Katie Worth

Pet proposal put on hold

The jury is still out on whether San Francisco — named after the patron saint of animals — will make it a little easier for pets and their owners to find homes. After two hours of sometimes-heated discussion, the Commission for Animal Control and Welfare tabled a resolution Thursday that would have suggested The City prohibit housing discrimination against responsible pet owners. The matter will be taken up again at a commission meeting in January. Any resolution would be nonbinding, but it could pave the way for a San Francisco supervisor to push forward with proposed legislation. The commission’s recent resolution to ban cat declawing in The City was picked up by the...

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Operator injured after cable car derails

A cable car driver was taken to the hospital Thursday with non-life-threatening injuries after a mechanical failure derailed the vehicle. No one but the driver was on board at the time of the accident, which happened at 3:20 p.m., Muni spokesman Judson True said. The Mason cable car line had been out of service since about 11 a.m. after a problem with the underground cable was discovered. The car had been left stranded by the problem, and was finally being pushed to a car barn, True said. As it was starting up the hill at Mason and Greenwich streets, a depression beam — part of the underground cable rigging — failed to move out of the way of the car’s grip, and forced...

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Muni agent allegedly punches teen girl

A Muni station agent likely faces assault charges after witnesses say he threw a punch at a teenage girl over a fare dispute. At around 4:10 p.m. Thursday, the juvenile girl and her sister, a young adult, approached the station agent in the Embarcadero Muni station and asked for a reduced rate, San Francisco police Sgt. Lyn Tomioka said. The girl didn’t have identification to support her age claim, and she and the ticket agent got in an argument about it. Witnesses reported that the agent walked into his booth and the girl followed him, telling him to call the police. The discussion became more heated, and then the agent hit the girl in the mouth, witnesses told the police. At...

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San Mateo gets help to tackle budget

Incumbent Brandt Grotte and newcomers David Lim and Robert Ross have won San Mateo’s City Council election. There were five candidates battling for the three open seats on the five-person council. Grotte has held his seat since 2005. Incumbent Frederick Arn Hansson — who was appointed by the other members in January after former councilwoman Carole Groom was appointed to the Board of Supervisors — did not retain his seat. It was guaranteed that at least one newcomer would join the council since Councilwoman Jan Epstein was termed out of office. Lim is a deputy district attorney; Ross is a retired police lieutenant. Challenger Bertha Hall Sanchez, a nurse, did not...

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Redwood City Council: Two newcomers join Ira

The three open spots on Redwood City’s seven-person council will be filled by incumbent Jeff Ira and newcomers Jeff Gee and John Seybert. Voters had five candidates to choose between, including Ira, who has served on the council since 2005. Councilmembers Diane Howard and Jim Hartnett were termed out, leaving open seats for two of the four challengers. In that field were three current planning commissioners: Gee, Seybert and Janet Borgens. Also on the ballot was probation officer Cherlene Wright, who serves on the city’s Housing and Human Concerns Committee. The council faces significant development concerns, including whether to approve a controversial development plan for...

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Bridge repair to be monitored after emergency fix

Repairs on the Bay Bridge were expected to be complete by 10 p.m. Thursday and a bevy of independent inspectors were assembled to sign off on the work to avoid future blunders that closed the span and stranded hundreds of thousands commuters for days. After a cable snapped Tuesday that had been hastily fixed to support a cracked bar during the Labor Day weekend closure, bridge officials have been exceedingly careful about reopening the span. The Federal Highway Administration and the state Seismic Safety Peer Review Panel were each expected to do independent, overnight inspections of the repaired metal bar, called an eyebar. “It’s like kicking tires on a car. They want to...

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Community effort grows into garden

It took a tussle with Caltrans, 281 signatures and a lot of sweat, but a vacant lot in Potrero Hill has been transformed from a neglected patch of soil next to a freeway offramp to a flourishing garden. A community group originally proposed a garden on the land a decade ago, and submitted a proposal to Caltrans, but that plan was rejected and the idea was abandoned. The land sat untouched until December, when neighbor Annie Shaw, who knew nothing of the group’s original plan, began eyeing the land near Pennsylvania Avenue and 18th Street. Shaw’s husband wanted to move somewhere with space for a garden, but she was not eager to move. With some advice from staff at Strybing...

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Bay Bridge closure leaves commuters hanging

The Bay Bridge will be closed at least through today’s early-evening commute after a piece of the bridge failed catastrophically and chunks of metal fell onto cars during Tuesday’s rush hour. At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, three cars were hit by falling pieces of metal that had been installed to support a cracked bar on the bridge. It was the same cracked bar that delayed the reopening of the bridge over Labor Day weekend while Caltrans made emergency repairs by placing a saddle, or brace, around the cracked bar to support it. Several lanes on the bridge were closed immediately on Tuesday, and by 7 p.m., the California Highway Patrol had stopped traffic. It is unknown when the...

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GreenPeace field organizer calls for day of action

Lauren Thorpe, the field organizer for GreenPeace has helped organize 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action events on Saturday, which has organized events in San Francisco and across the globe to speak out about climate change. What is 350.org? 350.org is an organization that created this Web site and this call to action, where they said, on Oct. 24, we need you to mobilize in your community around this number 350, which represents the safe level of carbon in the atmosphere — 350 parts per million. Right now, we’re at 390 parts per million. So what’s happening on Saturday? There are about 4,000 events happening in more than 170 countries. It’s...

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‘Night Stalker’ tied to SF victim through DNA

After unexpectedly uncovering DNA evidence that “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez may have murdered a 9-year-old girl in the Tenderloin in 1984, the San Francisco police department will begin digging through that year’s cold cases to see if others may also have been victims of the satanic killer. “We are looking at all the homicides that occurred in that general time, place and those general areas … [looking for] any similarities between this homicide and others,” said Deputy Chief David Shinn of San Francisco Police Department’s bureau of investigation. Ramirez is on death row at San Quentin State Prison, after being convicted of 13 murders that...

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League aims to connect children, police

As a teenager, when most of his buddies were spending their days running around the Sunset getting into trouble, David Lazar was working on robbery cases and learning radio codes as part of the cadet program run by the Police Activities League. Just a few years later, two months after his 21st birthday, Lazar became the youngest officer on San Francisco’s police force. He was already leaps ahead of other freshmen on the force, having spent nearly 1,000 hours with the force as a volunteer. Today, after 18 years on the force, Lazar is the force’s youngest station captain, the leader of the large Ingleside police district. Lazar is just one of tens of thousands of San...

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Two men injured in shooting

Two men who appear to have shot each other have both been taken to San Francisco General Hospital, one with life-threatening wounds, police reported. At about 8:30 p.m., police responded to reports of gunshots on Garlington Court, a residential street in the Bayview neighborhood near George Washington Carver Elementary School, according to police Sgt. Lynn Tomioka. Police found two victims with gunshot wounds, one of whom may have life-threatening injuries, she said. Initial reports indicate the men may have been shooting at each other, but it’s not clear whether there were others involved with the shooting, she said. Police are asking the public to assist with the investigation...

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Commission: Keep cars out of Starr King

After three hours of debate over a development adjacent to the Starr King Openspace last night, the Planning Commission decided to block cars from driving through or parking in the treasured green area. But they failed to mollify neighbors concerned about the development’s additional shadows cast over the Potrero Hill open space. The debate surrounded a developer’s plan to demolish a ramshackle 96-year-old house at the end of a row of homes that juts into the Starr King Openspace, and replace the home with a three-unit condominium building. Neighbors had two problems with the plan. First, they worried the new building would cast a much longer shadow over the privately held...

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Guilty plea expected in Ponzi case

A man who has admitted to running a $20 million Ponzi scheme out of a bookkeeping office in San Francisco’s Sunset district will plead guilty in federal court later this month, his attorney James Reilly said. San Mateo resident Roberto Heckscher, who operated Irving Bookkeeper and Taxes on Irving Street, was indicted Thursday on charges related to the fraud. He allegedly ran a scheme in which he promised to invest clients’ money but instead used the funds to meet other investors’ interest payments. Heckscher duped as many as 300 investors, Reilly said. The scheme dates to 1979, according to the indictment. Heckscher initially invested the money as promised but ran...

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"Eyesore" church to make way for condominiums

Even for San Francisco controversies, this one’s colorful. A squat and bulky bright-royal blue Noe Valley church was finally demolished this week, following years of legal wrangling and disagreement over its fate. Many neighbors are glad to see the structure — if not the church — go, said Vicki Rosen, president of Upper Noe Neighbors. “Of the neighbors I’ve spoken to about it, most people will be glad to have it gone because they think the building’s really unsightly,” she said. Local residents had complained for years the structure was an eyesore. The building, a former theater at the corner of Church and 28th streets, was acquired by the...

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Big-rig crash cleared from Bay Bridge

All westbound lanes of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were open shortly after 8 p.m. tonight, about five and a half hours after a big-rig overturned mid-span and created a traffic nightmare. CHP spokesman Shawn Chase said the vehicle was removed shortly before 8 p.m. and all lanes were clear at about 8:15 p.m. The crash happened at about 2:30 p.m. when the driver of a Safeway truck tried to slow down as he entered the new S-curve section of the bridge but lost control and crashed, initially closing four out of five lanes. A second lane was then opened, allowing vehicles to move slowly by the crash. Chase said earlier Wednesday the traffic approaching the area was...

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Bay storm breaks record

Record-breaking rainfall and strong winds walloped the region Tuesday, flooding streets and bringing down trees and power lines. The unusually large October storm, the remnants of Japanese Typhoon Melor, came in near 2 a.m. Tuesday, said Diana Henderson of the National Weather Service. “This early in the season, it’s kind of unusual to have this amount of rain, and this amount of rain this quickly,” she said. In San Francisco, Interstate Highway 280 just south of Mariposa Street and the Sixth Street and King Street offramps were closed because of flooding. “There’s a lot of standing water on the freeways and problems with flooding and wrecks everywhere in...

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Fire ‘best thing’ for Angel Island

One year ago Monday, hundreds of acres of Angel Island erupted in flames, threatening the island’s historic buildings, endangering campers who were spending the night on the island, and creating a fiery vista for waterfront onlookers around the Bay. Today, instead of looking back on that fire as a catastrophe, Angel Island’s lead park ranger Dave Matthews sees it as entirely the opposite. “That was, naturally, the best thing that’s happened to the island in the last 100 years,” he said. “Naturally, fires are good. If we were able to do prescribed fire, we probably would have burned most of that area over the last 20 years anyway.” Fires are an...

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Apartment plan is for the dogs

The fur may be about to fly again, as animal activists revive the fight against building owners who won’t allow animals in rental units. The Animal Control and Welfare Commission initiated discussion at City Hall on Thursday night about ways to increase the number of apartments in San Francisco that allow pets, including measures forbidding landlords from discriminating against responsible pet owners when looking for tenants. It’s a contentious issue that led to a shake-up in City Hall a few years ago. In 2006, the same commission tried to enact a mandate allowing landlords to charge tenants with pets more, an incentive they hoped would motivate more building owners to...

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Navy to send only one ship for annual parade

Blame it on the wars, drugs and pirates — the Navy is only sending one ship to San Francisco for this year’s Parade of Ships. This year, the 360-crew USS Green Bay will be the only Navy vessel to participate in the annual Parade of Ships during Fleet Week. In previous years, the Navy has sent at least two ships, and just a few years ago sent six — bringing thousands of sailors into The City for the annual event. Navy vessels are in high demand right now, and ships that have visited The City in years past are currently deployed to the Middle East, working off the coast of Somalia protecting boats from pirates and helping the U.S. Coast Guard with anti-narcotics...

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Stunt pilots back in the sky

Don’t be startled by the roar of engines overhead this afternoon — it’s just the Blue Angels. The Navy’s flight demonstration team will kick off San Francisco’s 29th annual Fleet Week — which officially starts Thursday — by flying over the opening ceremonies for The Presidents Cup about 4:25 p.m. The Blue Angels, famous for flying spectacular aerial stunts in fighter jets, perform to show off the capacity of the military’s aerial muscle and to enhance its recruiting efforts, according to the Navy. The team will practice its moves over San Francisco’s skyline Thursday and Friday and will perform at 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Today,...

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Tsunami expected to reach SF beaches tonight

An earthquake that struck near American Samoa and has already killed at least 34 has caused a tsunami that is expected to hit San Francisco by 9:30 p.m. tonight. The tsunami will cause waves between 8 and 26 inches taller than they would be otherwise, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Dan Gudgel. The rough waves should last for an hour and a half, he said. The tsunami will hit Ocean Beach just a couple hours after the 8 p.m. high tide, and between the tide and the tsunami, could cause some minor damage, Gudgel said. He said a tsunami of a similar size in 2006 caused damage on Santa Cruz’s yacht wharf. The 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck around dawn about 20 miles deep...

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Fire truck slams into building, no one injured

A fire truck that was swinging around a corner with its lights and siren on slammed into a 24-story building Monday, scraping off the building’s marble paneling and destroying several windows but injuring no one. At around 5:30 p.m., the fire crew, responding to a building alarm, turned right from Montgomery Street onto narrow Commercial Street, said Deputy Fire Chief Pat Gardner. He said the cab, traveling around 15 miles per hour, made a wide turn. The rear end of the truck, which is operated by its own driver, jumped the curb, skidded across the sidewalk and scraped along the building before coming to a stop. The cab was unharmed, he said, “but it destroyed the back end...

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Man hit by train was 49-year-old San Mateo resident

A man who died along with two parrots after being struck by a Caltrain in San Mateo Monday has been identified as 49-year-old Peter Manion. Manion was a San Mateo resident, the San Mateo County coroner’s office confirmed Tuesday morning. Caltrain officials say Manion, who was carrying the parrots, was hit at 4:40 p.m. by a northbound train, at the street-level East Bellevue Avenue crossing, which is between the San Mateo and Burlingame stations and a few blocks west of San Mateo High School. Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn said as of Monday night, investigators were still unsure whether the incident was an accident or a suicide and the only known witness was the train...

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Drunk driver collides with parked police cars

If you’re going to drive drunk – which you shouldn’t – at least make sure you’re not doing so immediately in front of a police station. That was the hard lesson learned Sunday night by an inebriated man who allegedly drove his car out of the North Beach Garage on Vallejo Street and immediately ran into three – yes, three – police cars, all parked in front of the Central Police Station, according to a San Francisco Police Department dispatcher. The driver apparently pulled out of the North Beach Garage and was travelling “at a high rate of speed” west on Vallejo, when he “bounced off” one patrol car, careened across the...

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Man, two parrots killed on commuter rail tracks

Caltrain logged its 12th fatality of the year Monday after a man was hit while carrying two parrots at a crossing in San Mateo. The man, who was not identified pending notification of his family, was hit at 4:40 p.m. Monday by a northbound train at the street-level East Bellevue Avenue crossing, which is between the San Mateo and Burlingame stations and a few blocks west of San Mateo High School. Though the impact was apparently at the crossing, the man’s body was found about 50 feet north, Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn said. The parrots also died, she said. Dunn said as of Monday night, investigators were still unsure whether the incident was an accident or a suicide and...

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Possible sexual predator targeting middle school girls

Police say a potential sexual predator has been prowling around middle schools and attempting to lure girls into his car. There have been three cases since September 9 in which a man has approached girls ages 12 to 15 and asked them to get into his car, according to police spokeswoman Sgt. Lyn Tomioka. the public was warned of the incidents in a newsletter sent out by Capt. David Lazar of the Ingleside Police Station. It’s not yet clear whether there are multiple suspects or only one, but police officers will be interviewing all the victims further and, if possible, releasing a composite sketch, Tomioka said. The girls were approached near middle schools in the Outer Mission and...

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More San Mateo County schools to face sanctions

Last year, Amanda Neborsky, the principal at Hoover Elementary in Redwood City, promised the school’s 880 students that if the school met its goals on the state’s standardized tests all teachers would come to school with blue hair. This Friday, she will join teachers in fulfilling their end of the bargain by donning blue wigs for the day. Hoover Elementary, however, is an exception. The number of Peninsula schools facing federal sanctions under the No Child Left Behind Act for failing to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” increased by 50 percent — from 30 schools to 45 — according to reports released by state education officials Tuesday. There are about...

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Car claims life of S.F. pedestrian

A recent San Francisco State University graduate who friends described as hilarious and quirky was killed after a car hit her on Fell Street early Tuesday morning. A 19-year-old who lives on the Peninsula but was commuting to work in The City drove his Honda Civic to the right around a car that had stopped in front of him — a legal maneuver — according to police spokeswoman Sgt. Lyn Tomioka. The Civic then struck Melissa Hope Dennison, 24, of San Francisco and the impact threw her “a significant distance” from the intersection of Fell and Broderick streets, Tomioka said. The accident was reported at 6:27 a.m., fire dispatchers said. Dennison died at the scene....

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Stern Grove still has tree trouble

A year and five months after a falling redwood branch in Stern Grove killed a 50-year-old woman who was walking her dogs, there are still 350 trees in the park deemed hazardous and in need of removal. Since the incident, The City has removed 35 trees and pruned about 20 from the lush and expansive park in San Francisco’s southwest area. Just this summer, city tree crews removed eight of what were considered the highest priority in the park. But the remaining hundreds of trees — and hundreds more in other parks — will likely have to wait until at least next spring before they are removed, according to the Recreation and Park Department. For the father of Kathleen...

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Three killed in van crash, fire off Interstate 280

Traffic on Interstate 280 was gnarled Thursday afternoon after a fatal crash killed three, injured one other and caught a half-acre of brush on fire, California Highway Patrol reported. At around 1:20 p.m., a van was traveling northbound on I-280 in Millbrae, just south of Trousdale Drive, when for unknown reasons it veered off the road, rolled down the hill and caught fire, according to CHP Officer Grace Castillo. Two of the four passengers in the van were declared dead at the scene. A third passenger was airlifted to Stanford Hospital and later died. A fourth was transported to San Francisco General Hospital. The severity of the injuries is unknown, she said. All northbound lanes...

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Man falls by Muni tracks, later dies

A 58-year-old man died from injuries Tuesday morning shortly after he was discovered lying unresponsive next to Muni train tracks in Noe Valley. The cause of those injuries is still being determined, but according to onboard video retrieved by the Municipal Transportation Agency, San Francisco resident William Nelson exited an S-Castro Shuttle light-rail vehicle near Church and 22nd streets shortly before he was found by a witness. The video shows Nelson disembarking through the rear doors and walking approximately 20 to 30 feet alongside the train. He then appears to fall and is no longer visible, according to the transit agency. Muni spokesman Judson True would not say exactly how...

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Artwork may fade into history

For some, it’s a lovely but neglected reminder of a San Francisco community that was once far more colorful than it is today. For others, it’s an unattractive, faded piece of art that distracts from an otherwise beautiful building. At issue is a 29-year-old mural that wraps around three sides of the Bernal Heights Branch Library, depicting Hispanic and black children and figures from history. The mural was commissioned by The City in 1980 and was painted by late muralist Arch Williams, with help from children and volunteers from the community. Now, the library is undergoing a major renovation, paid for with voter-approved bond money. Last month, the Library Commission...

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Lucky numbers bring City Hall wedding rush

Today's date, 09-09-09, is considered by some to be a lucky numerical sequence - and many decided it would be an auspicious day to start their wedded life. At City Hall, marriage ceremonies for Sept. 9 were booked months in advance, said San Francisco County Clerk's Office Director Karen Hong Yee. The time slots for marriage ceremonies and licenses rarely fill up on Wednesdays in September, she said. Last Wednesday - September 2 - about a third of the slots for marriage certificates and two-thirds of the slots for wedding ceremonies at city hall were not filled. But this Wednesday, all 48 slots for marriage certificates and 33 slots for ceremonies filled up almost as soon as...

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S.F. jail inmate dies in custody

Police say a 31-year-old man went from struggling with jail deputies to collapsing comatose before dying in a San Francisco County Jail cell. Issiah Downes had been in psychiatric housing since he was arrested March 8 on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest, according to Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst. She said the 6-foot-1-inch, 300-pound inmate had been held in general psychiatric housing, but became disruptive and agitated. He agreed to go into a safety cell that has no hard surfaces or ways to harm oneself, according to police spokeswoman Sgt. Lyn Tomioka. Once there, he collapsed, Hirst said. Downes was declared dead at 6:34 p.m....

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Bridge-fix delay hits work week

An unexpected crack in the eastern span of the Bay Bridge is expected to cause commuter mayhem Tuesday morning, as roughly 300,000 people seek alternate routes. Officials said Monday the Bay Bridge opening will be delayed 24 hours, and they expect cars to begin driving over the 8.4 mile span by 5 a.m. Wednesday. The announcement had local transit agencies scrambling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of commuters. Asked how likely it is that the bridge will open by Wednesday morning, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said it was not guaranteed, but completing it by then is “within the realm of possibility.” “We’re giving it everything we’ve got,” he...

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Police cleaning up Dolores Park

Alcohol-fueled rowdiness at Dolores Park has led to an increased number of complaints — and a focus on people illegally drinking there. Dolores Park, a two-square-block hilly park in the oft-sunny Mission Dolores Neighborhood, has long attracted people who want to barbecue, entertain their children or enjoy the sun. Dolores has become The City’s most popular park and in recent years has begun attracting larger crowds than it can reasonably accommodate, according to the Recreation and Park Department. As the usage has grown, so have the complaints about fights, trash and unauthorized events, say neighborhood residents, parks officials and police. The displeasure with the...

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Alioto Fish sues city over toxic site

A longtime Fisherman’s Wharf tenant is looking to jump ship amid allegations that its site could be contaminated. Alioto Fish Co. wants The City to buy out its lease so the company can move its operations away from a parcel allegedly polluted by oil and gas company ExxonMobil Corp. A year ago, San Francisco sued ExxonMobil in federal court, alleging the oil company failed to live up to a 1994 agreement to clean up a fuel facility on Jefferson Street at Fisherman’s Wharf. ExxonMobil and related companies occupied the site from 1938 to 1992. The suit also alleged ExxonMobil had not reimbursed the Port of San Francisco for $137,000 in cleanup costs it incurred. Since then, The...

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Summer weather has been unusually cool

If Mark Twain’s supposed assertion that “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” has seemed particularly apropos this year, there’s a reason. Though last week’s two days of hot weather could slightly cloud one’s memory, this summer has indeed been unusually cold, the National Weather Service said Monday. June’s high temperatures were 1½ degrees cooler than normal for San Francisco, and the average daytime high in July was more than 3 degrees cooler than normal, according to forecaster Bob Benjamin. August was tracking to be 1 degree below normal, but the soaring temperatures Friday and Saturday bumped that average...

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Library upgrade project lacked proper oversight

By all accounts, West Portal residents love their recently renovated library. Its historic façade was preserved, it now has more book space and technology, and it’s finally earthquake safe. A new report by the Controller’s Office, however, charges that oversight of the renovation was lacking and possibly wasteful. The library is one of 16 in The City chosen for renovations that are being funded by two voter-approved bonds. The first, passed in 2000, authorized $106 million to upgrade libraries. In 2007, the library returned to voters and asked for tens of millions more to complete the projects. At the time, a Controller’s Office report said a lack of oversight,...

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Stern Grove drainage ditch works too well

When San Francisco resident Pat Skain heard three years ago that Stern Grove and the adjacent Pine Lake Park would be renovated to the tune of $20 million, he was elated. Maybe the park’s meadow would finally drain correctly so a giant mud pit wouldn’t form every winter. But three years later, money has come and gone — and come a rainy day, the mud pit will be back. The park has always had a drainage problem during heavy rain, in no small part because it was created on what was once a bog, Recreation and Park Department spokeswoman Lisa Seitz Gruwell said. The City is now looking into whether the contractor tasked with fixing the problem should be on the hook to...

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New police base ready for action

Tonight, a few members of the public will have the chance to see the new police headquarters — which is a dozen years in the making. Officers are expected to move into the new building by the end of the month, said San Mateo Community Development Director Robert Beyer. The new building is located on Franklin Parkway across from the southeast corner of the old Bay Meadows Race Track lot, about a mile southeast of the current building on South Delaware Street. Moving boxes have yet to make their way into the new building, as there are still some finishing touches to be made, according to officials, and portions of the facility still have to pass fire and safety...

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Commercial fishing on San Mateo County coast is sinking fast

If you give a fisherman a million bucks, the old joke goes, he’ll keep fishing until it’s all gone. That kind of gallows humor rings a little too true to generate many laughs these days in Pillar Point Harbor, where a once-thriving fishing community has dwindled to an aging group of only the most devoted fishermen — and many of those are relying on savings to sustain till the next good year. To hear people like Harbor Master Dan Temko tell it, just a few decades ago the Pillar Point Harbor teemed with fishermen who tied their boats to rafts because the berths at the harbor were all full. Captains looking for crews had their pick of young people eager to stake out...

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After-school, other programming at San Mateo rec center at risk

Asked what it will mean for his family if the Shore­view Recreation Center shuts down its after-school program due to budget concerns, Ken Buteyn, father of two 10-year-olds, comes up with one word: “Disaster.” Negotiating daily childcare is already a juggling act for Buteyn and his wife, who both work full time, particularly because their children are on a year-round school schedule. The prospect of having to rework carefully arranged schedules, or finding and paying for an after-school daycare situation, would be daunting. That’s precisely what the Buteyns and dozens of other families are likely to have to do, however, because the city, facing a sizeable budget...

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Levee blame leaves many hanging

The clock is ticking on Redwood Shores resident Carol Ford and nearly 4,500 other homeowners like her. They will be forced to pay hundreds of dollars a year for flood insurance on their homes if a levee at the nearby San Carlos Airport is not fixed by next year. But a year after the problem was first discovered, Redwood City, San Carlos and San Mateo County remain locked in a jurisdictional battle, each saying the others are responsible for fixing the problem. Ford said Redwood City should have taken responsibility. “They let us know about this problem a year ago, and they got everybody all excited,” she said. “Since then, couldn’t they have built this...

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Peninsula pooch owners rejoice in new park

It’s possible that not everyone would agree with this city’s claim that it’s home to “the premier dog park in San Mateo County,” but you’re not hearing any argument from Cooper. The sandy-blond toy poodle from San Bruno was ecstatic to return to Foster City’s dog park after it had been closed for a month and a half for improvements, said human companion Regina Eustaquio. The 20,000-square-foot park is located at the corner of Bounty Drive and Foster City Boulevard, adjacent to Boat Park. There are other dog parks closer to her house, but none are as nice as Foster City’s, she said. “I couldn’t wait for it to reopen,”...

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City clerk asked to take massive pay cut

A decision by the City Council to cut the city clerk’s salary by more than half has raised some eyebrows, left some crying foul and kept councilors playing defense. In a tense meeting last week, the City Council voted unanimously to slash the recently elected city clerk’s salary from $109,000 to $52,988, which resulted in her making less than any of the full-time employees in her office. Clerk Annette Hipona said the move was politically motivated, and points to the fact that none of the five current councilors, whom she describes as Daly City’s “political machine,” endorsed her candidacy in November. She said she is worried that her effectiveness as an...

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Grand Jury gives green light to red light cameras

In the initial six months of enforcement, the red-light camera issued 527 violations. The fine is currently $378.50, according to the report; the city receives approximately 34 percent. The grand jury recommended that the city add more cameras, noting that it had already sought approval from Caltrans for three intersections that have a history of collisions involving red-light violations. Red-light camera enforcement — used in dozens of states nationwide and proven to be effective, according to a federal study — has its problems and critics. Research by the Federal Highway Administration released in 2005 found that cameras can reduce red-light violations and broadside...

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Daughter searches for late artist dad’s mystery murals

It may not be quite as dramatic as Tom Hanks running through the Louvre trying to solve the Da Vinci Code, but the Peninsula has an art mystery of its own. The daughter of renowned San Francisco artist Brents Carlton is seeking information about four murals her father painted in 1928, as a 24-year-old fresh out of art school. Carrie Carlton Helser’s only clues come from a single line in a carefully kept ledger the artist maintained for his taxes, and four small black-and-white snapshots. Helser discovered the first clue in the 1970s, about a decade after her father’s death and after the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art asked Helser and her mother for custody of...

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Council denies new South City hotel

A plan to build a new Hyatt Hotel in the city faced a setback this week when the City Council rejected the proposal, saying they needed more details of the project. The proposed eight-story, 166-room hotel would be located on what’s currently an empty lot on Gateway Boulevard east of U.S. Highway 101. The new hotel could net the city about a half-million dollars annually in tax revenue, assuming the economy recovered and occupancy matched rates of recent years, city officials said. Developer Vijay Patel, whose family owns a small chain of hotels, submitted the proposal. He first approached the city about the project in 2007. His application went before the Redevelopment Agency in...

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System change buoys recycling

Many Peninsula residents currently have to sort recyclables into two containers: one for paper and cardboard, and another for plastic, glass and metal. Recycling advocates say this sorting process prevents some people from recycling — an argument that has convinced other Bay Area communities to switch to “single-stream” recycling, where everything is allowed in a single bin. Such bins will soon be dotting Peninsula cities. A plan to issue $65 million in bonds to replace the current Shoreway Recycling and Disposal Center and build a new facility cleared the final hurdle in the approval process this week. The new facility will serve the South Bayside Waste Management...

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High-speed rail would benefit from federal dollars, but agencies need to finalize details

Presenting a unified front to the secretary of transportation is Bay Area agencies’ best chance at securing some of the $8 billion of federal economic stimulus cash for transit projects, according to many regional transit experts. But to do that, three counties, a dozen cities and several regional and state transportation agencies will need to agree on the Bay Area’s priorities. In June, the U.S. Department of Transportation will lay out criteria for how it will distribute funds, and each of the nation’s 11 designated high-speed rail corridors will have the opportunity to qualify. Since its rail project is the furthest along and has state funding, California has...

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Daly City History Museum is a reality

In 1986, Bunny Gillespie approached the mayor at a celebration for this city’s 75th birthday and asked what his thoughts were on turning the old John Daly Library into a local history museum in time for the city’s centennial. “He told me to write him a letter about it,” Gillespie said. “So I did. I started writing to him, and every year after that my husband and I wrote to the new mayor and the new council. And finally, after more than 20 years, they came around and said, ‘OK, you’re going to get the new museum.’” This weekend, their perseverance will be rewarded when they see the historic library building reopened as the Daly City...

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3-Minute Interview: Girl Scout leader shares cookie-selling secrets

A San Francisco Girl Scout troop leader since 1999, Wendie Wu’s San Francisco troop now has more than 35 scouts — who will be selling the organization’s famous cookies until March 22. Wu was also a San Diego-based Girl Scout for nine years. Did you sell cookies when you were a Girl Scout? Oh, yes. Back then, it was a big deal to sell 100 boxes. My biggest sale was 103, and for selling that many I got a free week at day camp. Today, for a free week at camp, you have to sell 1,000 boxes. Has the process of selling the cookies changed much? I don’t think the basic process has changed, but the fact that we live in San Francisco makes the booth sales much better than...

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Short film details birth of South City

For much of the 19th century, the agricultural land just south of San Bruno Mountain was known as Baden. But that all changed when meatpacking baron Gustavus Swift moved into town around 1890 to start a stockyard. Swift’s other operations grew out of the industrial and agricultural lands of South Chicago and South Omaha. To Swift, the land wasn’t Baden — it was South San Francisco. The name stuck, and when the city was incorporated in 1908, its name became South San Francisco, while the name Baden was relegated to history. Now that history is resurrected in the short documentary film “South San Francisco — From Baden to Biotech,” which chronicles the...

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Development plans on controversial site released

The oft-controversial development of the Cargill site on the waterfront is back on the map. The vast mass of land on Redwood City’s waterfront has for decades operated as a salt manufacturing facility. In recent years, landowner Cargill Saltworks and developer DMB Saltworks have publicly vetted the idea of developing the 1,400-plus-acre site, but have yet to submit an official proposal to either Redwood City or the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the state agency that claims ultimate oversight of the project. A conceptual design for the 1,433-acre planned development, which the developer promised was still a work in progress, was, however, presented to...

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Debris pile replaces historic Bay Meadows racetrack

A pile of rubble where the Bay Meadows racetrack once stood will remain a fixture of San Mateo’s landscape — for now — as the massive 82-acre development planned for the site has been postponed indefinitely. Developers will wait until the market "has firmed up" to erect more than 1,000 homes and hundreds of thousands of square feet of office and retail space on the vast lot formerly occupied by the historic racetrack, said project manager Janice Thacher of development firm Wilson Meany Sullivan. In the meantime, the city will not receive more than a quarter-million dollars per year in revenue from taxes on the racetrack, said Finance Director Hossein Golestan....

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Plaque cements Hillsborough heist in history

One early morning in summer 1905, a man “9 feet high,” armed with “a small cannon” and wearing a black mask jumped out from the brush and pulled off the last known stagecoach robbery in the Bay Area. Regrettably for the bandit, he didn’t get much for his distinguished mark in the history books — the heist netted just $4.30. Later this month, a plaque will be erected to recognize this historic crime, which took place on Crystal Springs Road near Woodridge Road. The famous corridor meanders through Hillsborough’s dry canyons, past the old Casey Rock Quarry, on its way down to San Mateo. The event was rediscovered several years ago by Hillsborough...

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3-Minute Interview: Sport and Physical Education proponent discusses National Recess Week

Charlene Burgeson, the executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, is a key organizer of National Recess Week. Today, thousands of schools nationwide will participate in a simultaneous four-square game, including Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School in The City. Why is recess so important? Recess has a lot of benefits for young children. One is they get to be active, and that has obvious health benefits. But these benefits also help their ability to learn in the classroom. There’s also the social benefit of children learning to get along, compromise, make their own rules and figure out conflicts. Is it true that recess is disappearing in some...

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Daly City dealing with stray carts

It’s a question of how to handle basket cases — in the most literal sense. Daly City officials are hammering out the details of a shopping-cart ordinance passed in November that holds stores responsible for preventing shopping carts from rolling off their lots, or face fines of up to $500. Under the ordinance, stores would have the choice of paying the city to collect the wayward carts, creating a consortium to hire somebody to do it or install mechanisms to prevent the carts from being rolled away, such as wheels that lock after reaching an electronic boundary. Stores must also prominently display signs prohibiting carts from being removed both on their buildings and on...

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Stimulus still falls short of state cuts

Last week was full of good news and bad news for public transit in San Mateo County. First came the federal economic stimulus package, signed by President Barack Obama on Feb. 17, which included money to buy scores of much-needed new buses for SamTrans, and millions for improvement projects for Caltrain. California’s future high-speed rail also got a boost, when the anticipated $2 billion for such projects ballooned to $8 billion. But whatever spirits in the public transit world were buoyed by the prospect of federal dollars flowing to their agencies were promptly dashed in the wee hours of Feb. 18, when the state Legislature passed a budget that gutted public spending for both...

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Woman sees through disability

In 1998, when Gerda Cohn was a youthful 84, she lost the last remnants of her eyesight. She was told by her doctor that she could look forward to a fading old age of sitting in her rocking chair and listening to books on tape. She was distraught. “I went home and sat on my couch, not sure what I was going to do with my life,” Cohn said. “And then I thought, ‘I still have limbs. I’ve still got my health. I’ve got a mouth that talks. And most of all, I’ve got a brain — so think!’” And what she wound up thinking was that there was no way she would let her disability end her life. Cohn began volunteering more than she ever had,...

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Unique home tour benefits San Mateo school

Linda Siguenza knew that admirers of architect Joseph Eichler could tend toward to the passionate fanatic — after all, she was one herself. But when she and some neighbors organized a tour of Eichler-designed homes in their neighborhood to raise funds for their local school, they little anticipated that they’d be forced to cap ticket sales at 850 and field hundreds of upset calls from as far away as Utah that more tickets weren’t available. That was in 2007, when a group of residents from the San Mateo Highlands — a neighborhood that has more than 800 Eichler-built homes — organized the first Eichler Home Tour. This year, they’re organizing their...

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Filipino veterans see justice in stimulus bill

Alfredo Carino looked young for his nearly 18 years, so when he joined the U.S. Army on New Years Day of 1943, he was picked out to be a spy. Each day, he’d take eggs, fruit and vegetables to the garrison the Japanese military had recently established in his town, a seaside province of the Philippines, and sell them to soldiers, all the while carefully observing how much equipment was flowing through the garrison, how many soldiers, how many bodies. Later, he was armed with a gun and fought those Japanese soldiers, side by side with American troops. Carino said he and his comrades “fought hard for the U.S. Army” and that he was proud of his service, which is why years...

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Restaurants resisting effects of recession

Some may say that the middle of a recession isn’t the most prudent time to open a new restaurant, but Kristina Daya begs to differ. “My husband and I feel that of course, in good times, people like to go out and celebrate and spend money on fine dining,” said Daya, whose new Mediterranean restaurant, Tartousa Mediterranean Bistro, opened Wednesday. “But in hard times, you still need a place you can both feel at home and get away from all the chaos and the bills and the mortgage and everything else that’s eating you.” As it turns out, Daya is not the only San Mateo restaurateur who feels this way. Since December, more restaurants have opened their...

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Cyclists finally cruising with BART

To commute to his job in Millbrae by bike, Al Meckler had two choices: brave busy El Camino Real or take a circuitous back route that danced across the railroad tracks multiple times. Both seemed indirect or unsafe. As a result of a 19-year-long process that was circuitous in its own right, at least one portion of that commute will get a little easier next month. The city has built a 3-mile bicycle path atop the buried BART tube between the transit agency’s San Bruno and South San Francisco stations. Biking enthusiasts say the new $6.5 million path — half of which was completed last year — has already made the convoluted north-south trek a little simpler, and they...

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Filling the gaps in school budgets

The last school Nicole Johnson worked at didn’t have a parent foundation. It also didn’t have library access. That’s why Johnson doesn’t have any problem asking parents of children in the Burlingame School District to donate at least $500 per child per year. She knows the consequences if it doesn’t happen — and those potential consequences seem to be getting worse each year. “The money goes toward supplementing the P.E., music and library programs that are no longer paid for the by state,” said Johnson, who is with the Burlingame Community Education Foundation. “We actually pay the salaries of the teachers of those programs. And...

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Public safety agencies getting in sync

If a major earthquake were to strike one of the fault lines that runs through the Bay Area, emergency officials from across the region would largely rely on cell phones and land lines to communicate with one another. Most radio systems used by the region’s public-safety agencies are not compatible with those in other regions. The consensus is that this problem must be solved before a catastrophic emergency puts the region to a test, but the precise method for doing that is the subject of a heated debate — particularly in San Mateo County. The controversy centers around disagreements over which system is better: the analog system that has been used by most emergency officials...

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Belmont agrees to repair washed-out roadway

Neighbors who for years drove over a rickety, narrow road will finally get their due. The city has agreed to pay more than $100,000 to fix Marburger Road following a protracted legal battle with residents. The residents will even have their legal fees covered. Within city limits in the Belmont hills, the road was the subject of a lengthy dispute between the city and the road’s residents about who was responsible for making repairs. In a settlement agreement ratified by the City Council last month, the two sides finally settled the score, with Belmont agreeing to fix the road — and pay the residents $45,000 for their legal expenses. The dispute was sparked after much of the...

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Justin Reed Early to read from his memoirs

The author of “StreetChild: An Unpaved Passage” will read from his memoirs Wednesday at A Different Light Bookstore. After suffering mental and physical abuse at home, Early ran away at age 10 and lived on the streets of Seattle. He moved to San Francisco at 19, and later became clean and sober. He now works as a personal assistant for celebrities in Los Angeles. You grew up on the streets of Seattle, but at 19 you moved to San Francisco. Why did you move here? It was just a runaway thing. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was in trouble in Seattle, and was told by the judge that if I didn’t leave Seattle and got in trouble again I’d go to prison in...

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County officials more frugal with dollars

With city and county budgets tight and only getting tighter, some elected officials are backing off a long-standing tradition of spending a working weekend in Monterey on the taxpayer’s dime. This year, the Redwood City San Mateo County Chamber of Commerce will host its 40th annual Progress Seminar, an annual meeting of many of San Mateo’s most powerful movers and shakers to discuss issues facing the Peninsula. In past years, the seminar has attracted hundreds of government officials — elected and otherwise — as well as business leaders and people from the nonprofit sector. Its organizers tout the conference as one reason San Mateo County has fewer of the heated...

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Empty storefronts prompt rallying cry to shop locally

After watching five storefronts become empty within two blocks of his shop, businessman Paul Spitz has decided it’s time for you to do something about it. He wants you to shop in San Mateo. Spitz, who opened The Great Frame on 25th Avenue three years ago, has begun making noise to revive the “Shop San Mateo” campaign that was initiated several years ago but has since faded. The original Shop San Mateo campaign was initiated after the Sept. 11 attacks and the dot-com bust left the city short on tax revenue and local businesses pressed for customers. Banners were hung in the city, signs were posted in windows, and “big wild green bags” that advertised...

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Crime-fighting pooch Bacchus stayed on force longer than most dogs

It was 3 a.m. and Redwood City police Officers Bacchus and Steve Unga were sent out to check a burglary alarm in a restaurant on Seaport Boulevard. All was dark inside when they arrived, but it was possible the burglar was still inside. Unga looked at Bacchus and sent him in to lead the investigation. Sure enough, Bacchus hit the mark: He sniffed out the perpetrator, who had squeezed into a narrow gap between a food-preparation table and a wall. “It was such a tight spot that you’d probably glance over it and walk by, not thinking a person could be there,” Unga said. “But Bacchus found him.”It was all in a day’s work for the German shepherd, who was...

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Inmate escape spurs upgrades

A teenage murder suspect escaped from a youth detention center through a backyard, and a year later neighbors are still living on “pins and needles” because of fear that another escape will happen. On Saturday, it will be one year since murder suspect Josue Raul Orozco climbed over a wall at the Youth Service Center in the hills above San Mateo, escaping from a detention center that was perhaps not even supposed to be housing him. Orozco, who was 17 years old and facing a murder charge that carried a life-in-prison sentence, allegedly convinced two other youths he was playing basketball with to help boost him up to a lamp on the 15-foot wall. After scaling the wall, he...

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Madoff’s fall felt in San Mateo

Twenty years ago, at the advice of a good friend, Cliff Bernie’s parents began investing their nest egg with an East Coast asset-management firm that the friend promised “was doing things differently than other people do it.” In the last two months, it’s become increasingly clear exactly how “differently” the investor trusted with their money — Bernard Madoff — was in fact doing things: so differently that Cliff Bernie has now lost the bulk of his savings and has been forced to shutter the family fabric business his father started in San Mateo in 1957. “It’s been awful,” Bernie said. “I had to lay off a guy who had...

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Carolyn Cassady offers a new view to Beat legend Neal Cassady

Carolyn Cassady, the former wife of famous Beat-era novelist Neal Cassady will be signing her book, “Off the Road,” at North Beach’s Beat Museum from 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday, on what would have been her late husband’s 83rd birthday. How do you think Neal Cassady influenced San Francisco? It was later when he got known, from [Jack] Kerouac’s writing that he had an influence. And the reason he was [in San Francisco] was because I moved there in 1947 and he followed me. And Kerouac followed him, and [Allen] Ginsberg followed him. So there would never have been a Beat scene there otherwise. So his influence didn’t come until later? Yes, because Kerouac was...

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County expects deluge of reassessment requests

Legions of Peninsula homeowners are getting tax breaks by asking San Mateo County to reassess the value of their property. And the county’s budget picture isn’t any prettier for it. Some 8,600 people asked the county last year to review the value of their property, arguing the market price had dropped and they should be paying less in taxes. That figure was up from 1,070 requests in 2007, and 770 in 2006. Additionally, in the first 30 days of this year, there were 960 more requests — and county officials expect that figure to swell beyond anything seen before. “We don’t know how many reassessments we’ll do this year — 10, 15, 20,000,”...

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Levee plan would bypass flood insurance

Residents appear willing to put a proverbial finger in their waterfront levees to avoid a federal requirement to buy flood insurance, according to a recent survey. Last year, it was revealed that 7,000 San Mateo property owners and at least as many Foster City property owners could be obligated to buy federal flood insurance, because the Federal Emergency Management Agency said San Mateo’s levees were not high enough to protect the cities. This revelation set off a deluge of protest from Foster City residents and leaders, who complained that they should not be punished for San Mateo’s failure to improve their own levees. But now, a resolution may be in sight. San Mateo...

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Reward revives 30-year-old murder case

Sgt. Bryan Cassandro continues to work a murder case that first came across his desk 30 years ago. Now, however, police are hoping a reward will help them capture whomever killed a mother who disappeared from a San Francisco restaurant Feb. 2, 1979, and was found dead on San Bruno Mountain the next day. Modesto resident Roann Schweitzer, 43, was dining with her two daughters at the Canterbury Hotel in downtown San Francisco when one of her daughters became ill. As her other daughter paid the bill, Schweitzer went to get the car. She never returned. Schweitzer’s body was found by a hiker around 5:30 p.m. the next day up an embankment about 100 yards from Guadalupe Canyon Parkway...

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Sports-field demand outpaces space

Seeing people using the sports fields in Redwood City seems to be a good thing — but it may be too much of a good thing. It’s not uncommon to see eight different teams practicing on a single field during the busy spring and fall seasons, sometimes from two or three different leagues. Throw in a few guys and gals showing up in hopes of playing a game of pickup soccer on the field at their neighborhood park and you have a recipe for chaos. The city’s 22 sports fields are increasingly insufficient to handle the needs for playing space, and while sports leagues and community groups do their best to share them, city officials are beginning to consider how they might build...

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State, local health cuts could be painful

Edward Burns put his career aspirations nine years ago as an interior designer and graphic artist on the backburner to take care of his aging mother who is wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia. After a lengthy and arduous application and hearing process, the state agreed to pay Burns about $11.50 an hour for 30 hours a week to provide care for her. On this, and some extra hours he worked helping another disabled woman part time, he was just barely able to pay rent and put food on the table for himself, his mother and his teenage son. But now, Burns isn’t sure what he’ll do. He counts among the thousands of San Mateo County residents whose hourly wage will be slashed...

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Vital Pacifica services could be slashed without new funds

The governor isn’t the only one pondering an increase in sales taxes. The leaders of this coastal town are considering doling out about $150,000 for a special election in June to ask voters to increase the city’s retail sales tax by as much as one percentage point. If the state sales-tax rate is unchanged, such an increase would raise Pacifica’s retail sales-tax rate from 8.25 percent to 9.25 percent. The city is considering this option as a possible answer to its pending budget woes. A $75 fire assessment on property in Pacifica will end in June, and without some new source of revenue, the city said it will have to slash more than $1 million of services from its...

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New evidence reopens cold case

Daria Classen’s 20th birthday was supposed to be a happy occasion. She was about to hop on a plane to Cleveland to meet her boyfriend; she had a hunch he would pop the question. Her mother took her and her sister, Debra, to a celebratory dinner at a fancy San Francisco restaurant. During dinner at the Canterbury Hotel, Debra became ill, and Daria paid the bill while her 43-year-old mother, Roann Schweitzer, went to fetch the car from a nearby lot. Her mother didn’t return. The next day, Schweitzer’s body was found in a remote area on San Bruno Mountain in San Mateo County. She had apparently been assaulted on her way to the car; broken glass was found on the pavement...

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New vessel to patrol fringes of Bay

In October, Redwood City police started getting calls about a group of people living illegally on a cluster of anchored sailboats along the city’s waterfront, doing drugs on the decks, having sex in full sight of people watching from the shore, and tossing waste and trash straight into the Bay. At first, police were hard-pressed to solve the problem, since their only police boat wasn’t working, and they ultimately had to borrow an inflatable fireboat to reach the miscreants. Next time this situation comes up — and it does with some frequency in Redwood City’s sloughs — police will be better equipped, thanks to a well-placed gift aimed at solving some of the...

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Sewage plant plans to reduce PG&E bill

South San Francisco’s sewage treatment plant could be decorated with 6-foot windmills and a layer of solar panels later this year. The plant is the city’s largest energy consumer, forking over about $80,000 a month to PG&E, according to plant Assistant Supervisor Ken Navarre. Because of a desire to cut down on this cost and “reduce [the city’s] dependence on PG&E,” South San Francisco is considering investing in a $4 million combo wind-and-solar power system for the plant, City Engineer Ray Razavi said. A second phase of the project could involve lining the nearby Costco with more solar panels, he said. The water treatment plant squats near South...

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Smoking bans spread

Pretty soon, San Mateo County smokers will have to pull out a list and a map to figure out where they can go to light up. Redwood City is the latest Peninsula city to consider a major smoking ban in their parks — following the lead of Burlingame, Pacifica, San Mateo County and Belmont. Foster City is considering a similar ban. Redwood City’s proposed ban, which would prohibit smoking in all city parks, arose after a “smoking-related conflict” occurred during a Music in the Park concert. In May last year, an informal online survey was conducted to feel out public sentiment on the topic. Of 300 respondents, some 86 percent were in favor of a ban. A public hearing...

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Agency takes control of San Mateo County health care

Until recently, if a low-income or uninsured woman in San Mateo County went into labor, she’d have to be sent to the next county to have her baby. Not anymore. Now she’ll go to the nearest hospital, as well as receive prenatal care at the clinic closest to her community and be connected with a range of health care providers to keep her and her baby healthy. These are some of the changes that have been wrought in recent months during an overhaul of San Mateo County’s $500 million health care services, according to Srija Srinivasan, special assistant to the county manager. Last summer, all of the county’s health services — from its overtaxed hospital to its...

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Half Moon Bay: You gotta have faith

An independent audit of the city’s finances offers a grim view of the future, bringing into question its ability to survive. But leaders of the coastal town say they have great faith that the city will find a solution to its dire financial problems, in part because of newly hired leadership. In April, Half Moon Bay was slammed with an $18 million settlement in a land dispute after a federal judge ruled that the city had created wetlands on a developer’s 24-acre property and the developer would not be allowed to build there. The city will have to either allow the developer to build on the land — which would require a change in state law — or pay the developer...

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City makes effort to remove sunken boats

Matt Browne has been spending the hours when most are people asleep up to his thighs in mud, working by moonlight. Browne and his partner have been hired to do one of the dirtiest jobs in the city: pull three long-sunken boats out of the sludgy floor of Redwood City’s sloughs. He’s been doing it by night, since the tide has been at its lowest lately after the sun sets. The three boats Browne is targeting have been there for nearly a decade, and have long been labeled an eyesore and an environmental hazard — and a navigation disaster waiting to happen — said Farris Hix, City Code enforcement officer. But until recently, there was never enough money, $18,000, to...

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Music's over for Muni station's future as jazz club

The historic Muni substation in the Fillmore district apparently wasn’t all that jazz after all. The two-story brick building on the corner of Fillmore and Turk streets was built in 1902 and once housed large electricity-generating turbines for streetcars. Five years ago the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency purchased the building from The City for $900,000 in hopes of converting it into a new jazz center or some other community resource. Recently the agency decided to sell it back to The City, and millions of dollars that were allocated to the project are now being reallocated, according to Redevelopment Chief Fred Blackwell. A redevelopment agency project, the Fillmore Jazz...

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San Bruno looking for new downtown vision

There was a time when San Bruno’s three-block downtown was the busy hub of the city. But a large mall and two major shopping centers later, the city’s downtown is looking a little old and tired, and businesses are struggling to lure shoppers. “It definitely needs help,” says San Bruno’s Community Development Director Mark Sullivan. “We want to restore its identity as sort of the heart of the city — the city’s core area.” Wednesday, San Bruno city leaders will host a workshop about their Downtown and Transit Corridor Plan — to revitalize the downtown area, which sits within the triangle made by San Mateo Avenue, El Camino Real,...

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Cab companies looking to raise fares amid downturn

Prices at the pump may be down, but get ready to pay more when you step into the next cab. San Mateo’s three cab companies are lobbying to have rates increased, and say they’ll be asking for similar rate hikes in other Peninsula cities. The companies say they are trying to help cab drivers stay afloat in a painfully slow economy, but advocates for seniors say the proposed hike would hit that population at the same time as a slated Feb. 1 hike in public transportation rates. “Especially the really low-income people will be weighing, ‘Do I really have to take this trip or don’t I?’” said San Mateo resident May Nichols, chair of the county’s...

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'Bringing the Noise' for King's birthday

Hodari Davis, the national program manager at Youth Speaks, a spoken-word education nonprofit, will be the host for the organization's 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, “Bringing the Noise,” at 7 p.m. Monday at the Herbst Theatre. What can people expect from this event? They can expect to be inspired by the voices and talents of young people. They can also expect to be surprised at the critical thinking and the breadth of understanding displayed by those who are performing on stage and those who are in the audience. Will you perform? I’ve been asked to present some poetry. What have you been writing about lately? I’ve been writing a lot about Oscar...

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Blue skies ahead

The Mavericks big-wave surf competition won’t be held this weekend, but it might still be a good time to take that drive down the coast: sunny skies are expected Saturday and Sunday. After today, temperatures should decline slightly, from a high of about 65 expected in The City today to about 59 on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday Monday, said National Weather Service forecaster Diana Henderson. But the skies are expected to stay blue, even as temperature slides, she said. Not even fireplace smoke will smudge those blue skies, as the Bay Area Air Quality Management District has declared a winter Spare the Air day through noon today. The declaration, which falls on days when...

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Council hopefuls wait out decision

More than a dozen people applied for the vacant San Mateo City Council seat by the 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline. The seat became vacant when the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors appointed then-San Mateo Mayor Carole Groom to join their ranks, as a replacement for former Supervisor Jerry Hill, who was elected to the state Assembly in November. The City Council opted not to hold a special election to replace Groom, instead deciding to appoint someone to hold the position until the November election. The vocal Beresford/Hillsdale Neighborhood Association wrote a letter to council members urging them to appoint someone who promises not to run in November, arguing that that person would...

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Benefits hacked for San Carlos future hires

In a move perhaps signaling what is to come in other cash-strapped cities, San Carlos this week approved a reduction in benefits for future employees. Starting in March, everyone hired by the city will be offered fewer retirement benefits than those already employed. Similar reductions were already agreed to three years ago by the Fire Department and by the Police Department last year. On Monday, the City Council approved reductions for all city employees. Assistant City Manager Brian Moura said the city is the first on the Peninsula to diminish benefits to all future employees. The move could be a precursor to similar drops in benefits elsewhere in the county and state, as cities look...

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Mavericks organizers look to this weekend for contest

The organizers of Mavericks big wave surf contest will decide at 9 a.m. Thursday whether to call the contest for this weekend, as big swells are headed that could bring massive waves. Surfers are already headed to the Bay Area in preparation for the contest. “Everybody’s coming in on Friday and some guys are even coming in on Thursday night to be here when the swell starts to build,” contest director Jeff Clark said today. The swell is expected to hit the coast Friday and extend through Saturday, said Keir Beadling, chief executive of Mavericks Surf Ventures. However, he said, it’s still too soon to project whether the swell will be ideal for the contest, which...

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Daly City hit hard by housing crisis

Daly City has taken a big hit during the nation’s housing crisis. Though no local, state or federal agency collects or organizes information about where or why the foreclosures are happening — a reality that has infuriated and stymied city officials — private online database RealtyTrak indicates Daly City has had hundreds more foreclosures than any other city in the county. The only city in the county that eclipses Daly City in its per capita foreclosures is the much smaller East Palo Alto in the southeastern corner of the county. Daly City officials believe families in every neighborhood have been displaced. To attempt to get some handle on how the housing crisis is...

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Brisbane moves ahead on City Hall remodel

When most San Mateo County cities are preparing for the worst economic crisis in decades, this small city has allocated $2.4 million to complete renovations on City Hall. The city will try to pay for most of that with municipal bonds — an almost unheard of endeavor in recent months. But Brisbane isn’t your typical city. The bayfront town of about 3,500 has long had very healthy reserves, enough to be able to run city operations for at least six months. And though the city is now facing tougher times — perhaps a $2 million to $4 million shortfall during the next five years — city leaders believe they can handle the crisis without layoffs or massive cuts to...

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City filters out smoking in most homes

Smoking in apartments and condos will be snuffed out Friday, and city officials — and landlords — are bracing for trouble. The ban in homes is the most controversial piece of a law that was passed in 2007. The initial phase of the ordinance, implemented in November 2007, outlawed smoking in public places such as parks, sports fields, shopping areas or outside any business. The ordinance was approved by the City Council in 2007, and garnered accolades for the 25,000-population Peninsula town from anti-smoking groups and criticisms from privacy and smokers’ rights groups. Though it drummed up a lot of press, city officials have yet to receive any complaints from...

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Police awaiting test results on Sharp Park body

Investigators are awaiting a coroner’s toxicology report to learn more about the circumstances surrounding a suspicious death that occurred at Sharp Park Golf Course last month. On Dec. 18, a hiker found the body of 34-year-old Pacifica resident Laura Jessica Valentine near the 17th tee. Pacifica police spokesman Capt. Fernando Realyvasquez said Valentine was overheard having a verbal dispute on the phone before leaving her house the previous night. Valentine’s death is still being treated as suspicious, although there were no marks on her body, he said. Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the report will indicate whether Valentine, who was found in a...

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San Mateo County watching senator’s bailout bill closely

San Mateo County agencies, schools and cities are pinning their hopes on proposed federal legislation by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to rescue their budgets from the massive clobbering wrought by Lehman Brothers Inc.’s bankruptcy. About $155 million was invested by cities, school districts, the Community College District and county government via an investment pool. The county filed a lawsuit against Lehman executives to recover some of the lost assets. Feinstein’s bill aims to restore those assets. The legislation carves out $10 billion of federal rescue funds from the Troubled Assets Recovery Program to funnel into local governments that invested in Lehman and other...

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San Mateo County readies supervisor shuffle

San Mateo residents will see the city's former mayor sworn in as their county supervisor at a special meeting tonight in San Mateo City Hall. Carole Groom, who served on the San Mateo City Council for the last eight years, was appointed to replace Jerry Hill as district supervisor, because Hill was elected to the state Assembly in November. The county's other four supervisors could have authorized a special election to replace Hill, but instead opted to appoint Groom, choosing her against 10 other candidates for the position. Groom will be sworn in by San Mateo Council member John Lee. Also at the 6 p.m. meeting, Supervisor Mark Church is expected to be elected president of the board,...

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State now requires testing on all children’s products

Tens of thousands of California thrift stores, garage-sale hosts and eBay peddlers have been selling illegal goods for the past five days — and they probably didn’t even know it. Even if they were aware of it, they probably wouldn’t know exactly how to avoid it, except to take all their children’s clothes and toys to the dump. A state law that went into effect Jan. 1 makes it illegal to sell or give away any children’s items — including clothes — that haven’t been tested for lead or phthalates, a chemical used to make plastics more pliable. The same will be true throughout the rest of the nation Feb. 10, when a similar federal regulation...

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SamTrans bus arrival times going high-tech

The timetables for several SamTrans bus routes will be receiving a high-tech boost. The San Mateo County Transit District has hired a contractor to install electric signs indicating estimated arrival times on all SamTrans bus lines that go to the Daly City BART, Colma BART and the Redwood City Sequoia Station. Arrival times will also be available on the Bay Area’s 511 phone system and on 511.org, allowing customers to know precisely where their bus is and time their own arrival at the stop to coordinate with that of the bus. The system works by placing a Global Positioning System on each vehicle and then conveying the expected arrival times to signs installed at bus stops along...

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Hotel proposed for San Francisco’s seawall lot

A group of hotel operators has proposed constructing a building on a narrow strip of waterfront that has been the subject of considerable debate. The two-thirds of an acre Seawall Lot 351 — a triangular strip of land just north of the Ferry Building at The Embarcadero and Washington Street — was created when the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished. Since then, it has been a parking lot, according to the Port of San Francisco, which owns the land. Multiple developers have proposed building condominiums on the land, but that proposal has always been met with opposition from the neighborhood. Most recently, San Francisco Waterfront Partners, which developed nearby piers...

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The New Deal helped build The City

Imagine San Francisco without the Bay Bridge. Or the airport. Or Treasure Island. Or Aquatic Park. Or the zoo. That is just a partial list of local landmarks that exist as a result of the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt’s economic policy in the 1930s to help dig the nation out of the Great Depression. Those investments, which continued until World War II, put millions of people to work and created much of the infrastructure we still rely upon today, historians say. As President-elect Barack Obama touts an economic stimulus package that many are calling the “New” New Deal, historians are continuing to track the legacy of the original. The California Living...

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City finally has a surplus — of cardboard

A crash in the value of recycled cardboard is causing mountains of cardboard to pile up outside on San Francisco streets, officials are warning. “This is an issue that affects the cleanliness of our streets. All recyclables, including cardboard, should only be placed out for collection when a licensed hauler is scheduled to pick it up,” said Mohammed Nuru, Department of Public Works deputy director of operations. On any given day illegal recycling collectors roam The City streets in trucks — known as “mosquito fleets” — looking for cardboard and other recyclables. In recent weeks, however, they’ve stopped collecting the cardboard as frequently...

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Woman dies in car crash

A 23-year-old San Francisco woman was killed in Golden Gate Park Monday morning when a Jeep Cherokee in which she was a passenger — driven by her husband — flipped and ran into a light post. The couple’s 3-year-old child was in the back seat and sustained minor injuries. The woman, identified by the San Francisco Medical Examiner as Jessica Soriano, died about two hours after the accident. Her husband was not hurt, according to police. The accident occurred around 8:15 a.m. Monday on Crossover Drive, a section of Highway 1 that passes through Golden Gate Park and connects 19th Avenue and Park Presidio Boulevard. The black Jeep Cherokee was heading northward on the...

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Mavericks window to open on Jan. 1

It looked like the gnarly economy might spell a wipe-out for the Mavericks big wave contest this year, but the contest has managed to pull out of that barrel. Beating worries that the contest wouldn’t be able to attract enough sponsorship to be held this year, the contest is now officially on — if somewhat delayed, according to organizers. The contest is held each year at the surf break off of Pillar Point near Half Moon Bay, one of the most challenging surfing spots in the world due to its huge waves, cold water, dangerous currents and rocky coastline. The contest began in 1999 and has been held each year that there have been suitable surfing conditions. During the...

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Personal Best: Kickin’ it in the Sunset

Like many athletic teenagers in England in the 1970s, it didn’t take long for Kru Edgerton Brown to get caught up in the martial arts wave that swept the world around that time. Brown had always played soccer and dabbled in boxing — two of England’s favorite sports — but he soon started taking karate lessons. It wasn’t long before he was exposed to Muay Thai — a kickboxing art that was and remains Thailand’s favorite sport, or, as Brown describes, “What they watch on TV instead of baseball.” He fell in love with the martial art for its fluidity and grace, and devoted himself to training in the sport. Nearly two decades later, he won...

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Schlage Lock factory may finally meet wrecking balls

The City’s old Schlage Lock factory, closed in 1999 and left derelict since then, will finally meet the proverbial wrecking ball, perhaps as soon as February, according to city officials. The Planning Commission on Thursday approved a proposal to transform the abandoned site and the neighborhood around it into a 46-acre transit village. The plan consists of cleaning up rife contamination from 70 years of lock manufacturing and building hundreds of new homes, parks, businesses and even a grocery store. Though the plan must still be approved by the Redevelopment Agency and Board of Supervisors, Thursday’s approval by the Planning Commission gives the site’s owners the...

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Cable car, SUV collide, injuring two

Two people were hospitalized and blood was left pooled on Hyde Street following a peak-hour collision Wednesday evening between a moving cable car and a sport utility vehicle. The 4:55 p.m. accident, near the intersection of Hyde and North Point streets in Russian Hill, closed a quiet block to traffic near The City’s Ghirardelli Square and Russian Hill Park, and disrupted service on the Powell-Hyde line for almost two hours. A woman in her mid-30s, who had been riding in the green, three-door Honda SUV, was left hospitalized at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital with injuries not considered life threatening. The SUV sustained cracked front windows and substantial damage to its rear,...

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Stem cell money at risk

Proponents of a stem cell research center in The City are acting quickly to come up with a “contingency plan” in case the state continues to yank bond funding for anything that is not considered vital. On Wednesday — as the governor and dozens of others celebrated a $25 million donation from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to help UC San Francisco’s new stem cell research building come to life in the Sunset district — a panel of state officials in Sacramento voted to stop financing $4 billion in bond funding for infrastructure projects across the state. The three-member Pooled Money Investment Board voted not to lend money for an estimated 2,000...

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AT&T's general manager speaks up about kids with cell phones

The Three-Minute Interview: Terry Stenzel, the AT&T general manager and vice president for Northern California and Reno, talks about cell phone use among younger children. Have you seen children with cell phones get younger? Dramatically, and that’s really in the last couple years — even in the last year. It kind of keeps working its way down. Before, you’d see someone in high school who had a phone, and now we’re seeing it clear down into the grade schools. What’s the youngest child you’ve seen with a cell phone? I think age 7. How are cell phones useful for young kids? I had a good friend of mine whose daughter decided to get on a school...

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One found dead in two-alarm Nob Hill fire

An elderly woman who acquaintances said was nearly blind was found dead under a pile of rubble in her apartment Tuesday after a fire roared through her Lower Nob Hill building. Fire officials responded to the blaze in the 53-unit apartment building at 947 Bush Street about 12:15 p.m. after flames began erupting from a second-story apartment. The apartment belonged to Loretta Jue, a woman in her mid-70s who suffered from glaucoma, according to building manager Joe Rinaldi and others who knew the woman. Firefighters found her body under a pile of burnt debris in the hours after the fire was extinguished. As of late Tuesday, fire investigators had not determined what caused her apartment...

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Historic brawl over preservation commission

Tensions are flaring on the issue of who should sit on the newly created Historic Preservation Commission and exactly how much power they should have. On Dec. 5, Mayor Gavin Newsom submitted nominees for each of the seven seats on the voter-approved commission. That list has already been amended and two pieces of legislation have been introduced to determine the powers of the commission. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who says he is proud of his reputation as the “preservation supervisor,” introduced legislation that would grant the commission broad powers, while Newsom has submitted legislation that would greatly moderate those powers. At stake is how The City makes decisions...

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Man killed after visiting wife in nursing home

Almost every day, 87-year-old Victor Cinti would wake up before dawn for a two-mile trip to visit his wife in a nursing home. On Sunday, he didn’t make it home. As he walked across Geary Boulevard at Webster Street around 2 p.m., he was struck by a vehicle and killed. Police believe he may have crossed against a green light at the intersection, which has an overhead pedestrian bridge and no ground-level crosswalk, according to police Capt. Richard Correia. The death has left the people who knew Cinti deeply saddened, said Freedom Pyakural, who works at the Union Square Plaza Hotel, where Cinti had lived for more than 20 years. She said he and his wife lived together at the...

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Motorcycle officer who crashed in critical condition

A San Francisco police officer remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday after he and another officer lost control of their motorcycles Sunday while escorting 150 Harley Davidson riders on a toy giveaway. Officer Felix Sung, 51, and another officer were leading the motorcyclists on their annual ride to donate toys and money to children at San Francisco General Hospital, according to police spokesman Sgt. Wilfred Williams and Police Officer Association Vice President Kevin Martin. As the escort descended the rain-slicked hill on Bayshore Boulevard near Wheat Street, the officers hit a small oil slick and lost control of their motorcycles, Martin said. During the accident,...

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Transportation plan sacks game-day congestion

If the 49ers’ record wasn’t bad enough, game-day traffic can give even the most die-hard fan a headache. Ticket holders sometimes spend more time sitting in traffic getting to and from the game as they do watching the team play. But if the 49ers choose to stay in The City this will change, according to a draft transportation plan recently released by city officials. The transportation plan lays out a broad vision for relieving the bottleneck on Harney Way and unclogging Bayview streets on game days, if the team takes The City up on its offer to build a new stadium at Hunters Point rather than moving to Santa Clara. Among the plans — many of which would go into...

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A serious temblor would crush homes

More than 40,000 residents who live in San Francisco’s most vulnerable types of buildings would no longer have homes if the San Andreas Fault produced a 7.2-magnitude quake today, a new study revealed. An analysis commissioned by The City looked at the consequences of a serious earthquake on San Francisco’s 2,800 large, wood-framed, soft-story apartment or condo buildings — structures that are at least three stories, contain five or more residential units and have either retail space or garages on the first floor — which received the most damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The report found a stunning 80 percent would be so damaged they would be unlivable...

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Man accused of stomping child's kitten to death

A man angry with a 5-year-old girl grabbed her kitten, threw it off a balcony and then stomped it to death, according to police. The Redwood City man, 33-year-old Jesus Calderon-Franco, became angry when he realized his roommate’s daughter, the owner of the 4-month-old cat named Pucci, had scribbled her name and her mother’s name on the bathroom door, Redwood City police Sgt. Steve Blanc said. At the time of the incident, the evening of Nov. 30, the girl was out of the house shopping with her father, according to San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. The father’s brother had dropped by and watched Calderon-Franco become enraged by the drawing...

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Presidio museum plan still a work in progress

If Presidio leaders hoped to win over foes of the park’s proposed modern art museum with a drastic revision of the plan, they woke up disappointed today. More than 300 people turned out to a public meeting of the Presidio Trust on Tuesday night to discuss the new plan, and the vast majority of the speakers — whether in favor or opposed to the project — said their opinion was untouched by the changes. For six months, the Presidio Trust has been publicly vetting a proposed project by Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher to build a 100,000-square-foot museum in the heart of the Presidio. Until recently, the proposal would have consisted of a single, massive building on...

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Angel Island attraction ready for its close-up

It’s been 71 years since Dale Ching first set foot on Angel Island, but he still recalls the bewilderment and horror he felt as a 16-year-old immigrant from China. Expecting his journey across the Pacific to conclude with a joyous reunion with his father, he was instead met by armed guards and barbed-wire fences. Today, he’ll return to the island. This time, however, he will be an honored guest. He’ll also be one of the first people to tour the U.S. Immigration Station — where he was detained in 1937 — to see the first completed phase of a $65 million restoration project that could turn the relic into a major tourist stop and bring international attention to...

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Sorry, San Carlos, no onramp for you

A 20-year-old plan to give San Carlos an onramp to Interstate 280 is being abandoned with plans to funnel the $3 million set aside for the project to Caltrain instead. As a result, the residents of San Carlos’ western hills will continue to make a multimile detour to the south every time they need to reach the freeway that runs through the heart of the Peninsula. The final relinquishment of the project and its funding is essentially a formality — the project has not been on anyone’s radar for decades, according to San Mateo County officials. But the story behind the money and its provenance opens up a window to a quirky piece of the historical territorial battle...

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Museum would require millions of public transit dollars

Constructing a 100,000-square-foot modern art museum in the Presidio may be a pricey endeavor for the philanthropists who proposed it, but could also cost The City. It would cost Muni millions to transport the estimated 1.5 million annual visitors to Gap owners Don and Doris Fishers’ proposed museum, according to a memorandum written earlier this fall by leaders of the Municipal Transportation Agency. That’s on top of an estimated $7.2 million to buy eight new buses to serve the area, the report states. There is currently very little public transportation to the Presidio, ae national park where the Fishers have proposed building a museum to house their vast collection of...

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Caltrain offers free rides after major system breakdown

Thousands of people enjoyed free – if somewhat delayed – rides Thursday on Caltrain, after the agency decided to open up their gates as an apology for a massive system breakdown earlier in the day. Caltrain officials were unable to estimate how much the breakdown and subsequent free rides would cost the Peninsula’s cash-tight train system – the primary public transportation line between San Jose, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The problem started when Caltrain’s primary server that controls rail signals failed – and then the backup to that server failed as well, according to Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn. That breakdown, which happened just...

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High-speed rail plan needs federal boost

California’s champions of high-speed rail are ratcheting down their expectations for private funding while ratcheting up their hopes for money — possibly as much as $15 billion — from the federal government. Proponents of the $33 billion project, which would connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with trains that travel more than 200 mph, initially estimated that private funding would pay for one-third of the project. According to a new business plan, however, the California High Speed Rail Authority will be looking to the federal government to pay for as much as 45 percent of the project, said board member Ron Diridon Sr. “We could be asking for as much as $15...

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Revamping piers would bring more ferries to The City

The City’s downtown waterfront could be transformed into a ferry mecca, with a new terminal at the beleaguered Pier ½, two more at the base of Mission Street and expanded open space to handle emergencies and special events. The fledgling proposal, conceived by the Water Emergency Transportation Authority and scheduled for discussion Thursday, would reinvent the waterfront around the Ferry Building, and could bring thousands of new ferry riders to The City’s waterfront daily. The plan calls for three new ferry docks to accommodate a total of six new ferry berths, which would serve six new routes to the Berkeley area, Treasure Island, Redwood City, Richmond, Antioch,...

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'Hacienda Heights' star enjoys femme fatale role

Jasmine Morales, The Tiburon-born actress plays Vida Fonseca, a character in the new soap opera “Hacienda Heights.” The show premieres at noon today on KRON and will air weekly on Wednesdays. What is “Hacienda Heights” about? It’s a groundbreaking show. It’s an all-Latin cast, though we speak English. I like to call it the Latin “Dallas.” It’s about extreme wealth, power, sex and money. It’s about two rivaling families who want those things. Who’s your character? I play Vida Fonseca. I’m widowed and I own a restaurant — and I’m the femme fatale, the sex bomb. Let me put it this way: I don’t cook and...

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Macy's window a big hit for animal adoption

The haggard economy may mean a slow holiday season for some items, but apparently puppy love is recession-proof. Dozens of dogs and cats have received a new home after being adopted out of the Union Square Macy’s window display. In the first nine days of the display, some 76 animals were adopted, compared to just 55 in the same period last year, said Kiska Icard of the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The organization partners with Macy’s to adopt animals out of the store’s front windows. Icard didn’t know what may be motivating so many people to adopt this year, except “the windows are unbelievably cute this year —...

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Homicide count nears ’07 total

Gunshots erupted at a raucous party in Golden Gate Park on Saturday night, leaving a 20-year-old San Francisco man dead. Witnesses say the victim, identified by authorities as Brandon Evans, was among about 100 young people drinking and listening to a live band perform at the horseshoe pits above the Conservatory of Flowers. A 911 call summoned authorities to Conservatory Drive shortly before 11 p.m., where they found Evans fatally wounded, Park Station police said. No arrests have been made. The east end of Golden Gate Park is the scene of occasional assaults, usually between homeless people, but shootings are rare, authorities said Sunday. San Francisco couple Anita Carter, 41,...

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S.F. homeowners miffed by assistance program

Hundreds of homeowners may find themselves paying The City hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of selling their homes at the price they’re worth. About 275 homeowners who participated in San Francisco’s first effort to help residents get a leg up in its pricey housing market say they were lied to about the terms of the program, in which they are able to buy their homes at below-market rates. They are not happy with The City’s proposed fix, which would require most of them to spend about $150,000 — and some of them as much as $500,000 — in order to now sell their homes at the going rate. As it stands, The City will only allow those homes to be...

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Man cuts off talks in standoff with police

A tense standoff between police and a man allegedly holed up in his parents’ home with a gun neared the 24-hour mark Sunday night without resolution. The situation began about 11 p.m. Saturday, when the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office received a call from the 29-year-old’s parents saying their son had been acting strangely, sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Ray Lunny said. The parents left the house and police tried to convince their son to do the same, but he cut off contact Sunday morning and “the conversation has been one-way between us and him since then,” Lunny said. The man is believed to have mental health problems, may be under the influence of...

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Journey of Macy’s tree starts at 7,200 feet

Not many can say where they may be in 17 years. But the tree that now stands in the Union Square has been destined for the heart of San Francisco for just about that long, said tree farmer James Carlton. The Carlton family, now in its third generation of choosing the right trees for public spaces, eyed the conifer on the high slopes of Mount Shasta around 1991, and figured that once it was tall enough, it could be a perfect candidate for one of San Francisco’s most iconic holiday landmarks. The tree has been groomed for the job ever since, Carlton said. The tree, which will be lit before an audience of thousands Friday, is not the typical white fir tree the Carltons usually use...

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Limits proposed on Van Ness chain stores

It will be more difficult for chain stores to open on Van Ness Avenue under legislation before the Board of Supervisors today. The new regulations, proposed by Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, would require any new chain stores, also known as "formula retail," to go through a special, conditional-use permitting process before the Planning Commission if they wanted to open shop on Van Ness. McGoldrick said the move is in advance of major changes that have already begun to take place on The City corridor. Projections estimate that thousands of new homes will be built along Van Ness in coming decades and those residents should have a say about what sort of businesses show up in their...

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Cities looking to boost local business

With the economy dulling by the day, some Peninsula cities are working to make their local businesses sparkle. San Mateo’s City Council will provide $234,000 to an effort to promote the downtown business district as a brand. Nearby San Carlos is meeting with businesses to see if they can help them weather the financial storms. And Foster City is exploring how its sustainability effort – which pursues environmentally-friendly policies and practices -- could help local businesses. These efforts are being made as the nation’s consumers have become more conservative with spending. Businesses across the country have taken a hit, with some not surviving it. With the sales...

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Board approves plan to change face of S.F.

In one fell swoop Tuesday night, a huge swath of San Francisco was set on a path that will allow new housing to mushroom in formerly industrial neighborhoods. It may protect some of what’s left of The City’s blue-collar roots. The Board of Supervisors voted to rezone four large neighborhoods on the eastern side of The City, including parts of the Mission district, lower Potrero Hill, SoMa and Dogpatch neighborhoods — roughly 7 percent of The City. About half the industrial land in those neighborhoods will now be zoned for housing and mixed use. Those areas have been the site of many of the most contentious battles in recent decades about land use and affordable...

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Hospital won’t repeat mistakes of the past

The new San Francisco General Hospital will be an example of lessons learned, city officials say. The last time voters approved a hospital bond — $299 million in 1999 for the expansion of Laguna Honda Hospital — it took more than five years to get through the planning and design process. By that point, construction costs had inflated so much that one of the new buildings had to be dropped and the number of new beds was slashed by one-third. This time, nothing of the sort will take place, say health care officials. Today, just 16 days after voters approved an $877.4 million bond to rebuild General Hospital, the project will be handed to the Planning Commission for final...

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Metreon to be revamped

After years of struggling with an identity crisis, the Metreon may finally have found a new face to put forward. Next month, owners will unveil plans to revamp the 300,000-square-foot mall, which has struggled to turn a profit despite sitting on some of The City’s most prime real estate — adjacent to the Yerba Buena Gardens on Mission and Fourth streets. The plans include bringing in a slew of new restaurants, retail stores and cultural spaces, and redesigning the first, second and fourth floors of the four-story mall, while leaving intact the successful movie and IMAX theaters on the third floor, said Amy Neches of the Redevelopment Agency. The first floor of the...

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Holiday travel likely to be a breeze at SFO

If you’re planning to fly this holiday season and are worried Santa Claus may beat you to grandma’s house, don’t look to President George W. Bush’s new plan to speed things up, airport officials said. Measures rolled out by the Bush administration Tuesday to cut down on holiday air travel delays aren’t likely to help fliers traveling through San Francisco International Airport, according to SFO spokesman Michael McCarron. But there is some good news: Passengers at SFO may see shorter lines than expected. The Bush proposal, which allows commercial airlines to use some military airspace, was lauded by some as just what the industry needs during the holidays,...

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Murdered businessman's widow convicted of theft

After a four-week trial, a jury convicted a 57-year-old woman of pilfering more than $1.5 million from her husband before he was killed, putting in place one piece of the bizarre puzzle surrounding his death. Kathleen Bach, 57, of Redding could spend more than 13 years in prison after being convicted of theft, embezzlement, forgery and money laundering involving an estate managed by her husband, San Francisco businessman Victor Bach, as well as from the company he owned, Western Plumbing & Heating, according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. Investigators have never been able to solve the homicide of Victor Bach, who was bludgeoned to death in his warehouse Oct....

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Harding Theater plan put on hold

A plan that would have largely gutted the historic Harding Theater and replaced it with retail stores and condos faces a setback after officials sided with dozens of people who asked for a more extensive review process. The 75-year-old theater has been vacant for about five years. In its heyday, it was used as a movie theater, a vaudeville showplace and a live-music venue, before housing a Baptist church for about three decades. Owners of the building, near Divisadero and Hayes streets, are seeking approval of a plan that would leave the façade and elements of the interior intact, but replace much of the theater with retail, along with an eight-unit condo complex. The developers...

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Record-breaking heat expected this weekend in San Francisco

Swimsuits may be better than ice skates this weekend. The Bay Area is expected to get hit with what could be a record-breaking November heat wave. San Francisco could be a balmy 79 degrees both Friday and Saturday, according to National Weather Service forecaster Mark Strobin. After the weekend, the temperature is predicted to gradually drop off, he said. The heat could spell trouble for the three temporary ice skating rinks — in Union Square, Embarcadero Center and the San Francisco Zoo — for the holidays. The rink in Union Square opened Wednesday morning and expects to be running its chiller full-bore this weekend, said Willie Bietak, president of Willie Bietak...

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Shopping center owners want to stack housing on retail

The Potrero Center on 16th Street — a rarity in San Francisco with its large parking spaces and strip-mall-style lineup of chain stores — is about to receive an urban makeover. Today, the Planning Commission will consider an amendment to the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan that will allow owners of the shopping center — home to Safeway, an Office Depot, a half-dozen other big-box stores and hundreds of parking spaces — to build several stories of housing units on top of the current retail buildings. Owners proposed the amendment, which would more than double the shopping center’s height limit from 40 to 85 feet and also includes an agreement to sell 22 percent...

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Caltrain banking on high-speed rail

California’s planned high-speed rail could result in cash savings for the electrification of the Caltrain corridor. High-speed rail could also help pay to lower or raise tracks — called grade separations — at the dozens of intersections where Caltrain tracks currently traverse roads, an expensive and controversial safety measure that cities in San Mateo County have long lobbied for. Last week, voters approved Proposition 1A, a $9.95 billion bond measure for the California High Speed Rail, which would carry passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in about 2½ hours. The electric trains, which would travel at 220 mph, are slated to follow the Caltrain...

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Transbay Transit Center going off track

Statewide bullet trains have been presented by transit officials as the silver bullet The City needs to finally bring rail transit downtown, but some are questioning whether a necessary extension should receive financial help from bonds for high-speed rail approved by voters Nov. 4. Proposition 1A, passed in last week’s election, authorized $9.95 billion in bond money for a high speed-rail line that would take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a mere 2½ hours. In anticipation of the project, the first phase of the new Transbay Transit Center is being built with the assumption that a major rail corridor will connect to the new terminal. However, that would...

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Power out in Richmond District

More than 1 , 500 homes in the Richmond District remain without power after an outage occurred right at dusk , according to a PG&E spokesman. The spokesman said the power outage started around 5:31 p.m. and is affecting Balboa Street from 32nd to 45th avenues. He said the cause is still under investigation , but there have been reports of a wire down in the area....

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Arrests made in South City homicide

Two of the four people who were in the car when 21-year-old South San Francisco resident Shivnesh Reddy was killed on Oct. 29 have been charged with murder. But the other two have been released because there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute them , Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Monday. Reddy was shot and killed around 8:50 p.m. that Wednesday in the back seat of a black Honda on the 600 block of First Lane in South San Francisco , police have said. Police have alleged that he was shot during the course of a robbery , and that the robbery involved marijuana. The following morning , 19-year-old Neil Chand , the car’s driver , was arrested on charges of...

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City hoping for easier Treasure Island buy

The City may get a better deal on Treasure Island under President-elect Barack Obama’s administration, the project’s leaders say. For the last two years, The City has been embroiled in negotiations with the Navy on the purchase price of Treasure Island, a former military base that ceased operations in 1997. The City hopes to build 6,000 new homes, three hotels, a 400-slip marina, and a bevy of retail, restaurants and entertainment venues on the island, along with 300 acres of parks and open space. But the Navy and city negotiators have not been able to come to an agreement. In summer, city negotiators offered to buy the island from the federal government for the price of...

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Board approves changes to old AT&T location

As legend has it, the first transatlantic telephone call from the West Coast was made from the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph office at New Montgomery and Howard streets, and the man to pick up the phone on the other end was Winston Churchill. But telephones are no longer the business at the striking 1925 art deco skyscraper in SoMa. The building has been vacant since 2007, when a developer bought the terra-cotta structure and Pacific Telephone’s descendent, AT&T, moved out to make way for 118 luxury condominiums. The project — which the developer says will cost more than building a similar project from the ground up — will require gutting the interior of the...

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Venture capital stuck in neutral

It took six months of navigating through increasingly rough seas, but on Sept. 12 it seemed Dave Pritchard was finally in for some smooth sailing. Pritchard and his colleagues at South San Francisco-based biotech firm KaloBios had managed to beat recent odds and secure investments worth $22 million from nine venture capital firms. The funding would allow the company to continue developing antibodies to treat autoimmune diseases such as asthma and arthritis. That Friday, after a half-year of negotiations, each of the venture capitalists had signed off on the project. By the following Monday, all those signatures had blown away in a fierce economic storm. In the wee hours of that morning,...

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Balboa Park BART station area could get a revamp

The area around the Balboa Park BART station is at the nexus of seven neighborhoods. It’s a connection point for BART, three Muni train lines, a dozen bus lines and a freeway. It abuts the bustling San Francisco City College and provides easy access to the businesses and restaurants on Ocean Avenue. Given all those apparent assets, it may come as a surprise that the words used by city planners and neighborhood leaders to describe the neighborhood are often “dreary,” “jumbled,” “depressing” and “unsafe.” But a plan to transform the predominantly asphalt landscape into a shining metropolitan transit center and lively residential...

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Historic-preservation commission approved

Voters cast their ballots in support of creating a new commission that will have authority over historic preservation-related decisions in The City. Proposition J, put on the ballot with unanimous approval by the Board of Supervisors, creates a Historic Preservation Commission to replace The City's existing Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board and gives it more power to preserve historic structure and designate landmarks. As it stands, the Planning Commission is not obligated to follow the Landmark Board's...

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Two parcel taxes undecided

It was too close to tell if voters approved or rejected a flurry of parcel taxes that would provide new funds for San Carlos School District, Belmont-Redwood Shores Elementary School District and Bayshore School District. By state law, local school districts can collect a parcel tax if it is approved by two-thirds of the voters in the district. Measure S increases the San Carlos School District's current parcel tax from $110 to $185 per year per parcel starting next July. The money is targeted to maintain early reading programs, small class sizes and school libraries, as well as expand science, writing, mathematics, arts and technology education, and increase teacher salaries. Measure...

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Voters closely split on new taxes for parking, rental cars

San Mateo County voters were closely divided Tuesday on two taxes expected to bring in more than $11 million in revenue for the county. Measure Q will impose an 8 percent tax on commercial parking lots in unincorporated county areas, similar to the taxes charged on those facilities in South San Francisco, Millbrae and San Bruno. Its proponents say the measure — which will largely affect San Francisco International Airport — will raise roughly $4 million per year for the county’s general fund and help close a $92.1 million deficit San Mateo County is projected to face by 2013. Measure R will impose a 2.5 percent tax on car rental companies in unincorporated parts of...

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Port to get new funding for Pier 70 makeover

The historic but decrepit Pier 70 is one step closer to finding new life after voters approved new funding for its renovation. The Port of San Francisco aims to redevelop the 65-acre property, which contains some of The City's oldest buildings. The new funding mechanism authorized by Proposition D allows the port to borrow against future Pier 70 hotel and payroll taxes to fund renovation and cleanup of the site, located at the base of Potrero...

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Millbrae school facilities to get $30 million makeover

Millbrae voters have approved a $30 million bond to improve the city's aging elementary school facilities. Measure X will upgrade each of the five schools in the Millbrae Elementary School District. The youngest school in the 2,100-student district is more than half a century old and the average age of the schools is 63. The funds will be used to improve the schools' electrical systems, replace leaking water and sewer lines, upgrade old heating and air conditioning units, repair leaking roofs and bathrooms, and make all schools wheelchair accessible, according to the district. A portion of the bond dollars will be placed in a dedicated technology fund, to update and maintain student...

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Back to the drawing board for Seawall lot

It’s back to the drawing board for the Port of San Francisco about what to do with Seawall Lot 351, the triangular parking lot across from Pier 1 on The Embarcadero. After backing away from a developer’s controversial proposal to construct approximately 170 condos on the site, the port issued a request for other development proposals for the 2.2-acre parcel. Those proposals were due last week. However, just one proposal came in, and it was from the same developer, San Francisco Waterfront Partners, said port spokeswoman Renee Dunn. Port officials blamed the bad economy for the lack of responses, and have decided to call the current proposal process off and start again next...

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Meter rates to change according to demand, area and time of day

Parking in popular places during popular times in San Francisco could soon be more than a difficulty — it may be more expensive, according to information from the Port of San Francisco and Muni officials. The port will replace its 1,000 individual parking meters along the waterfront with multispace stations in February, which will hike rates for special events such as Giants games, Fleet Week, Fourth of July and New Year’s. The new meters were approved last week by the Port Commission. About one-quarter of The City’s 25,000 parking meters will be converted for variable pricing by spring, if the plan is approved next month by the Municipal Transportation Agency,...

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Golden Gate Park bandshell yet to reach encore

For many years, a construction dust cloud has hung over Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse area. There was the de Young Museum rebuild, the construction of an underground garage and the new California Academy of Sciences building. In the midst of it all, the Recreation and Park Department launched a $9 million restoration of the concourse itself, lining the area between the two museums with trees, park benches, wide walkways and gardens. In September, the restoration of the bandshell on the west end of the concourse was scheduled for completion, which would have left only one remaining project: The plaza’s four historic fountains are slated for a $1.3 million restoration...

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School’s expansion rankles neighbors

The nation’s economic crisis could spell tighter budgets for public schools, but the $28,500-per-year college-prep Drew School on California Street is seeing different writing on the wall: a $14 million expansion. But because that expansion would require demolishing a 117-year-old Victorian home, some of the school’s Pacific Heights neighbors are none too happy about it. The 250-student private high school hopes to demolish the neighboring residence to make space for a new 15,600-square-foot addition to the school, complete with an assembly room, music room, rehearsal space and classrooms and enough room to grow to 280 students. The new building would be one of the...

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Filipino-American War is subject of Presidio Trust exhibit

The tranquil Presidio and waterfront may be a place that San Franciscans go to escape the hubbub of downtown, but those peaceful locations were bustling places in the not-so-distant past because of a war on the other side of the world. One hundred years ago, America was engaged in a major war against a factious country on the other side of the world, and there were many American voices of dissent; but those voices were not coming from this city. Then, there was hardly a more pro-war city than San Francisco. The Filipino-American War was launched entirely out of San Francisco. The war remains virtually unknown to most city residents today, but it left an indelible mark on San Francisco:...

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Visitor likely paying for Angel Island fire

The campers responsible for the fire that swept Angel Island earlier this month may be on the hook for an $850,000 bill. State law requires Cal Fire to charge the person or persons responsible for a fire for the costs of extinguishing it — in this case, the better part of $1 million dollars. Fire officials have determined the blaze was caused by humans, and are now investigating whether it was intentional or accidental, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Janet Upton. The fire, which started about 8:45 p.m. Oct. 12, scorched nearly half the 780-acre island and took nearly two days to fully extinguish, but did not harm any people and destroyed...

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Ship terminal hits snag

The Port of San Francisco has again been left to try to figure out how to build a much-needed cruise-ship terminal on The City’s waterfront, after another private developer jumped overboard on a plan to allow for some construction in exchange for funds for the terminal. Port officials on Tuesday laid out a vision for a $60 million terminal at Pier 27, accompanied by 2 acres of open space on the waterfront and shops. Notably missing from the plan was involvement by Shorenstein Properties, the third developer to have secured the right to build a cruise terminal on The City’s waterfront in the last 15 years, and the third to have backed out of it, according to Port Project...

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Power plant retrofit option rejected

The question of whether to shutter or retrofit the Mirant Power Plant located at the foot of Potrero Hill could be settled next week. The proposal to retrofit the plant was issued in May by Mayor Gavin Newsom, and it was a sudden reversal from his previous support of entirely shutting the plant down and replacing it with a new, city-owned natural-gas facility on the same site. Newsom had billed the retrofit as a clean, cheap and temporary solution that would leave the plant in the hands of its private owners until San Francisco had enough renewable energy or other options and could shut it down. But during the Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting Monday, members...

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Chinatown won’t be heaven for 7-Eleven

Big Gulps have no place in Chinatown, the Planning Commission decided Thursday. The commission recommended a ban of any chain store along Grant Avenue, Chinatown’s active main business corridor, and moments later gave a thumbs down to a planned 7-Eleven convenience store on a nearby busy corner. If the Board of Supervisors accepts the recommendation, Chinatown will become the third San Francisco neighborhood to ban “formula retail” — defined as any business with at least 11 stores somewhere in the U.S. — following similar chain-store bans in North Beach and Hayes Valley. The recommendation fell short of what Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin...

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I-880 returns to normal after blaze

- Drivers who faced a traffic nightmare Wednesday on Interstate 880 in Oakland due to a tanker-truck explosion should find the roads open and back to normal today. As of 7:40 Wednesday night, after more than 13 hours of work by CalTrans and gridlock for commuters, all lanes of the freeway had reopened, California Highway Patrol officials confirmed. A massive fire was sparked when a black sedan rear-ended the tanker, causing it to crash about 6:15 a.m., according to Trent Cross, spokesman for the CHP. After the two vehicles collided, the sedan spun into the center divider and the tanker, carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline, overturned and erupted in flames, Cross...

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Whole Foods in Haight comes up for debate

The controversial proposal to build The City’s largest Whole Foods grocery store on the corner of Haight and Stanyan streets won’t be vetted in a public forum until Thursday, but the project’s sponsors and detractors are already rolling up their sleeves. The project would replace the vacant Cala Foods store and parking lot with a 34,000-square-foot Whole Foods, and add 62 market-rate residential units above the new store and 178 parking spaces under it. The “overwhelming majority” of neighbors commenting on the project plan have said they’re excited by the prospect of a full-service grocery store returning to their neighborhood, said City Planner...

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Analog switch creates static on Mount Sutro

A federal mandate that all analog televisions be converted to digital by February has pulled the scab off an old wound for some Mount Sutro neighbors. Mount Sutro, the forested hill behind UC San Francisco, has been home to the Bay Area’s largest transmission tower for nearly 40 years. The 977-foot tower, owned by a consortium of telecommunications companies, broadcasts television and radio signals to 8.4 million Bay Area residents, and is also used by some cell phone, cable- and satellite-television companies. Changes to the iconic tower are required through the Federal Communications Commission’s conversion mandate. Primarily, analog antennas will be removed and some...

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India Basin creates tug of war

The only stretch of privately held waterfront property in San Francisco is slated for development, and it’s causing an unusual puzzle for The City. The land sits on India Basin, a diminutive bay squeezed between the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and the tongue-like Heron’s Head Park. It was once a quiet maritime center known best to boat builders, but through the years it has evolved into one of the Bayview district’s quieter and least-developed areas. But that’s about to change. Of the approximately 60 acres of nonpark land that abuts the basin, about 38 is the decommissioned Hunters Point Power Plant, which will be fully removed by the end of this year....

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Cousteau's granddaughter to speak in Bay Area

Alexandra Cousteau, the granddaughter of legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau, will speak at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael this weekend. What is a bioneer? Bioneer stands for biological pioneer. They are scientific and social innovators from all walks of life — people who have really looked deep into what living systems are, people dedicated to solving really critical issues affecting people and the planet. Tell me about your ‘Blue Campaign’: The Blue Campaign is really the idea that water is our most important life support. Water is the vehicle through which climate change will be felt. Are you concerned that the current economic woes could push the...

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Mission Dolores church at center of crusade

On a recent Sunday, as sun poured across the domed, pillared white church that has overlooked Dolores Park for the better part of a century, the aged sanctuary looked nothing like a battleground. But indeed, a crusade is advancing on the old church, in the form of a coalition of preservationists who refuse to see it demolished. The congregation that calls the building home, however, says there’s no easy way to save it. The problem stems from the unreinforced brick construction of the 92-year-old Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 651 Dolores St. Though the 1,000-seat edifice was unscathed by the 1989 earthquake, the Department of Public Works insists the building must come...

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National credit crisis puts crunch on bond-funded projects

Projects to improve The City’s public schools, some branch libraries, a handful of parks, a number of public housing projects, and at least one hospital may be delayed if the nation’s credit crisis doesn’t clear up soon. City projects were slated to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from bond sales this fall. But in recent weeks it has become virtually impossible for cities to sell municipal bonds, said The City’s finance czar, Nadia Sesay. In the sale of municipal bonds, governments owe buyers a debt and are obligated to repay the principal and interest at a later date. Governments began to have trouble selling bonds in September, after several financial...

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Peninsula budgets take a hit

Longtime San Mateo resident Barbara Bycsek’s pension money just doesn’t go as far as it used to anymore. So this year, she’s cut way back on eating out, she tries not to drive as much, and she says that if her TV breaks, she “probably would not be in a hurry to replace it.” Bycsek is far from alone in her response to the country’s economic crisis, which is bad news for city governments nationwide, many of which are watching funding dwindle as residents spend less and less money. On the Peninsula, since 1 cent of San Mateo County’s 8.25-cent sales tax goes into city coffers — sales tax can make up anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent of a...

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The City’s debt may boil over

The nation’s credit clampdown has caused interest rates to skyrocket on approximately $965 million of debt owed by The City and its airport — a problem that if not resolved could result in delayed projects, cuts in services and higher air-travel costs. The debt in question is in variable-rate municipal bonds, which government agencies use to pay for big projects at especially low interest rates. The City used the money to pay for the Moscone Center West construction in 2000, and the airport used the bonds for improvements to their terminals. But since the $2.66 trillion U.S. market for state and city bonds started freezing after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. declared the...

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Legislation would aid displaced residents

Thousands of residents who were forced to move out of homes in the Western Addition and Hunters Point neighborhoods 40 years ago would jump to the top of a list for any city-subsidized housing if legislation before the Board of Supervisors today is approved. An estimated 28,000 people are eligible to receive a “certificate of preference,” a program instituted in the 1960s when the Redevelopment Agency systematically displaced residents — largely blacks and Japanese Americans — by rebuilding neighborhoods in the name of removing blight in both areas. As it stands, however, the agency has contact information for only 900 eligible residents, said Redevelopment...

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Port cash drifts to The City

Despite its problems making ends meet, the perpetually cash-poor Port of San Francisco makes big bucks for The City, according to a new economic analysis. The Port’s 7.5 miles of shoreline property is home to some of San Francisco’s main tourist attractions, which bring millions of visitors each year to The City. Nonetheless, the Port is struggling to fund $1.9 billion for capital-improvement projects, including repairing rotting piers and improving sewer systems. To date, only $800 million in funding has been identified for the infrastructure needs, said Tina Olson, the port’s finance director. As one of The City’s enterprise departments, the port is expected to...

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Aging crane could lift Port’s history

When longshoremen outnumbered tourists on San Francisco’s Port, one of the dirtiest jobs they could get was bringing in coconut. It required climbing into a mass of gooey, bug-infested coconut meat in the hull of a ship, hacking at it with a pickax and then shoveling it into buckets. A large steel crane that rose from the middle of Islais Creek, just south of Pier 80, carried the coconut meat, or copra, from the ship to a pipeline that fed a nearby factory, where the copra would be processed into oil, coconut flakes or cattle feed. Those days are, of course, long gone. The coconut trade shifted, the ships stopped coming, the pipeline and factory were disassembled, and the land...

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Threat of rain won’t dampen Hardly Strictly

Thirsty Northern California may get some sorely needed rain this weekend — a possibility that probably doesn’t sound good to folks with the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival penned in their schedules. The National Weather Service predicts that clouds will start packing the skies today and rain is possible by Friday evening, with a 30 to 50 percent chance of showers by Saturday, forecaster Diana Henderson said. The sky should return to partly cloudy by Sunday, she said. When asked when was the last time the Bay Area saw rain at this time of year, the forecaster said, “Oh, about 100 years ago.” But the timing is not so good for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass...

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Frog may soon have more jumping room

The red-legged frogs made famous by Mark Twain’s story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” may soon have some very expensive San Mateo County real estate in which to stretch their legs. A federal agency is proposing to designate about one-third of the county as protected habitat for the threatened species, a tenfold increase from the current designation. The proposal, born from a corruption scandal that reached near the highest levels of the federal government, would quadruple the amount of critical habitat for the species throughout California. For San Mateo County, the 13,000 acres of land currently designated as critical habitat for the...

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Police arrest teen in Golden Gate Park sexual assaults

A teenager believed to have sexually assaulted at least four women in Golden Gate Park last week has been arrested. The 16-year-old confronted the women while they were jogging or riding a bicycle, San Francisco police Lt. Dan Leydon said. One of the assaults occurred Sept. 24, another the following day and two more Saturday. In each case, he allegedly exposed himself. In two cases he tried to grope the women. In one case, there was some penetration, Leydon said. The teen was caught after being identified by a witness. Undercover police officers followed him; the male youth exposed himself to a female undercover cop, Leydon...

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Toll could welcome future Treasure Island residents

Drivers on Treasure Island could be charged each time they drive on or off the island during rush hour under a bill signed into law by the governor that could create the test program for future congestion tolls in The City. City officials have redevelopment plans for Treasure Island that will transform the low-density residential area into a new community that will include 6,000 new residential units and a new ferry terminal-transit hub. With Treasure Island’s population expected to increase by 13,000 to 15,000 new residents in the next five years, the new law — sponsored by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office — is aimed at preventing increased traffic on the already...

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Giants balk at deadline for lot proposal

The San Francisco Giants have asked for another deadline extension to submit development plans for one of the parking lots at AT&T Park. The 16-acre Seawall 337, better known to baseball fans as Parking Lot A, is a prime piece of Port property just south of the ballpark that has long been slated for development. The Port hopes the development of the valuable land will bring in revenue to fix up the decrepit Pier 70. Last spring, four investment groups submitted proposals for the site. The top two proposals were from a team involving Kenwood Investments and another involving the Giants. The Kenwood group pitched a plan to establish an arts district, while the Giants proposed an...

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Financial solvency just inches away?

The Port of San Francisco, best known as a home for tourist traps, restaurants, farmers markets and a baseball park, is looking to take a step toward its shipping roots. Port officials are exploring the idea of importing cars again — a business they say could net the persistently cash-poor Port a minimum of $2.5 million per year. Just one problem — literally — is in the way: the height of the Caltrain tunnels that those cars would have to travel through. Automobiles are typically transported on 19-foot, tri-level rail cars. But Caltrain’s two rail tunnels through San Francisco’s southeastern corner have a clearance of just 18½ feet, said Peter Daly,...

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Man shot in dispute over woman

An argument between two men over a woman resulted in a shooting around 4 p.m. Sunday. Officers from the Ingleside Police Station responded to a report of shots fired on Putnam Street in Bernal Heights Sunday afternoon. A victim had been shot in the hand after an argument between a woman’s boyfriend and ex-boyfriend, police said. The suspects were brought into custody shortly thereafter, police...

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Questions linger in fatal truck crash

Bouquets, stuffed animals and balloons piled up at a makeshift memorial Tuesday in the grocery store parking lot near where a truck accident killed a 9-year-old boy and critically injured several others less than 24 hours earlier. The boy, whose identity was being withheld Tuesday pending family notification, was killed when a debris-hauling truck careened down a hill through an intersection, hitting an SUV. The truck and SUV then slid about 100 feet, hitting seven cars and a pedestrian in the parking lot of Mollie Stone’s at 43rd and Olympic avenues. Two of the three people injured, a 30-year-old woman and a 53-year-old woman, were taken to the Intensive Care Unit at Stanford...

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OpenWorld has Moscone maxed out

Oracle's massive annual OpenWorld conference - expected to draw some 43,000 visitors and as much as $100 million to the Bay Area's economy this week - has outgrown San Francisco. In fact, it has not only "absolutely maxed out" the 2-million-square-foot Moscone Center, but is using "every square inch" of other meeting space in The City, and may be forced to patronize another city if Moscone isn't expanded soon, said Leonard Hoops, executive vice-president of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. Oracle, based in Redwood City, has agreed to return to San Francisco in 2009 and is considering returning in 2010, said Hoops. But the company "is, frankly,...

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Pier into the future

The City’s historic and perfectly located Pier 70 faces a massive cleanup. A new financial mechanism, which relies on anticipated revenues, could help San Francisco achieve its long-sought-after redevelopment. Pier 70 sits on 65 acres of bayfront land. It’s home to a handful of the oldest and most photogenic buildings in The City. It often sees more sunshine in a month than the Sunset district does in a year. The plot of land dates back to the Gold Rush and appears to be a veritable gold mine for developers. Instead, every investor that has reviewed the land has eventually turned and walked away, according to officials from the Port of San Francisco. The trouble is its best...

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S.F. creeks called clean; Peninsula not so lucky

One creek in San Mateo and another in South San Francisco are packed so full of garbage that both may be designated by federal officials as trash-impacted waterways — a label that could prove costly for each city. The creeks are included on an annual list by Save the Bay, a nonprofit organization that works to protect and restore the San Francisco Bay. The list highlights 23 trash-polluted waterways that drain directly into the Bay and may be in violation of the Clean Water Act. Waterways in the group’s third annual Bay Trash Hot Spots list could be placed under federal regulation, obligating the cities to take measures to clean them up — or face state sanctions. The...

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Plan to nix new North Beach venues OK'd

New bars and restaurants in North Beach may have had their last call. The Planning Commission endorsed a plan to ban new restaurants and bar spaces in North Beach after hearing several hours of heated arguments in favor and against the controversial proposal Thursday afternoon. But the commission’s recommendation asked for a special exception to the long-abandoned neighborhood eyesore, the Pagoda Theater, across from Washington Square Park. The Pagoda Theater, built in 1909, has been vacant for more than a decade and plans to develop it have been fruitless. A developer has a plan to build a restaurant there along with 20 residential units and two retail spots. The proposed...

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Tesla plugs in to San Jose

Tesla Motors has put the brakes on the city that considers itself the capital of the electronic-car industry. Tesla, one of two electronic-car startups that set up shop in the cash-strapped Peninsula city in recent years, announced Wednesday that it plans to build a factory in San Jose — and will eventually move its 200-employee headquarters there as well. The 90-acre site in San Jose, which gave the new factory free rent for its first 10 years there, beat out proposals to place the new factory in South San Francisco, Vacaville and a site in New Mexico. The company decided to stay in California after the state offered to waive sales tax on $100 million worth of equipment. The...

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Dangerous day to drive on Geary

Two separate major accidents struck within three hours Tuesday afternoon in the Richmond district, leaving a 73-year-old pedestrian with life-threatening injuries and another victim with stab wounds. The pedestrian is fighting for his life following a hit-and-run incident at 20th Avenue and Geary Boulevard, which occurred around 1 p.m. Ywe E. Emerson, 49, was allegedly making a left turn from 20th Avenue and struck a 73-year-old pedestrian walking in the crosswalk. Emerson then backed up and sped off northbound on 20th Avenue, San Francisco police spokesman Sgt. Neville Gittens said. A witness followed Emerson’s vehicle, Gittens said. The good Samaritan eventually lost sight of...

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Companies' fall may mean layoffs in Financial District

The economic blows that most of the nation has felt over the last year have been somewhat softer in San Francisco — the housing market has stayed afloat, new businesses seem to be plugging away, and unemployment rates haven't risen dramatically. This week might change all that. What's being described as "the mother of all Mondays" hit Wall Street yesterday, when it became clear that financial powerhouse Lehman Brothers was declaring bankruptcy and that Merrill Lynch was sold for a pittance to Bank of America. Concerns over the future of other financial companies, A.I.G. and Washington Mutual, added fuel to a 500-point slide in the market by the end of trading on Monday....

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More people starting their own businesses

When the clinic that veterinarian Calvin Lum worked for had a management shake-up and he was laid off, he was left wondering what he would do next with his life. Eventually, he settled on an idea that had been simmering in the back of his mind for years: He started his own business making house calls as a veterinarian. Lum began attending business seminars and hired a business consultant. He recently launched San Francisco Veterinary House Calls. It turns out Lum’s story is a common one. The San Francisco office of the federal Small Business Administration is reporting a jump in attendance in their workshops and seminars, despite the fact that the economy has been slumping. In...

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Has North Beach hit alcohol limit?

The latest in a long line of proposals to deal with the violence, public drunkenness and littering in North Beach would ban new restaurants and bars. The rowdiness and increasing crime that plague the nightlife hot spot has city officials and neighborhood residents at odds on the proposal, which essentially restricts new alcohol permits in the area. Attempts to curb the rowdy revelers have included proposals banning the sale of early-morning pizza, and North Beach property owners paying a new tax to increase the police presence. City leaders have also proposed giving specific handstamps to clubs and bars to track where drunken partygoers have been. However, the neighborhood’s...

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San Mateo County students ready to graduate

More San Mateo County seniors in the Class of 2008 managed to ace the state’s exam to graduate than students in years past. The number of students who failed California High School Exit Exam, or CAHSEE, in three of San Mateo County’s larger high school districts dropped from 312 to 169 for the 2007-2008 school year, according to data analyzed by The Examiner. The percentage of students that didn’t pass the test has also slimmed: altogether, 4.6 percent of students at the districts - Sequoia High School District, South San Francisco Unified School District, and Jefferson High School District — didn’t pass the test in the class of 2008, compared to 9.1...

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Niners fans bring back traditions at opener

If you’re wondering why the 49ers lost Sunday to the Arizona Cardinals, here’s a clue: Niner fan Ed Castellanos decided to go to a sports bar with his buddies instead of staying home and turning on his neon 49ers sign, tuning the radio to a certain good-luck station and refusing to change the channel under any circumstances. The football season has once again started, and once again who-knows-how-many rituals are being performed by 49ers fans in homes and bars across the Bay Area and beyond in an attempt to ward off another agonizing losing season for The City’s favorite football team. Ricky Saenz, who sat with friends at the 4th Street Bar and Deli looking for signs...

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Peninsula schools still strong, but state gaining ground

San Mateo County schools, once lauded for far exceeding the state’s average test scores, have remained static in recent years — and the rest of California’s schools are catching up. According to data released by the California Department of Education on Thursday, San Mateo County students, while performing well on state standardized tests overall, have not made many advances in the past three years, while schools across the state have leaped forward. The news deflated education leaders in a county where people spend a lot to live and send their children to school. On Thursday, the Department of Education released two sets of information: a numerical state ranking and...

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City bringing Halloween back to life

Like Victor Frankenstein in his lab, city leaders are attempting to reinvent a new Halloween identity for San Francisco. Since 2006, when a series of violent Halloween parties in the Castro culminated in nine shootings on Oct. 31, city leaders have been trying to restructure the event in a way that keeps everyone safe and doesn’t hurt the booming business that the holiday festivities generate in The City. That’s proving especially difficult in a year when the cards are all lined up to encourage the biggest spook-day party in years. Oct. 31 will be a Friday and it will coincide with the popular Critical Mass bicycle event. It will also fall the weekend before a major election...

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Public Works employee found at fault in fatal accident

A police investigation has concluded that a Public Works employee was at fault in a fatal accident that killed a 66-year-old pedestrian last spring. The driver, a 55-year-old woman who had been driving Public Works pickup trucks for 10 years before the accident, is still employed with The City but a Public Works spokesperson would not comment on whether she remains on administrative leave, saying it is a personnel matter. The accident occurred at 8:15 a.m. on Friday, April 11 when 66-year-old Florencia Tiongco, a housekeeper at Hotel Whitcomb on Market Street, was crossing Bayshore Blvd. at its busy intersection with Bacon Street. Both Tiongco and the DPW worker had a green light,...

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Sun shines for first Sunday Streets

Usually, a toddler doing somersaults in the middle of the busy Embarcadero and Mission Street intersection in San Francisco would elicit cries of terror from worried parents. But this time, the parents just laughed and clapped. For four hours today, several miles of waterfront roads were shut down to cars and opened to any and every other form of transportation, from in-line skates to wheelchairs and unicycles. The Sunday Streets event, the brainchild of Mayor Gavin Newsom that has been hotly contested by some business owners and members of the Board of Supervisors, was the first of its kind in San Francisco and stretched for more than four miles, from Chinatown down The City’s...

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Commission nixes settlement in failed rescue

A settlement with the family of a Seattle man who fell to his death during a failed rescue attempt by an off-duty firefighter in 2006 has been soundly rejected. The Fire Commission voted unanimously 4-0 to reject a deal hashed out by the City Attorney’s Office for an undisclosed amount of money after the family of 26-year-old Nicholas Torrico filed a federal civil lawsuit in 2007. The lawsuit alleges that Torrico would still be alive if San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Victor Wyrsch hadn’t attempted the rescue. Witnesses said Torrico climbed to the edge of the roof of a four-story building in Nob Hill on Oct. 12, 2006, and appeared poised to jump. When Wyrsch climbed up to...

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Woman detained on $200K bail

Bail has been set at $200,000 for Teresa Sheehan, the mentally ill woman who was shot by police in her home after allegedly threatening them with a knife. Sheehan was shot by police Aug. 7 after she allegedly threatened a social worker, and then police, with a knife. Sheehan, described by family members as mildly schizophrenic but not violent, survived, but was arrested and charged with five felony counts several days later. As of Thursday, she remained detained in a ward at the San Francisco General Hospital while she recovers. Family members — some who came from the East Coast — attended her bail hearings this week.

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Soup kitchen a stew of trouble?

Rampant drug dealing at the Tenderloin’s largest soup kitchen has raised the ire of the district’s top cop — and his proposed solution is steaming up the leaders of the well-known nonprofit. An impassioned letter from police Capt. Gary Jimenez to the leader of the Glide Memorial Church — a nonprofit that serves food every day to 2,200 of San Francisco’s poorest residents — says the church is “doing a very poor job of monitoring” the line of the homeless and hungry that forms for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In the letter, he has proposed that the kitchen move the queue off the street and into its parking lot, in order to “remove this...

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Music festival to net park more than $1M

Golden Gate Park will receive more than $1 million in donations from the weekend’s Outside Lands Music Festival. The park was guaranteed to receive a donation based on how many people attended. About 150,000 attended, which contractually translated to a $1,050,000 donation, according to the contract with the festival’s organizers. The festival, which featured 65 musical acts ranging from Tom Petty to Rodrigo y Gabriela, wrapped up its third and final day of events Sunday night; clean up started early the next day, said Elton Pon. He said concert organizers have until Wednesday to clear off all fences, stages and other items — and complete a litter cleanup. Officials...

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Housing may cost city thousands of jobs

San Francisco, say “So long” to industry and “Hello” to condos. The City is expected to lose approximately 9,470 jobs throughout the next 16 years by converting nearly 5 million square feet of industrial space into housing units in four neighborhoods on the eastern side of San Francisco. Under a rezoning proposal recently approved by the Planning Commission, the plan would grant housing developers access to huge swaths of industrial land that was previously available to them only with special permits. The zoning would allow housing development opportunities in east SoMa, the Mission district, Potrero Hill and the central waterfront, four areas with a rich...

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City prepares for Outside Lands Festival

The usual assortment of trees, animals and exercise enthusiasts in Golden Gate Park has a new backdrop this week: large swaths of chain-link fence. The temporary barriers, which went up last weekend, are in preparation for the upcoming Outside Lands Festival, a three-day music event that kicks off in the park Friday. The festival, which will feature Radiohead, Tom Petty, Jack Johnson and some 60 other bands, is the first paid concert of its size in the history of Golden Gate Park, and the first to have nighttime performances. Depending on the amount of paying customers, the Recreation and Park Department could gain anywhere from $400,000 to $1.2 million from the event, according to...

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Requests for aid denied, police say

In response to an incident in which police officers shot and injured a mentally ill woman wielding a knife, law enforcement and mental health officials say that they have been asking for expanded mental health services to help police for years, but to no avail. In some cases, they said, services have been taken away. For at least 10 years, the Mental Health Board has asked for approximately $1 million per year to expand its part-time Mobile Crisis Treatment Team — on call for when police find themselves in a situation that requires mental-health professionals — to be a full-time operation. However, the money has never been found, said Helynna Brooke, the board’s...

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Back to school on the Peninsula: School bonds pay off

Teenagers who have been sweating it out at Aragon High School in San Mateo are in for a nice, cool treat this year. Children at Monte Verde Elementary School in San Bruno won’t have to worry about roof leaks when the rainy season starts. And students at Woodside High School may spend next semester toying in a new robotics lab. As students return to school in San Mateo County, they’ll get the first look at a multitude of improvements that were put into place during the summer, as districts spent some of the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve been granted by voters in recent years. School bonds have proven popular — if occasionally contentious — in the...

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Shocking turnabout on Tasers?

The City’s top cop wants to arm the police with Tasers, giving officers in dangerous situations another nonlethal option. Two weeks after police shot a mentally ill woman multiple times, San Francisco police Chief Heather Fong, right, said Tuesday she wants police to be given authority to use electric-jolting Tasers — and it appears she may have the support of the Police Commission. “The Police Department is always looking at ways to provide more nonlethal options to officers in handling violent suspects,” Fong said in a statement to The Examiner. “We have presented information on Tasers to the Police Commission in the past and are recommending a follow-up...

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Cops: Lack of beanbag gun led to shooting

A San Francisco police captain defended the police officers who two weeks ago shot a 56-year-old mentally ill woman in her apartment, explaining that a nonlethal, disabling beanbag gun was requested by the officers but did not arrive in time. The victim, Teresa Sheehan, was shot by police Aug. 7 after she allegedly threatened a social worker at Sheehan’s home on 15th Street in the Mission Dolores neighborhood. Her family has said she was shot five times, including one shot to the face, one to each shoulder, one to the chest and one to the groin. Sheehan’s family has described her as mildly schizophrenic but not violent, and have accused police of completely mishandling the...

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Slow morning commute on 101

Traffic was backed up for several miles on southbound U.S. Highway 101 after a disabled vehicle briefly blocked right-hand lanes near East Poplar Avenue in San Mateo this morning. The vehicle has since been moved off to the shoulder and traffic to the off-ramp is moving again. Farther north, an ambulance responded to a two-car accident on southbound Highway 101 at the Central San Rafael exit, delaying travel into The City. Traffic was also heavy on Route 1 heading south through The City between Fulton and Taraval streets. Drivers saw brief delays getting on to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge westbound. For the latest traffic updates, visit www.511.org....

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Bay Meadows races into history

Bay Meadows’ grandstands throbbed with the roar of 10,000 fans Sunday, the clobber of horse hooves hitting dirt and the emotion of one of the Bay Area’s fine slices of history becoming just that — history. A few hundred yards away, in the dim barns that house hundreds of horses and many of their keepers, the emotion was also thick, if more subdued. The closure of the 74-year-old racetrack has been a hard pill to swallow for its thousands of regular patrons, but is a pill that will completely transform the lives of hundreds of people who have both worked and lived at the track for years — some even for decades. They, along with the horses, must all be gone from...

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Future of a neighborhood: Distinction vs. development

With developers clamoring to purchase nearly a dozen lots in the Castro, longtime residents and business owners have been fretting about what might come of the famously gay neighborhood. Now, a plan that aims to maintain the feel of the neighborhood while the area grows is in the works. In large part, the wide-reaching suggestions for the plan, which covers a large area between Market Street and Octavia Boulevard to 17th Street and Market streets, have seen remarkable consensus, Planning Director John Rahaim said. “I think it’s an excellent model of how we can do these things in other areas where we see growth happening,” he said. However, the document has been far...

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San Mateo County kids learning, but gap persists

Overall, students in San Mateo County inched up the test-score ladder in 2008, but white and Asian students seemed to be climbing faster on state standardized tests than their black and Hispanic peers. Nearly 55 percent of public-school students in the county were at or above grade-level proficiency in English, and 50 percent passed the mark in math, according to newly released results on state standardized tests. Between the county’s 24 districts, however, the percentages of students passing had a wide range. Some districts saw 90 percent or more pass in math and English, while others had less than 40 percent meet state goals. The county, like the state, struggles with...

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SFPD accused of fouling up

The family of a 56-year-old woman shot by police at an at-home mental health facility after she threatened a social worker and officers with a knife accused San Francisco police of mishandling a delicate situation. The woman, Teresa Sheehan, is in stable condition at San Francisco General Hospital. During the Aug. 7 incident, she was shot in the face, shoulders, chest and groin, family members said. The shooting followed a complaint from a social worker who said Sheehan had threatened to kill him, according to police. The worker called police for assistance at Sheehan’s 1941 15th St. home around 11:10 a.m., SFPD Sgt. Wilfred Williams said. When police arrived and entered the...

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Sales of luxury suites sky-high

Maybe it’s the private wine-tasting room in the shape of an inverted wine-barrel, or perhaps it’s the elaborate multimillion-dollar art collection that can be admired on the way to the heated, competition-size lap pool. Inundated with a bevy of amenities — such as the theater-style room with a 100-inch high-definition projection screen — the upper crust of The City is quickly buying up the luxury condos at the downtown 60-floor Millennium Tower despite regional homes sales slumping throughout the Bay Area. Since November, more than 80 condos have gone into contract at the 419-unit building, according to the Mark Co., a San Francisco real estate marketing and...

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3-Minute Interview: Jan Null

The California Highway Patrol has affixed ribbons to the antennas of its vehicles this month to warn about the dangers of leaving children unattended in cars. Null, a San Francisco State University professor, is one of the nation’s leading experts on the death of children left in unventilated vehicles. How many children die from being enclosed in unventilated cars each year? On the average, 36 a year nationwide … But those are only the cases we know of — we’re sure there are cases that don’t get reported. Has there been a trend? What we think has happened is they started putting airbags in cars, and car seats were moved to the back seat. And that’s...

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Fewer clean sweeps of city streets

Starting in September, many residents of The City will be able to ease the weekly ritual of shuffling their cars back and forth across the street to avoid street sweepers. In a cost-saving measure, the Department of Public Works plans to cut street sweeping from once a week to twice each month in many neighborhoods. The change will affect about 8,500 city blocks but should save the department about $1 million from its $12 million annual street cleaning budget, DPW chief Edward Reiskin said. The City’s most-littered streets — dense residential neighborhoods and commercial areas, as well as alleys and primary arteries through neighborhoods — will not see a change in...

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Stepfather vouches for Childs

The computer engineer who was allegedly plotting to bring city services to a grinding halt by wiping out its network was searching for a storage locker and may have been also planning his getaway — to Sparks, Nev., according to court records. But a letter from the man Terry Childs called "dad" paints a different picture of the 43-year-old from Kansas: that of a......

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Computer problems linger for several departments

At least two city departments remained locked out of The City’s network Wednesday, puzzling network experts who were able to unlock the rest of the system earlier this week.Department of Technology Chief Ron Vinson said it remained unclear whether the problem had anything to do with the standoff with Terry Childs, who helped create the FiberWAN network and refused to surrender its codes until recently. Vinson said it is possible the problems could come from the departments’ own technology.Representatives of both the Recreation and Park Department and the Sheriff’s Office......

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Coding guru relinquishes access

The city computer engineer accused of holding The City’s network hostage in recent weeks by refusing to turn over the secret access codes finally surrendered them Tuesday to "the only person he could trust" — Mayor Gavin Newsom.Mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard said Newsom agreed to meet with Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg after his defense attorney called the mayor Monday and made an overture that he was willing to hand the codes to Newsom and no one else.Childs has been behind bars since July 13, after he allegedly locked down......

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Party could haunt entire city

Start thinking about costumes: There could be an official street party in your neighborhood for Halloween this year. After a series of violent Halloween parties in the Castro culminated in nine shootings on Oct. 31, 2006, officials shut down the long-standing impromptu party last year by closing bars, restaurants and stores, imposing a strong police presence and aggressively campaigning to keep people in their homes. With Halloween 2008 falling on a Friday and coinciding with Critical Mass, it was imperative The City come up with an alternate plan, said Continued...

 

Commuters ready to launch

Published: Jul 21, 2008

Plans are afloat to construct two new ferry launches on San Francisco’s waterfront, part of a plan to spin a web of ferry routes throughout the Bay. The two launches, which will be built just south of the Ferry Building on Pier 2 and will cost at least $45 million, could be the destination of ferries carrying commuters and visitors from South San Francisco, Continued...

 

Rail plan on track to eminent domain

Published: Jul 21, 2008

California’s proposed high-speed rail system would take travelers from San Francisco to Los Angeles within 2½ hours, but it also could force hundreds of residents and businesses along the Caltrain corridor off of some or all of their property.The high-speed rail line, which is scheduled for completion by 2020, will be built along the......

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3-Minute Interview: Ben Spies

Published: Jul 18, 2008

The defending AMA Superbike champion will race at Mazda Raceway in Laguna Seca this weekend for the U.S. national Superbike Series races. The 24-year-old from Longview, Texas, has been racing since he was 8.For people who......

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Sinking pier drowning businesses

Published: Jul 17, 2008

Rotting wood pilings and a crack-ridden foundation have forced the Ferry Building to close its parking lot, much to the chagrin of the landmark’s businesses and customers.The lot sits on Pier ½, a 70-year-old structure that sits near the Ferry Building and has seen limited maintenance for decades. Though there are several other parking lots within a few blocks, the 100-car lot is the building’s primary parking option, serving hundreds of the landmark’s driving patrons each day.The lot’s closure may quickly translate into losses for business owners and farmers-market merchants,......

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Port of S.F. to be fortified with cameras

Published: Jul 16, 2008

Say "cheese" the next time you visit The City’s waterfront — you may be caught on camera.The Port of San Francisco will spend $1.5 million of a $3.1 million Homeland Security grant on video surveillance equipment to combat crime and detect terrorist threats on the seven miles of waterfront that it oversees.The port asked for the camera equipment in a grant request to the federal Department of......

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Public given voice for 45 more days

Published: Jul 15, 2008

The Presidio Trust extended the public comment period Monday on a controversial proposal to construct a contemporary art museum, hotel and theater in the Presidio after hundreds of people packed a hearing on the project.Five hundred people filled the Presidio Trust’s meeting Monday night to capacity, while hundreds more stood outside waiting to tell the board what they thought of the museum plan put forward by Gap founder Don Fisher. Leaders of one of the plan’s opponents, the Continued...

 

3-Minute Interview: Jack LaLanne

Published: Jul 11, 2008

The 93-year-old "godfather of fitness," who hosted the longest-running exercise show on television, will speak Saturday at the launch of his great-nephew Chris LaLanne’s gym, LaLanne Fitness, 590 Howard St.Tell me about this fitness program at your great-nephew Chris’ new gym? Every student he has there, he has a plan for them. I’m excited about this plan — it’s going to help millions of people eventually.How do you think fitness has evolved since you started? I was the first one to......

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3-Minute Interview: Stacey Wisnia

Published: Jul 10, 2008

The executive director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is gearing up for the three-day, 12-movie event, which kicks off Friday with the 1927 comedy "The Kid Brother" and wraps up Sunday with "The Patsy."How do you pick each year’s films? We’re really interested in films that people thought were lost and were rediscovered, so we try to get a couple of those into the festivals. ... We always try to get a few foreign films into the mix, or......

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Smuggled owl’s story hatches years later

Published: Jul 10, 2008

The San Francisco Zoo has revealed that an owl in its care was smuggled into the country disguised as an Easter egg before being rescued by a sting operation.The origins of Athena, a protected Eurasian eagle owl, have been kept secret for more than two years because she was evidence in a trans-Atlantic trial, which involved corrupt falconers in Europe and the United......

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Nets could be best for stopping suicides

Published: Jul 08, 2008

A steel net drooping 20 feet below the Golden Gate Bridge would have far less aesthetic impact — and be considerably cheaper — than other suicide barriers proposed for The City’s most iconic and lethal landmark, according to a draft environmental impact report unveiled Monday.The netting is one of five barrier concepts analyzed by the report; the others all involve a 10- to 12-foot tall steel railing, interspersed with tall clear panels, to prevent a person from jumping.Though the idea of a suicide barrier has been toyed with since the......

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Contaminated sites sully San Mateo County's landscape

Published: Jul 07, 2008

The industrial swath that hugs the Bay between Hunters Point and East Palo Alto years ago contained so much contaminated land that some environmental groups dubbed it the "toxic crescent."Today, there are more than 550 known contaminated sites in San Mateo County.While that figure is formidable, it is about 39 percent smaller than it was 10 years ago, and is continuing to shrink, according to the two state agencies that oversee toxic cleanups.And the drive behind the cleanup is simple."Development," Department of Toxic Substance Control spokeswoman Carol Northrup said. "Development......

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Dangerous street yields lawsuit

Published: Jul 04, 2008

Woodside Road has proven dangerous for pedestrians in recent years, and one woman has sued the city, state and Caltrans, alleging an intersection on the street is dangerous for pedestrians.On April 23, 2007, Deborah Jo Iverson reportedly was crossing Woodside Road at Orchard Avenue when she was struck by a car, according to the lawsuit.Iverson was hospitalized and, according to a claim she filed with the city last year, she sustained severe injuries and incurred medical costs of more than $15,000.Though the police report listed the driver, Raymond Herrera, as......

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Substance found near Mills hospital

Published: Jul 04, 2008

A suspicious white, powdery substance was found near the loading dock at the Mills-Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame on Thursday, bringing a team of the county’s hazardous material authorities and a number of firefighters to the scene before the material was found to be harmless hours later.An employee found the material at the hospital at 7:35 a.m. and fire officials immediately cordoned off the area while hospital officials sent a memo to staff members and patients, explaining that they were not in harms way.When the Burlingame Fire Department couldn’t figure out......

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County to pay for overvaluing land

Published: Jul 03, 2008

Biotech giant Genentech stands to receive a tax refund from the county to the tune of $20 million — and that amount could increase.The company, which is the county’s second-highest property tax payer, has been disputing its property tax since at least 2003. Genentech took the case to San Mateo County Superior Court, which on April 1 issued a ruling that the company had been overtaxed.The court decision cut the value......

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Mysterious fire breaks out on cargo plane

Published: Jun 30, 2008

Two pilots of a DHL cargo plane preparing for takeoff Saturday night escaped from an onboard fire by crawling out of the plane’s cockpit windows.The two were the only occupants of the Boeing 767 when a fire at San Francisco International Airport started immediately behind the flight deck, blocking the exit doors, according to airport officials.No one was hurt in......

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Anglers clamoring to net last of crabs

Published: Jun 28, 2008

Monday is the last day of the crabbing season in California — a date that usually passes with little fanfare because fishers have long since abandoned their crab pots and taken up their steel salmon lines. But this year, many will be fishing crab until sunset Monday."We’re all just trying to get the last buck before there’s no more fishing to do out there," explained lifelong angler Marc Alley, of Continued...

 

Fire could summon 14th-century fear

Published: Jun 26, 2008

When thinking of the plague, one might conjure images of 14th-century English villagers surrounded by rats and fleas, perhaps dragging swollen corpses out to a cart to the cry of "Bring out your dead!"One probably doesn’t conjure up serene San Bruno Mountain.But sure enough, the highly infectious disease has been haunting the mountain for generations."There’s plague on San Bruno Mountain. We regularly get mice who test positive there," said Chindi Peavey, vector ecologist for the Continued...

 

‘15-acre project’ could get bigger

Published: Jun 26, 2008

The developer of a major downtown building project may be allowed to expand the proposal by more than 25 percent — much to the consternation of residents who say the city has expanded enough in their suburban town.The Parkview Plaza — which has been known as the Village Square or "the 15-acre project" — is a senior housing project designed for 11 of the last 15 remaining acres of undeveloped land in the city.On Dec. 17, the city came to an agreement with developer Continued...

 

Results of probe into escape to be revealed

Published: Jun 25, 2008

An investigation into a teen murder suspect’s escape from San Mateo County’s Youth Services Center will be the subject of a community meeting in the unincorporated Highlands neighborhood next week.On Feb. 14, 17-year-old Josue Orozco escaped over the wall of the center, located in the hills above San Mateo near the Highlands......

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Search ongoing for Mount Shasta hikers

Published: Jun 24, 2008

A 37-year-old personal trainer from Millbrae and his longtime friend from North Carolina, who have been missing since this weekend after an excursion to Mount Shasta, were on their first date at the 14,162-foot mountain in Northern California, the man’s sister said Monday.Salvador Frias and 37-year-old Continued...

 

County seeking a bridge between cyclists, safety

Published: Jun 24, 2008

For bicyclists in San Mateo County, U.S. Highway 101 can seem like a wall.In order to get to the other side, bicyclists must either brave overpasses cramped with automobiles flying on or off the freeway, or perhaps ride miles to one of just a handful of safe bike lanes.But little by little, that wall is cracking.After a year’s delay, the Monte Diablo Avenue bike-pedestrian bridge over 101 in San Mateo is set to open at the end of July.Also, the new pedestrian-bike bridge at Broadway in Burlingame will open by......

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Resident wages pungent battle

Published: Jun 20, 2008

When 75-year-old Naomi Silverstein climbed out of bed late one night last October, she was shocked that she stepped into raw sewage.A city sewer had backed up, and flooded her home with sludge, she said. The damage was so great that all the floors had to be replaced and walls repainted.Her home was repaired in December, but it happened again one month later. She was standing in the shower when she heard the sewage burbling through her pipes. She ran through the house, ready to gather towels to protect her......

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Survey may mute controversy about noise

Published: Jun 19, 2008

The ruckus raised over the noise made by Notre Dame de Namur University’s Koret Field may finally be hushed.The school’s recently renovated $1 million lacrosse field has been the subject of debate and some neighbors had complained that play on the field produced too much noise. But a new sound survey indicates that the field doesn’t produce significantly more noise than nearby traffic — essentially replicating a survey that was soundly rejected by neighbors and the city late......

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Teacher to have case heard after controversial dismissal

Published: Jun 13, 2008

A high school teacher who was dismissed for alleged misconduct, and then shown an inundation of impassioned support by students and parents, has been placed back on paid leave and should have his day in court in September.In March, longtime Aragon High School teacher Bill Faustine was removed from his post as psychology, engineering and physics teacher by the San Mateo Union High School District Board of Trustees.Though district officials remained mum on the......

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Seniors vie to save last dance

Published: Jun 13, 2008

It’s a Wednesday night and 70-year-old Glenn Havens has two beautiful ladies in heels and ball gowns swaying in his arms to the music of the Waldo Carter Orchestra.When the song ends, the plaid-shirted Havens escorts the two back to their seats and shakes his head."It’d be a real shame if they ended this," he says. But end it they may. The senior dances, which San Mateo Park and Recreation Department......

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Program helps care for kids

Published: Jun 13, 2008

Shirley Tuscano was pregnant and uninsured when she was first told by a doctor about San Mateo County’s Children Health Initiative, a program devoted to providing every child in the county with health care insurance.She immediately signed up, and says it’s made a world of difference for her family. Her now 5-year-old son was diagnosed two years ago with autism, and since then he’s received hundreds of hours of therapy and......

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Lamp’s role in escape still dim after report

Published: Jun 12, 2008

Nearly four months after a murder suspect escaped from a youth detention facility, it is still unclear who’s to blame for the facility’s fatal flaw: a misplaced lamp that allowed the fugitive to be boosted over the wall. The lamp is only mentioned in passing in the 19-page, $54,000 report released this week, although the private investigators looked at a plethora of defects in the staffing, training, protocol and facility structure they say also contributed to the escape. The escapee, Josue......

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Details emerge in San Mateo bank heist

Published: Jun 11, 2008

Police have released more details and a photo of the suspect in Friday’s robbery of a San Mateo bank. The suspect walked into the Washington Mutual Bank at 1730 El Camino Real and handed a teller a demand note reading "This is a robbery," San Mateo police Lt. Mike Brunicardi said. He received an undisclosed amount of money and then fled toward......

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Steep fees for felled trees — if Belmont has its way

Published: Jun 10, 2008

The city has filed a lawsuit against three property owners and a tree maintenance company for allegedly chopping down 33 trees without a permit, as one official called it the largest wholesale, unauthorized removal of trees in recent city memory.Community Development Director Carlos de Melo said the tree hacking violates the city’s tree code. The trees were on a long, narrow strip of land sandwiched between El Camino Real and the Caltrain tracks a few blocks north of Ralston......

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A new way to find man’s lost best friend

Published: Jun 09, 2008

When the human companions of Kody, a brown Havanese dog, left for vacation last summer, he was dropped off at San Mateo resident Connie Weiss’s house. But, later that day, when a visitor came over, Kody bolted out the door, down the block and into unknown territory.Thus began the great search for Kody: a search that involved many friends, family and even some strangers, a search that started in the afternoon and......

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Getting to class more difficult, expensive for county students

Published: Jun 09, 2008

The school bus appears to be headed in the direction of the dinosaur for students at the largest high school district in the county.After eliminating several bus lines last year, the San Mateo Union High School District is eliminating two more this year in what they describe as an unfortunate but necessary belt-tightening. The lines being eliminated this year take students to Aragon High School from Continued...

 

Woodside fire burns property, cars and hillside

Published: Jun 09, 2008

A spark from a welding torch may have started a blaze that burned down a carport, two vehicles and a hillside of vegetation Saturday evening, according to fire officials.One firefighter sustained minor burn injuries in the two-alarm fire, Woodside Fire Department Battalion Chief Dan Ghiorso said.But Ghiorso said the damage could have been far worse had it been windy or had the fire come later in the season.The fire was reported at 5:28 Saturday evening; the fire department responded within five minutes and had water on the flames within about......

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Female bank robber may have hit numerous times

Published: Jun 06, 2008

A woman believed to have robbed multiple banks — including one just last month in Burlingame — hit again Thursday, this time targeting a bank in downtown Belmont, police said.A small packet of billson the side of the highway, discovered just moments after the robbery took place, lead investigators to believe the woman fled on foot and then escaped in a getaway car. Authorities said they have no description of the car.The woman, described as a middle-aged black woman in a sun hat and sunglasses, walked into the U.S. Bank......

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3-Minute Interview: David Anderman

Published: Jun 05, 2008

The senior attorney and chief business official for Lucasfilm is in charge of protecting and promoting the "StarWars" company’s intellectual property, which keeps him busy watching YouTube parodies and thinking about robot chickens. He spoke about movie marketing at the Cubberly Community Center Theatre in Palo Alto this week. How did you get involved with Lucasfilm? I was an attorney doing intellectual property......

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Verdict still out on county judge seat

Published: Jun 04, 2008

With 140 of 553 precincts reporting Tuesday night, it was too close to call who won the election for San Mateo Superior Court judge.Trial attorney and judicial arbitrator Jerry Nastari had a very slight edge over his opponent, court attorney and facilitator Don Franchi.The two were vying to replace retiring Judge John Runde,......

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Speier sweeps Democratic rivals for congressional bid

Published: Jun 04, 2008

By the end of the year, Rep. Jackie Speier will have been on the ballot a total of three times. She’s now won two of those races handily — a result she hopes to replicate for her final election of the year in November.The 58-year-old attorney beat out three other candidates in the Democratic primary for the 12th Congressional District on Tuesday.In April, Speier won a special election to replace Rep. Tom......

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Arsenic cleanup nearly done

Published: Jun 03, 2008

In the last few years, the number of fences around Burlingame High School has grown and grown.At first, it was the 8,000-square-foot front lawn, which was found to be contaminated by arsenic. Then, more contamination was found and fence after fence popped up: in the large courtyards where students lounge at lunch, around planters around the school, at a practice field behind the school.But all those fences should finally come down this summer, as the high school’s $4.2 million arsenic......

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Dangers hidden in homeowner groups

Published: Jun 02, 2008

Victor Saldana and his wife saved up some money and decided to finally buy their own home. They knew they could never afford a single-family home on the Peninsula and instead found a condominium at what seemed like a great price.Then Saldana went to a homeowners association meeting and heard the news: Their Colina Condominium complex in South San Francisco has major structural problems. To fix the damages, each unit in the complex may have to pay a special assessment fee in the range of $70,000 to $90,000 per unit......

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Late-night car accidents hospitalize five

Published: Jun 02, 2008

Two late-night accidents on U.S. Highway 101 this weekend sent at least five people to the hospital.The first accident occurred around 1:50 a.m. Saturday morning just south of Whipple Avenue, when a southbound 1998 Toyota Camry with four occupants drove off the side of the highway, said California Highway Patrol Officer Peter Van Eckhardt.The vehicle ran through about 50 feet of fence and five posts on the shoulder, before reaching the......

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Pot club purveyor soldiers on

Published: May 30, 2008

As Ken Estes surveyed the broken glass strewn across the floor of his cannabis club Thursday, he vowed he would not be "intimidated" by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency."I will either relocate or reopen within a month," promised the marijuana purveyor.The club, Holistic Solutions at 216 Second St., was one of three dispensaries owned by Estes that was raided by federal agents early Wednesday morning. According to Estes, they also raided two of his growing operations, his home and the homes......

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Fee could be link to affordable housing

Published: May 27, 2008

Commercial developers that build offices and retail stores bring in jobs, but city staff members say that they should also pay fees to help build affordable housing for the workers who take the positions.The "linkage fee" for commercial developers was proposed in 1993, and, city staff says, if the fees had been implemented there would be $15 million more in the pot now for affordable housing.The proposal has gained renewed interest, with members of the City Council and the Planning Commission giving it favorable reviews during a joint study session......

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Agencies unite against mountain blaze

Published: May 26, 2008

Dozens of firefighters from San Francisco and San Mateo counties count among the nearly 2,900 who are still fighting the Summit fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains.Within a few hours of the fire being reported early Thursday morning, three strike teams with firefighters from 15 fire departments in San Mateo County and......

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Foster City’s wish may be granted

Published: May 26, 2008

Foster City’s long-held dream of having its very own high school may be once again rekindled.A Los Angeles-based charter school foundation has recently submitted an application to the San Mateo Union High School District to open a high school in the city. The application comes as another effort to open a high school in the bayside town appears to be extinguished. The move is the third charter school effort in as many years to arise in Foster City.School district Superintendent David Miller confirmed that he received an application from Dialogue......

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Pranksters may face charges for glue stunt

Published: May 23, 2008

Students and teachers arriving at Burlingame High School on Thursday morning found themselves stuck outside of the school after 40 of the school’s doors had been glued shut.The apparent senior prank sent several hundred of the school’s students to different classrooms and left school administrators furiously threatening criminal litigation.The super glue had been shot into the door’s locks; it took several hours and cost about $2,000 to fix the damage — enough to warrant a felony charge, if the perpetrators......

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Upper grades hit high notes on exams

Published: May 22, 2008

Teachers at San Mateo County high schools and middle schools have reason to be proud: 41 percent of high schools and 48 percent of middle schools on the Peninsula hit the state’s annual assessment target in 2007.Since 1999, California schools have been required to increase scores on a number of state tests each year. The state Department of Education measures their progress through a ranking system called the California Academic Performance Index.Schools and districts are given a score between a low of 200 and a high of 1,000. The benchmark......

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3-Minute Interview: Michael Ondaatje

Published: May 22, 2008

The author of "The English Patient," which won the Booker Prize and was made into an Academy Award-winning movie, will be at Books Inc. on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco today at 7 p.m. promoting his latest novel, "Divisadero." Largely set in the Bay Area, the book follows three siblings separated by their past.You were born in Sri Lanka, educated in......

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Police funding faces ax

Published: May 21, 2008

Fewer police officers could be protecting Peninsula streets as a result of the state’s budget crisis — but exactly how many will be cut won’t be known for months.Three state funds that feed local police departments are facing the ax during this year’s state budget talks. The amount to be chopped countywide could be limited to a tolerable $600,000 or inflated to a painful $8 million.For cities such as Belmont, the best-case scenario is a loss of about $34,000. The worst-case scenario......

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Freshman enrollment surges at Notre Dame

Published: May 17, 2008

In the last five years, the incoming class walking the historic halls of Belmont’s Notre Dame de Namur University has dwindled until last fall, when there were just 96 freshmen to replace this year’s graduating class of 215.But the Catholic university plans to turn that around.The private school, which was founded in 1851 as a women’s college, has overhauled its leadership and launched a marketing campaign to bring in students......

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Two teens escape low-security facility

Published: May 16, 2008

Two 17-year-old boys picked up their bags and walked out of a juvenile probation camp Thursday afternoon near La Honda, located in the hills south of Redwood City in unincorporated San Mateo County.The facility for delinquent boys, Camp Glenwood, does not lock the juveniles in and does not have a fence, so such escapes occur about five or six times a year,......

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Bike to Work Day accident kills United Airlines worker

Published: May 16, 2008

Judy Castillo sat at her desk Thursday morning chatting with her boss about Bike to Work Day. She pointed to a newspaper article about a man who rode 10 miles to work each day, and joked that the paper should have profiled her husband, who rides his bike 22 miles to work each day.A half-hour later, she got a call from the San Mateo Police Department: Her husband had died......

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Tight budgets might not cost teachers their jobs

Published: May 15, 2008

Teachers in most school districts in San Mateo County will not lose their jobs now that school officials have finagled tight budgets squeezed by looming state cuts.But that does not mean class sizes won’t grow, school officials warned.Districts are beginning to grapple with what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s revised budget, released Wednesday, means for their coffers. Today is also the deadline for school districts to notify certified teachers whether they will be......

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County programs for disabled face ax

Published: May 13, 2008

Jim Engvall has a full life. He has a nice apartment in Belmont and a good job that he enjoys, he spends his free time volunteering for a cause important to him and he’s surrounded by people who care about him.But the 56-year-old with cerebral palsy fears that much of that could be on the line — not only for him, but for the 3,500 residents of Continued...

 

Sighting of mountain lion has neighbors, authorities on guard

Published: May 12, 2008

A mountain lion was seen around an unincorporated residential neighborhood near San Mateo on Sunday, prompting an alert by the county Sheriff’s Office and a fruitless search for the wild animal. At 10:30 a.m., the Sheriff’s Office received a call about a mountain lion spotting in the game preserve behind the 1700 block of Lexington Avenue in the Highlands neighborhood, said San Mateo County Sheriff Sgt. Gary Brown. An alert about the sighting......

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Bay Meadows nearing finishing line

Published: May 12, 2008

The wild cheers rose higher than the dust as race horses pounded the track at what is likely the last day of Bay Meadows’ last regular season meet.Surf Town, ridden by jockey Chris Landeros, won the afternoon race — to the chagrin of Maureen Serafini, who hadn’t won a bet all day and had pinned her last hopes to long shot Licari.Serafini’s......

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Investigation finds sex offenders living in Peninsula care facilities

Published: May 09, 2008

A county audit has revealed that two registered sex offenders were living in child care and foster care facilities in the Peninsula, though no children were harmed on the two cases, county officials said.The two instances were revealed by an audit by the county’s Human Services Agency, in which the agency compared 530 addresses of child care and foster care facilities to a state database of registered sex offenders. The investigation was requested by Supervisor Jerry Hill after a state audit......

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A prescription for discount drugs

Published: May 08, 2008

The swelling costs of prescription drugs could be soothed by a hefty discount for tens of thousands of uninsured and underinsured San Mateo County residents.A new proposal would cut the cost of prescription drugs by 22 percent at a time when approximately 80,000 of San Mateo County’s residents are uninsured, according to the county’s Blue-Ribbon Task Force. But the best part, county Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson said, is that the......

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Redwood City knee-deep in levee quagmire

Published: May 06, 2008

Redwood Shores has a predicament: federal emergency officials say a nearby levee is not high enough to protect the waterfront neighborhood from a major flood.But the simple solution to that problem — making the levee taller — may be impossible because the levee is in front of San Carlos’ landing strip, which means building up the embankment could violate Federal Aviation Administration......

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Hospital’s ills may be due to bills

Published: May 06, 2008

San Mateo County’s public hospital is teetering on the financial edge — a situation that’s likely to grow more precarious with state budget cuts this year.But, unlike other nearby county hospitals, the San Mateo Medical Center offers a 50 percent discount on bills for self-pay clients if payment is made within 30 days.The hospital also lacks the ability to accept same-day payments from self-pay patients for many services.The Examiner’s investigation into the payment practices of the hospital comes after recent......

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Dogs lend an ear to help children read

Published: May 05, 2008

A boy whose Dalmatian had recently died sat on the floor of the Redwood City library, reading aloud to Parker.Parker, a big, black Labrador retriever, listened attentively for a while, and then rolled over so his new friend could scratch his belly.Parker and the boy were participating in Paws for Tales, a program in which animals visit libraries and are read to by children. The program was launched by the Continued...

 

Insurance costs may flood county residents

Published: May 05, 2008

If Julie Pollock had ever heard of a flood in Foster City, she would not be balking at the prospect of being required to buy flood insurance for her home.But she hasn’t."I can’t understand how [federal officials] think Foster City could ever flood, and I don’t see why they expect people to pay $1,350 a year for something that’s never going to do us any good," she said.Pollock, who has lived in......

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Levy could avert dangerous waters

Published: May 05, 2008

San Mateo officials say they don’t have the $2.6 million to repair the levees; Foster City officials say the levees are not their problem to fix. With tens of thousands of residents caught in the middle, one viable solution for property owners may be to tax themselves to avoid buying expensive flood insurance.Officials from Foster City, whose levees are in relatively pristine condition, recently said the city will work with San Mateo to......

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Company looks up for Foster City expansion plans

Published: May 05, 2008

Up seems to be the popular direction for buildings to go in Foster City lately, and the city’s largest company, Gilead Sciences, is following suit.The 10th-largest public company in the Bay Area plans to double the square footage of its 17-building Foster City campus in the next 10 years. Though plans are preliminary, the company hopes to replace several of its lab and office buildings with taller buildings, some as tall......

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Toddler appears to be recovering, family friend says

Published: Apr 30, 2008

A toddler who fell out of the window at his parents’ apartment is apparently recovering.A close friend of the family’s said he visited the family in Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University on Monday night. Nirmal Jha, who identified the toddler as Abhishant Ranabhat, said the 18-month-old was moving around and opening his eyes.The boy was in critical condition after falling 21 feet from a third-story window on Sunday. Continued...

 

3-Minute Interview: Dave Wang

Published: Apr 30, 2008

The electronic musician, aka Mochipet, released a new album earlier this month on the Daly City Records label he launched out of his Daly City apartment about three years ago. Called "Microphonepet," it features collaborations with musicians around the world. Wang recently completed a European tour and is touring the East Coast.Why did you start your own record label? I started my own label because there’s a lot of my music that other labels didn’t want to release. And I felt like there was a lack of experimental music —......

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Freak toddler accidents highlight grim trend in county

Published: Apr 29, 2008

A toddler who fell out of a third-story window Sunday afternoon and remained in critical condition Monday was the second in a week to have fallen out of a window in San Mateo County.Last week, a 5-year-old girl fell from of a second-story window on Grand Avenue in South San Francisco, police confirmed. The girl was transported to San......

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School calls on ‘Simpsons’ writer for help

Published: Apr 28, 2008

Sports programs killed, libraries closed, teachers given pink slips — as Homer Simpson might say, "Doh!"But as districts across the state make such cuts to cope with their budget crises, the students, parents and teachers at Ralston Middle School are taking matters into their own hands. And in this case, they happen to be yellow, four-fingered hands.Michael Reiss, a longtime writer on "The Simpsons" and several other animated series, will be speaking......

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Grand jury’s warning not heeded

Published: Apr 28, 2008

In the Great Quake of 1906, the San Andreas Reservoir ripped in half: one half moved nine feet north, while the other half stayed put.It’s that kind of catastrophic dam failure — one that could lead to flash floods through what are now heavily populated parts of the Peninsula — that worried a San Mateo civil grand jury last year. In a critical report, the jury recommended San Mateo County and......

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Slow resolve to speedy roads

Published: Apr 26, 2008

Ignorance is bliss — at least when it comes to setting the city’s speed limits.Unsafe driving has been the root of complaints from two neighborhood associations that represent the Beresford-Hillsdale area and the downtown area. Each association has campaigned for more enforcement in their neighborhoods, complaining that drivers regularly drive at high speeds through those areas.But in a recent meeting, the San Mateo City Council decided not to authorize a citywide survey of traffic speeds, the first step in......

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Nature’s call alerts resident to deadly San Mateo fire

Published: Apr 25, 2008

An early morning fire Thursday that consumed two houses, displaced 16 people and killed two puppies in San Mateo was dangerously close to taking human lives, residents say, if it weren’t for the full bladder of a neighbor. Ray Tulloh, who lives adjacent to the Lodi Avenue houses that caught fire, said he had woken up to go to the bathroom early Thursday morning and flipped on the TV to help him......

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Neighbor runs over, kills elderly woman

Published: Apr 24, 2008

A 76-year-old woman walking to her exercise class Wednesday morning was killed when her neighbor apparently reversed her car over her, authorities said.Neighbors said Hideko Terada, a resident on East Santa Inez Avenue,was walking to an exercise class around 7:45 a.m. when a neighbor, reversing a small sport utility vehicle out of a driveway, struck her but then rolled over her again as she drove forward. Hours after the accident, green paint on the driveway and sidewalk marked where the fatality occurred.The driver told police on scene that she did......

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Manager pens ‘Dear John’ to city

Published: Apr 24, 2008

After 18 years at the helm of the city of San Mateo, City Manager Arne Croce is stepping aside and making way for another skipper.Croce sent the City Council a letter Tuesday announcing his retirement. The council will hold a special session today to appoint an interim city manager and begin the search for a permanent replacement.Croce, who was city manager of Los......

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Sewage plant phasing out its odorous method of treatment

Published: Apr 23, 2008

Two million dollars over budget, 18 months behind schedule, and about 30 years later than nose-plugging neighbors would have liked, San Mateo’s sewage treatment plant is finally ridding itself of its unique reek.The plant, which treats 13 million gallons of raw sewage a day from San Mateo, Foster City, Belmont and Hillsborough, will transition next month from its famously stinky sludge-cooking system to a new — and hopefully less offensive to the nostrils — bacterial treatment system.The transition will be complete in October — more than 18 months behind schedule,......

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Road repair proving uphill battle

Published: Apr 23, 2008

Every time Carol Schoening wants to leave her house, she must carefully reverse her car 300 feet up her road, inch by inch. She has no choice: two-thirds of Marburger Road is washed out, and the city says the street is not its responsibility to fix. After living with this situation for more than two years, the Schoenings and three other property owners on Marburger Road in the Belmont hills have filed a......

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Foster City could be dubbed flood zone

Published: Apr 22, 2008

Residents may soon be flooding in to insurance offices to buy insurance if new a FEMA map, which declares the entire city a flood zone, are approved.The long-awaited draft map, just published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, impacts homeowners who have federally insured mortgages, because they will be required to buy flood insurance.Foster City’s own levees — which protect the city from being flooded by the Bay — are in fine condition, FEMA engineer Kathleen Schaefer said.Neighboring San Mateo’s levees, however, are faulty and will require tens of millions......

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Finish line in sight for Bay Meadows

Published: Apr 22, 2008

As horse racing at Bay Meadows nears the homestretch, City Council members Monday night approved the plans for what the land will be used for after the storied track is demolished.The 74-year-old racetrack, where Seabiscuit raced and the photo finish was first used, is slated for demolition in September, after the racing season and the San Mateo County Fair in August.On the land, the Bay Meadow’s Land Co. will build......

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Web-based Akamai acquires old Visa lot in San Mateo

Published: Apr 21, 2008

Visa may be everywhere you want to be, but since the financial-services brand left its corporate headquarters in San Mateo years ago, the commercial campus formerly known as San Mateo Executive Park has sat mostly vacant.But no longer: The lot’s new owners have leased one of its six buildings to technology giant Akamai. The campus, on Clearview Way near the intersection of Highway 92 and West Hillsdale Boulevard, includes six buildings......

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Woman injured in fire that destroys her many wares

Published: Apr 17, 2008

An elderly lady whose house was filled to the gills with books, antiques and other collectibles watched much of it go up in flames Wednesday.The unidentified woman was treated for smoke inhalation and burns on her hands, and has lost nearly all her belongings in what is believed to have been an accidental fire, San Mateo Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Novelli said.Novelli said they did not find any animals in the house, which he said did not have any functional......

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Students may have lunch-money blues

Published: Apr 16, 2008

With the cost of food rising at historic rates, the county’s largest school district may have to charge children more for school lunches.The San Mateo-Foster City School District board of trustees on Thursday will consider hiking lunch fees for elementary school kids from $2 to $2.50, and from $2.50 to $3 for middle school students. The price would be double what it was just nine years ago.The hike will cost families about $10 per child a month, if......

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Man rescued after Bay swim

Published: Apr 15, 2008

The life of a 20-year-old man who took an ill-advised dip in the Bay wearing just his Speedos was saved Sunday night by a resourceful park ranger and a volunteer Coast Guard member.The unidentified man was on the beach at Coyote Point in San Mateo with his brother and a companion Sunday evening when he decided to go for a swim, said Park Ranger Rick Munds, who was on duty at the......

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Bay Area hip to Internet access

Published: Apr 14, 2008

Bay Area residents are flying ahead of the rest of the nation with its speedy Internet connections, according to a poll released today.Approximately 76 percent of the Bay Area residents interviewed for an annual poll by the Bay Area Council, a pro-business organization, said they had broadband Internet access. Dial-up users were nearly as common as dinosaurs: Only 3 percent of respondents admitted to using the once-standard modem connection.The business-sponsored public-policy group compared its results with those of the......

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Plan to get around bond terms on shaky legal ground

Published: Apr 14, 2008

A scheme by San Mateo County’s largest high school district to sidestep flaws in the fine print of its $300 million bond appears to be illegal, according to the county’s legal advisers.San Mateo Union High School District leaders recently announced that they’d found problems with the language of the Measure M bond, which was passed by voters in 2006 to help the school district renovateaging......

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Fired Aragon High teacher appeals termination

Published: Apr 12, 2008

Aragon High School teacher David Faustine, who was fired last month for alleged misconduct amid student protests in his support, has appealed his dismissal.Faustine, 58, who taught psychology, engineering and physics at Aragon High and has taught at Peninsula schools for 34 years, was placed on administrative leave in February for alleged misconduct. Faustine has said complaints stemmed from comments he made in an advanced placement psychology class about the psychology of sex.On March 20, the Continued...

 

Road privatization finds favor

Published: Apr 11, 2008

Toll roads, privately run public transit and even business-owned public schools have the strong support of Bay Area residents, according to a poll by a pro-business organization.The poll by the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored, public-policy advocacy organization, showed that residents are open to allowing private companies to finance improvements to roads, schools, hospitals and water-supply systems. These projects could help the cash-strapped state fund major infrastructure projects that it currently cannot afford, said Continued...

 

Fine print may bring 15 years of higher tax

Published: Apr 09, 2008

Improvement projects for one of the largest school districts in San Mateo County are in jeopardy after district officials found flaws in the fine print of a $294 million bond measure in the latest chapter of the bond’s troubled history.The Measure M bond, approved in November 2006, was intended to help the San Mateo Union High School District build new classrooms and renovate facilities at......

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Foster City weighs impact of project

Published: Apr 07, 2008

Imagine hundreds of Foster City children clamoring onto buses each morning to go to a different city’s schools.If the city grows by 730 new households, as it would if the mammoth Pilgrim-Triton redevelopment goes forward as planned, that image could become a reality, said Dawn McDaniel, a retired teacher who spoke at a Planning Commission meeting recently.Impact on schools was one of the top concerns among many that residents raised......

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Bay Meadows closure could dismantle social network

Published: Apr 05, 2008

Every morning of the racing season, 74-year-old Dorcas McCarthy, of Pacifica, picks up a friend and heads to the Bay Meadows Race Track.She has coffee and lunch there, chats with old friends, bets $2 on the horses and goes home. The routine is repeated the next day."It’s something to do to break my day up, since my husband died," she said. "If they close this place, I’m going to have to find something else to do — I don’t know what. I’ll miss it, that’s for sure."McCarthy counts among hundreds......

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Lawsuit talk buzzing about airport noise

Published: Apr 05, 2008

Residents in the tiny coastal village of Montara are preparing to file a lawsuit against the Half Moon Bay Airport, claiming that airplanes have been flying too low over their neighborhood, some barely flying "above the treetops." George Skegas, who has been living in Montara with his wife for nearly four years, said he initially didn’t notice that they lived......

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District stresses good attendance

Published: Apr 02, 2008

When Jane Milanes told her son’s elementary school that he’d be out of school for a family vacation early in the school year, she was surprised to receive a letter asking for a donation of about $30, to make up for the money the school would lose because of his absence.Many more parents of children in the San Mateo-Foster City School District will start receiving similar letters,......

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Owners in square fret about proposal

Published: Apr 01, 2008

For 23 years, Sue Jower ran a successful salon in the Marlin Cove shopping center, catering to customers so devoted to her that they came all the way from Napa Valley for her beautifying magic.Then, in 1999, when the shopping center was torn down and redeveloped, she moved to the Charter Square Shopping Center, working hard to retain the clientele she’d built for more than two decades.So when she heard recently that the owners of Charter Square were thinking of razing the entire 60,000-square-foot shopping center and building a brand-new,......

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As other cities struggle, Foster City closes in on becoming debt-free

Published: Mar 31, 2008

As most cities on the Peninsula are considering layoffs and tax increases to keep from sinking into the red, Foster City’s is afloat with green.The city of about 30,000 will be completely debt-free by 2010, according to a budget report that will be presented to the City Council today. Even rosier, the city has about $17 million in reserves — more than 50 percent of its general fund budget, Assistant......

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Bay Meadows blaze ‘suspicious’

Published: Mar 31, 2008

A group of mischievous kids may have been responsible for a fire that started at the Bay Meadows Race Track on Saturday afternoon.Around 4:45 p.m., during the last races of the day, a fire started in a pile of boxes and computer parts at the north end of the famous track’s grandstands, San Mateo Battalion Chief Jeff Barile said.The boxes and computer parts were being stored in an indoor patio area of the long-closed Tipster’s Café, Bay Meadows General Manager Bernie Thurman said. A canopy over the area also caught......

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Historical ‘gem’ feels effect of truck routes

Published: Mar 28, 2008

In the 1960s, master craftsmen from Japan brought 100 crates of rare wood, woven mats and delicate rice paper to San Mateo, where they constructed a meticulous replica of the Japanese emperor’s summer villa on the Watanuki family’s property.Today, when Laurie Watanuki runs her fingers across that rice paper, they blacken with diesel soot. Her Fifth Avenue property is lined on......

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Report: Gas prices will rise another 75 cents by Memorial Day

Published: Mar 27, 2008

If you are aching when you pay $3.65 a gallon at the pump, think of the sting you will feel if gas prices increase another 75 cents by Memorial Day, as predicted by a consumer report released Wednesday.Despite declining gas consumption, which should lower the price of gas, a cut in production by oil refiners may drive prices ever higher in the coming months, according to the report by the Consumer Federation of America. Consumers may know that the decreased supply will hit them hard at gas pumps and grocery......

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You better finish construction in Belmont quick

Published: Mar 26, 2008

More and more, San Mateo County residents who want to expand their homes are under a time crunch to make changes or they’ll find themselves owing money to the cities in which they reside.Belmont is the most recent city in the county to begin penalizing homeowners and developers who don’t complete construction projects within strict time limits. Tuesday night, the Continued...

 

Who pays when the levee breaks?

Published: Mar 25, 2008

San Mateo’s faulty levees could soak Foster City — and the wallets of its residents.The levees of Foster City’s bayside neighbor are in bad shape, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency, and are in need of some $32.5 million in repairs. Foster City’s own levees meet all federal standards, Mayor Pam......

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‘Major’ overhaul looms for middle school

Published: Mar 24, 2008

Picking a major and minor can be a conundrum for college students — but soon it could be one facing Bayside Middle School students.On Thursday, a team of parents and educators at the failing school presented district leaders with a program they hope will turn Bayside around: the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Program — or STEM — a model developed by the renowned Continued...

 

Security boosted after heist streak

Published: Mar 22, 2008

Bandits sporting fedoras and wigs, speeding off on bikes and in getaway cars: San Mateo banks have seen it all this year — and it’s only March.An increase in bank robberies in the city over the last year has led to banks and police beefing up security measures. Until recently, San Mateo banks typically fell victim to four or fewer bank robberies per year. But last year, there were eight attempted bank robberies, and so far this year, there have......

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Aragon instructor ousted for alleged misconduct

Published: Mar 21, 2008

Despite impassioned protests by students and parents, a longtime teacher at Aragon High School was fired Thursday night amid rumors of alleged misconduct.The San Mateo Union High School District board of trustees met in a closed session for what they described as a "personnel matter," an hour after approximately 50 students and a dozen parents — many wearing T-shirts and carrying signs reading "Free Continued...

 

3-Minute Interview: James Kass

Published: Mar 19, 2008

The poet is the executive director of the nonprofit Youth Speaks, which Saturday at 7 p.m. will host the 12th annual Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam finals in S.F.’s War Memorial Opera House. Tickets are $18 for general admission and can be purchased at www.cityboxoffice.com.How was Youth Speaks born? I started Youth Speaks in 1996 while I was a graduate student at San Francisco State. The intention was to create as many opportunities as possible for a diverse......

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Coast Guard suspends search for sailor

Published: Mar 17, 2008

The two men who went missing Saturday aboard the 32-foot sailboat "Daisy," competed in a boat race despite an advisory warning against the sailing of small crafts as high seas and high winds swept the Bay this weekend.One of the two sailors, Anthony Harrow, 72, of Larkspur, would never return alive from Saturday’s Double Handed Lightship Race, a daylong competition organized by the Island Yacht Club. Harrow’s body was found by San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies around 11:20 a.m. Sunday at a tide pool area near Moss Beach in San......

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Low-wage earners being forced out

Published: Mar 14, 2008

For months, Julia Skelly-Hirst has looked for a home. She’s scoured Craigslist, searched laundry bulletin boards and signedup on waiting lists for affordable housing in San Mateo County. Every day, she goes home to a decaying hotel in the Tenderloin where she pays $450 a month for a room."It’s been a nightmare," said Skelly-Hirst, who said her life fell......

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A complex issue for San Mateo rent increases

Published: Mar 12, 2008

In the 18 months since the Hillsdale Garden Apartments changed hands, Laura O’Brien’s rent for her three-bedroom apartment has increased by $530. She said she would move, but can’t.O’Brien is a licensed child care provider who runs a day care out of her home; her business license is linked to her address. Her family includes four children who are excelling at Hillsdale High School and O’Brien doesn’t want to disrupt their education.O’Brien is among hundreds of residents at the 697-unit apartment complex, located next to the Hillsdale Shopping Center, who......

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Worker on watch of facility while teen escaped lost job

Published: Mar 11, 2008

The person assigned to supervise the 17-year-old murder suspect who escaped from an exercise yard at the county’s juvenile hall is no longer employed there. Chief Probation Officer Loren Buddress would not comment on the employee’s departure, describing it as a "personnel issue." He said no other employees have been disciplined in the case. The supervisor was cited as a primary cause of the Feb. 14 escape in a report the Probation Office sent to county supervisors and court officials late Friday. Continued...

 

Medical center faces tough choices

Published: Mar 10, 2008

San Mateo County’s public hospital says it will have to start turning some patients away in an attempt to fill a $5 million budget hole.The San Mateo Medical Center, mandated with serving the county’s poorest residents, has a capacity of about 70 patients in its acute care and intensive care units. But the financially-strapped medical center may have to "cap" the number of patients it accepts into the unit, said county Supervisor Jerry Hill, who chairs the hospital’s board of directors.Once the hospital reaches that cap, patients will be turned......

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3-Minute Interview: Maggie Markham

Published: Mar 10, 2008

The Bowditch Middle School teacher coached the school’s sixth-graders to learn vocabulary words for the WordMasters Challenge, a national competition that 230,000 students participate in annually. The sixth-graders placed first out of 424 school teams in the year’s first of three WordMasters tests.How does the WordMasters Challenge work? It’s a national vocabulary program that sends out 25 vocabulary words three different times in the year. Those words are being learned by sixth-graders all over the country. And then they give the kids a test that uses the words in analogies,......

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Bag charges and extra fees could leave some grounded

Published: Mar 08, 2008

With some airlines starting to charge passengers for a second checked bag — and even more for extra and overweight bags — analysts say air travel is drifting out of reach for people such as Christina Malins, who recently stood under a tower of baggage at the San Francisco International Airport. "One bag per person would be really, really hard," she said, struggling with a cart loaded with eight suitcases and a pile of carry-on bags. "I mean, this bag alone is just car seats," Malins, her sister and her......

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Bay Meadows plans off to the races

Published: Mar 07, 2008

Architects went for broke on the new designs for the planned office buildings at Bay Meadows released Thursday, hoping that the curvy, modern edifices will be sexy enough for city officials — and hopefully to attract a Silicon Valley heavyweight.The redevelopment would replace the historic Bay Meadows racetrack and drastically alter the face of San Mateo with condos, office buildings and retail stores — a boon for city coffers, but a tragedy in the minds of many residents, who would like to save the 74-year-old track where Seabiscuit raced and......

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New proposal for downtown space wins over hearts

Published: Mar 06, 2008

When asked what most excites them about the Village in Foster City, Claudette and Jim Main spill over with enthusiasm."Oh, I love it," 60-year-old Claudette begins. "It’ll be within walking distance of Leo Ryan Park, the Rec Center, the library …""And the convenience stores will be right next to the retirement facility — restaurants and coffee shops, right there where you live," interrupts her 67-year-old husband.The Mains were among about 20 Foster City residents who attended a Planning Commission study session Tuesday night at whcih commissioners gave the thumbs up......

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Young motorcycle rider remembered after fatal crash

Published: Mar 06, 2008

A large, drooping, purple orchid sent in condolence sat Wednesday on the front step of 28-year-old Christopher Seal’s parents ‘house, a home on a quiet cul-de-sac only about a mile from the site of his death the night before.The Belmont resident was killed Tuesday evening when his motorcycle collided with a car on the 1300 block of Ralston Avenue, near Continued...

 

3-Minute Interview: Lisa Spector

Published: Mar 06, 2008

The Half Moon Bay resident and concert pianist, along with two colleagues, developed "Through a Dog’s Ear," a book and CD of music designed to calm anxious dogs, which were released March 1. A private concert for dogs and their human companions by Spector will be auctioned off at the San Francisco SPCA Bark and Whine Ball tonight.How did this project start? I’m a concert pianist and an enormous dog lover, and about five years ago or so I started becoming aware of how the dogs in my care would......

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Escape probe gains direction

Published: Mar 05, 2008

While the internal investigation into the escape of a murder suspect from San Mateo’s juvenile detention center has proceeded much more slowly than expected, the county’s independent investigation has a new helmsman."We’ve found our guy," County Manager John Maltbie said.Though the chosen lead investigator won’t be named until contract negotiations are complete, Maltbie described him as a "nationally known expert" who will be "instantly recognizable to those who are in......

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Smoking ban yields few complaints

Published: Mar 05, 2008

Nearly five months after passing the toughest secondhand smoke ordinance in the nation, only three smoking complaints have been filed with Belmont, two of which were not enforceable, and a third unfounded.That hasn’t stopped one City Council member from continuing the fight against smoking by possibly bolstering the regulation.Belmont’s landmark ordinance received nationwide attention last year. It requires landlords to put no-smoking clauses into new or renewed leases at most apartments that share a floor or a ceiling with another unit. Smoking is also prohibited in indoor and outdoor workplaces,......

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Range misses mark with environment

Published: Mar 04, 2008

The closure of the decades-old firing range at Coyote Point in five years will leave many tons of lead bullets in an adjacent hillside, an environmental hazard that will require a large-scale cleanup, environmental groups and county officials said.San Mateo County supervisors would like to see the range closed in the next five years, said Samuel Hertzberg, senior planner with the county’s Parks Department, because they said the park......

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County in talks about new facility

Published: Mar 03, 2008

It would be a win-win-win situation: a new 1,000-seat performing-arts facility for San Mateo County, a new home for nonprofit Broadway by the Bay and a new tenant for Coyote Point’s old Castaways Restaurant.The only problem now is where to come up with tens of millions of dollars. For the last few years, county Parks and Recreation officials have been in talks with San Mateo’s Broadway by the Bay,......

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Street funding encounters bumps

Published: Mar 03, 2008

State budget cuts are looming like a storm on the horizon for most government agencies, but they’re already raining down on the region’s roads.In an effort to deal with the state’s cash shortage, the governor and state legislature last month froze gas-tax funds, which are a prime source of funding of road projects for cities and counties. The state has promised to give that money back in September — at the end of the traditional roadwork season.The freeze on gas-tax funds has sent San Mateo County and some cities in......

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Twenty-person rumble rocks CSM campus

Published: Feb 27, 2008

One man’s insult of another man’s sister escalated into a 20-person brawl at College of San Mateo on Tuesday, police said. Police got a call that a fight had broken out between two men near the Snack Shack on the campus’s main quad yesterday just after noon, San Mateo Police Lt. Mike Brunicardi said. The fight sent at least one person to the hospital. The fight initially broke......

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Youth detention facility’s behavioral structure criticized

Published: Feb 27, 2008

No matter how well-behaved they are, murder suspects should not be rooming with teens accused of petty crimes, San Mateo County supervisors and residents told officials in charge of the county juvenile detention facility Tuesday.The comments were made at a Board of Supervisors hearing in which supervisors unanimously authorized an independent probe into the Feb. 14 escape of 17-year-old murder suspect Josue Raul Orozco from the Youth Services Center.The escape was the first from the 2-year-old Youth Services Center, a juvenile detention facility located in the Highlands neighborhood in the......

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3-Minute Interview: Matt Richtel

Published: Feb 26, 2008

The San Francisco resident is a New York Times reporter, comic strip writer, novelist, Scrabble aficionado and occasional songwriter. What powers his productivity? Regular naps, he says. Richtel will read from his novel "Hooked" at the San Francisco Public Library’s West Portal Branch today at 7 p.m.Give me a synopsis of "Hooked." Man sits in internet cafe in Marina. Gets handed note. By the time he looks up, the note-giver has walked out the door. Walks to follow her. Opens note. Note says, "get out of the cafe, now!" Cafe......

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Police say man stole beer from port, sold it to stores

Published: Feb 26, 2008

A Daly City man tried to spread the high life after stealing a truck full of beer from the Port of Oakland, authorities said. Carlos Passalacqua Demartini, 37, is accused of casing a 40-foot cargo trailer loaded with $10,000 of Corona beer from a secure yard at the Port of Oakland in January, San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Morley Pitt said. "We don’t know how many cases were stolen, but it was a tremendous number," Pitt said. What the alleged thief may not have realized at the time was......

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Belmont may dump garbage contract

Published: Feb 26, 2008

The city is considering trashing its waste collector and may even decide to pick up its own garbage.Belmont’s City Council hired a consultant to look into how much it would cost for the city to do its own garbage and recycling collection. The consultant reported it may only cost 7 percent more to invest in its own trash collection than the $4.1 million it pays Allied Waste......

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3-Minute Interview: Mike Hogan

Published: Feb 25, 2008

The Belmont resident and self-described "serial entrepreneur" enlisted the help of his two children, 12-year-old Ryan and 15-year-old Kendall, in the development of www.flashcardfriends.com. The site combines social networking with learning, allowing students to create, share and test themselves using virtual flashcards. Where did the idea for Flashcard Friends come from? I found when my kids used flashcards, they got straight As, but getting them to make them was much more challenging......

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Foster City plans teen paradise

Published: Feb 23, 2008

A new stage for bands. A bigger skate park. Video game and TV rooms, art rooms, homework rooms and a kitchen. In total, some 9,600 square feet of awesomeness. That’s what Foster City teens have in store if bids for a giant new teen center come in below the $6 million mark that city officials have set aside for the project. The City Council gave the long-dreamed-of project the nod at a budget meeting recently and a request for proposals was issued. If a bid receives approval at the council’s......

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Foster City not blowing smoke about ban

Published: Feb 22, 2008

Smokers may have to butt out of Foster City parks, if an idea being chewed on by the Parks and Recreation Committee comes to fruition.The idea of a smoking ban was first suggested by committee member Jim Freshour last summer, after he attended a July 4 celebration at a park and people were smoking around him."I can’t stand to be around cigarette smoke, the smell of it just drives me......

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Light fixture allegedly used in escape goes under spotlight

Published: Feb 22, 2008

The light fixture that 17-year-old Josue Rual Orozco grappled to hoist himself over a juvenile detention center wall and escape last week was the only light in the courtyard of the facility installed at a 12-foot height. Every other halogen light at the Youth Services Center was installed at 15 feet, Chief Probation Officer Loren Buddress said. What’s not clear yet is whether the lamp was installed lower by design or whether it was a construction error when the 2006 facility was built. "The light was set lower than it......

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Probation chief and residents face off over facility, escape

Published: Feb 22, 2008

Residents near a juvenile detention facility say they were misled by county officials and were told that the most dangerous criminals would not receive long-term housing at the Youth Services Center, from which a 17-year-old murder suspect escaped last week. "It was promised that these types of individuals would not be housed at this facility long term. We were told the average stay of a youth would be 20 days," said Continued...

 

Lacrosse field racket revisited

Published: Feb 21, 2008

As the lacrosse season gets under way, Notre Dame de Namur University students are once again cheering their team on, while some neighbors are plugging their ears.The city has found a contractor to conduct a second acoustic study on the noise generated by players and fans on Koret Field, Notre Dame’s recently renovated lacrosse field. The last study, submitted by Shen Milson & Wilke......

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Power outage cost restaurants thousands

Published: Feb 21, 2008

It was not a very rosy Valentine’s Day for Burlingame restaurants, who lost tens of thousands of dollars when power was cut in the middle of one of their biggest nights of the year.Nor is it likely to be a very sweetly remembered one by Caltrain or Burlingame, each of which is blaming the other for the outage — and one of which may have to pay the restaurants......

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High school district installing 'Columbine locks'

Published: Feb 21, 2008

If San Mateo’s high school students are feeling shaken by the horror of last week’s shooting at Northern Illinois University, perhaps a new safety measure being taken by the high school district will make them rest easier. Within the next four weeks, new locks will be installed in all schools in the San Mateo Union......

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3-Minute Interview: Jeannie Novak

Published: Feb 20, 2008

The video game developer and author is visiting San Francisco this week for the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center. Novak wrote "Play the Game: The Parent’s Guide to Video Games," which provides tips for parents about how to navigate their children’s interest in video games. What are some common misconceptions parents have about video games? One is the assumption that video games are only for 12- to......

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Belmont drivers can save more than gas

Published: Feb 20, 2008

If you live in Belmont and you buy a hybrid car this year, you might just get free belly-dancing lessons out of the bargain.The Belmont City Council last month adopted a Green Vehicle Initiative, which gives residents who buy low-emission cars $250 vouchers. The vouchers can be spent on any city service or fee, including Park and Recreation program such as wine tasting groups, tennis classes or piano lessons.Though federal and......

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3-Minute Interview: Sasha Cagen

Published: Feb 19, 2008

The San Francisco resident wrote the books "Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics" and "To-do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us." Her first book inspired International Quirkyalone Day, an alternative to Valentine’s Day now in its sixth year.What’s a quirkyalone? A quirkyalone is someone who enjoys being single. They want to be in a relationship, but it really has to be the right one.What inspired International Quirkyalone Day? I looked around......

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Supes request probe into inmate’s escape

Published: Feb 18, 2008

Two San Mateo County supervisors are calling for an investigation into the escape of inmate Josue Raul Orozco, the 17-year-old homicide suspect who scaled over a San Mateo County Youth Services Center wall on Thursday. County supervisors Jerry Hill and Rich Gordon said Sunday they want an independent investigation into the center’s security. Hill questioned whyit took hours for authorities to issue an arrest warrant for Orozco. "I wasn’t happy about how long it took to respond and how easily this person escaped," Hill said. Orozco escaped from the facility......

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3-Minute Interview: Eric Wolfinger

Published: Feb 16, 2008

The baker temporarily left his job at the Mission district’s Tartine Bakery and traveled to Colombia’s Sierra Nevada, where he managed to gain entry to a village of the reclusive Arhuaco Indians. Photos from the trip are on display at Tartine Bakery through Sunday and can be found on his blog, www.openkitchenblog.com. What drew you to Colombia’s Sierra Nevada? I knew there was a pretty reclusive group of people in the mountains who had survived for generations pretty much without any contact with the outside world. I was told......

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Fee possible fix for housing crunch

Published: Feb 16, 2008

With a projected 40 percent increase in jobs countywide by 2025, the question facing the city of San Mateo is: Where will all those workers live?One answer coming from city officials is to force developers to help pay for housing.The City Council and Planning Department are studying a proposal to adopt a commercial linkage fee — a $5 per square-foot fee on commercial developments that would go toward affordable housing programs. Only one other city in Continued...

 

Businesses hissing mad about gas-line rupture

Published: Feb 15, 2008

At least one local business said it would try to recoup losses from Pacific Gas & Electric after the company failed to mark a gas line that ruptured Thursday morning and forced authorities to shut down roads for about two hours.JMB Construction punched a hole in the gas line about 11:25 a.m., closing South Linden Avenue between Railroad and Victory avenues and not far from El Camino Real and U.S. Highway 101. Sean Quinn, foreman for JMB Construction, said workers were using an excavator to install a sewer line when......

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Caltrain shock halts commute, causes blackouts

Published: Feb 15, 2008

An electrified fence at the Caltrain station in Burlingame jolted and injured a middle-aged man Thursday evening, shutting down rush-hour traffic on the tracks for close to two hours and leaving thousands in a subsequent blackout.Around 6:40 p.m., a witness called 911 after seeing smoke and small flames coming from a tree leaningagainst a metal construction fence at the south end of the Burlingame platform, police said. Burlingame Fire......

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Shock halts Caltrain commute, cuts power

Published: Feb 15, 2008

An electrified fence at the Caltrain station in Burlingame jolted and injured a middle-aged man Thursday evening, shutting down rush-hour traffic on the tracks for close to two hours and leaving thousands in a subsequent blackout.Around 6:40 p.m., a witness called 911 after seeing smoke and small flames coming from a tree leaning against a metal construction fence at the south end of the Burlingame platform, police said. Burlingame......

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Plan to close 25th Avenue meets dissent

Published: Feb 13, 2008

Closing 25th Avenue — a street that runs over the Caltrain tracks in San Mateo’s Hillsdale neighborhood — is absolutely not an option, residents and businesses told a Caltrain official at a joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission on Tuesday night.The meeting was held to provide feedback about a long-planned project to route 25th, 28th, and 31st avenues either under or overthe tracks.The three entities involved in the project are Caltrain, which controls the tracks, the city, which controls the roads, and the San Mateo County Transportation......

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San Mateo development policy upsets many

Published: Feb 12, 2008

Bob Nice lives a half a block away from a proposed development that could add dozens of new homes, cars and people to his quiet neighborhood. But he only found out about it when one of his neighbors knocked on his door.He wasn’t aware of the housing proposal because the city sends notifications to homes only within 300 feet — about six houses — of a proposed project, regardless of whether it’s a simple home remodel or a several-acre development.That may change, however. The San Mateo City Council will rethink......

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Body found in back seat of car at beach

Published: Feb 11, 2008

A corpse whose arm was spotted sticking out from the back seat of a car late Saturday night might have been killed in Oakland and then driven to San Mateo County, officials said.Just after 11 p.m. Saturday, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Deputy Keith O’Dell investigated a car parked after closing hours at the Montara State Beach parking lot just south of Devil’s Slide on Highway 1. O’Dell spoke with a man sitting — apparently alone — in the driver’s seat when he saw an arm dangling under a cover on......

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Bay Meadows nears finish line

Published: Feb 07, 2008

Bay Meadows may be starting down the homestretch.As the faithful gathered Wednesday at the first races at what might be the last meet at the historic Bay Meadows racetrack, some remained hopeful the track may be saved.On Tuesday, an organization that had been trying to stop the track’s demolition and development of a condo complex announced it had given up fighting the issue in state court.Linda Schinkel, coordinator of Friends of Bay Meadows, said that after an expensive two-year legal battle, the organization could not afford to appeal a state......

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Measure L passes

Published: Feb 06, 2008

Watertight roofs, working heating systems and more classrooms are in store for the 10,000 students of the San Mateo-Foster School District after Measure L received the thumbs up from voters Tuesday."We’re delighted that Measure L has passed," Assistant Superintendent Joan Rosas said.The $175 million bond measure, which doesn’t raise property taxes, needed 55 percent of votes to pass. It will fund repairs for problems as basic as broken heating systems, cracked asphalt on playgrounds and ancient wiring as well as add classrooms to the district’s most popular schools.kworth@examiner.com ......

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Measure I passes

Published: Feb 06, 2008

Eichler Highlands and its neighbors said yes again to a tax for extra fire and police services. The neighborhoods are on county land and don’t receive city services. Since 1982, residents have voted to pay about $65 a year for more sheriff patrols and an extra fire truck."I’m pleased," said Cary Weist, president of the neighborhood association. "It will give this community assurances that all public safety measures are being taken." kworth@examiner.com......

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San Mateo reaps benefits from high-density housing

Published: Feb 05, 2008

Bicyclists can thank high-density housing residents for a new bike lane along Delaware Street in San Mateo — and probably for future bike and pedestrian friendly projects.The city of San Mateo has been promised $37,000 — and stands to gain perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars more — for developing high-density housing near train lines through a regional transit agency’s incentive program.The program’s goal is to motivate governments to give the thumbs up to high-density, low-income housing developments within ......

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Contractor’s mistake sinks city monies

Published: Feb 05, 2008

The city of San Mateo wants its money back from a contractor whose mistake nearly left plans for a Bay marshes boardwalk sinking in the mud.Last year, a contractor was hired to build an $800,000, 340-foot boardwalk in the marshes near Tidelands Park south of Coyote Point, complete with benches and interpretive signs, as part of the city’s shoreline master plan project. In November, the contractor started driving in 20-foot concrete piles to support the boardwalk.It didn’t take long to......

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3-Minute Interview: Ben Lee

Published: Feb 04, 2008

The San Jose resident is a superstar in the badminton world — a nine-time U.S. champion and member of the 1992 Olympic team. Lee and three other badminton aficionados have opened the Bay Badminton Club in Burlingame, a gym devoted to the sport with 16 courts, locker rooms, a children’s play area and a pro shop. The club’s grand opening was Saturday.Can you describe badminton for people who don’t know what it is? Badminton is a racket sport. It’s one of the fastest racket sports in the world. The shuttlecock,......

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State measure could help local community colleges

Published: Feb 02, 2008

When the economy sours, a paradox arises: People go back to school, but community-college funding is slashed. That is the quandary College of San Mateo President Michael Claire outlined recently when he explained why he said voters should approve Proposition 92 on Tuesday — a measure that would give community colleges $1 billion in extra funding during the next three years. But Theresa Wheeler, spokeswoman for No on Prop 92,......

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State measure could help local community colleges

Published: Feb 02, 2008

When the economy sours, a paradox arises: People go back to school, but community-college funding is slashed. That is the quandary College of San Mateo President Michael Claire outlined recently when he explained why he said voters should approve Proposition 92 on Tuesday — a measure that would give community colleges $1 billion in extra funding during the next three years. But Theresa Wheeler, spokeswoman for No on Prop 92,......

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Measure L would fund fixes to school facilities

Published: Feb 01, 2008

The leak that sprang in fourth-grader Esra Yeksek’s classroom at College Park Elementary School this year wasn’t too bad, she said.The same was not the case with the room down the hall, which had water streaming down the wall, when students’ work had to be thrown away.But for Principal Diana Hallock, there’s no size of leak that should be tolerated in classrooms, which is why she’s pinning her hopes on Measure L.When San Mateo voters go to the polls Tuesday, they’ll be asked to approve a measure to give the......

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Three arrested in recent streak of graffiti

Published: Jan 31, 2008

quick-dialing witness, some quick-thinking police officers and a quick-ending chase resultedin the arrest of three people believed to have painted graffiti all over the Peninsula and posted pictures of the vandalism on the Internet. The suspects are thought to be part of the "TC" tagging crew, which is responsible for tens of thousands of dollars of damage in San Mateo and other cities, authorities said. In the wee hours of the morning Tuesday, a resident saw three people spray-painting a tag on a wall of The Futon Shop on El......

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Man runs into burning home to rescue vintage Les Paul guitar, escapes safely

Published: Jan 31, 2008

When Jay Brousseau realized his kitchen was in flames and the heat was intense enough to melt the paint off the walls, he did what people wouldn’t normally do: He ran back. Fortunately, Brousseau escaped a second time without a scratch, his beloved 1965 Gibson Les Paul electric guitar tucked under his arms. But the same cannot be said for Brousseau’s North Humboldt Street apartment, which he and his wife just moved into a month ago. The apartment caught fire around 10 a.m. Wednesday, and fire officials were able to......

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Passage of Measure I would keep fire services in place

Published: Jan 31, 2008

When someone’s home catches fire in Rick Priola’s neighborhood in the San Mateo hills, firefighters are there in what seems like mere seconds. "The response time is great — they come right through our back gate and they’re right here," Priola said. This was not always the case — and, if Measure I gets an unexpected "no" vote next week, it may not be in the future. Since 1982, residents......

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Truck routes proposed in San Mateo

Published: Jan 28, 2008

Before Jane Brennan sunk $250,000 into remodeling her San Mateo home last year, she asked city officials if they were planning anything that might affect the character of her neighborhood. They said no. Several months later, she was infuriated to learn that the city was considering turning her quiet, residential street into a truck route. "It’s terrible," she said. "We have small children on our street. And now they’re turning it into a truck route?" Brennan’s street is one of about 30 San Mateo roads that may be newly designated......

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Eatery reopens; few new leads in slaying investigation

Published: Jan 25, 2008

As T.G.I. Friday’s reopened for business for the first time since their night manager was found dead in a pool of blood in the San Mateo restaurant, police say they still have no leads as to who might have slain him. San Mateo police Lt. Mike Brunicardi said police have not arrested anyone in the case, have no suspect description and do not know if night manager Douglas Castello, found dead on the floor of the restaurant at 5:15 a.m. Monday by the day manager, fought back. Police have maintained......

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City will pay for creek fix’s design, but not repairs

Published: Jan 23, 2008

A $165,000 contract has been approved for an engineering firm to design levee upgrades along the southern region of San Mateo Creek, though the $2.6 million to pay for the levee construction will still be left to homeowners.At its meeting last night, the City Council agreed to hire the firm Schaaf and Wheeler to design flood walls and levee upgrades that would protect 3,750 homes south of San Mateo Creek from floods. If built, flood walls would line both banks of the mouth of San Mateo Creek, as well as......

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T.G.I. Friday's offers reward for slaying info

Published: Jan 22, 2008

A T.G.I. Friday’s night manager, described by grief-stricken co-workers as "always working hard," "very cheerful" and a favorite among employees, was found dead in a pool of blood on the floor of the San Mateo restaurant early Monday morning in what police said may have been a murder motivated by robbery. The death is the city’s first homicide since 2006. The victim was identified by police as Hayward resident Douglas Castillo, 36. A day manager found Castillo on the floor around 5:15 a.m. Monday and immediately called police, San Mateo......

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Students honored for green thinking

Published: Jan 18, 2008

In February, a group of Foster City third-graders marched on City Hall to demand that officials do something about climate change.The group from Foster City Elementary School came with a range of suggestions. And at least one of their suggestions caught the ears of council members: lower the $800 fee for solar panel permits, one of the highest solar fees in the region.Since then, the city not only lowered the fee, they’ve eliminated it.On Thursday, the third-graders were recognized by a company that probably stands to gain the most from......

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Sewage systems need upgrades to avoid stinky situation

Published: Jan 18, 2008

Some 750,000 gallons of diluted raw sewage flowed out of Peninsula sewer pipes and into the Bay during the blustery winter storm that ravaged the Bay Area in early January, according to the state water control authority. More than half of the raw sewage from two trouble spots in San Mateo, where residents described manhole covers exploding off the street and untreated sewage spewing upward like a geyser. Another 270,000 gallons came from sewers in residential Continued...

 

Fire burns woman, but homeownersays he lives by himself

Published: Jan 17, 2008

An early-morning fire left a woman with second-degree burns on her face and hands, fire officials said, though the homeowner said he lives alone and wasn’t aware that anyone had been injured. The San Mateo Fire Department responded to a 911 call from a Sonora Drive house at 5:38 a.m. Wednesday and found the garage in flames. The fire also had started to spread to the neighboring house and was "within a minute" of penetrating that house, according......

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Foster City fancies a center of activity

Published: Jan 15, 2008

A heart — that’s what Foster City officials hope their city will be getting in exchange for the city’s last vacant lot.They envision farmers markets, concerts and art festivals. They see restaurants easily accessible to visitors who moor their boats in the nearby marina. They hope for the downtown that Foster City has never had.Tonight, after nearly two years of discussions and negotiations, the precise details of how that heart will look and feel will finally begin to be hammered out. The city’s Planning Commission will hear exactly what the......

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Speier announces bid for congressional seat

Published: Jan 14, 2008

One Jackie Speier supporter said the politician had earned her respect by spending the night in a women’s prison to investigate conditions there. Another said that she’s been a Speier fan for decades but this will be the first time she’ll be living in the right district to vote for her. A third moaned that he didn’t get a "Jackie Speier for Congress" sticker. "They ran out," he lamented. "I should have gotten here earlier." They counted among hundreds of......

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Fixes to San Mateo roads go in circles

Published: Jan 14, 2008

It’s likely to be many years before San Mateo drivers can venture onto the streets without braving some bumps, potholes and cracks, according to city officials.Thirteen of the city’s roads will be resurfaced in the coming months, a project that was rubber-stamped by the City Council recently. But none of those 13 streets count among the city’s 24 miles of "failed" roads, said Public Works Department director Larry Patterson."It took......

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Proposal for former County Times lot met with concern

Published: Jan 10, 2008

Concerns about parking and traffic loom over the 81 town homes, seven commercial buildings and two duplexes proposed for the 3.5-acre lot inhabited by the vacant San Mateo County Times building in San Mateo. If the plan were approved, the Times building would be demolished. A San Francisco-based developer has filed a preliminary application to develop the lot, which......

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Universal blood type in short supply across region

Published: Jan 09, 2008

A shortage of type O-negative blood throughout the Bay Area — exacerbated by this past weekend’s ravaging storms — has forced one surgery at UC San Francisco Medical Center to be postponed and caused one hospital to receive less blood than requested for a heart operation.Kim-Anh Nguyen, medical director of Blood Centers of the Pacific,......

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