Supervisor Wiener's January 2012 Newsletter

January 2012 Newsletter

Office Phone: 415-554-6968

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New Year Updates

My new colleague, Christina Olague

Last week, Mayor Lee appointed Christina Olague to the Board of Supervisors to represent District 5 in light of Ross Mirkarimi's resignation to become Sheriff. I have known Christina for a long time and worked closely with her last year when she was president of the Planning Commission. Although she and I have policy disagreements, we also have common ground on various issues. I am confident that we will have a productive and collegial relationship, and, indeed, we are already co-sponsoring legislation to improve our Planning Code. Welcome Supervisor Olague!

Scott and the Board of Supervisors look on
as Mayor Lee swears in Supervisor Olague.

Serial Rapist Caught!

In December, the community became aware of a serial rapist, who had struck three times in the Mission, with the latest attack occurring in mid-December on Fair Oaks Street in District 8. I met with neighbors to discuss ways to help the victim and improve lighting in the area. We then held a large community meeting with hundreds of attendees. On January 6, the San Francisco Police Department caught the rapist (click here for the Examiner article), and the District Attorney has charged him. This is a huge relief to me and the neighborhood. I want to commend the Fair Oaks Community Coalition for coming together quickly to help the victim and to improve safety in the neighborhood, as well as SFPD for incredible police work. For information about how to get involved, please contact FOCC at focc.neighbors@gmail.com. To contribute to the fund helping the victim, you can send a donation to:

24th Street Survivors Fund

Sterling Bank & Trust

3800 24th Street

San Francisco, CA 94114

My 2012 Committee Assignments

At my request, Board President David Chiu kept my 2011 committee assignments intact for 2012: the Land Use & Economic Development Committee and the Budget Committee. These are two very influential committees that will allow me to keep working to ensure smart land use and transportation policies in the city and to help guide San Francisco's budget policies. In addition to my strong commitment to infrastructure investment and law enforcement, I will, as described below, be working overtime this year to ensure that the City keeps its commitment to those living with and at risk for HIV infection. In addition to these committee assignments, I will continue to represent San Francisco on the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which oversees much transportation planning and funding in the Bay Area.

Redistricting of Supervisorial Districts: Your Chance to Be Heard

Every ten years, after the census, the City adjusts our 11 Supervisorial districts to ensure population parity. The Redistricting Task Force is charged with making those modifications, and this year, particularly because of significant population growth in the South of Market and Mission Bay neighborhoods, the task is a challenging one. I encourage you to review the Task Force's proposals and drafts and to attend a public meeting to listen and express your view. Although there is a specific District 8 meeting in March, please do not wait until March to engage. More information here. Feel free to contact my office with any questions you may have.

My Policy Work

Board passes 4 pieces of my legislation at first meeting of 2012

On January 10, the Board of Supervisors passed four pieces of legislation that I authored. Each is a step forward for San Francisco:

Prevailing Wage Legislation

This legislation strengthens, clarifies, and cleans up our City's Prevailing Wage Ordinance, and particularly helps ensure that low-salary janitors are paid a fair wage. The Prevailing Wage Ordinance requires that a range of city contractors pay their employees the prevailing wage and not pay them poverty wages. The ordinance helps prevent a race to the bottom in terms of workers' wages and living standards. Over the years, the ordinance has become more complicated and cumbersome, and some contractors have used loopholes to avoid paying the prevailing wage. I worked closely with labor, city agencies, and impacted nonprofits to craft legislation that removes or narrows loopholes, simplifies the legislation, and modernizes it.

Creation of New Park on Corbett Street

This legislation will allow the Corbett Heights neighborhood to create a beautiful park and community garden. The Corbett Slope, at 341 Corbett Street, is a large neighborhood open space with many trees and beautiful views. It used to serve as neighborhood open space but has been fenced off for a number of years. For years, the local neighborhood association, Corbett Heights Neighbors, has wanted to transform the open space into a park and community garden. However, almost a decade ago, the property was transferred to the Mayor's Office of Housing to be sold to a private developer to generate revenue. I believe that we should not be selling off parks or neighborhood open space, even if doing so could generate revenue. Our neighborhood open space is precious, and once it's gone, it's gone for good. This legislation will prevent that from happening.

Volunteers working at Corbett Slope

Dogwalker Legislation

This long-overdue legislation - which has been in the works for close to a decade - puts some basic standards in place for professional dogwalkers who use city property, primarily parks, to conduct their businesses. There are currently no rules addressing dogwalkers, unlike numerous other jurisdictions that have systems in place. Moreover, other Bay Area jurisdictions either have or soon will have regulations. The legislation requires professional dogwalkers, who provide a critical service to San Francisco dog owners, to have a basic level of training, to have liability insurance, to obtain a permit, to comply with safety standards for transporting dogs, to carry one leash per dog on their persons at all times, and to walk no more than 8 dogs at a time. In crafting the legislation, I worked closely and collaboratively with several dogwalker organizations, many individual dogwalkers, dog owner groups, the SPCA, and various city departments. The dogwalking community, as well as dog owner groups and the SPCA, have been supportive of the legislation and believe it will increase the overall quality of the profession.

Sentencing Commission to Address State Prisoner Realignment

This legislation, which I sponsored with District Attorney George Gascon, will help the City to cope with the increase in prisoners in our county jails as a result of state realignment. Partly as a budget solution and partly as a reform of California's approach to incarceration, the state reclassified a number of felonies that previously resulted in state prison time as resulting in county jail time only. Some prisoners are being transferred from state prison to our county jails, and going forward, for certain crimes, felons will spend their sentence in county jail instead of state prison. If we are not careful, we will quickly flood our jails and explode our jail budget. This legislation creates a temporary sentencing commission, with a 3-year sunset provision, consisting of a diverse array of criminal justice stakeholders and managed by the District Attorney, which will formulate sentencing guidelines to ensure that people who need to spend time in jail do so while people who don't need to spend time in jail do not. This process provides us with a great opportunity to ensure that we are being smart in the allocation of our scarce criminal justice resources.

Upcoming Legislation and Other Policy Work

Responding to Federal Cuts to HIV Services

I am co-sponsoring legislation with Mayor Lee and Supervisors Campos and Olague to restore funding for HIV services that the federal government is cutting. Well before the federal and state governments became proactive about addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic, San Francisco led the way in ensuring access to critical services for our HIV-positive population and those at risk for the disease. Unfortunately, our state government has been dramatically reducing its commitment to HIV services, and the federal government now appears to be moving in that direction. From March 1 to June 30, we will lose approximately $1.8 million in federal Ryan White Care Act funds, and next fiscal year (July 1-June 30), we will lose approximately $4.25 million. The legislation I am co-sponsoring will back-fill the $1.8 million cut for the current fiscal year and thus ensure that a number of critical HIV services survive. We will then need to work very hard through the budget process to back-fill as much of next year's cut as possible. The situation is serious, but when it comes to fighting HIV/AIDS, San Francisco has always risen to the challenge. We will do so again.

Scott and Supervisors Campos and Olague host a press conference with Mayor Lee announcing legislation to fund HIV services cut by the federal government.

Creating More Jobs and Making It Easier to Start a Business

Kick-starting our economy and creating jobs are some of the top responsibilities of our city government and me as an elected official. We need jobs for our residents, and we need revenue to fund critical city services. I was recently recognized for my strong pro-job record on the Board - indeed, I was rated as the Supervisor most supportive of job creation. This recognition resulted from my support and help passing the streets bond, which will create many jobs, my support for measures to attract and keep tech companies here and to revitalize the mid-Market area, my support for health care reform, and other pro-job measures.

In addition, I am co-sponsoring legislation with Supervisor Olague to dramatically simplify our Planning Code as it pertains to starting a restaurant, café, or similar business. Our Planning Code currently has a whopping 13 legal classifications for eating and drinking uses - resulting in undue complexity and a truly byzantine permitting process - and this legislation reduces the number to 3 (restaurant, limited restaurant, and bar). Click here for a fun video showing how convoluted and confusing our current system is.

Scott, Mike Stanton, and Noe Valley Association Executive Director Debra Niemann join House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in a merchant walk of 24th street in
Noe Valley to advocate for job creation and helping small businesses.

Making High Speed Rail a Reality

As one of San Francisco's representatives on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, I work hard every day to improve our transit infrastructure, in San Francisco and regionally. A key to the future of transportation in the Bay Area and California is High Speed Rail.

I am working hard to build support for the project. In the Bay Area, specifically, we need to electrify CalTrain, ensure that High Speed Rail can use that track and pass slower trains, and extend the system to the Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco. Recently, foes of the project, enabled by a press feeding frenzy, have cast doubt on the project as too expensive. We need to move forward and get the project done right. All transformative infrastructure/transit projects are expensive, and none of them are 100% funded on day one. Whether the interstate highway system or any other major transportation project, these systems take years to build and are funded over time.

As the San Francisco Chronicle astutely observed, we need this system. Without it, we will just continue to build more roads and airport capacity, which is also very expensive and much less green. We need to do high speed rail right, but we need to do it.

Ensuring Access by Everyone to our Public Spaces

I am sponsoring legislation to ensure that Jane Warner Plaza and Harvey Milk Plaza - at the heart of the Castro and two of the few public spaces in the neighborhood - are accessible by everyone and not monopolized by people at the expense of others. The legislation will put some very basic rules in place, including prohibiting camping, large shopping carts, and smoking, and requiring a permit to sell merchandise other than printed materials (which are exempt). These rules are already in place in our parks and/or our sidewalks, and they will make these plazas more accessible to the broad public. The legislation will not in any way impact the ability of the public to use the plazas to gather, protest, hold vigils, perform, distribute material, or otherwise assemble. The legislation is scheduled to be heard in the Land Use Committee on Monday, January 23rd at 1:00pm.

Increasing the Supply of Moderate/Middle Income Housing

One of my key focuses on the Board of Supervisors is to push the City to place greater emphasis on creating housing affordable by middle/moderate income people, so-called "workforce housing." We produce quite a bit of high-end housing and, though not enough, a significant amount of low-income housing. Yet, we do very little to produce housing for our middle income residents. On Monday, February 13th at 1:00pm (as always, please double check the date closer in time with my office, since dates do sometimes change), I will be holding a hearing at the Land Use Committee on what the City is doing and what we should be doing to create more housing for our middle class. This is a big issue that does not have easy solutions. Instead, it will require long-term perseverance and strategic thinking to move our city toward a more balanced housing policy.

Addressing the Needs of LGBT Seniors

Another major problem that we need to address more aggressively is how to provide for a growing population of LGBT senior citizens. Our LGBT community is aging, and it faces a number of unique challenges - for example, aging with HIV, seniors who are less likely to have children, senior services that aren't always as attuned toward LGBT people as they should be - as well as the challenges that all seniors face, like staying in their homes and aging in place. To begin addressing this need, I, along with Supervisors Campos and Olague, called for a hearing to bring together experts and community advocates to discuss the topic. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, January 26th at 1:00pm at the Government Accountability and Oversight Committee.

Food Trucks: A Matter of Balance

Last year, I convened a working group to try to address concerns about the way the City permits food trucks on our streets. Some brick-and-mortar restaurants are concerned that food trucks will unfairly compete with them, given their lower overhead, while food truck operators want the City's permitting process to be much clearer so that they are not applying for permits in locations where permits will never be granted or where permits will be overturned on appeal. I am working with brick-and-mortar restaurants, food truck operators, and the Department of Public Works and Office of Small Business to review our entire process and determine whether changes - either legislative or administrative - are necessary to ensure that we foster our growing and innovative food truck movement while treating brick-and-mortar restaurants fairly. The San Francisco Chronicle recently editorialized on the issue and my work.

Historic Preservation

I have spent considerable time and effort assessing and attempting to improve our City's approach toward historic preservation. I support preservation and believe we need to take a thoughtful and balanced approach to ensure that we preserve what's best about our City while embracing the need to move forward and, at times, change. The New York Times recently covered the issue in the context of a proposed historic district north of Duboce Park. The Times noted several proposals that I am making as we update our Planning Code's approach to historic preservation. Click here for additional commentary.

Maintaining Our Street Trees and Park Trees

We don't devote nearly enough resources to maintenance of our City's urban forest. As a result, our park trees are rarely inspected - which can create safety hazards - and the City is gradually turning over responsibility for street trees to adjacent property owners who may or may not want the trees or know how to care for them properly. I am working with various stakeholders to see if we can create a sustainable funding stream for our street and park trees, to ensure that they are properly maintained and that property owners are not required to care for trees unless they want to.

In the meantime, for more information about DPW's tree maintenance plan, including the transfer of responsibility for certain trees to adjacent property owners, click here. In addition, you can contact DPW's Urban Forestry Division at treetransfercare@sfdpw.org or (415) 554-7336.

Scott and Supervisor Campos at the opening of supportive affordable housing development with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Lee.

Community Updates

District 8 Office Open House & Art Reception

Please join me at City Hall for an open house and reception highlighting the works of local District 8 artists Augusta Talbot and Rob Cox. The reception will take place on Thursday, February 2nd from 5:00-6:30pm in room 274 of City Hall, where refreshments and snacks will be served. Both the artists will be present to speak to their pieces and answer any questions you may have. For further details and/or information, please call Adam Taylor in my office at (415) 554-6968.

Update: Church and Duboce Track and Street Improvement Project

On the weekend of January 27, 2012, SFMTA will be conducting track replacement work at the intersection of Church/Market streets. The work will start at approximately 7:00pm Friday, January 27th and last until 5:00am, Monday, January 30th. There will be partial shutdowns of the J Church and F Market & Wharves lines and reroutes of the 22 Fillmore, 37 Corbett and N Owl. The construction will also require street and bike lane closures and traffic detours. At the intersection of Church & Market streets, both directions of Church Street will be closed to through traffic. Eastbound 14th Street will also be closed to through traffic at Church Street during the construction period. Westbound Market Street will be closed to bicyclists at Buchanan Street. Street parking will be limited at the construction site.