Wiener makes a good point: Whatever you think about dogs at Fort Funston, if you limit the space there, more dogs will wind up in city parks, which are already crowded and have far more in the way of mixed uses. (There are no kids’ playgrounds or ball fields at Fort Funston, few toddlers, and only rarely anyone sitting around sunbathing.) So what the feds do has an impact on all of us, dog owners and other park users, and Wiener wants the mayor’s help in pushing back against the new rules.
The mayor, as is typical, ducked the question. He expressed concern. He worries about impacts. He wants everyone to work together. He is “confident” that GGNRA will “work with us.” He made no promises.
Sup. Malia Cohen had a question about workforce development, and the mayor made a long speech about how great it is that unemployment is so low, and how he’s developing a text app that lets unemployed people look for work over their cell phones. I don’t think that’s what she was asking about, and I don’t think it’s going to make a huge difference for the long-term unemployed, but whatever; I guess that apps can solve anything.
It was outside in the hall where the action was. The one big advantage to Question Time is it creates an informal press conference in the hall, and reporters can follow the mayor back to his office and ask real, unscripted questions – and today they were mostly about the collapse of a Twin Peaks house that Mel Murphy, former president of the Building Inspection Commission, was “renovating.”
Lee admitted that Murphy was a personal friend. He admitted that something went wrong. He had nothing comforting to say to neighbors who have been fighting this project, except to say that the planning process was complete – which means, as far as he knows, there will be no bar to cleaning up the mess and starting the “renovations” right up again. Murphy, he said, was “past the permitting stage and in the building stage.” And no, he will not remove his pal from the Port Commission.
I haven’t been to the site, haven’t examined what happened, and wouldn’t understand it if I did; structural engineer is not part of my job description. But I can say that, front of the TV cameras, it appeared as if a Lee crony got away with a project that the neighbors thought was too big for the area and didn’t trust … and their worst fears were realized. Good thing nobody got hurt.
Then I got a chance to ask about the mayor’s secret private lunch with the city’s tech moguls.
I didn’t get a complete list of the CEOs, but he said that Ron Conway was there, as were the leaders of Salesforce, Yelp, Zynga, and people from Conway’s lobbying group, Sf.citi. He spoke about how happy he was with the job creation and economic impacts on mid-Market, and said he reminded them that even tech workers have trouble with housing affordability. “They want to be part of the solution,” he said.
“We’ve given them a bright green light to form a housing task force,” the mayor said. Oh, yes, and philanthropy: “I said there are 1,893 tech firms in the city and I wish there were 1,893 foundations.”
I told the mayor that the SF Business Times, that hotbed of left-wing thinking, suggested that Twitter give back its tax break for a year. “That,” he said, “would be up to Twitter.”
HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS, SORT OF: The evictions and displacement epidemic is so scary that nobody on the Board of Supervisors wants to vote against anything pro-tenant. Sup. David Campos couldn’t even get out of committee last year a measure to let tenants go to the Rent Board with complaints of landlord harassment. His measure passed on first reading today, 11-0. And Campos told me he’s working on what would be one of the most significant pieces of tenant legislation in years: A move to increase the statutory relocation fee for Ellis Act evictions, possibly to the level that’s used by the federal government. Now is the time: It would be political suicide for most of the supervisors to vote against it. And can you see Ed Lee vetoing it?
