Heads of state from all over, including Donald Trump, attended he funeral of Pope Francis. Very few of them listened to, or will listen to, or acknowledge that the late Pope (for all of his drawbacks) was a serious critic of modern neoliberal capitalism. Here, for the record, is one of his messages:
As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolutely autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems, or for that matter, to any problems.
Of course, it’s no surprise that many the obits and reports on the Pope’s funeral downplay any mention of Capitalism. Oh, and these right-wing Christians like J.D. Vance love to talk about the Bible and Jesus, but always seem to conveniently forget, say, Matt. 19:24 and, you know, 1 Timothy 6: 9-10. You could look it up.
The budget battle is going to be the first real test of Mayor Daniel Lurie and the new, more conservative, Board of Supes. Labor and community-based organizations are gearing up to push against massive cuts and potential layoffs. And Sups. Jackie Fielder and Shamann Walton want to hear more about the one area in the budget the Lurie has refused to touch (and in fact, is increasing): The Police Department.
The Budget and Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday/30 on a Budget and Legislative Analyst audit of police overtime, which cost the city $108 million in 2023, and involved cops making huge sums with little oversight.
The department says that it needs the OT because there aren’t enough cops on the street, something that Lurie has pushed since he announced he would run for mayor. But guess what? With fewer cops than the city has had in decades, crime is way down. Maybe more cops doesn’t mean safer streets.
Police overtime alone accounts for 20 percent of the next year’s budget deficit. Address that, and get Big Tech companies to pay their fair share of taxes, and the defict becomes a lot more manageable.
That meeting starts at 1:30pm.
The San Francisco Golf Club is one of the most exclusive institutions in the city. You can’t even apply for membership; you have to be invited.It sits on the border of SF and Daly City. As we noted back in February:
Let’s put it this way: Condoleezza Rice is one of only seven women who are members of Augusta National, among the most exclusive golf clubs in the world. It’s where they play The Masters. She’s also a member of the San Francisco Golf Club.
Most people in the city have never heard of the place, which suits the club just fine. But now it’s in the public eye—because the club wants to build a new storage facility. No big deal, we noted, except that
The club wants to build a 19,000-square-foot maintenance building on the corner of its property, in an area that is not part of the golf course and is unimproved.
The problem: It’s also 40 feet away from St. Thomas More school, which has 300 students from pre-K to eighth grade on Brotherhood Way.
The building, as initially proposed, would have been used for locker rooms and showers for the staff—but also as a sort of gas station to refuel club vehicles and a storage and charging station for golf carts and lawn mowers that use lithium-ion batteries.
But the Planning Commission approved the project 4-2 in February, with all of the mayoral appointees in favor and the Board of Supes appointees opposed.
The Friends of St. Thomas More School have appealed to the full board, which will hold a hearing Tuesday/29 on both the conditional use permit and the Planning Department decision not to require full environmental review. That hearing starts at 3pm.
It’s not clear to me why a developer wants to build a new 29-story hotel at Market and Montgomery. Hotel occupancy is down, and some of the existing buildings are having a hard time keeping up with their debt. Maybe tourism is going to recover, despite Trump’s tariffs and attacks on immigrants, which are discouraging international travel to San Francisco; maybe there’s room for another hotel. Not my expertise.
I’m also not typically on the side of big commercial landlords, like the owners of 44 Montgomery Street or the Chancery Building.
But a Planning Commission battle over the new hotel, at 570 Market, raises some interesting issues that, unfortunately, we have seen before in this city.
The developer wants to demolish a small existing building and put up the fancy hotel, which, if it has union jobs and manages to succeed, is fine with me. But in the process, the builders will have to excavate next to the Chancery, a historic structure, and make six-foot-wide holes to drive pilings into bedrock. Construction, according to Planning Department documents, will involve “de-watering,” and could cause the adjoining buildings to “settle” a bit.
I am not a structural engineer or an architect, but I do remember the last time these issues came up: The Millennium Tower, which has sunk dangerously. The Planning Department wants to approve this without a full Environmental Impact Report; the owners of the adjoining buildings have appealed.
That comes before the commission Thursday/1.
