As The City searches for a new "green czar," park proponents are calling for an update of the 19-year-old plan devoted to recreation and open space.The 54-page portion of The City’s general plan that focuses on recreation and open space hasn’t been revised since 1987, city planners said. As more and more development projects get under way, open space needs to be included in the plans, said Isabel Wade, executive director of the nonprofit Neighborhood Parks Council.
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After years of The City translating public information for its non-English-language speakers into "gibberish," Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Thursday a new plan for accurate translations. In the past, The City has relied on a computer software program to translate information on its Web site, resulting in garbled information, according to Newsom."To my astonishment and my dismay, I saw what we were translating on our Web sites — complete gobbledygook, complete nonsense, gibberish, an embarrassment if ever there was one," Newsom said.
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Touting the benefits of organic foods, a City Hall committee is pondering ways to ensure that schools and city facilities go organic with their food service.While The City has adopted various policies advocating more organic or sustainable food supplies in its food service, implementation is still being hashed out. The Environmental Commission has endorsed the goal of having 20 percent of all city facilities, including schools, serve locally grown and organic foods within the next seven years.
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Not far from the hard-to-miss bow-and-arrow artwork known as "Cupid’s Span" on the Embarcadero, two new restaurants are rising from the ground. The new eateries on the 300 block of the Embarcadero — one for fish lovers and the other geared toward red-meat carnivores — are the latest businesses to break ground on the reborn waterfront.EPIC, catering to those who want steak and other grilled meats, and Waterbar, specializing in fruits from the sea, are a joint effort by Pat Kuleto Restaurants, JMA Ventures LLC and the Port of San Francisco.
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Although questions remain about whether San Francisco can provide all of the key venues necessary to host the Summer Olympics in 2016, a significant number of the Bay Area’s top business leaders say city leaders should work to bring the international games to the region, according to poll results released Thursday.Eighty-five percent of Bay Area CEOs and top executives said they believed government and civic leaders should actively pursue a bid to bring the games to the area, according to a survey of 508 company chiefs by the Bay Area Council.
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The man who police say called to report his 5-month-old daughter as kidnapped before changing his story and leading investigators to her body pleaded not guilty to two felonies and an enhancement Thursday, according to the District Attorney's office.Police arrested Anthony Theard, 24, for manslaughter Friday, spokesman Neville Gittens said. On Thursday he was arraigned on charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse, with an enhancement of inflicting corporal injury on a child, resulting in death.
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San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley is seeking to unseat one of three incumbents in the Sequoia Healthcare District race — with the support of some board members who hope to see one within their ranks voted out of office.
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A partnership between the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office and the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA has resulted in an increase in felony convictions for animal cruelty offenders.Debi DeNardi, humane society captain of field services, said there have been as many as four felony convictions this year, amounting to close to 50 total felony and misdemeanor convictions in the two years the nonprofit has worked closely with the district attorney’s office."We were lucky to get six a year before that," DeNardi said.
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County officials have ruled the latest fatality on the Peninsula’s Caltrain tracks an accident, the fifth such death this year.Wednesday evening’s accident brought 2006’s total Caltrain deaths to 11, passing the 2005 total of 10. Eighty percent of last year’s deaths were suicides.Redwood City resident and ice cream salesman Elias Mecina Vazquez, 63, was riding home on a three-wheeled "powered ice cream cart" with a freezer box attached to the rear when he was hit by a northbound train slowing down to enter the Sequoia station near Chestnut Street, according to officials.
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The city and Caltrain have started clearing out weeds and trash next to the train tracks, now that both parties have determined who is responsible for certain areas around First Avenue.Residents implored Caltrain and the city at an August meeting to clear weeds and pick up trash of all sizes littering the train-track area, but officials were unsure then who owned the property in question.Caltrain officials and San Bruno Parks and Facilities Services Manager Dave Perazzo attended the meeting at which residents such as Diane Martin and Tim Buckley complained about the weeds.
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