San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2010/07/)
The mayor and the president of the board of supervisors this week agreed on several Muni reforms to help the transit agency restore services cut in May and to improve oversight of the agency.
Supervisor David Chiu and Mayor Gavin Newsom agreed Tuesday on reforms at the cash-strapped San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. » Read more
A preliminary hearing for a Muni mechanic and street seller accused of selling late-night Muni transfers illegally was postponed Friday until Aug. 17. The Public Press reported this week that San Francisco police arrested Muni mechanic Edmund King and charged him with providing late-night transfers to another suspect, Leroy Gutierrez, to sell them on the streets illegally. The police said they caught both during an sting operation following a months-long investigation. King is charged with two felonies, possession of stolen property and embezzlement by a public employee, the district attorney’s office said.
Mayor Gavin Newsom may be sticking to his no-new-taxes pledge through a second year of brutal deficits, but there are several moves afoot to put additional revenue into city coffers. One is a plan for higher taxes for properties with a $5 million to $10 million price tag. And another is a one-block special tax zone for the Mission District that local businesses say works well for them to help combat blight. On Tuesday the San Francisco Business Times reported on a proposed tax measure that would raise taxes for properties in the price range of $5 million to $10 million. The proposal goes on the ballot in November and would increase the levy to 2 percent from the current 1.5 percent.
Video by Eleanor Beaton/SF Public Press.
A growing Islamic feminist movement is taking shape in the Middle East and offers hope for the future of women’s rights there, according to Isobel Coleman, senior fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. » Read more
The expansion of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project hit a new milestone on Wednesday when Caltrans workers began raising one of the four new towers to support the suspension span. KTVU reports the tower is 155-feet tall and weighs 1,190 tons. The piece arrived from Shanghai on June 18 and eventually made it to the Port of Oakland the following month. Inspectors checked the tower to make sure there was no damage during its voyage to the Bay.
“This part of the bridge is designed to be iconic, and this tower has got a lot of architectural features built into it that take it beyond an A-to-B workman bridge that the Bay Bridge is known for,” said Bart Ney, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation. The installation of each tower should take approximately take 12 hours, according to Caltrans.
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency this week launched its first phase of a new parking meter program called SFpark. The agency replaced 190 parking meters with new smart parking meters along Hayes Street and around Civic Center on Tuesday. The program is a way to ease congestion in the city and reduce air pollution, according to the agency. The smart meters have sensors to help drivers provide “real-time information” of parking availability, which drivers can look up on the Web before leaving for their destination in the city. The new feature though would not be ready until next year, said Paul Rose, an agency spokesman.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may not sign the state budget before he is termed out of office in January. The state is facing a $19 billion deficit for the fiscal year which began on July 1. "If I don’t get what I need, I will not sign it and it could drag on to the next governor," Schwarzenegger said after meeting with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce on Monday. The governor wants pension, tax and spending reforms added to the new budget. California has been without a budget for four weeks.
San Francisco’s budding green-energy program, having survived a statewide initiative that would have killed it, seems clear of all roadblocks, except one: economics.
After the failure of PG&E-backed Proposition 16, which would have required two-thirds voter approval for local power programs, the city pushed forward with community choice aggregation, which would replace PG&E power with a locally run alternative. » Read more
The San Francisco Police Department has made two arrests in an ongoing problem that has cost the transit system thousands of dollars every week: the resale of transfers. Police said they caught two people in a sting operation illegally selling late-night Muni transfers. One of two arrested was a Muni mechanic who was supplying the transfers, police said. Transfers are supposed to be only be usable for 90 minutes, but late-night transfers allow passengers are not time-limited. The Muni Police Task Force conducted a surveillance for months at Mission and 16th streets, a hot spot for selling illegal transfers.
This week BART is back in the news, postponing 3 percent fare cuts and approving a new funding plan for the Oakland Airport connector, which would require borrowing $106 million from the state and various agencies. On Wednesday the Contra Costa Times reported that the proposed temporary BART fare cuts did not seem to be popular with the public. They would last three months and cut fares by 3 percent. Three-fourths of transit users who spoke out via e-mail or survey said BART should instead spend money from a budget surplus to deep-clean carpets and seats, or stash the money in reserves for unexpected emergencies in periods of unstable transit funding.
BART Director Joel Keller told Contra Costa Times, “The public has spoken, and they are vehemently against the fare reduction.”
As of Thursday the BART board postponed the vote on the fare reduction indefinitely.