francis snaps three shots in quick succession, capturing the raptor pumping his great wings on takeoff. Pleased with his kill, Francis moves on. A Vilnius bumble bee hovers near a purple Madeira bush. Francis drops to a knee and shoots again, freezing the bee in mid-flight as it approaches the Madeira. A little further, a red dragon fly poses for Francis, who takes advantage of the moment, getting a beautiful close-up of a slender red thread of an insect.

Bigger and more dangerous game lurks not far off. Three feral cats named Grandma, Daddy, and Big Brother circle their food dish. Francis
creeps nearer, hiding behind a rose bush and deftly shooting all three of the show-boating wild felines. Farther on, waiting for the cats to
finish their course at the food dish, Bandit and her offspring Pick and Pocket, the resident raccoons, hungrily look on from under a lilac bush.
They are next in line at the feed trough. Francis takes out all three with A red-shouldered hawk lifts off from an eucalyptus branch. one shot.
He stealthily creeps along another 30 feet, where he spies Flower and her offspring Daisy, Maisy, and Lazy, the neighborhood skunks. They
are next in line behind the raccoons. Francis takes several more shots, being quite careful, aware of their powerful defenses. The animals
all act very polite, letting whoever was eating finish before taking their turn. It’s all very civil and orderly. Occasionally, the pecking order
changes, but seldom is there a conflict.

Francis rapidly fills his SD chip with trophy shots. On the way back to the house, he spots Opie the elusive opossum. Opie is high in a plum
tree, so Francis quickly goes into the house, runs up the two flights of stairs, and out onto a deck above the marsupial. He carefully aims
and then blasts away at Opie, taking him from above. He looks at the LCD screen and smiles, happy with his day’s hunting.

Francis Macphotochromer has taken more game in a couple of hours than Francis Macomber took in several weeks in Africa. He wasn’t
uncomfortable and didn’t spend any money. Sure, the animals weren’t as big, scary, or glamorous as African game, but with a little forethought, care, and a touch of Photoshop, his backyard trophies can look just as impressive in an 8 X 10 inch frame.

[Note: This article was originally written for The Photochrome Camera Club of San Francisco; see photochrome.org/ club on the Web.]

Legal Ease

Contractors, Liability, and the Law

by Mary Catherine Wiederhold, Esq.

In 1962, California became one of a minority of states that allowed a contractor’s employees to seek recovery from the property owner for
injuries caused by a negligent general contractor. In addition to the state workers’ compensation insurance, the law allowed the injured
employee to sue the homeowner for damages. This column discusses the current law of “independent contractors” and a homeowner’s
liability when there is an injury.

In 1993, the California Supreme Court decided that a homeowner who hired an independent contractor who became injured while on the job
could not be sued when the homeowner did not cause the injury. It reasoned that because workers’ compensation covered the contractor’s
employees, the homeowner or general contractor should not be held personally liable. Workers’ compensation entitled all employees to
recover benefits for injuries arising out of their employment. After the 1993 case, the courts would not allow employees of an independent
contractor to sue the homeowner. Even if the general contractor illegally did not have workers compensation insurance, the injured worker would still receive benefits under the state’s uninsured employers fund. The rationale was that injured workers would receive a “windfall” if allowed to collect workers’ compensation and sue homeowners for their injuries.

In 2008, however, the Court of Appeals decided that a worker, who was an independent contractor and not an employee of the general
contractor, and therefore was not covered under workers compensation insurance, could sue a third party for damages. The court’s decision was based on the fact that an independent contractor hired by the general contractor had no access to workers compensation insurance. In that case, Jeffrey Tverberg was an independent contractor who had been hired by a subcontractor of a general contractor who had subcontracted the installation of a canopy. Mr. Tverberg was injured when he fell into a hole that had been dug where the canopy was to be installed. He sued the general contractor and the property owner who hired the general contractor.

Mr. Tverberg was not an employee and had no access to workers’ compensation insurance. Therefore, the court allowed his lawsuit to go
forward. In February 2009, the case involving Mr. Tverberg was accepted for review by the California Supreme Court, so we do not yet know if this rule will survive.

A legal commentator argued that this case represents an end-run around the earlier 1993 case decided by the California Supreme court.
But if an injured worker has no insurance and cannot sue for his or her injuries, then we all end up paying for the worker’s health care
through increased taxes and medical insurance premiums.

Homeowners should be especially careful when hiring contractors. Many general contractors hire subcontractors to perform specialized
trades such as electrical and plumbing. Some of these subcontractors may be independent contractors and therefore a homeowner might
be liable if there were an injury.

DESIGN MATTERS*

by Peter A. Zepponi, AIA, Architect

This column addresses basic residential design and home improvement topics of interest to Miraloma Park residents. If you have a question or topic you’d like considered for a future article, please send an email to pazdesignmatters@aol.com, call 415.334.2868, or visit
www.zepponi-architects.com.

Q: What are some simple, cost-effective ways to make my house more ‘green’?

A: Pick the low hanging fruit first. These are old houses. Start with the easy things. When people think about going ‘green’ and saving
energy, and being environmentally friendly, one of the first things they think about is solar panels or energy efficient mechanical systems, or
any number of devices you can buy and add to your home to make it ‘better’. The trouble with this kind of thinking is that every device
contains ‘embodied energy’ required to produce it, and some devices take a lot of energy to make and can be very expensive to purchase.
So before you even go there, change your mindset and pick the low hanging fruit first. By that I mean that most of us live in old houses built when materials were plentiful and energy was cheap, so not much attention was paid to thinking about the energy efficiency of the home as a working engine. There are a number of simple, cost-effective measures you can take to improve your home and the environment at the same time. Rather than adding something new to your house, fix areas where energy and resources are being wasted. Apply this strategy first to get the biggest bang for your buck. Who cares how efficiently you are creating energy or heat if it is all just escaping out poorly sealed doors and windows? This is the principle of Resource Conservation.

Here are a few ideas:

Step 1: Seal exterior doors, windows, and holes with weather stripping, caulk, or foam.

Step 2: Replace incandescent light bulbs with screw-in fluorescent bulbs, especially on the porch.

Step 3: Replace you furnace air filter. Dirty filters make the furnace motor work much harder.

Step 4: Fix your leaky faucets, toilets, and showers or replace them with certified energy efficient “WaterSense” new ones. Look for the new
“dual flush” toilets with 0.8 gallons per flush (gpf) for #1 and 1.6 gpf for #2.

Step 5: Insulate exposed hot and cold water pipes and HVAC ducts. Condensation on cold water pipes can cause building moisture and
mold.

Step 6: Insulate accessible walls, floors, and attics. Most older houses have no insulation, and it’s really important to conserve energy.
Blown-in insulation is most convenient for already built structures.

Step 7: Put glass doors on your fireplace to keep the heat in your living room rather than losing it up the chimney.

Step 8: Replace your old thermostat with a programmable one.

These low-cost, simple measures will improve the energy efficiency of your home and conserve resources, including your money. First pick
these low hanging fruit and then start thinking about all the other possibilities, especially if you are planning a remodel. You don’t have to do everything at once. However, if you are remodeling, take advantage of the opportunity to make informed choices and improve the quality and efficiency of your home one step at a time.

* This column and its content are intended to be a source of general information. Applicability to your specific project should be verified.

Peter A. Zepponi, AIA – Architects, is an architectural firm in San Francisco specializing in residential and commercial architecture. A
Certified Green Building Professional – Build It Green. 

]]> http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-june-2009/feed/ http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/how-to-receive-the-ingleside-police-districts-updates/ http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/how-to-receive-the-ingleside-police-districts-updates/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:00:13 +0000 admin News and Notices http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/how-to-receive-the-ingleside-police-districts-updates/ If you would like to receive the Ingleside Police Department districts updates on events and police blotters, select this link  http://www.sfgov.org/site/police_index.asp?id=19972
… to access the Ingleside Station website.

Then select the link on the right side:  Community Updates  http://www.sfgov.org/site/police_index.asp?id=31355
Then, scroll down and see this e-mail link for the Ingleside Statiion  sfpdinglesidestation@ci.sf.ca

To join the e-mail list, all you need to do is send an email to the captain of the Ingleside Statiion to request to be added to the mailing list.  They ask you include your name and telephone number if there is an issue with your email (but it is not required to do so).

 

]]> http://www.miralomapark.org/news-and-notices/how-to-receive-the-ingleside-police-districts-updates/feed/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-may-2009/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-may-2009/#comments Sat, 02 May 2009 16:24:50 +0000 admin Newsletter Archive http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-may-2009/

Goodbye, Again: Against SFPD District Captain Rotation

Neighborhood Social with Supervisor Elsbernd for June MPIC Election

Water and Sewer Rates Are Rising Why and How

Tales of the Great Quake Enchant Once Again

So Long to Nathan Rutherford and Lou Johnson

The Los Palmos Neighborhood Community Garden

What’s Happening with NERT?

Fifty Years Ago in Miraloma Park:: Highlights from the May 1959 issue of Miraloma Life

Important Notice About the Housing Element

Table Tennis In Glen Park?

In Memoriam: John Lockley, Former President of the MPIC

Woodblock Color Print (1924)

Goodbye, Again: Against SFPD District Captain Rotation

by Karen Wood

As the founding member of the MPIC Board Safety Committee, I’ve worked closely with Ingleside Police Station since 2000, participated in the Efficiency Plan focus group process and in the Fair and Impartial Policing Citizen Advisory Committee, and have spent many hours each week working with Ingleside Station on community safety challenges.

My experience has taught me that the routine rotation of district captains without cause is absolutely and irredeemably counter-productive to community policing, which requires solid working relationships between captains and community members. These relationships develop over time: it takes several years for a captain to develop meaningful knowledge about his or her district and to gain the trust of residents. I have worked with four captains since 2000.

Now, once again, we undergo the process of orienting and getting to know a new captain who, for his part, must begin the complex process of learning about the Ingleside communities. This is a steep learning curve: intensive knowledge of neighborhoods and their residents requires several years of application, and intensive, rather than superficial, knowledge is what we who work with our officers have come to expect.

I first learned of the concept of community policing during the Efficiency Plan process. During those meetings and at so many community meetings that I’ve attended over the years, the consensus of opinion has been that community policing requires consistency both in staffing and in communication, two components of good policing that are inseparable. I am truly at a loss to understand the practice of transferring commanding officers who are doing a fine job in their districts and who have forged solid relationships with residents.

The explanation commonly offered for this practice is that frequent rotation of district commanding officers prevents the formation of  “fiefdoms,” meaning, one supposes, that long tenure at a district station leads to insubordination in a commanding officer. This concern reflects poorly and without justification on the quality of command staff supervision.

But for the community as a whole, the routine transfer of captains without cause hinders the smooth and well-functioning collaboration of community and Department. It prevents all concerned—captains, residents, and officers, as well—from achieving optimal results from our efforts and enforces on all a relentless cycle of orientation and re-education, again and again. This process presents a disincentive for community volunteers, like me, to continue our efforts when they are repeatedly frustrated.

Substantial public financial and personnel resources have been dedicated to fund consultants and studies aimed at improving the effectiveness of our police force. But this simple measure— allowing captains to remain in their districts as long as their performance is strong—will do more to promote good relationship building and communication than all the studies we taxpayers have funded.

 

Neighborhood Social with Supervisor Elsbernd for June MPIC Election

The Miraloma Park Improvement Club will hold its annual election for Directors and Officers on Thursday, June 18, 2009 from 7 to 8 pm, at the MPIC Clubhouse. The election will be part of an open-house social event with wine and tasty treats, which our District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd will attend. The theme will be “How Can the MPIC Better Serve Miraloma Park.” Please come, make your suggestions to the Board, and bring your neighborhood and city-wide questions and concerns to Supervisor Elsbernd. All members in good standing with dues paid by Monday, May 18, 2009 may vote in the MPIC Board election. Nominations from members in good standing will be accepted at the MPIC Clubhouse from 7 to 8 pm on Thursday, May 21 after which nominations will be closed.

As of May 1, on the ballot for re-election as Director are current Directors Karen Breslin, Sue Kirkham, Dan Liberthson, Gary Noguera, and Kathy Rawlins. Nominated to the ballot to stand for election for the first time is Daniel Homsey. Dan Liberthson is standing for a repeat term as Corresponding Secretary. The position of Recording Secretary will be vacant, as Kathy Rawlins has tendered her resignation from that office as of the end of June, 2009. Nominations for the position of Recording Secretary from members in good standing are welcome.

 

Water and Sewer Rates Are Rising Why and How

by Steve Lawrence (Forest Hill)

WHY:

Water is supplied to San Franciscans by a City department called the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), which is separate and unrelated to the State Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Water rates have been rising, and between today and 2018 need to rise, if all goes as planned, at just under 10% per year. Rarely does all go as planned; construction costs often overrun.

What construction? SFPUC is in the middle of a $4,400,000,000 Water System Improvement Program (WSIP) to protect the water system from earthquake, to prepare it to survive drought, and to make it capable of being properly maintained.

Nearly two-thirds of the water system’s water goes to wholesale customers, which are cities and water agencies between SF and San Jose, and eastward. San Franciscans must pay less than half the bill for WSIP, about $2300 for every San Franciscan. Water bills must rise to cover the cost of WSIP. Nearly half the expected duration of WSIP has passed. So far, projected costs have risen about 20% from original estimates. To date, a bit under 20% of the WSIP funding has been spent and 20% of the work accomplished. During the next 6 years, 80% of the work remains to be done.

In that work there are a few very large projects costing over $200 million. These include building a new water line under the Bay (Bay Tunnel and Bay Division Pipeline No. 5, east and west sides), a new dam at Calaveras reservoir in the Sunol Valley, and a second tunnel between Sunol Valley and Fremont, called the New Irvington Tunnel. There are many smaller projects, about 80 in all. Water lines will be seismically upgraded so that the movement caused by an earthquake, unless very large, should not break the lines. Many other improvements must be made to a water system that is now 75 years old.

At the conclusion of WSIP, San Franciscans will need to use less water than now. Average use today is about 89 million gallons per day (mgd); in 2018, we must use no more than 79 million mgd from the regional water system. WSIP will build a recycled water plant, and in San Francisco will develop more ground water, which will be blended in with our naturally pure mountain water. In all, we should have 85 mgd available. San Franciscans will use less water per person per day because toilets and other fixtures will be more water efficient, appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines will use less water per load, and landscaping will be less thirsty.

How goes WSIP? This author, who has watched since inception in 2002, notes many delays to date. The very large projects mentioned above have suffered delays of more than 3 years. If no earthquake strikes before completion, this may work to the city’s advantage, because construction costs have recently plummeted.

The goal of WSIP is to avoid a situation like that after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Some day an earthquake will strike. Then the question will be: Are we prepared enough to avoid a mass exodus of citizens and business, from which it will be hard to recover? If drinking water is lost for a long time, that question could have a negative answer. Water rates are rising in an effort to head off that catastrophe.

In addition to paying for interest and financing costs of the bond indebtedness authorized by the voters in 2002 to fund the above physical improvements, costs of delivering water are rising because of other expenses. These include programs for conservation, raising Lake Merced and groundwater levels, use of recycled water, increased street sweeping (now under SFPUC’s budget), a new headquarters building, and more.

HOW:

Rates charged for water and wastewater service are going up. Although these rates have risen 15% per year for the past 5 years, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), which provides these services, now says that water rates need to rise more beginning July 1. According to SFPUC, both water and wastewater (sewer) service rates will rise about 10% for the typical customer.

Some believe that water rates are actually rising more than SFPUC claims. For the median customer, who uses 7 units of water, one calculation found that the water bill would rise 17.5% per the proposed rates to start July 1. A unit of water is 748 gallons, enough for the typical San Franciscan for 12 days.

Rates will be decided by the Commission of SFPUC at a public meeting on May 5. After the Commission decides on rates, the Board of Supervisors has the power to reject them.
So far, little opposition to the rate hikes has surfaced. At a recent meeting of the Rate Fairness Board, which advises the Commission concerning rates and how to structure charges, only two members of the public testified. In the past, many dozens have spoken.

Rates are rising faster than inflation because the SFPUC is in the middle of a program to improve reliability of the water system, especially after earthquake and during drought, and to better permit maintenance. The Water System Improvement Program is expected to cost $4.5 billion, and is to be completed by 2015. Also, at the end of that program San Francisco is expected to use less water. Because less water will be sold, more must be charged for each unit delivered. On the wastewater side, SFPUC is nearing completion of its 5-year program to address critical problems with its wastewater system, including flooding. Later on, it expects to issue a master plan outlining longer term improvements, at a cost of $3.2 billion according to recent estimates.

While capital improvements are perhaps the main source of future rate increases, the cost of providing water and sewer service have also risen because programs tangentially related have been picked up by SFPUC. A greater proportion of street sweeping costs are now paid through wastewater rates than in the past. Lake Merced, once cared for by the Department of Public Works (DPW), is now SFPUC’s responsibility. Greening programs, Department of Environment, and Mayor’s office employees are all paid for by SFPUC. Some believe these programs are picked up by water and wastewater rates because the city’s general fund is short.

On May 5, not only rates but also the rate structure is up for decision by SFPUC’s commissioners. SFPUC staff have proposed that there be two tiers of rates for all residential customers, a low tier applying to the first 3 units of water used per month, and a higher (more expensive) tier for water and wastewater thereafter. SFPUC believes this encourages conservation.

Critics, however, say that despite years of tiers there is no proof that conservation is in fact promoted. Tiers penalize those living in larger groups, even when each member of a family or household uses small amounts of water. Because SFPUC does not determine how many people there are living in each household, it cannot distinguish between the water waster and the larger household, and under tiers it charges a greater average price to both. Critics call this “the family tax,” and suggest that the SFPUC needs to address the inequities this rate structure would create.

The May 5 SFPUC meeting will take place from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in San Francisco City Hall Room 421. There is an opportunity for public input, and those concerned about the proposed rate and rate structure changes are urged to attend and speak their piece. There will also be opportunities for public input when SFPUC’s recommendations are taken up by the Board of Supervisors.

 

Tales of the Great Quake Enchant Once Again

by Dan Liberthson
On April 6, an enthralled gathering at the MPIC Clubhouse listened to Neil Fahy, geologist and professional lecturer, talk about lessons in leadership to be learned from the great SF quake of 1906. Using remarkable slides culled from various archival collections, Neil brought to life the story of what happened during the quake, with particular attention to the strengths, weaknesses, and conflicts among the key leaders at the time. We learned about Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan, who, after planning for the response to the quake for many years, had the misfortune to be killed beneath a falling chimney during the actual event.

Young immigrant banker A.P. Giannini kept his Bank of Italy open when all other banks closed during the disastrous quake and the ensuing fire, and lent money on no security to all comers—a trust in his community that was rewarded by long-term loyalty and the stellar growth of what became the Bank of America. One of the leading scoundrels of the time, kick-back king and dirty-money man Abe Ruff, was cut out of the action when Mayor Schmidt, considered a lightweight by General Frederick Funston of the Presidio and many others, rose to the occasion and instead appointed honorable and efficient citizens like Freemont Older and M. H. de Young to the committee overseeing the response and rebuilding. Shoot-to-kill orders from the Mayor helped deter looting, while attempts to block the fires by dynamiting buildings in their path did more damage in many areas, partly because of inept use of the explosives, than the quake itself.

All the while the “regular folks” muddled through, helping and supporting one another as best they could, whether living in temporary tent shelters in Golden Gate Park or in the remaining habitable lodging. Neil’s grandparents on their ranch in the south-east part of the City took in several families who had lost their homes, feeding them with crops grown on the premises and recompensed for costs by the government. What a thrill it was to imagine, as vividly recreated by our able presenter, ranch and farm life in the midst of San Francisco, in a bygone time before the seemingly inevitable concreting over!

Look for Neil to return in the Fall with a presentation about the making of Golden Gate Park—another memorable tale spun by a fine story-teller of our City’s history.

 

 

So Long to Nathan Rutherford and Lou Johnson

by Kathy Rawlins

The Miraloma Life newsletter has often eulogized past Miraloma Park Improvement Club Board members. I would like to take this opportunity to remember two neighborhood residents who, although they were not Board members, were nonetheless quite outstanding in their own ways and contributed to the betterment of the neighborhood through their efforts of environmental beautification.

Lou Johnson, as has been noted in a previous MLL article, was a kind and gentle soul who provided neighborhood support for many causes. One of these, which lives on in his memory, is the Melrose-Detroit Garden. He and his wife, Yvonne, helped establish this place of beauty and peace where there had been trash and weeds. They received many plant contributions to the garden and volunteers helped in its upkeep.

Nathan Rutherford, another valued member of the community, was a friendly face to those on the 300 block of Molimo Drive. He always gave a smile and a wave to anyone passing by. Nathan could be seen during holiday times creating beautiful floral arrangements in his garage and then loading them up to give to friends and acquaintances. In his later years, he took it upon himself to improve his garden in both the front and back yards, which his landlord supported wholeheartedly. Many neighbors complimented him on his industry, and many received starter plants from him to spread the beauty. Not only is his garden flourishing, but since it is entirely drought tolerant plants, it is an example of good ecology for all to admire and imitate.

I suspect that many of us, in our hurried daily lives, drive the hills of our neighborhood without taking enough time to admire the efforts of residents to make their homes and gardens attractive. At this lovely time of year, I would invite everyone to make time to walk the streets and take pleasure in the gardens we usually drive past with a glance. Let your neighbors know you appreciate their efforts to beautify our community by a smile or a compliment. This will give them that ‘pat on the back’, the recognition all unsung heroes appreciate from time to time, and it will lift your spirits as well as theirs.

In closing, I would like to say again “Thank you, Lou and Nathan–the world is a more beautiful place because you were here.”

 

The Los Palmos Neighborhood Community Garden

by Gundula Schmidt-John

Fragrant frisias, bold anemones, colorful plants, and lush green scrubs will welcome you at the Los Palmos Neighborhood Community Garden (LPG), a neighborhood oasis that Friends of the LPG invite our Miraloma neighbors to visit.

The LPG is located at the intersection of Foerster and Los Palmos Drive, just east of 195 Los Palmos Drive. Once filled with weeds, this plot has now been transformed by the loving hands of the Friends of LPG and other neighbors. The Friends work weekly on landscaping and organize biannual Community Work Parties to help to bring the neighbors together.

Come and stroll down the easily accessible paths to view the Garden at many levels, or sit on one of the benches and admire a stunning landscape abundant with colors and flowers. In addition to many plants, the Garden has mature flowering plum trees, our own fruiting apple tree, an herb patch, and a vegetable farm. Our colorful sweet peas and towering watsonia were the highlight of last year’s MPIC Garden Tour. Butterflies, hummingbirds, and other small birds abound, and the garden provides a site for monitoring bee migration.

Financial aid for the Garden comes from a monthly collection of recyclables that are dropped off by the neighbors. Other contributions are welcome: please contact Gundula at 195 Los Palmos Drive, phone 586-4871. The Friends of the LPG hope you will enjoy your visit, especially now that the Garden is in full bloom. We thank you for all your support. As always, the Watsonia bulbs contributed by neighbors have grown into the highlight of our Spring Garden.

 

What’s Happening with NERT?

by Phil Laird

Recently I spoke with Lt. Erica Arteseros, Program Coordinator for the Fire Department’s Neighborhood Emergency Response Program (NERT) to get an update on the status of the program. Following are some of the topics we discussed.

By the time you read this article the annual NERT citywide drill will have come and gone. If you, like me, glanced at your NERT badge and realized that it had expired, you may wonder how to renew it and whether it is worth the trouble. We can renew our NERT certifications only by attending one of the Class #6 sessions (the last of the six training classes). This class reviews the “take-home exam” questions on basic preparedness from the NERT manual and then conducts a hands-on drill for basic skills such as triage and search and rescue. You will probably be surprised at how easily these skills fade and how quickly knowledge evaporates over time. To recertify, pick a Class #6 to attend and email or phone NERT to signal your intention to go, so that they can prepare a new badge for you. Classes are on the web site, www.sfgov. org/sffdnert (click on “training schedule”). Send the email to sffdnert@sfgov.org with the word “RECERT” as the subject. Or phone (415) 970-2022.

So, is it worth it? What does NERT “certification” mean? There is no evaluation of NERT volunteers to test whether they have mastered any specific skills. A NERT badge certifies only attendance at the NERT training classes. I find this seriously concerning: I don’t want someone to attempt to pull me from a collapsed building or to attend to my injuries just on the basis of having sat through 20 hours of training classes. I asked Lt. Arteseros about this, and she acknowledged that, unlike First Responder and EMT training, NERT does not have the resources to manage a large-scale assessment and certification program. Still, I think that the use of the term “certification” implies a level of competence that most NERTs do not have.

NERT is, however, developing specialized training programs that go beyond the basic six classes and do entail some certification. The San Francisco Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) is part of a nationwide program to establish local teams of medical, health and other volunteers to strengthen the public health infrastructure and improve emergency preparedness. Required training includes FEMA IS-700 training, Incident Command System training, and First Aid/CPR. A series of optional, specialized classes can follow, depending on the type of support the NERT may be interested in. Note that you do not need to have any prior medical training to participate.

The “Rescue Drill” program offers training in specialized skills for aiding fire fighters at the scene of a disaster in their neighborhood—loading and unloading hoses, advanced cribbing, securing victims in Stokes stretchers, and such.

Recently the Battalion Chief managing this program retired, and until a new Chief is assigned, participation is limited. The training calls for more physical activity than other NERT functions. If interested, contact your neighborhood coordinator (Jed Lane for Mt. Davidson/Miraloma Park).

Other advanced programs that have been in place for a while include Ham Radio Communications (HCT), Incident Command (ICS), and Leadership Teams/Block Captains. In my opinion the greatest potential for the NERT program is to help organize neighborhoods quickly following a disaster so that immediate local services can be provided, needs assessed, and those needs communicated to City responders. Those neighborhoods that coordinate quickly and effectively will be the ones that recover first, and Incident Command training provides most of the necessary knowledge and skills. Attending NERT drills also helps reinforce teamwork skills because the activities are conducted in neighborhood-based groups.

I asked Lt. Arteseros about the status of the NERT budget in the face of the current financial problems. NERT did suffer a mid-year cut to the budget, and its future funding is tied to that of the San Francisco Fire Department. But training classes are underway and will hopefully continue throughout the year. Asked about her biggest concerns, she said she is frustrated by the number of people who still don’t know about the NERT program, despite the well-publicized “72hours.org” campaign this past year. NERT is launching a new Family Preparedness program to increase personal preparedness in San Francisco. An attractive alternative for those of us too busy to attend 20 hours of classes, it consists of a one-time workshop to inform individuals and families about how to prepare for major emergencies. The program is conducted in conjunction with neighborhood organizations such as SF Safe. Fire department officials will visit with the neighborhood group to offer a package of risk awareness and disaster planning tips, an overview of NERT training, and support for neighbor-to-neighbor pre-planning.

NERT was created in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake, when hundreds of volunteers came to help fight fires and rescue victims, but their potential could not be realized because of their lack of training. This situation recurred after the Cosco Busan oil spill, when again hundreds of people wanted to help with the cleanup but could not be used for lack of training in hazmat situations. Whether the training consists of basic preparedness for families or advanced First Responder Certification, having a population with the knowledge and skills to respond to a disaster will determine how well we fare in the next big quake or other major incident.

 

Fifty Years Ago in Miraloma Park:: Highlights from the May 1959 issue of Miraloma Life

compiled by Phil Laird

MPIC President Cecil Hickman writes: “We here in Miraloma Park have been promised a mechanical signal at Fowler and Portola. Let us see that this promise is carried out. This is election year! Nuff sed.”

Miraloma Church News: “What’s in a name? We have decided that as well as being identified with the community we should also be identified with our denomination. The word ‘community’ adds little, so the congregation voted to change our church name to ‘Miraloma Reformed Church.’”

Reginald Glazbrook writes: “I had the honor of serving as President of the Miraloma Park Improvement Club for the year 1957. The Club was very active that year, mostly due to various issues that came up pertaining to the keeping of our area as a first-class residential zone. This involved many special meetings of the Board of Directors and committees.

“Individually and in a body we made many appearances at the City Hall before the Planning Commission, the Board of Permit Appeals and the Board of Supervisors. Fortunately, nearly all of our fights were victorious. This was mainly due to the efforts and hard work performed by my efficient committee members.

“During my tenure of office…I originated and had made the plaque with the past presidents’ names and dates engraved thereon which proudly decorates our clubhouse.”

[Note: The plaque still decorates the north wall.]

 

Important Notice About the Housing Element

The City of San Francisco is holding public hearings about the 2009 Hoiusing Element of the General Plan, which will govern, among other matters, how much and what sort of housing will be built over the next decade, and what rules and zoning will apply to that housing. City residents are encouraged to educate themselves about the Housing Element, and to make their voices heard at these meetings. As the Planning Department puts it, “We want to hear directly from residents about their issues and needs related to housing, so that the 2009 update really does reflect the diversity of our City’s viewpoints and incorporates policy ideas that address these issues and needs.”

Conveniently for Miraloma Park residents, one such meeting will be held at the Miraloma Park Improvement Clubhouse (350 O’Shaughnessy Blvd at Del Vale) on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. Please come to learn about and contribute to this vital aspect of SF planning.

 

Table Tennis In Glen Park?

by Charlotte White

Who’s up for exercise that’s far from deadly boring?

Come to Drop-In Table Tennis on Wednesday evenings, 6:30 - 9:00 PM, at the Glen Park Recreation Center (Elk at O’Shaughnessy/Bosworth). It’s free! All skill levels are welcome. Just bring paddle, ball, peelable clothes, tennies, and a hang-loose attitude, and head for the joyous hollering. Believe me—I go most weeks. For details, call 337-4705, and ask about Drop-In Badminton, too.

 

In Memoriam: John Lockley, Former President of the MPIC

John Lockley, a Teresita resident and attorney who died on March 6 at age 96, was one of the most dynamic presidents in the history of the Miraloma Park Improvement Club. During his tenure (1956-7), he ensured the preservation of Glen Canyon as an open space, helping to stop a large development planned for the area. He was instrumental, together with others, in integrating Miraloma Park by insisting on an end to the practice of including racial restrictions in the covenants in property deeds, which had been determined to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Over the course of a long career, Mr. Lockley served as a federal tax prosecutor and Assistant United States attorney and handled one of the most important defining cases in the area of water rights and land law, Miller v Lux. After retirement at age 80, he continued to teach the law well into his 90s, and was an arbitrator until his death. He provided pro bono law services for diverse churches and temples, as well as a number of farmers and non-profit organizations.

Mr. Lockley’s surviving family, including Miraloma Park resident Jo Lynne Lockley, request that donations in his memory be made to the Little Sisters of the Poor at 300 Lake St., SF, CA 94118. “He loved the law,” said Jo Lynne. “He believed in order, fairness and justice.”

 

Woodblock Color Print (1924)

Matsue Izumo sees a crescent moon

orange sunset rippling in wavy water

a lit window

—Dan Liberthson, ©2009

]]> http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-may-2009/feed/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-april-2009/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-april-2009/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:00:22 +0000 admin Newsletter Archive http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-april-2009/

A Grand Bird and Plant Tour of Glen Park Canyon

Miraloma Life Volunteers Invited

75th Anniversary of Mount Davidson Cross

What is the WOTPCC?

Legal Ease

What is the CSFN?

NERT News

Parks and Open Space Planning Meeting

Fifty Years Ago in Miraloma Park: Highlights from the April 1959 issue of Miraloma Life

Make Some Music!

A Grand Bird and Plant Tour of Glen Park Canyon

by Dan Liberthson

Friends and neighbors, you have an incredible treat in store. Allan Ridley and his wife Helen McKenna-Ridley will be giving a 2-hour walking tour of Glen Park Canyon on Saturday, May 2, followed by a chat about what we’ve seen (and not seen) at the Miraloma Park Clubhouse. Allan may be familiar to some of you who have gone on his wonderful birding tours of Mt. Davidson in past years.

Allan Ridley, MS,  taught biology and ornithology at the Urban School of San Francisco.   Helen McKenna-Ridley, MS, taught biology and environmental science at George Washington High School and became principal of Raoul Wallenberg High School. Helen is an experienced docent at the San Francisco Botanical Garden (SFBG) in Golden Gate Park. Together they have traveled widely and have led birding and natural history trips to Costa Rica, Ecuador, New Zealand, and Australia. On the first Sunday of each month at 8:00 AM, they lead a bird walk through the SFBG.

For the May 2 event, we’ll  meet behind the recreation building in Glen Park Canyon, parking on Elk Street (which runs between Diamond Heights Boulevard and Bosworth Street) or side streets off  Elk Street. Enter the park by following the alley from Elk Street behind the tennis courts, and meet behind the recreation building. The tour will start at 9:00 AM sharp and last about 2 hours. After the walk, we will gather for refreshments at the Miraloma Park Clubhouse, 350 O’Shaughnessy Boulevard at Del Vale, at about 11:15 AM, chat, and Q&A. Here are the essentials:

Event:    Birding and plant tour of Glen Park Canyon with Allan Ridley and Helen McKenna-Ridley

Date:    Saturday, May 2

Time:    9 AM for the walking tour, 11:15 AM for gathering at the Clubhouse

Place:    For the walking tour, meet behind the Recreation building in Glen Park (enter from Elk St. behind tennis courts). For the gathering after, Miraloma

Park Clubhouse, 350 O’Shaughnessy Boulevard at Del Vale (enter the parking lot from Del Vale). See miralomapark.org for more information.

Miraloma Life Volunteers Invited

With the retirement of our long-time editor, Joanne Whitney, the Miraloma Life is interested in hearing from volunteers interested in doing editorial and/or publication work for the newsletter, whether on an ongoing basis or in a supporting capacity. Those interested in editing should have some background therein, and those interested in doing the layout/publication should have experience with Adobe InDesign software. As you know, the newsletter is a 12-page publication that comes out in the first week of every month except July and August. Experience as its Editor or Layout Artist/Publisher would be useful to anyone who wants to supplement his or her resume, and is a rewarding way to serve the community. Please send email responses to miralomapark@gmail.com or leave a message on our voicemail, (415) 281-0892.

75th Anniversary of Mount Davidson Cross

By Jacquie Proctor

Seventy-five years ago, in 1934, the highest cross in the world was dedicated and lit for the first time by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 11 years after

George Decatur organized the initial Easter Sunrise event atop Mount Davidson in 1923. After more than 5000 San Franciscans hiked up the City’s highest hill before dawn to hear the Dean of Grace Cathedral at that first Easter Sunrise service, Decatur worked to make it an annual event, which continues to this day.

Three years after that first service, in 1926, The Municipal Record reported that “the subdividers’ axe and steam shovel were heard on Mt. Davidson’s lower slopes, destroying in ruthless fashion the beauties of nature” and that “ardent nature lover, Mrs. Edmund N. “Madie” Brown, was aroused over the destruction.”  She “made a plea at the Commodore Sloat Parent-Teachers’ Association on April 12, 1926 for the preservation of Mt. Davidson,” still privately owned by subdivider A.S. Baldwin. Madie campaigned for 3 years with the PTA and the Federation of Women’s Clubs before the City appropriated $15,000 to purchase 20 acres of Mt. Davidson for a public park. The park was dedicated 80 years ago in December of 1929.

The Easter sunrise event continued to grow in popularity, with annual attendance reaching 30,000 during the Great Depression. Temporary crosses had been constructed on the eastern viewpoint atop Mt. Davidson, but with this high level of attendance, George Decatur was inspired to raise $25,000 in private donations to build the cross we see today. The architect and engineer of San Francisco’s highest buildings, George Kelham and Henry Brunnier, designed the 103-foot high reinforced concrete monument. The fundraising committee included Margaret Mary Morgan, the first woman elected to the Board of Supervisors, and Mrs. A.S. Baldwin, who donated the 6-acre summit of the hill to the city for the permanent location. On March 3, 1934,
thousands of San Franciscans watched as the final granite slab cornerstone was laid. Underneath it is a crypt containing a copper record box filled with historical items, including 1933 city telephone directories, copies of area newspapers, and a transcript of the 1845 deed of Mt. Davidson to Don Jose de Jesus Noe from the first Mexican Governor of California, Pio Pico. During the ceremony, Mayor Angelo Rossi appointed the Boy Scouts of the San Francisco area as guardians of the record box, which was accepted by William H. Worden, Jr., Eagle Scout of Troop 88. Three weeks later, on March 24, 1934, President Roosevelt, lit the cross at the request of the park founder, Madie Brown. She wrote:

“As Chairman of Arrangements, I have dared to dream that our President would press the button in Washington, D.C., which in turn would light for the first time this giant cross in San Francisco. It seems most appropriate that the President, who has brought light to many a darkened American home and who, through his new deal, has instilled the principles of the Golden Rule into American business, should take part in this cross-lighting ceremony.”

A crowd of 50,000 people surrounded the cross at 7:30 PM when President Roosevelt tapped a golden telegraph key to send a signal over a special direct circuit provided by Western Union, 3702 miles in length, from the White House through Chicago to Mt. Davidson. The signal lit the twelve 1000-watt floodlights for the first time, making the cross-visible 50 miles away.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the monument’s dedication, the Council of Armenian Organizations of Northern California (now owners of the cross) and Troop 88 are planning to open the copper record box during this year’s Easter Sunrise Event on Sunday, April 12.

Miraloma Park resident Jacquie Proctor is the author of Images of America: San Francisco’s West of Twin Peaks, published in 2006 by Arcadia Publishing.

What is the WOTPCC?

by Dan Liberthson

The West of Twin Peaks Central Council (WOTPCC), like the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods (CSFN) discussed on page 7 in this issue of the Miraloma Life, is an “umbrella organization” including neighborhood organizations in San Francisco. However, unlike the CSFN, which admits neighborhoods City-wide, the WOTPCC  represents only neighborhoods in the West of Twin Peaks area and comes together to work on issues of particular importance to that area. The WOTPCC comprises 17 neighborhood organizations and over 10,000 homeowners in the West of Twin Peaks area of San Francisco, and the Miraloma Park Improvement Club is one of these member neighborhoods. The others are Balboa Terrace, Forest Hill, Forest
Knolls, Greater West Portal Ingleside Terraces, Lakeshore Acres, Lakeside Property Owners, Merced Manor, Midtown Terrace, Monterey Heights, Pinelake Park, St. Francis Homes, Sherwood Forest, Twin Peaks Improvement, Westwood Highlands, and Westwood Park. Delegates from these organizations meet on the fourth Monday of each month at the Forest Hill Clubhouse, a lovely Maybeck building just off Dewey Circle.

Since its origin in the mid 1930s, the WOTPCC has had a special interest in zoning issues, as most of its neighborhoods comprise exclusively single-family homes and are zoned for such homes (RH1 zoning). Early efforts to change that zoning led to cohesive opposition by the Council under its first president, John S. Curran. The continued interest of the Council in preservation of zoning was demonstrated at its March meeting, at which a substantial turnout listened to a presentation by John Rahaim, Director of the Planning Department, and then questioned him specifically about three RH1 zoning elements that have long been fiercely protected by the Council: a requirement for at least one off-street parking space for each home, a prohibition of
secondary units (illegal “in-law” apartments), and strict height limitations (currently 35 feet).

In recent years, moves by the Planning Department to promote “transit hubs” with higher height limits, greater population density, and a reduced requirement for off-street parking spaces have alarmed WOTPCC’s neighborhood organizations, as the implementation of such zoning modifications could degrade the character and quality of life in our single-family neighborhoods and small commercial districts (like West Portal and Miraloma Park’s Portola shopping area).

Mr. Rahaim’s responses indicated a sensitivity to neighborhood character and zoning concerns that appeared to reassure many of the delegates of the Council’s member organizations, who nonetheless made it clear that they intend to protect their zoning, as the WOTPCC staunchly has done since its founding. The MPIC, which represents the entirely RH1-zoned neighborhood of Miraloma Park, identifies strongly with the Council’s conservative approach to zoning issues, and has consistently lent its voice to the unanimous opposition by the Council’s member organizations to any potential erosion of West Side zoning.

Their website at westoftwinpeaks.org provides Board minutes and a calendar of events.

Legal Ease

By Mary Catherine Wiederhold, Esq.

A few months ago I wrote about jury service in San Francisco. I am a litigator and have done trials. Some people believe that lawyers are not asked to serve on juries, but this is not true. In July 2008, I received a jury summons, for which I sought a postponement because I was an attorney in a trial. But when the jury summons arrived again in January 2009, and I could not postpone it any longer. I was to report to the Civic Center Courthouse, which mostly has civil trials. Unfortunately, I had to participate as a lawyer in a trial on the date I was to report.

When I went down to the jury service room in the Civic Center Courthouse on January 26, I told the people who were going to check me in that I was starting a jury trial. They refused to check me in. I went upstairs to the second floor, answered the 9:00 AM roll call in Department (courtroom) 206, and told the presiding judge that my client and I were ready for trial. I then stated that I had received a jury summons and that the personnel downstairs were refusing to check me in. The presiding judge stated, “You have to do your jury duty,” and then dismissed me. My client and I eventually settled her case.

Not wanting to be a juror scofflaw, I called jury services at the Civic Center Courthouse, told them my situation, and asked what could be done. They told me to come in and serve on February 5. So on February 5, at 8:45 AM, I entered the courthouse with my knitting and two books.

The Jury Services Room is on the lower level of the courthouse. It is a large, dark-paneled room that seats about 150 people. Free internet service is available. In the center of the room are a heavy wooden table and chairs. On either side are two large glass etchings with some phrases from the U.S. Constitution. Beside the phrases, etched into the glass, are pictures of the bodies of the Framers without their faces.

A video, which I could not see but could hear, informed me that I had to be at least 18 years old to serve, have no felony convictions, and be a U.S. resident. I qualified on all counts. The video discussed the importance of being a juror. After a short wait, my name was called, along with those of many other people, and we were told to report to a courtroom on the sixth floor. The clerk in that courtroom called our names and made certain we were all present.

The courtroom was one of the smaller ones. The court reporter sat in front of the witness stand, across from the clerk, near the judge’s raised desk. The bailiff sat in the back near the corner. The attorneys sat at the large table in the center of the room. The judge came out and explained who the parties were and introduced the court reporter, the clerk, and the bailiff. She said that three-quarters of a jury needed to agree in a civil trial, but not at this trial. This was a criminal case, and the verdict had to be unanimous. Because it is unusual for a criminal case to be held in the Civic Center Courthouse, I was very interested. The judge explained that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution mandated jury trials in criminal matters. She introduced the Deputy District Attorney, the Deputy Public Defender, and the defendant. She stated that the defendant was being charged with a felony of possessing drugs and with two other felony charges. She said it would be a 5-day trial, and she gave the times and days that court would be in session. Giving a schedule was helpful for people with children or dependent family members, and for arranging work.

Twelve people were called to sit in assigned seats in the jury box and 6 more people were assigned seats in front of the box. This began the process in which the judge and the lawyers ask questions to individual jurors to determine if they could be fair in this case. Each potential juror stood and provided his or her name, neighborhood, length of residence in San Francisco, highest educational degree, spouse’s or domestic partner’s employment, number of children and their ages and occupations, and other information. This information give the attorneys a sense of who the jurors were. As a litigator, I find it helpful when people present this information slowly, because attorneys write it down in shorthand and use these notes for follow-up questions to the
potential jurors.

The judge also asked if any of the potential jurors were members of victims’ rights groups, if they would evaluate the testimony of law enforcement differently than other witnesses, and if they had any moral or religious beliefs about judging other people. The Deputy District Attorney began questioning the jurors by thanking them for showing up for their jury duty. She then asked if the jurors believed that “no one tells the same story twice.” The Deputy Public Defender objected, and I wondered if this might be an issue in the case. When the Deputy Public Defender asked questions, he told us about the “reasonable doubt” standard, and how it is a higher standard than clear and convincing evidence or preponderance of evidence. Then he asked the
potential jurors about their biases about the defendant’s being a drug addict and if they would tend to discount his testimony because of this. He also asked whether the jurors would believe a police officer more than a person who was not a police offer. We then adjourned for lunch for about an hour and a half.

After lunch, court reconvened with more questioning, and some potential jurors were let go. After I and other potential jurors were called to the witness box and questioned by the attorneys, the judge and the attorneys went into her chambers and discussed which jurors should be excused “for cause.” “For cause” means that the judge says that a potential juror might have a bias or information that might interfere with his or her deliberations. I was excused “for cause” because I knew one of the witnesses in the case.

The whole process took about a day, and it was interesting to me to see the process from the other side, as a potential juror rather than an attorney. Although I traditionally thank potential jurors when they first file into the jury box for my trials, from now on I will be even more appreciative of their time.

What is the CSFN?

by Gary Noguera

The Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods (CSFN) is an “umbrella organization” comprising representatives from most San Francisco neighborhoods who come together to work with the City on issues of importance to individual neighborhoods and to the City at large. The CSFN started when the Planning Department rejected the proposals of concerned neighborhood organizations for amendments to height and bulk limits in the Planning Code. The San Francisco Foundation gave a small grant to the Coalition to help it on its way, a neighborhood group in the Sunset served as its first fiscal agent, and a part-time secretary was hired to set up meetings, produce a newsletter, and recruit other neighborhood organizations.

Planning Association for the Richmond (PAR) President Martin McIntyre convened the first meeting of the CSFN on September 11, 1972, with 47 representatives of the neighborhoods present, covering most areas of SF. Today, there are 43 member organizations from all parts of the City.

The CSFN was incorporated in 1991 as a 501(c)4 nonprofit civic organization with a Board of Directors made up of representatives of all member organizations. It has held candidates and issues forums to educate the members and the public. It has, through member participation and lobbying, supported its member neighborhoods on issues affecting the broad community, and continues to monitor various City departments to insure fair treatment of all City residents.

The Miraloma Park Improvement Club (MPIC) plays an active role in the CSFN. We send a representative to CSFN monthly meetings to voice our opinions and vote on issues of concern to us and to all City residents. Our delegate, yours truly Gary Noguera, is currently the President of the CSFN, and sits on the Board of Directors. Thus, the MPIC affords its members the important benefit of direct representation at CSFN and a voice that will be heard City-wide.

NERT News

by Jed Lane

In last month’s article I wrote about new studies done to inform the City’s citizens and administration of the imminent danger of residential destruction from an “expected-size” earthquake. An expected-size earthquake is one the size of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, not the Big One that is also expected.

The Richter scale, developed in 1937, is used to measure the relative force of the energy released when the tectonic plates in the earth slip along one another, causing earthquakes. The Loma Prieta quake was 7.1 on the Richter scale, and the slip was 25 miles long on the fault (where the two shifting plates meet). In the 1906 quake, which is estimated to have been 7.7 to 7.9 on the Richter scale, the slip was 296 miles long on the San Andreas fault.  A quake that is 9.0 on the Richter scale releases 1000 times the energy of a 7.0 quake.

When next we experience a large quake in the 7.1 range close to the San Francisco, the SPUR and CAPPS reports show there will be massive loss of housing. The City is not prepared to take care of us in that event. Are we prepared to take care of ourselves?

Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) training prepares you to be aware of your surroundings in earthquakes and other disasters and provides guidance on the necessary plans to be self-sufficient after the event. In April, on the anniversary of the 1906 quake, NERT will hold its annual City-wide drill. At the drill, NERT members from across the City will gather to practice the skills they’ve learned and will have the opportunity to interact with the Fire Department and other City leaders.

Drill time and location: April 18, 2009 from 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM at Everett Middle School on Church St. at 17th St. The entrance to the school yard is on 17th St.

Here on Mt. Davidson, we should be having a conversation focused on how to be organized, so that when faced with the upheaval that will be going on all over the City, we will be able to care for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors and rebuild the community. This conversation should take place first in your home and then with your neighbors. Neighbor-to-neighbor conversation is just the beginning; knowing where our neighbors live and what their needs are likely to be is equally important.

Almost all members of the MPIC Board have been through the NERT training program, and we are evaluating the community leadership that will be required. We will not be able to do much without organized support from all residents, or if general panic and a “mob mentality” develop. So we ask that all Miraloma Park residents “Be safe – Be prepared – Get NERT trained,” and join us in this vital conversation about survival and recovery after a big quake.

Contact me (Jed@JedLane.com,  415.425.9810) if you have any questions or would like more information on NERT or the SAFE Block Captain program.

Parks and Open Space Planning Meeting

by Jed Lane

On March 4, 2009 a community meeting was held at the Miraloma Park Clubhouse to provide community input to the San Francisco Planning Department for the Regional Open Space Element (ROSE). This plan is being developed is part of the General Plan and has not been updated for a very long time.

Members of the community were asked to speak to parks and open-space issues, looking forward 100, 50, and 25 years, and to the immediate future. The meeting was facilitated by staff of the Neighborhood Parks Council (NPC) and moderated by DeeDee Workman, President of Workman Associates, a public affairs consulting firm, and the past Executive Director of San Francisco Beautiful.

Visionary ideas were shared and current concerns were discussed. Full notes from all the meetings can be found at openspacesf.org/OSmeetingnotes. If you would like to participate, additional meetings are scheduled, with the meeting schedule provided at www.sfnpc.org/2009OSworkshops. You can also organize your own meeting by contacting the NPC for their “meeting in a box” program.

We have more open space in our neighborhood than most. With Mt. Davidson, Twin Peaks, and Glen Canyon close by, it is easily possible to walk to a semi-natural space. In recognition and continuation of the past stewardship of citizens who prevented residential encroachment on Mt. Davidson and a freeway through Glen Canyon, we need to do our part for our kids and their kids. If parks are your issue, join with the leaders in your community to help advocate. If you don’t think you can make a difference, look at all that has been accomplished by Andrea O’Leary and her neighbors at the Sunnyside Playground and the Sunnyside Conservatory.

Contact me for more information: Jed@JedLane.com;  415-425-9810.

Fifty Years Ago in Miraloma Park: Highlights from the April 1959 issue of Miraloma Life

compiled by Phil Laird

Cecil F. Hickman, MPIC President, wrote:
“For the regular monthly meeting of April 16, our program chairman has secured an excellent foreign film [“Scandinavian Rhapsody”]. Showing time is approximately 35 minutes. Due to a great number of requests by other organizations for this film, we are having an early showing—probably 8:20 PM—to permit a second showing elsewhere in the City later this same evening…

“It was decided by the Board of Directors that no official action would be taken by the Club in regard to the changes in #36 bus schedule until and unless valid protests are received in sufficient number. We will need a number of sound objections to rebut the big reason for the curtailment of service—dollars and cents. Please phone Streets and Transportation Chairman Edward White with your views on this matter…

“I have received information…to the effect that at long last we may say goodbye to the “Shack” off Molimo Drive… The owner has contracted to have the edifice torn down within 2 weeks. Let us see!

“I hope everyone had a Happy Easter. How thankful we should be that we live in the beneficent shadow of the Cross—not the ominous shadow of the hammer and sickle!”

Excerpts from other articles:
“ ‘They said it couldn’t be done.’ But seeing is believing—the Scouts managed to change a Girl into a Boy Scout. Eleanor Mirabella finally made it at this last High Court of Honor. She was made a First Class Scout of the Boy Scouts of America. Her son, Michael, and Seth Samuels both made Eagle Scouts this month of March and were honored at a High Court of Honor dinner held on March 24 at the Community Church.”

“Billy Price, our 11-year-old carrier, fell for the fascination of a house under construction, and also fell 12 feet through a stairway. No stairs. He suffered a broken collar bone and was out of school a week. A steel brace was necessary for 8 weeks, but he is now looking forward to the baseball season. Good batting, Billy.”

Folk Dance News:
“Our group is having its usual amount of fun each Tuesday evening. We have been honored with the presence of several dancers from other dance groups lately. It is nice having you, and do come more often.

“Our teacher is really giving us a workout these days, putting the finishing touches to many new dances. What fun!”
“Teacher of slip cover and drapery making from your own material. $3.00 per lesson. For further information call …”

In 1959, annual dues for membership in the Miraloma Park Improvement Club were $2.00.

Make Some Music!

Upcoming Neighborhood Event Announcement

Are you a musician or a songwriter? Do you have a band? We are planning a neighborhood event for Saturday June 20th at Sunnyside Playground that will showcase the many musically talented residents of our neighborhoods and we want you to show your stuff!

The event will include all ages presenting solo recitals and acoustic or amplified ensembles in any style or tradition. Other musical groups will direct us in making a joyful noise with implements everyone brings: spoons, buckets, jugs, washboards, or even just hollow heads and puffy cheeks.

A segment will showcase original songs written for the event with special recognition for songs co-authored by kids and parents around the theme of what goes into and comes out of the three bins. Call it the BBG Song (Black, Blue & Green): Silly – Serious - Gross – Anything Goes!

We are seeking a graphic designer to design a poster for the event.  Contact Andrea O’Leary at Jultonedes@aol.com (or call 334-3601) or Jed Lane at Jed@JedLane.com to offer your talents or to be part of the planning.

]]> http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-april-2009/feed/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-march-2009/ http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-march-2009/#comments Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:00:55 +0000 admin Newsletter Archive http://www.miralomapark.org/miralomalife/miraloma-life-online-march-2009/

A MPIC Special Presentation: THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE OF 1906 – Lessons in Leadership

Miraloma Life Editor Retires - Volunteers Requested

Water Department Projects Progressing Toward Completion

“Graffti Watch” Program Trains Miraloma Park Volunteers

Neighborhood Parks Have More to Celebrate

Mt. Davidson Hike March 21st

Special Event: Parks & Open Space Discussion

NERT News

New Feature Announcement

Design Matters

For Everyone’s Sake, Back Up Your Files!

Clarification of the MPIC Tax-Exempt Status

A MPIC Special Presentation: THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE OF 1906 – Lessons in Leadership

Neil Fahy, who presented a marvelous lecture and tour on SF geology last Fall, is back with a first-class slide show about the Great Earthquake.
Neil’s interest in the 1906 quake is two-fold. First, as a professional geologist, he is fascinated by how this major earth-shaking event developed. But just as much, as a native San Franciscan brought up with family stories of the quake, he is intrigued by how people behaved during and reacted to this critical event. The Fahy family came to the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada in the 1860s in search of the riches of California. In 1906 Neil’s father lived at Dolores and 29th Streets and his mother was on a truck farm at the present site of the Daly City Bart Station.

Neil’s presentation is focused largely on the people involved, particularly the leaders who got the City through the turmoil and on the road to recovery.  How did the major players react in that time of crisis and what were their roles? Neil will tell the story of the most influential individuals, including Mayor Schmidt, political boss Abe Ruff, newspaper owners Fremont Older and M. H. de Young, Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan, General Frederick Funston, and young banker A. P. Giannini. But he will also paint a picture of how “regular folks” (like his parents) dealt with the situation.

The anniversary of the Great Quake is April 18 and the oldest survivor of the event, Herbert Heimie Hamrol, died recently. Please join us on April 6 for a vivid glimpse of this bygone era and the triumphs and failures of its people and leaders. Light refreshments will be served.

Date: Monday, April 6
Time: Gather, 7:45 pm; start, 8 pm.
The lecture will be about 45 minutes long and will be followed by a question-and-answer period.
Place: Miraloma Park Improvement Club,
350 O’Shaughnessy Blvd at Del Vale.

For more information, visit miralomapark.org
or phone (415) 281-0892.

 

Miraloma Life Editor Retires - Volunteers Requested

Joanne Whitney, Editor of the Miraloma Life for many years, is retiring.  We thank Joanne for helping to make the Miraloma Life one of the best neighborhood newsletters in San Francisco. For now, Dan Liberthson has taken on the role of Acting Editor and Phil Laird will take care of layout and publishing. Both are MPIC Board members.

We are looking for volunteers interested in filling these positions on an ongoing basis or to serve as back-ups. Those interested in editing should have some background therein, and those interested in doing the layout/publication should have experience with Adobe software. As you know, the newsletter is a 12-page publication that comes out in the first week of every month except July and August. Experience as its Editor or Layout Artist/Publisher would do credit to anyone looking for ways to supplement his or her resume.

 

Water Department Projects Progressing Toward Completion

by Amy Sinclair, SFPUC Public Relations Officer

Water system improvement projects in and around Miraloma Park are making progress!

The seismic retrofit of the Stanford Heights Reservoir, located at Teresita Boulevard between Agua Way and Rockdale, is more than half-way complete.  The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) began the project in 2007 to prepare the drinking-water reservoir to withstand the next major earthquake.  In addition to seismic upgrades within the reservoir structure, improvements to the exterior will include a new security fence and drought-tolerant native plants, grasses, and wildflowers around the perimeter.

The new water pumping station on Agua Way at La Bica is currently under construction and is expected to be complete by the end of the year. The building will house energy-efficient water pumps and an emergency generator that will help ensure delivery of water after emergencies such as an earthquake or a major storm.  The SFPUC collaborated with the Miraloma Park Improvement Club Board, drawing on the neighborhood’s Residential Design Guidelines, to create a design within the context of the architectural character of the homes on Agua Way.

Visitors to Mt. Davidson will notice new surfaces on several popular trails and construction work taking place on the water storage tank at the top of the mountain near the cross. New water pipeline installation is complete and the tank is undergoing a major renovation to improve water pressure, fire protection, and stability during an earthquake.

The SFPUC would like to thank residents for their patience as we rebuild your water system. 

Stay informed and comment on water, sewer and municipal power improvement projects throughout District 7 by joining the SFPUC’s new community blog: http://sfwaterdistrict7.blogspot.com/
 

 

“Graffti Watch” Program Trains Miraloma Park Volunteers

by Sue Kirkham

Graffiti are a persistent menace that reduces property values and degrades the quality of life for everyone. Located at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, Miraloma Park sits in the crosshairs of graffiti vandals. That our neighborhood is comparatively free of graffiti is due to the work of our Anti-Graffiti Team that has been abating graffiti in and around our neighborhood for well over a decade.

Still, there is an arms race of sorts between the taggers and those fighting their destructive maneuvers. New types of tags appear, only to be countered by tag-resistant signs and new, eco-friendly products to remove them. The most effective weapon, however, remains the shoe leather and elbow grease of volunteers who remove graffiti as soon as we see them.

Recently three members of Miraloma Park’s Anti-Graffiti Team joined other volunteers from neighborhoods around to city to be trained and equipped for graffiti abatement on public property. Sue Kirkham, Peter Renteria, and Phil Laird spent a Saturday morning with Merle Goldstone from the Department of Public Works (DPW) and regular members of the San Francisco Graffiti Watch Anti-Graffiti Program to learn how to remove graffiti safetly and effectively from signs, mailboxes, poles, signal boxes and other public property.  We also came away with some new equipment that will make the task a little easier and with bright fluorescent yellow vests identifying us as part of the Graffiti Watch program.

The Miraloma Park Graffiti Abatement team is made up of Board Members and other concerned residents of Miraloma Park.  Some work in teams of two to abate graffiti; others go solo. Some volunteers take care of their block; others go farther afield.  Long ago we learned that it is especially important to keep free of graffiti property along the throughfares boarding Miraloma Park: Portola, Monterey and O’Shaughnessy.  Graffiti typically hit the commercial areas and thoroughfares first. If left in these locations it gives license to the offenders to begin penetrating the residential neighborhood.

Graffiti Watch is a city-wide program of DPW that trains, supplies, and supports volunteers working to abate graffiti in their neighborhoods. Anyone can sign up for the free two-hour training session, after which they can obtain supplies from the city. The website for the program can be visited at www.sfgov.org/site/sfdpw_page.asp?id=33011, or you can call Merle Goldstone, Public Information Officer for Graffiti Abatement, at 415-760-1943.

The graffiti scourge erodes property values and, left unabated, leads to an increase in crime.  Please join us in keeping Miraloma Park a Park a graffiti-free zone.  Sign up for the San Francisco Graffiti Watch program, or contact Sue Kirkham to learn more and see how you can participate in preserving your quality of life in Miraloma Park.  Phone 415-333-9840, or email info@suekirkham.com.

 

Neighborhood Parks Have More to Celebrate

by Andrea O’Leary

Recreation and Parks Department Acting General Manager Jared Blumenfeld is touring all SF park sites to assess them and talk to staff and residents. Jared is very open to public input and will visit Glen Park, Sunnyside Park, and Sunnyside Conservatory on Wed., Mar. 4. His visit schedule and blog are at http://www.sfgov.org/site/recpark_index.asp?id=92180.

Two surpluses achieved in the Sunnyside Playground & Park renovation completed in 2007 will fund a rehab of the rec. center “clubhouse” (starting Mar.) and fulfillment of another item or two from the community’s Wish List. The clubhouse has been opened up to permit larger gatherings, will meet all ADA requirements, and will have  new kitchens and bathrooms. Sunnyside Park Families & Neighbors (SPFN ) will celebrate with the community the great results achieved when neighbors come together and persist.. SPFN will work with new Rec. & Park Neighborhood Service Area 5 Manager Eric Andersen (Eric.Andersen@sfgov.org) to sponsor another community meeting to discuss desired programming and public access to the Park and Sunnyside Conservatory. To contribute and participate, e-mail SPFamilies@aol.com.

A collaboration of neighborhood advocates (SPFN, Friends of Miraloma Playground, Southern Miraloma Activity Club, Bella Vista Neighbors in Action, and Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory) has won a $2,000 grant from the Neighborhoods West of Twin Peaks Convener Group (DCYF) to produce a “Make Some Music” event in Sunnyside Park in June. Live bands will perform and help visitors make music together. Families will compose, perform, and win prizes for songs about keeping our neighborhood clean and green.

Construction proceeds at the Sunnyside Conservatory, with renovation of this historic Landmark to be complete in October. The octagon-shaped building was once a horse and buggy turn-around. Restoration includes retaining the old-growth redwood, enclosing the building and the west wing, and adding lighting, heating, and bathrooms. The grounds will retain the famous palms plus new landscaping and hardscapes and a delightful art element. Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory have followed this project closely and plan a reopening celebration suitable to the site’s splendor. Send comments/suggestions  to SunnysideConservatory@gmail.com.

 

Mt. Davidson Hike March 21st

You are invited to join Miraloma Park neighbor Jacquie Proctor, author of San Francisco’s West of Twin Peaks, on a guided tour of Mt. Davidson on Saturday, March 21, at 1:30 PM. Explore the inspired history of San Francisco’s highest hill on this hike through our 38-acre nature preserve to the amazing view and gigantic monument at its summit. The walk is free and sponsored by San Francisco City Guides (www.sfcityguides.org). Trails can be windy and muddy. Wear a jacket and sturdy shoes. Meet at the 36 Muni line bus shelter at Dalewood and Myra Way.

 

Special Event

The Miraloma Park Improvement Club is hosting a
 Parks & Open Space Discussion
March 4, 2009
6:00 to 8:00 PM
At the MPIC Clubhouse
350 O’Shaughnessy Blvd. at Del Vale

The purpose of this event is to gather public input to develop the Parks and Open Space Element of the San Francisco General Plan.  If you

have ideas, concerns or general feedback, join us and be heard.
For information specific to this event, email:
Jed@FogCityGuide.com

For general information or comments, email:
Susan.Exline@sfgov.org

For information on the outreach effort, email:
mkritzman@sfnpc.org

For information on the meeting’s purpose, see:
www.openspacesf.org

 

NERT News

by Jed Lane, Miraloma Park/Mount Davison NERT Coordinator

Two recently published articles explore preparing the City for a major earthquake so that we will be able to shelter in place and recover our lives in a short period of time. San Francisco Planning & Urban Research (SPUR) has released Part 1 of a multiyear, three-part paper, “The Resilient City Initiative,” which attempts to create a “comprehensive approach to disaster planning” (see SPUR’s Urbanist Issue 479 “The Resilient City,” at http://www.spur.org/documents/020109_article_01.shtm). The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI) has published the “Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety,” or CAPSS (see http://www.sfcapss.org/index.html).

Both organizations detail the actions needed to prepare for what they term “the expected quake” that is likely to occur within the 50-year lifecycle of a building. An expected quake could be as strong as the 1989 Loma Prieta quake but closer to us, not centered far away in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and thus even more damaging. Both groups argue that “soft-story” buildings are most urgently in need of attention. The first floors of such buildings are large open spaces with no interior walls to brace against a twisting action. The City’s effort will focus on soft-story buildings of three stories or more with five or more housing units. Five buildings of this type collapsed in the Marina in the 1989 quake. Actions are planned for these multi-family, wood framed, soft-story buildings throughout the City.

A soft-story building is defined as any building with an abundance of wall openings in the first story or, more precisely, with openings that occupy 80% or more of  any one wall or more than 50% of any two walls. Note that this definition applies to nearly every home in Miraloma Park! There are tens of thousands of homes like ours in the City, all vulnerable in a strong quake: wood-framed, two or three stories over garage, and with the garage and front entrance in the same wall. On our typical 25-foot wide lots, the reports state that seismic remediation can be done fairly inexpensively. For more information on how to prepare your home to emerge from a quake in good shape,  and a list of resources, go to http://www.abag.ca.gov/bayarea/eqmaps/fixit/resources.html.

After a damaging quake, how long will it take to the City as a whole to return to its pre-quake functionality? SPUR sets goals and timelines answering this question if the quake happened now and if it happened after appropriate preparation. Disturbingly, they report, current building codes are based only on the requirement that new buildings not collapse, not that they be usable or repairable after the damage. Thus, as things are now, it would take 3 years to get 85% of people back in their homes and  even longer to re-house 100%. The overall goal should be to have 95% back in their houses within 24 hours.  SPUR also looked at water, gas, electricity, transportation, and medical services, and noted that preparing for the preservation and restoration of these “lifelines” will require regional cooperation.

The Building Department’s CAPSS sets a goal of minimizing damage from an expected quake by revising building codes to attain more resilient buildings that can be more quickly repaired and rebuilt. Their study shows an expected loss of one-quarter of the existing housing stock (8,600 to 100,000 units) in a major quake.

Those of us who think about the eventual big quake and work in and on neighborhood issues often look to the experience of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. The neighborhoods that were rebuilt after that devastation had organizations with experience in taking positions before civic leaders. Areas without such organizations may never come back. In Miraloma Park, we are fortunate to live in a neighborhood with a structured organization to represent us. Since our neighborhood was built (in the 1920s and 1930s), the Miraloma Park Improvement Club (MPIC) has been working on issues that impact Miraloma Park and the City as a whole. The work continues, and we would welcome your involvement. Be safe—Be prepared—Get NERT Trained.

 

New Feature Announcement

Miraloma Life plans to publish a calendar of events in our neighborhood.If you have a Tai Chi class in the park, a model airplane club, a parenting group, a home-brew club, or a neighborhood watch group, please let us know when and where you are meeting and we will publish this information in the Miraloma Life, which comes out the first weekend of every month except July and August.

We want to increase awareness of the many groups active in our neighborhood and to support your efforts.To submit your event, use the submission guidelines for articles described on the back page of this publication. Be sure to supply your contact information.

Nothing unlawful or commercial will be published. Comments or questions? Call Jed Lane 415-425-9810.

 

Design Matters

by Peter A. Zepponi, AIA — Architect

This monthly column addresses basic residential design and home improvement topics of interest to Miraloma Park residents. If you have a question or topic you’d like considered for a future article, please send an email to pazdesignmatters@aol.com or call 415-334-2868 (website: www.zepponi-architects.com).

Q: How can I take advantage of the current economy?

A:  Leverage the market with a negotiated fixed fee based on detailed plans and specifications.

You have 30% equity in your home, a good job, good credit, you don’t want to move, and you’ve been putting off a remodel for years because it’s been too expensive.  If this describes you, then you have an ideal opportunity as a qualified homeowner wanting to remodel. 

If you intend to do some remodeling, now would be a good time to start planning it. Market pressures are making construction pricing very competitive and I expect that trend to continue over the next few months.  I have several new clients who are taking advantage of the historically low interest rates and favorable construction costs, and you might also benefit by timing your project to derive advantage from current market conditions.  I believe there will be a market low around May/June, corresponding with high unemployment rates and low interest rates. A funded project that is permitted and ready to bid by the end of April will have perfect timing in your favor.  By May, however, most contractors will have taken a job to make sure to have work through the summer months, so bidding might not be as competitive as it currently is. 

If you miss the current window, your next best tactic will be to negotiate with contractors who want to ensure they have another project in the pipeline behind the one they are currently working on.  You can favorably negotiate that situation as well, but not as hard-line as with a contractor who still needs to land a job to get through the dry summer months.  The next window for good pricing will be in September/October, when contractors have finished up summer work and are looking for something to carry them through the winter.  You would be in a good situation then if most of your work is indoors and feasible during the rainy winter months, because outdoor projects could not start until good weather.  Therefore, you will have a larger pool of available contractors vying for your project, which should result in more competitive bidding.

When you are ready to bid your project and hire a contractor, you should negotiate a fixed fee. Now is a terrible time to hire someone on an hourly time-and-material (T&M) basis, as attractive as they may make this seem.   Instead, hire an architect or other professional to prepare a detailed set of bid documents.  Most such professionals should be able to earn their fee by the value they bring to the project in negotiating, bidding, and minimizing “unforeseen” conditions that can drive up costs.   Many large construction projects have slowed down or stopped, which means that some contractors have no jobs to put their crews on. Therefore, they will put workers on your project if you are paying T&M, but without other projects in line, the contractor and the workers will have no incentive to finish quickly, and may drag out the work to continue getting income.  This worst-case scenario does not apply to all contractors, but why run the risk that you will be taken advantage of? 

Rather, give contractors clear drawings and specifications so they can provide you with an itemized bid that you can review and compare against other bids.  Any good contractor should know what a job will cost within +/- 10%.   Good plans protect both owner and contractor by minimizing misunderstandings and disputes.  Hire the contractor who gives you a fixed fee based on a thorough itemized bid.  This will not necessarily be the lowest bidder, but the contractor you are confident will do the job for the quoted price and, very importantly, the contractor with whom you have the best rapport.
This column and its content are intended to be a source of general information. Please verify applicability to your specific project.
Peter A. Zepponi, AIA—Architects, is an architectural firm in San Francisco specializing in residential and commercial architecture. 

 

For Everyone’s Sake, Back Up Your Files!

by Phil Laird

Sorry to break it to you, but your computer—the one you use for just about everything—just took its last byte and expired in a glorious puff of smoke. Yup: everything on it is gone. Toast. RIP. Of course, you have it all backed up in a safe place, right?  RIGHT??  All the bookkeeping files and tax records for the garden club?  The list of donors to be invited to the annual awards dinner?  Five years of emails, contacts, and bookmarks?  Gone? Please don’t say that. Wake me up when this nightmare is over.

Backing up your computer files doesn’t require any fancy software or complex procedures. The main idea is simplicity itself: there should never be just one copy of any file you can’t afford to lose. It isn’t necessary to back up your entire hard drive: just the data. Sure, you have gigabytes of stuff on your drive, but most of it is the operating system and the programs you use to work with the data. For most people, the crucial data themselves are much snaller, maybe a few hundreds of megabytes in selected files. All you need to do is copy these files somewhere else. Copy them NOW—as soon as you finish editing them—and get in the habit of copying your files as you close them. Otherwise do so at the end of a day’s work; but you still may lose that day’s work if your machine fails before you back it up.

The “somewhere else” where you back up your files could be a thumb-drive you plug into your USB port. It could be an external hard drive you dedicate for backups: they’ve come way down in price, and they can be connected immediately to another computer. It could be a CD or DVD that you burn on your computer. It could even be on the Internet, using one of the net storage services (from which you can download the files to another computer). But, sorry, copying from your C drive to your D drive on the same machine isn’t good enough. (That puff of smoke? That was your D drive.) 

What about backup software? Quality software can simplify and automate the process as well as compress files to save space. But using backup software requires some care. For example, I run Windows Vista on my desktop, but I have a laptop with XP that I take with me to work. Vista has a nice backup program built in. Trouble is I can’t restore it with my laptop.

Which points to the second main principle: backing up is only half the story; you need to be able to restore from the backup. If you are copying your files “as is” to another location, no problem.  But if you are using software that compresses or encodes the files, you need to test out your restore process. Pick some file that you’ve backed up, choose a temporary space on your computer, and retrieve the file from the backup to that location. If you encounter any problems, you should either change your backup procedure or write a note to remind yourself how to resolve the problem next time.
 
Which brings us to the third main principle: remember that you may not be the only one who needs to retrieve the backup data. You may change jobs or move to another city and hand the files off to whoever takes over. Or you may be out of town when your partner calls to say the computer has died and he or she has to print last year’s annual report. Will these people be able to retrieve the data from your backup?

The popularity of digital media presents a challenge for backing up. Digital files—photos, videos, podcasts—are big files. Moreover, they don’t compress much because they are already in a compressed format. So copying them to another location means that location has to be big, too. My partner is a photographer and faces this problem constantly, like anyone who works with digital media. A favorite mantra of photographers is that the difference between a mediocre photographer and a good one is that the good photographer has a much larger wastebasket. While unfair, this maxim reminds us that not all digital files are worth saving. The wedding pictures, sure.  Your kid’s concert recital, of course.  But of the six hundred shots of Yosemite, I’ll bet that about ten are real keepers. Back those up and leave the rest to their fate.

So do it yourself - and everyone who depends on you - a huge favor and take the time to back up your data. Now. I’ll wait here ‘til you’re done. No pressure. Really.

 

Clarification of the MPIC Tax-Exempt Status

The membership renewal forms in the December and January issues of Miraloma Life incorrectly stated that the annual dues are tax deductible.  The MPIC is registered as a 501(c)4 non-profit community organization. As such, we are exempt from paying taxes on donations to the Club. However, under the 501(c)4 rules, donations made to the Club, including annual dues, are not tax-deductible to the donor. 

We are in the process of converting the MPIC to full tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 organization; this will allow all donations to the Club, including dues, to be taken as a tax deduction.  We apologize for this error.

 – MPIC Board of Directors
 

 

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