About Those Curb Ramps ...

I recently wrote a story for SF Streetsblog about some sloppy curb ramp construction on Park Presidio in San Francisco. Someone posted later a comment asking if the curb ramps had ever been repaired, and the contractor himself posted a comment on the Streetsblog story saying his company would be doing the work within the next few days -- and it did, as you can see by the above photograph and two below.


But then I stumbled across this curb-ramp obstruction scene on Tuesday afternoon in downtown San Francisco:

The woman driving this sports car had pulled up in front of the curb ramp off of New Montgomery and just sort of sat there ...

And then she got on her cell phone and started chatting. In the meantime, pedestrians were walking around her car.

Richmond District Sidewalks Are For ...

That's a good question. I always thought they were for walking, but when I left for work at about 6 am this morning, I discovered otherwise ...


And bicycle parking is for ... ???? This is what I discovered outside the US Post Office on Geary at 21st Avenue when I returned at about 3:30 pm. The bicyclist came up behind me just as I was getting my camera out. Perfect timing ...

Bicycle Parking in San Francisco's Richmond District?

The Richmond District Branch Library reopened recently, after being closed for a year or more for renovations. And it is a shining example of the blessings of civic bonds in all respects except for at least one ... bicycle parking.

Above, I have parked my bicycle parallel to the new bicycle rack that otherwise is not very functional.



Books ...

Note that in this photograph, before I have locked up my own bike, two other bicyclists have locked their bicycles up at either end of the rack. A third person has locked his bike up on the handrail near the door to the library. Later, two additional bicyclists came, and leaned their bicycles against a tree. One person stayed outside while the other went inside.



Here's bicycle parking in front of the Richmond District YMCA on 18th Avenue. Same problem: bicyclists don't like the bike rack, so they lock their bicycles 1) on the SFMTA bike rack; 2) at the ends of the YMCA bike rack; or 3) to the tree. Unlucky stragglers have to lift their front wheels over the rack to lock their bikes up.


Tree hugging ...

The Citizens of This Nation Who Have Been Subjected to Warrantless Wiretapping v. Obama and Bush

Jon Eisenberg, counsel for the plaintiffs in Al-Haramain v. Bush/Obama.

Criminy, what a title.

We thought things would get better under Barack Obama, but at least I'll give him credit for these two things: 1) the Bush administration left him a legal can of worms; and 2) he tries. George W. Bush never had to try. When you are a white male scion of privilege, that's your lucky break. You think you are entitled, so your bristle when challenged (to try).

Barack Obama, though male, has hardly reached the level of entitlement expressed by George W. Bush and his ilk.

So ...

Last a week a colleague and I spent hours sitting in on warrantless wiretapping hearings in federal court in San Francisco. We are learning on the fly. I had virtually no idea what was going on. Except for this: attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and some independent lawyers, were out fighting the good fight in defense of the Bill of Rights, and in particular the Fourth Amendment. Go Defenders of the Bill of Rights!

These were the cases they were considering:

McMurray v. Verizon, et al.; and,

Al-Haramain v. Bush (or Obama, depending ...)

That was June 3, 2009. I had taken the elevator up to the 17th Floor of the old Federal Building in San Francisco, gotten there early, slipped into the courtroom, sat up front, and ...

Behind me were some people talk about Hepting ...

HEPTING ....

Ok, that's the multi-district litigation (or MDL), more commonly thought of as a class action, suit brought by ordinary citizens who had reason to believe that the telecommunications companies that they had subscribed to (you know, like Verizon, BELLSouth, or AT&T) had turned over their subscriber records to the National Security Agency. Ick!

Ick! Ick! Ick!

Spying, folks ...

The case is Hepting v. AT&T. Or some other telecommunication company. The plaintiffs filed their suits -- which were later combined into the MDL -- in like 2006 or 2007, sometime after the New York Times broke its story about NSA warrantless wiretapping in late 2005 after sitting on it for more than a year (coulda impacted the outcome of the 2004 election, wish it had).

The folks behind me were lawyers, and in fact, the judge in this case -- in ALL these cases -- Judge Vaughn R. Walker, was not only hearing the McMurray and the Al-Haramain case that day, but he had issued his Hepting ruling that morning ...

Waaa waaaa ... :-(

Woulda liked to have told you that Judge Walker had ruled against the telecomms but Congress (and then President Bush) had thrown a little roadblock in the way: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (otherwise known as FISAAA). Congress did that last summer when Democrats had control of both Houses of Congress -- but just barely -- and they were desperate to be rid of the Republican nutcases whom they had capitulated to on so many occasions since September 11, 2001. Congress passed the FISAAA -- and George W. Bush signed it -- in July 2008. (Oh, by the way, after much protest against the FISAAA, Obama voted FOR it, though Joe Biden voted against it ...)

Among the provisions of FISAAA? In fact probably the most important provision? An immunity clause that stopped the Hepting case against AT&T and other telecommunications companies in its tracks.

Walker reviewed the research done by plaintiffs' and defendants' lawyers all the way back to the years just after the Civil War and agreed with the defendants that, indeed, Congress is within its powers to pass a law that determines the outcome of a pending case.

Waaaa waaaa :-(

One of the lawyers gave me a copy of Walker's ruling. And then when I went home and looked at my computer, some days later, I realized I had also downloaded a copy of another ruling of his -- issued simultaneously -- in which he ordered state governments from Maine to ??? to stop their investigations of said telecomms ...

The Silver Lining

But he did leave American citizens with some good things:

1) In the McMurray case, plaintiffs are suing on the basis of a taking: that is, in passing FISAAA, Congress obstracted Fifth Amendment rights to due process, in this case substantive due process in the form of hearing out a lawsuit that had already been in process. For the time being, Walker has allowed that case to survive;

2) Realizing that the Hepting case had some legal hurdles, some of the plaintiffs broke off and filed charges under Jewel v. the NSA, directly challenging a government agency in its complicity in warrantless wiretapping. In his Hepting ruling, Walker specifically mentions Jewel and suggests it should be allowed to proceed in its case against a government agency; and,

3) In Al-Haramain, Judge Walker and the lawyers for either side have agreed that the next date to appear in front of him will be September 1. Then, plaintiffs' lawyer Jon Eisenberg can argue why the case has standing, and Anthony Coppolino of the US Department of Justice and Tim Stinson of the National Security Agency (who just sits there, kinda spy-like) can argue that there is NO standing and can we get this thing into the darn 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals like now? (NO says Walker and argues Eisenberg!!!! Not until there is a final ruling -- from Walker's court.)

Ok, did I get that right?

Al-Haramain v. Obama: Trying to Restore the Rule of Law

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Several civil suits involving extraordinary rendition, torture, detention without charges, and warrantless surveillance are now making their way through Bay Area federal courts. Tea leaf readers of President Obama are carefully watching these cases, as the president navigates the legal land mines laid down by the Bush administration – and, so far, there have been few reasons for civil libertarians to feel the euphoria that they may have felt during the January 20 inaugural ceremonies, when Obama was hopefully ending eight years of Orwellian rule and restoring the nation to transparency and the rule of law.

In all the cases – Mohamed V. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., Al-Haramain v. Obama (sometimes referred to as v. Bush), Padilla v. Yoo, Hepting v. AT&T, and Jewel v. the National Security Agency –plaintiffs initiated their suits during the Bush administration. Under Bush, United States Department of Justice lawyers fought the cases on the basis of national security, denying the right of the plaintiffs to litigate based on the “state secrets” privilege. Lawyers in the Bush Justice Department were never able to kill any of the cases; yet lawyers for Obama Justice Department have continued to deny the right of the plaintiffs to sue, asserting, at a minimum, the same “state secrets” argument, and at worst, a new argument, “sovereign immunity.”

In this piece, I address Al-Haramain v. Obama.

Al-Haramain v. Obama: Warrantless Surveillance

In the Al-Haramain case, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor – two lawyers for an Oregon branch of the Islamic foundation, which was suspected of having ties to terrorists – sued the Bush administration in February 2006 on the basis that the National Security Agency had spied on them and the foundation without warrants in March and April 2004, in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The lawyers and a third individual associated with the foundation (now defunct) learned that the government had been eavesdropping on their communications when the US Treasury Department, which was investigating its possible financial support of terrorist organizations, accidentally delivered a top-secret document to them in August 2004 that revealed the warrantless spying.

Based on the evidence revealed in the documents, Belew and Ghafoor got lawyers and sued. The case has been bouncing around to different courts, with Justice Department lawyers arguing consistently, under both Bush and Obama, according to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko in a May 22 story,

"… that courts have no power to decide the legality of the surveillance program unless the government acknowledges that it monitored a particular person or group. It has not done so in Al-Haramain's case."

Say what?

Truth Will Out

At this point, a lesson in early American/British law is in order. John Peter Zenger was put on trial in 1735 for publishing “false news and seditious libels.” Zenger was a New York printer, and among the works he printed was the first opposition paper in American history, including truthful satire that was not favorable to the governor of New York province at the time.

Prior to Zenger’s case, according to English barrister William Blackstone, writing several decades after the trial, “The provocation, and not the falsity, is the thing to be punished criminally.” However, Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, appealed to the jury on the basis of the fact that the information that Zenger had published was true and well known to be true.

“… Gentlemen of the Jury,” spoke Hamilton, “It is to you we must now appeal, for Witnesses, to the Truth of the Facts we have offered, and are denied the Liberty to prove … according to my Brief, the Facts which we are to prove were not committed in a Corner; they are notoriously known to be true; and therefore in your Justice lies our Safety.”

The jury acquitted Zenger (in fact, some historians say the jury practiced nullification), and while the acquittal was not a renunciation of the law, it set the stage for a remarkably free press – and the importance of the truth in settling cases.

Does ‘truth’ in the form of evidence play a role in Al-Haramain v. Obama?

The New York Times broke the story of warrantless wiretapping in a 2005, and George W. Bush and others have, perhaps foolishly, admitted to the practice, using the argument that the resolution passed by Congress on September 18, 2001 gave the president essentially a blank check to do whatever he needed to do to protect the country. So, like the facts in the case of John Peter Zenger, warrantless wiretapping is “notoriously known to be true.”

Nonetheless, the Justice Department has refused to give up the battle, despite that fact that it has not always been faring well in court.

For example, when the case landed in the courtroom of Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the US District Court for the Northern District of California in July 2008, Walker ruled that FISA preempts the state secrets privilege. The case could thus go forward. (In fact, counsel for the plaintiffs, Jon B. Eisenberg, in one of a series of commentaries he has written for Salon.com, said that Walker’s ruling essentially makes a felon out of George W. Bush.)

Judge Walker also ruled at one point that the case could proceed without the documents in question as evidence -- which the Justice Department has called “top secret” -- as the plaintiffs had gathered enough other evidence for the case to proceed. But more recently, Judge Walker has ruled that the plaintiffs could use a copy of the document that was originally sent to them, which the plaintiffs’ lawyers destroyed long ago out of fear of prosecution. But now …

You’ve heard of surwellian, right?

Justice Department lawyers are fighting back and refusing to cooperate with Judge Walker’s order to let the lawyers examine the document that they have already seen.

In early March, Eisenberg documented his troubles with the Obama Justice Department for Salon.com, in which Obama’s lawyers appear to be challenging Walker’s orders in ways that seem headed for a showdown between the executive and judicial branches of the government.

On May 22, a frustrated Judge Walker ordered the Justice Department to tell him by Friday, May 29, just exactly why he should not rule that the plaintiffs have won their case by default.

As I sit at my computer now, on May 29, I await the response from the Justice Department and peruse Eisenberg’s memorandum that Judge Walker also ordered him to produce.

According to Eisenberg’s memorandum, the plaintiffs do not desire a summary judgment in their favor today or anytime soon. They'll settle for a summary judgment, but what they really want is their day in court – with or without the sealed document as evidence – and they want to challenge the government’s argument that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, passed by Congress on September 18, 2001, gave the government a blank check to violate FISA and engage in warrantless wiretapping.

A hearing is scheduled in Judge Walker’s courtroom for Wednesday, June 3, at 2 pm.

Playing the Numbers Game

The amended San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency budget, adopted by the Board of Supervisors on May 27, 2009, impacts transit users more negatively than car drivers. The 38 Geary pulls up to a stop at 20th Avenue and Geary in the Richmond District.

On Wednesday, May 27 at a special meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to consider the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency budget, Board President David Chiu and MTA Executive Director Nat Ford threw numbers around like pinballs in a pinball machine, and at the end of the day, Chiu voted against his own measure to reject the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency budget. Again.

“I do not plan to vote to reject the budget,” Chiu said in chambers.

“I take this decision incredibly seriously. I’m the only one on the Board who does not have a car. I take Muni every day. … But we’ve come $30 million from where we were,” he said of the MTA budget that has variously been reported at $766 million, $776 million, $787.9 million – or any figure you care to toss out, as the last time anything was put out on the SFMTA press page was April 17 even though that was back in the Stone Ages of the budget discussions.

“We’ve come $30 million from where we were,” he said.

We did? Can I see that in writing?

Ford also made a surprise announcement at the meeting – a service enhancement memo worth $8.7 million in which the MTA agreed to put more service back into the system on the majority of bus routes that serve the largest number of people – the 9 San Bruno, the 14 Mission, the 47 Van Ness, the 38 Geary, the 44 O’Shaughnessy and others and to add 150 additional service hours (per week?).

“We clearly recognize that we’re a transit-first city,” said Ford.

We do?

To my knowledge, no one has seen that memo – and without that memo, his words and the words of the six supervisors who voted not to reject the budget are merely rhetoric.

There’s Nothing Here … Nothing at all

Despite the fact that no documents seemed available for the public – or members of the Board of Supervisors – to view, six out of five members on the board voted against Chiu’s motion to reject the budget, a motion that he himself had introduced at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee meeting on May 6.

As a result, starting on July 1, eight bus lines will be eliminated, route segments will be eliminated for another 14 lines, and bus frequency will be reduced on other lines. Fares will go up at the same time that service is being cut: adult fares will go from their current $1.50 to $2.00 per ride; monthly adult bus passes will go from their current $45 to $60 by January 1, 2010 – and pass users will have to fork out another $10 per month in order to use the passes on BART, the regional subway system; and passes for seniors, youth, and disabled riders will go up to $20 by January 1, 2010. Taxi service fees – such as the amount that drivers pay for their applications and the amount customers pay for rides – will also go up, as will parking fees in some city-owned garages and parking at metered curbside parking places.

It is the reduction in transit service at the same time that fares are increasing – especially when the fee increases for car drivers are four times less burdensome than those for transit uses, according to staff at the MTA – that triggered opposition from five members of the Board of Supervisors.

“I acknowledge the fine attempts by my colleagues here at the board, but a stronger message needs to be sent out about climate change,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi when announcing that he would vote for the motion to reject. “It’s also counterintuitive to allow an MTA budget that does more to inhibit ridership with fare increases and reduced service.”

“We gave the MTA a week to get some changes in the budget,” said Supervisor John Avalos, the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee. “But this budget disproportionately affects riders over drivers. … There’s nothing here. Nothing at all.”

And that $30 million?

When questioned about the $30 million in the corridor of City Hall, Supervisor Chiu’s legislative aide David Noyola, and MTA media spokesman Judson True, broke down the $30 million this way:

 $15 million in renegotiated work orders with other departments such as the San Francisco Police Department;
 $10.3 million in the givebacks negotiated on May 12; and,
 $5 million in projected future revenues from parking fees

But where’s the document -- signed and sealed -- that will guarantee this $30 million giveback?

The Process

The supervisors were continuing a budget process that started earlier in the spring when the MTA announced a budget deficit of $128.9 million. At that point, the seven-member MTA Board of Directors, and staff of the transportation agency – which manages both mass transit, taxis, and parking – began work to amend the two-year budget that had been adopted the previous year.

Transportation agency staffers had presented a budget to the directors – all mayoral appointees – on April 30 that included many of the items that members of the Board of Supervisors voted for on May 27 – with one addition: a proposal to start charging for parking at metered curbside parking spots on Sundays and on weekdays from 6 to 10 pm.

But under pressure from Supervisors Carmen Chu and Bevan Dufty and Mayor/Candidate for California Governor Gavin Newsom – the Chair of the MTA Board Tom Nolan introduced an amendment to excise the new parking policy proposal. The amended budget passed six to one.
That was a loss of $9 million that could have been used to restore service, a member of the public pointed out.

To make up for the loss of revenue from parking meters, Ford and his staff said they would work to renegotiate the work orders that the MTA has with other departments such as the San Francisco Police Department. In the case of the SFPD, every time an on-duty police officer boards a bus or drives by a Muni yard to check for intruders, the MTA is billed. It is also billed for 311 service calls that are related to Muni.

The budget made several stops between April 30 and May 27. On May 6 it went to the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee where Chiu introduced his original motion to reject the budget. It passed out of committee on a vote of four to one. On May 12, it went the full 11-member Board of Supervisors, and during that meeting Supervisor Carmen Chu helped negotiate a $10.3 million giveback that included only a promise to study expanding parking enforcement, a slight reduction in the work orders, and a memorandum of understanding between the SFPD and the MTA over work orders to be signed within the next 24 hours.

Not good enough: five supervisors voted to reject the budget – two short of the required seven. Still, three of the five who voted to reject the budget were on the Budget and Finance Committee where the item was still agendized for a meeting the following day. And there, those three supervisors – John Avalos, David Campos, and Ross Mirkarimi – revived the matter and sent it on back to the full board for another round. On May 19, the board voted seven to four to continue the item until a special meeting scheduled for May 27.

And on May 27 this is how they voted:

District One, Eric Mar – Aye
District Two, Michela Alioto-Pier – No
District Three, David Chiu – No
District Four, Carmen Chu – No
District Five, Ross Mirkarimi – Aye
District Six, Chris Daly – Aye
District Seven, Sean Elsbernd – No
District Eight, Bevan Dufty – No
District Nine, David Campos – Aye
District Ten, Sophie Maxwell – No
District Eleven, John Avalos – Aye

That MOU to be signed within 24 hours after the May 12 meeting? Nowhere to be seen according to one of the five supervisors who voted to reject the budget.

Will Muni Be Thrown Under the Bus?

Muni riders on the 47 bus, one of the more infrequent buses that is usually at capacity when I board it.

Here's a quick update on everything that has gone down with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency budget at the level of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors:

At the May 12 Board of Supervisors meeting, the supervisors, MTA staffers, and Mayor Gavin Newsom engaged in last minute negotiations to reduce some fare hikes to Muni. The supervisors ended up getting a giveback of $10.3 million out of a total budget that has been reported in the news as $784 million, $766 million, and $778.8 million with a deficit of $128.9 million ...

Item 8 was Supervisor David Chiu's original motion to reject the MTA budget. But because of the negotiations, Chiu, apparently satisfied with the givebacks, made a motion to table his previous motion -- and that second motion passed six to five.

I was sitting in the chamber taking notes when MTA Executive Director Nat Ford presented the details of the givebacks. At first I was sort of euphoric -- but then realized that there had been no analysis of the givebacks, and in the end, five members of the Board (Eric Mar, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, David Campos, and John Avalos) voted against the motion to table the motion to reject the budget.

And then the reporters, pundits, and one pissed-off commentator (me) got busy ...

Supervisors Vote 6 to 5 Against Rejecting the MTA Budget
SF Streetsblog

SF board makes deal on Muni budget
SF Gate

'They Didn't Do Shit' ...
SF Appeal

Fear of Newsom Petulance Causes Bad Muni Budget
Beyond Chron

The One Day Muni Negotiations
Melissa Griffin

Board decides not the reject Muni budget
SF Examiner

Board restores some Muni service, but Newsom gets his fare hike
San Francisco Bay Guardian

Say It Ain't So, Chiu
Fog City Journal

Sophie's Choice
SF Weekly

John Avalos, the Pied Piper of Polk Street
SF Citizen

A San Francisco Parking Enforcement Debate That Shouldn't Be Happening
SF Streetsblog

Stay Tuned: MUNI & Me
Fog City Journal

Fortunately, three of the five supervisors who voted against the motion to table the motion to reject the budget serve on the Budget and Finance Committee (Avalos, Campos, and Mirkarimi) -- which was meeting the following day. The motion to reject the MTA budget was still on the Budget and Finance agenda, and they revived it there, sending it back to the full Board of Supervisors.

Within the next few days, Supervisor John Avalos got cracking, and working with Executive Director Nat Ford, Irwin Lum of Transport Workers United, Manish Champsee of Walk San Francisco, Leah Shahum of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, BART Board Director Tom Radulovich (also of Livable City), Pi Ra of Senior Action Network, and others, he came up with a much different budget that restores some bus service to low-income neighborhoods, lowers planned fare hikes for seniors, youth, and disabled riders, and expands the hours of operation of metered parking spots in some neighborhoods of the city.

Supervisor John Avalos confers with MTA Executive Director Nat Ford on Monday, May 18.

At the next Board of Supervisors meeting, on May 19, supervisors voted seven to four (Ayes: Eric Mar, David Chiu, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, David Campos, Sophie Maxwell, and John Avalos; Noes: Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, and Bevan Dufty) to continue the measure to a special Board of Supervisors meeting on Wednesday, May 27, at 12 noon.

We'll see what happens on May 27. Will any of the seven supervisors -- the number required by City Charter to reject the MTA budget -- fold, no doubt under pressure from the mayor, and throw Muni under the bus?

Update on the SFMTA Budget Struggle

San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who does not own a car, introduced a motion to reject the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency budget after the April 30 SFMTA Board of Directors vote. This motion was heard at the Budget and Finance Committee on Wednesday, May 6, 2009. His measure passed, four to one, and has been forwarded onto the full board, where it will be heard on Tuesday, May 12. It is expected to pass there, as Chiu has six co-sponsors, and seven out of 11 supervisors are needed to reject the SFMTA budget. SFMTA staff will then be back at Budget and Finance on May 13.

However, according to our city charter, the SFMTA staff is under no obligation to redo the budget and come back with something more acceptable to the supervisors. And right now there is a struggle going on between the supervisors and the mayor, who is running for governor of California. As much as the staff want to produce a different budget -- and from all accounts, staff people do -- they are under pressure from the mayor. If the SFMTA does not produce a new budget, it could operate under the status quo, draining funds from our dwindling general fund -- or, according to Aaron Peskin, former president of the SF Board of Supervisors, the supervisors themselves could redo the SFMTA budget. David Chiu, thankfully, seems at this point to be working very diplomatically with the beleaguered staffers at the SFMTA.

Here are links to recent stories about the SFMTA budget crisis:

Arnold and Gavin: Using the Deficit to Scare Us; Beyond Chron, May 11, 2009

Tuesday Showdowns on Muni and JROTC; Beyond Chron, May 11, 2009

Supes Committee Votes to Recommend Rejection of MTA Budget; SF Streetsblog, May 11, 2009

Supervisors aim to change Muni budget; SF Chronicle, May 7, 2009

Supervisors seem primed to reject Muni budget; SF Bay Guardian, May 7, 2009

Muni First!

Students wait at a bus stop at the corner of Presidio and Jackson in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Times are tough all over, and San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency is feeling the pinch, as are our Department of Public Health and other municipal departments. It's times like these that reveal the true color of politicians as they attempt to scramble up the public office ladder -- and Mayor Gavin Newsom, running for governor on a legacy as a "green transportation" mayor, has just failed a huge test.

After all, global climate change, natural resource wars, and the end of cheap energy are all coming to head right now, and internationally, nationally, and locally, this is a time when truly great leaders could be emerging and leading us all to new ways, instead of perpetuating old, unsustainable ways.

All Politics Is Local ...

San Franciscans have known for weeks that the SFMTA, which oversees our buses, light rail, taxis, and parking, was facing a deficit of $128.9 million, out of annual operating expenses somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million plus. The solution? The SFMTA staff presented a budget to seven members of the SFMTA Board of Directors on April 30 that proposed raising fares and parking fees, and cutting Muni service and jobs.

But at the April 30 meeting, at one of the most opportune times to help shift people out of their cars and into buses and onto sidewalks and buses, directors -- all appointed by the mayor -- did not adopt the budget that staff had presented to them. Instead, Board Chairman Tom Nolan proposed amending the budget to eliminate staff proposals to start charging parking fees at metered parking spaces on Sundays and until 10 pm on weekdays -- and directors voted for the amended budget, six to one. (Even the SF Chamber of Commerce, normally about as car-friendly and eco-unfriendly as they come -- endorsed the proposal to charge for parking on Sundays and after hours on weeknights!) The directors are Tom Nolan, The Rev. Dr. James McCray, Jr., Cameron Beach, Shirley Breyer Black, Malcolm Heinicke, Jerry Lee, and Bruce Oka. McCray was the lone dissenting voice.

"We just lost a $9 million opportunity to restore service, and I'm not pleased," remarked Paul Hogarth of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in public testimony about the amendment.

When I asked Nolan about the amendment and his vote after the meeting, he said, "In making rounds to some of the supervisors offices, it became clear that this was very important to them. Supervisor Carmen Chu in particular -- she didn't like the idea of enforcing parking out in the avenues in merchant areas next to residential neighborhoods." When asked, he said that the mayor's office was also in support of eliminating Sunday and after hours parking enforcement.

But clearly the mayor found a way to shift the onus of this amendment away from him and onto a couple of supervisors, one of whom will be named in subsequent publications of SF Streetsblog.

The budget -- which includes one-way fare increases from $1.50 to $2.00, monthly pass increases from $45 to $55 in July and then to $60 in January 2010, the elimination of about eight bus lines, the increase in head time between buses running on other lines, a 50 cent hourly across the board increase at all parking meters from 9 am to 6 pm, and increases in hourly and daily (but not monthy) rates at city-owned parking garages -- now goes to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Board President David Chiu, however, has introduced a measure to reject the budget, and activists are out there organizing in support of his motion. His motion will be heard at the Budget and Finance Committee hearing on Wednesday, May 6. That hearing starts at 1:30 pm and will be held in Room 263 of San Francisco's City Hall and some of us are busily getting the word out that people need to turn out -- or at the very least send emails to supervisors -- in support of Chiu's motion:

Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org
Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org
David.Chiu@sfgov.org
Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org
Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org
Chris.Daly@sfgov.org
Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org
Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org
David.Campos@sfgov.org
Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org
John.Avalos@sfgov.org

We are, after all, a transit-first city -- and that's written into our city charter.

Make Me Do It

Dave Snyder, Newest Appointee to the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District

The past week and a half, San Francisco's progressive political junkies, a group of fiercely intense -- or intensely fierce -- addicts of the drama that unfolds in San Francisco's City Hall were justly rewarded for their addiction.

Dave Snyder is a well-known bicycle advocate and transportation wiz. He did not found the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, but in the 1990s he started to revive it and, as executive director, eventually turned it into a 2,000 member political advocacy group. It now numbers 10,000, about same membership as the local Sierra Club. Snyder left the SFBC to found Transportation for a Livable City (now Livable City), and then got a job as Transportation Policy Director at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

All the while, he has never owned a car in his life ...

In February or March, at the suggestion of some anonymous person, he nominated himself for an opening on the GGBHTD, a regional commission with 19 members from six California counties. San Francisco has nine commissioners: the mayor gets to appoint one; the 11 members of our Board of Supervisors get to appoint four; and four of San Francisco's commissioners are actually supervisors as well. Commissioners vote on tolls and other matters relating to the operation, maintenance, and funding of the bridge and some roads and transit systems connected to it.

Candidates wishing to represent San Francisco must apply through the Rules Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. That's what Snyder did. But the seat Snyder was applying for has traditionally been a "labor" seat, and there was another candidate, Larry Mazzola, of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry Local 38, who also applied. Mazzola was considered in no way qualified for the position compared to Snyder by many observers, but when Snyder realized his seat was traditionally held by someone in labor, he agreed to withdraw his nomination -- if a qualified candidate from labor could be found.

Some weeks went by. Or some days. I can't remember.

Then one Friday, Supervisor Chris Daly, chair of the SF Board of Supervisors Rules Committee, called up Snyder and said, hey, you know what Mazzola's allies are doing? They (four conservative members of the board who are allies of the mayor) are pulling some parliamentary maneuver and forwarding his name on to the full board of supervisors as the only candidate for the commission.

Daly is kind of the bad boy of the Board, passionate and principled, though sometimes stretching the definition of "principled". Labor in SF can be a bit of a racket, a reliable pro-development lobby for the moneyed interests that would tear down as much of our rent-controlled buildings as possible and replace them with market-rate and luxury condominiums if they could. Mazzola worked hard to defeat Daly when he was up for reelection in 2006 -- but Daly squeaked to a win anyway.

Local Bloggers

Anyway, at this point, Hope Johnson and Luke Thomas, of Fog City Journal, got to work ...

Stay Tuned: Newsom Allies Maneuver to Appoint ...

Colleagues Johnson and Thomas

And perhaps in part because of the coverage that these two intrepid and fired up freelancers gave the matter, six members of the Board of Supervisors, four of them newly-elected as part of a "progressive bloc" in November 2008, thwarted the four more conservative members and voted to appoint Snyder:

Snyder Wins Appointment ...

Stay Tuned: That's Just the Way It Isn't

But now Labor is having a hissy fit:

Stayed Tuned: United We Stand, Divided We Sit

I'm all for unions and jobs, but union workers don't get to have just any old construction project because it will bring jobs. The environment (and historic preservation) has to be taken into consideration.

I ran into Snyder recently and we got to talking about the kerfuffle. I posed this question to him: if you were willing to withdraw your name from consideration in favor of a qualified Labor candidate, then why didn't Labor put forth a qualified candidate? He didn't know the answer.

Here's more coverage:

Uncivil Union

Behind the Democratic Party Lunch Picket
(Pay special attention to the remarks of marcos ...)

Make Him Do It

When Snyder and I were talking, I brought up the issue of tolls. Tying direct costs to driving is a big item on the wish lists of environmentalists and transit advocates like myself. I told him I wanted him to work to raise tolls on the Golden Gate Bridge.

His response? His words were the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "Make me do it." In other words, write a letter and more than that, organize a movement to demand that the cost of driving be directly tied to the act of driving.

I'm game, and have high hopes for Snyder's tenure on the commission. (They're going to have to raise tolls, especially to pay for that $75 million that bridge district has agreed to donate to the rebuild of the viaduct that connects the bridge -- and all of northern California -- to the rest of San Francisco).

Make BHO Do It

But here's what I'm more worried about: BHO, you know, Barack Hussein Obama. He, too, is repeating the refrain of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: I agree with you, but make me do it. In recent days, BHO has released torture memos from the Bush administration and on Tuesday, April 21 the New York Times even reported that he had begun to talk about the possibility of prosecuting the lawyers who reinterpreted the law so as to give cover to the practice of torture in order to extract information from detained terror suspects.

But then on April 23 the NYT announced he opposes the creation of a commission to do a broad investigation into the Bush administration.

And what about those terror suspects who have been subjected to extraordinary rendition, detained without charges, and tortured? His Department of Justice lawyers are continuing to argue that their cases cannot be litigated because of state secrets, and now they are even using that argument to prevent cases going forward against AT&T and other telecommunications companies for warrantless wiretapping.

I guess we're going to have to make him change his position on those matters.

My next entry: extraordinary rendition, torture, and warrantless wiretapping cases in San Francisco federal courts.

Story of a Garden

Ed Dierauf, San Francisco community gardener

Sometime in 1975, Ed Dierauf, pictured above, was taking a jog down 15th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District. Passing what had long been a sandy lot adjacent to a San Francisco Unified School district child development center -- filled only with the garbage that passersby had left there -- he noticed a small group of people diligently at work with shovels and other equipment. When he inquired, someone said they were creating a community garden.

He turned around, went to his home a block away, changed his clothes and returned to join their efforts. In a sense, he has never left.

Fava beans and kale

Since that time 34 years ago, Dierauf and his fellow community gardeners have transformed the lot from sand dunes covered with non-native ice plant into roughly 75 plots and two tiny apple and pear orchards. Working the same small patch that he took up in 1975, above, he grows fava beans, scarlet runner beans, and kale, and combined with the food he harvests from his and his wife's back yard -- lettuce, Swiss chard, and apples from four apples trees -- he has been able to save up to about $300 annually in food costs.

Letter from Massachusetts

Gardening has long ranked at or near the top of surveys about favorite American pastimes, but in recent months, in response to the double whammies of the oil price spike in 2008 and the current economic downturn, gardening is coming back into vogue in full force, as many people realize the cheapest way to eat is to grow their own food. Even the suburban Boston town where my sister lives has recently caught the collective gardening fever -- in a recent letter (yes, an actual LETTER, not an email), my sister wrote that her town has recently bought land to turn into a community garden.

Genesis of a San Francisco Movement
While Ed Dierauf, 80, was not there to break ground for the Argonne Community Garden in April 1975 (he came a few months later), he can at least say he was there as a part of the first year of San Francisco's community garden movement.

The beginning of Argonne Community garden started with a federal job training program that no longer exists -- CETA, or the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, passed by Congress in 1973. Part of the function of CETA was to fund arts programs in the schools. San Francisco sculptor Ruth Osawa, whose intricate wire sculptures now hang from the ceilings of the de Young Museum, believed that gardens were an expression of artistic sentiment. She was influential in convincing the Alvarado Arts Workshop, which administered a share of CETA funds in San Francisco, to dedicate money to the recruitment of 19 gardeners to start organic community gardens. In April 1975, the workshop hired then Richmond District resident Mary Ann Crandall to find a location for and start a Richmond District garden.

Crandall’s Southern California family had had a victory garden during World War II but she was otherwise new to gardening. She scouted the Richmond for a suitable spot and eventually was able to get permission from the San Francisco Unified School District to transform the land around the childcare center into a garden. Coincidentally, according to an old neighbor, that very site had been the site of a victory garden during World War II.

“We started with five people, and we were naïve,” says Crandall, 74, who now gardens in Santa Rosa. “We only had compost bins, and we made manure runs to the stables in Golden Gate Park.”


Because there was only one faucet for a hose on the outside of the childcare center, they attached five hoses together in order to reach distant plots. They stored the hoses in a neighbor’s garage. Soon after that first year, gardeners installed an irrigation system, still in place, with the help of city government.

Susan Sibbett, pictured above, and her husband David, joined the garden in 1978. Susan Sibbett and Dierauf built the 15th Avenue fence, behind her in the photo, together.

The Greenhouse

Flora of the Fog Belt
When Dierauf and his fellow gardeners were starting, they didn’t know what would grow in the sandy soil under the Richmond District fog.

“There was one far out group in the early years who tried to cultivate a circle of wheat, but they failed, “ says Crandall. They had made that attempt in the part of the garden where there is now a geodesic dome greenhouse.

Dierauf, Crandall, and the other gardeners also realized quickly that hot weather plants such as tomatoes, corn, peppers, eggplants and most legumes, generally would not do well. But lettuce, chard, sorrel, spinach, kale, broccoli, beets, peas, artichokes, potatoes, scarlet runner beans, and fava beans thrived – and still thrive.

Kale

Sorrel

Lettuce and chard

Peas

Rhubarb

Artichokes

Arugula

Dierauf and his wife have mostly steamed what they have grown -- or used it in salads, but Crandall reacalls making Borscht and vegetable soups with carrots, peas, and bok choy for high school interns who worked with her every summer.

Expansion
Funding from CETA ended in 1979, and Crandall sadly left San Francisco. But Deirauf and others were well on their way in expanding the urban gardening movement, anyway. By then, Dierauf had applied for a grant to get solar panels installed on the original child care center, he had helped increase the number of plots to around 80, and in 1980 he and half a dozen other city gardeners founded the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG).

“There were all these community gardens,” said Dierauf. “It was obvious that there was a need for some sort of umbrella organization to help gardeners to talk to each other.”

It took several years to start, but by the mid-1980s, SLUG was up and running as a non-profit. Its mission statement was to give anyone who wanted it the opportunity to garden organically in the city.

For about 15 years, Dierauf sat on the board of SLUG and helped support the growing number of community gardens. (There are now about 50.)

“We had a charismatic leader then,” said Dierauf, in reference to Mohammed Nuru who left SLUG to go to the San Francisco Department of Public Works.

Dierauf recalled Nuru with admiration, noting that he had been able to get funding for the salary for his job. Under Nuru, Dierauf, and other board members, SLUG arranged regular meetings of gardeners so they could discuss common problems. SLUG also started a kitchen industry called Urban Herbals that involved Bayview teenagers in the production of jellies and vinegars. That program is no longer extant, but another program started by SLUG, the Garden for the Environment, on 7th Avenue in the Inner Sunset, still offers gardening courses.

Apple trees, the Upper Orchard.

View of the Argonne Child Development Center with solar panels. There is a communal raspberry patch in the foreground.

Transformation

In the early 2000s, the school district considered selling the land and moving the child development center to a nearby elementary school. A friend of mine recalls a developer stopping by once when she was tending her garden and suggesting that the plot would be better off turned into condominiums. "It was as if he were straight out of central casting," she told me recently.

Dierauf has noted that all of San Francisco's community gardens exist under the constant threat of development pressures. However, the Argonne gardeners -- this time -- were able to craft a deal that saved the garden: bond money would be used to rebuild and expand the center in the same location, and in return, the garden would give up a few plots. The childcare center architects also agreed enhance the landscaping and throw in a new greenhouse, to boot.

Bench dedicated to Ed Dierauf

In June 2006, members of the Argonne Community Garden dedicated this bench to Ed Dierauf in recognition of all of his work for the benefit of city gardeners. If you sit here on a clear day, you can see the western end of Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.

A Tragedy of Auto-Centric Planning

My sister and her husband bought a house in this Boston bedroom community in late 1989 or early 1990. While there remain a few Revolutionary War-era farm houses, in the decades since World War II, it has been transformed into a thoroughly suburban community with with strip malls, and wide, tree-shaded streets with few sidewalks. Everyone drives everywhere, and during the dog days of August, some people even get in their cars and turn the air conditioners on to stay cool. When I visit, I try to walk places, but the absence of adequate sidewalks makes walking -- and riding bicycles -- really dangerous.


The first time I visited them, in March 1990, we sat down one night to watch the local evening news. There was one report that I will never forget. A woman had been walking along one of the town streets, probably a street like the streets in these photographs without adequate sidewalks -- if there were any at all.


She had been hit by a car and rushed to an emergency room. Whether she was dead on arrival or whether she died later, I can't remember. But I do remember this: her own sister was one of the emergency room nurses on duty that night at the hospital when she was wheeled in.


Unfortunately, this town has become only marginally safer for pedestrians -- I took these photographs in 2008. In the top one you can see the dirt path created by people determined to walk despite the absence of a sidewalk. In the next one you can see a sidewalk along the side of the road next to a mall parking lot but not one on the side of the road where there are homes. The last photograph shows a pedestrian signal that seems to have been attached to the wrong side of the lamp post for some reason. That seems like it would be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Gardening for the Future

This is my community garden.

I'm going to admit that in the past few years I have neglected my own plot. But this year, with the economic downturn and possible arrival of peak oil (which may in part have triggered the economic downturn), one of my New Years resolutions is to tend my garden better.


Gardening comes as naturally to humanity as salmon fishing comes to Alaskan Brown Bears. In fact, it routinely scores at the top in surveys of favorite hobbies. In the near future, however, gardening will probably become much more than a hobby for many people, maybe even most, as the cost of fuel goes up and drives up the cost of grocery market food which has been shipped in from all over the nation and world.

James Howard Kunstler, peak oil author, addresses the link between the economic collapse and food security in a recent column called What Next? He critiques the efforts of President Barack Obama and Congress to shore up the old capitalistic financial system and recommends redesigning communities in such a way as to make them more sustainable within themselves. Here's an excerpt:

My guess is that the disorder in agriculture will be pretty severe this year, especially since some of the world's most productive places -- California, northern China, Argentina, the Australian grain belt -- are caught in extremes of drought on top of capital shortages. If the US government is going to try to make remedial policy for anything, it better start with agriculture, to promote local, smaller-scaled farming using methods that are much less dependent on oil byproducts and capital injections.

Free At Last and Other Updates

The case of Binyam Mohamed:

Binyam Mohamed, the lead plaintiff in the case Mohamed v. Jeppesen, was released from Guantanamo today, and is probably on his way to Great Britain right now -- even though he no longer has family there and his residency status has expired.

Through his lawyers, he made this statement:

"Before this ordeal torture was an abstract word to me ... It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next and tortured in medieval ways all orchestrated by the United States government."

Read the story here.

The case of the bike lane at Market Street and the on-ramp to the Central Freeway:

On January 22, 2009, Judge Busch, of the San Francisco Superior Court, ruled that he could not approve the Municipal Transportation Agency commissioners unanimous vote to remove the bike lane. He said he could not approve the removal because of a previous injunction barring all bicycle plan improvements -- or changes -- due to the absence of environmental impact reviews (EIR) to ensure that the bike lanes and other bicycle improvements or changes complied with the California Environmental Quality Act.

That injunction is expected to be lifted in the coming months. We'll see whether or not the MTA goes back to court to get the bike lane removed.

In the meantime, this bicyclist and local photojournalist offers words of caution:

Cyclists Beware ...

Oil Price Fluctuations and the Economic Downturn

The refinery in Richmond, California; taken from the Amtrak train on August 8, 2008

There is a group of people in San Francisco who are preparing the city's official Peak Oil Preparedness Report. The report is now in its draft form and available for public comment. In the introduction, there is one paragraph that references a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The San Francisco report extrapolates from that report as follows:

The leading edge of peak oil will be its economic impact. When the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia did a comprehensive study of the effect of oil price changes on the economy, it found a profoundly negative relationship. According to its report, the 2008 doubling of oil prices will reduce 2009 US economic output by 11% from what it otherwise would have been. It doesn’t even matter that the price spike was temporary; the damage to the economy will be long-lasting.

The reasons for the current economic collapse are complex, but the commentaries that I have read so far emphasize the absence of adequate regulation of the financial and housing sectors. It's hard to imagine, however, that the rise in the price of a barrel of oil last year has not played into the current economic havoc as well.