A couple months ago, a tenant told me a disturbing piece of news. Someone had got hold of the mail key that gives our carrier access to our lobby and the mailboxes. Evidently they had been using it to steal mail throughout the district. I was appalled that the Postal Service had not informed everyone concerned, and immediately changed the compromised locks. I spent hours on the phone trying to get action from the Post Office, but got nowhere. I asked the tenant to call our district supervisor to get his help resolving this problem. She was told by Aaron Peskin’s office to keep  calling the Post Office. I had to bypass the Postal access as a temporary measure to ensure our safety. I’m still waiting for a lasting solution.

When I asked our supervisor last week about the situation, he said his staff was working on it. I hope that inquiry and/or this posting prompts him to prioritize the problem.

The idea that a key is floating around which gives access to the mail of everyone in our area and entry to many, if not most of their buildings, is very troubling. The fact that our supervisor does not make it a priority is unacceptable. Here was a great opportunity for him to be a hero by making the right phone calls and getting the action necessary to insure everybody’s safety. As of this writing, the situation has not changed.

We need a supervisor who is focused on the issues concerning our district’s issues first.  I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I hadn’t done all I can to tackle problems like the stolen key. I hope that this serious situation gets resolves immediately.

Last summer I was showing a friend the area where I grew up, including the two City Parks that I frequented. I was saddened and embarrassed to see neither had seen a coat of paint since I was a kid, and one had been closed for some time. Didn’t we pass a bond measure awhile back to fix up the parks? Where did the money go?

The City and County of San Francisco spends 5 times as much per resident as Santa Clara County. We have twice as many employees, despite being 1/20th the size and having half as many residents. Why couldn’t some of those employees fix up my childhood parks? The City employs hundreds of Public Relations Specialists, (Spin Doctors), and just a handful of Certified Arborists. I believe they have it backwards.

On a recent visit to a local coffee shop I witnessed a City crew filling a pothole, about a foot round, and counted six worker involved in the process. I wondered how they all fit in the truck, and then noticed a second truck across the street.I have seen similar scenes time and time again, and can only deduce this is how things are done. There is no mystery why we spend so much and get so little if this is how they roll. Some City departments  have a culture of laziness and ineptitude. They somehow can’t even do the basic maintenance despite having twice as many workers as the average, and have to borrow money to hire sub-contractors to do their work.

We need to change the culture of civil service to where they take pride in the work they do and the City they serve. We should not have to mortgage our future to maintain our parks.

A few months back, I was awakened around 4 in the morning and noticed a car entering the parking lot across the street. This lot has had a number of break-ins, so seeing the occupants of that car start peering into the other cars, I called the police. I was told that a patrol car would be dispatched. Several minutes later a car alarm went off, confirming my suspicions about the activities. I called the police back to update them and was told that a unit had already arrived at the scene. I replied that I was looking straight at the scene and there were no police. Just then I noticed a police car coming up the street. Great, a perfect opportunity to catch these thieves in the act and reduce the rash of car break-ins that have been plaguing our neighborhood! The police car just drove right by. 😦   Three cars were broken into, and the culprits got away with it. I have heard similar stories from neighbors, and have encountered more “no-shows” since.

My father was a policeman in San Francisco, and back then, they all had to live in the City. It seemed that they really cared about fighting crime and making the City safe. After all, they lived here too. I’ve heard several police officers say the City is not safe for their families. What about us?

Our police department has been in hot water recently for being too aggressive. At the same time, crime is more prevalent and arrests are way down. This makes no sense.

Perhaps we need a police force that has a vested interest in the community they protect. If (or perhaps when) we have a large earthquake, we will likely be without the vast majority of our first responders. This will make a bad situation much worse. We have a compelling interest having our emergency personnel live here. We need to find ways to make that happen. Perhaps we can give our public safety personnel  (and teachers) priority in affordable housing developments.

I would also recommend having police cadets acting as “ambassadors”in our business districts. This would be beneficial in several ways:   It would afford a layer of crime prevention by having a visible law enforcement presence, with a direct line for police response. Also,it would free up our sworn officers to enforce the law and arrest criminals, instead of spending their time acting as deterrents. Most importantly, it would generate a relationship between the police recruits and our communities.

The residents and visitors in San Francisco need to be safe and their property protected. Sadly that has not been the case lately. We must turn that around.

The other night I went to a hearing at City Hall to try to talk sense into the “powers that be”, to stop the ill conceived Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit. We had some 50 or so concerned neighbors who were willing to interrupt their lives and give testimony before the Board of Appeals, to convince them not to allow the City to cut down the trees, tear up the street for years and permanently remove over a hundred parking spaces and a third of the traffic lanes.

After an hour of formalities and items ahead of ours were debated, it was our turn to step up to the plate. But, no, the Commission switched the order of agenda items and put us last. We had to sit for another five and a half hours before our issue would be taken up. I guess that’s how things work at City Hall. Over the past year over a dozen parking places have been taken away for various reasons and not once was there a notice of any hearing. The fact that we were allowed to speak, even if it meant waiting to well past midnight, was a privilege I guess.

As you might imagine most of those came out didn’t stay to testify. With families at home and work the next morning the majority had to leave, still twenty or so determined citizens stuck it out to the end. Despite their pleas for reason versus only a few cheerleaders for the project, the fix was in. The City will now spend over 300 million of your dollars to destroy an important artery and wreck havoc upon a community for years to come.

The residents and businesses deserve to have a say in any proposed changes to their neighborhood. We had dozens of meetings regarding the proposed changes to Van Ness, and each time the residents explained why it wasn’t a good idea and offered asked that low cost alternatives be tried first. They were continually ignored.

It looks like this boondoggle is going to happen, and when it fails, and the residents, businesses and commuters suffer, and the people who shoved it down our throats will face no consequences.

We need more accountability at City Hall and concern for those who’s lives are most affected by the ill-conceived plans.

Reasonable people will differ on the answer, but most will agree that the situation has gotten worse; and the solutions tried by City Hall have failed. Just recently they have joined forces to double down on their programs. Whether those programs are successes or failures depends on your point of view. If you believe creating permanent supportive housing is the measure of success, the City has triumphed. I don’t believe that we can or should try to provide a free apartment for life, to everyone who pitches a tent on our sidewalk. City Hall, and my opponent believe the solution is to provide the free housing. Aaron Peskin has vowed to open a “Navigation Center” in our district, and nearly did just that without any community outreach, but the building was sold at the last minute, preventing the implementation. A “Navigation Center” is a shelter where the homeless can bring all their stuff, and come and go as they please. I don’t think its a good fit for our neighborhood, and certainly should have the consent of the neighbors if considered.

So what is my solution to this overwhelming problem? Let me lay out my strategy:

First we should do what we can to prevent our residents from becoming homeless. Preventing evictions and providing relief to those who suffer setbacks should be our first line of defense.

For our residents who suffer a setback which causes them to become homeless, and are actively trying to get on their feet, we should provide temporary housing that is safe, clean and convenient to work or job training. These dwellings would not be for drug and alcohol abusers or aimless individuals who just want a hand out.

For the aimless, who represent the majority of visible homeless on our City, we should offer rehabilitation facilities, in remote locations such as Treasure Island, where they can voluntarily go, and begin to turn their lives around. We need to provide a decent place to sleep, nutritious food to eat, and counseling to address their challenges. In addition, we need to provide a path away from drug and alcohol dependency, and training, to provide them with skills to support themselves. They can start by helping themselves, maintaining their residence, and preparing meals. As they progress, they can learn skills such as farming, maintenance or construction, and perhaps rebuild some of the many treasures from the 30’s work camps that we still enjoy today.

For the most troubling of the Homeless population, the mentally ill, we have to take a more drastic approach. It is both inhumane and dangerous to allow those suffering with severe mental instability, to wander our streets. At the same time we cannot remain the depository for the nation’s mentally ill. It is extremely taxing on our social services and stretches our resources and ability to properly care for those who need help. We need to share the responsibility with our State and Federal agencies and not shoulder the burden ourselves. We also cannot rely on those who are suffering from mental illness or substance abuse to make appropriate decisions regarding their own well being. We must utilize and enforce the laws we have, and if necessary, create new ones, to protect the mentally unstable, as well as the public, from harm.

The implementation of these solutions will not be easy. There are many in this City who will disagree with my plans, and others who derive their livelihood from our failing programs. Not to mention the thousands of “Urban Hobo’s” who are counting on our compassion to enable their aimless lifestyle. We have allowed ourselves to be taken advantage of, much to our own detriment, and the longer we go in the wrong direction, the harder it will be to get back to where we need to be.

If you look down from the top of any large hill in District 3, you’ll see ridiculously tall buildings towering over their normal-sized  neighbors. These rude developments spawned a movement to establish reasonable height limits to preserve the character of our neighborhoods.

These height limits have come under attack recently, and variances to overcome them are routinely issued. The City’s population has also been growing at a rapid rate, albeit not fast enough for most developers and many at City Hall. The  City is only so big, our streets are   narrow and our infrastructure is old and straining. We are under forced water restrictions, causing our parks to go brown and requiring residents to cut back. Are we getting ahead of ourselves by encouraging accelerated growth? I believe we are. My opponent, however, declares that he is for more density and bonus height limits. As you can see from the map above, District 3 already has the highest density in San Francisco.

I understand there is a demand for housing in the Bay Area, and this is a good problem to have, but why should the bulk of the new dwellings be built where it is already too crowded?  I believe we should have a regional approach to growth and encourage migration to communities that need increased population. Oakland, for example, needs 100,000 more people much more that we do and its much quicker to get to downtown SF from West Oakland, than from many parts of San Francisco. To facilitate this, we should also focus on improving regional transportation and start thinking of the Bay Area as an interconnected community instead of individual localities.

There is little doubt that San Francisco will gain population. There are area and locations that are prime candidates, but we need to make sure that we don’t “spoil a good thing” by making it too difficult to live here. Lets get our infrastructure up to speed first and also work with our neighboring communities, to help them take advantage of the population migration.