San Francisco kick-started the open-data movement three years ago when lawmakers voted to approve the first ordinance in the nation to encourage departments to release their data. But since that time, The City has fallen behind.
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The California High-Speed Rail Authority is using a legal maneuver to shield itself from future lawsuits over its bond allocation. This is a wise move that will keep this important project moving ahead.
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Reading too much into the questions that U.S. Supreme Court justices ask during oral arguments and then leaping to conclusions about the likely outcome of their deliberations can leave one looking foolish when a final ruling is issued. But at Tuesday’s Supreme Court hearing regarding Proposition 8, the justices seemed to clearly telegraph the low likelihood of a sweeping ruling involving same-sex marriage.
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Negative though it was, musician Michelle Shocked’s anti-gay outburst at a San Francisco nightclub last week actually exposed a lot of positives. The horrified reaction was instant and wide-reaching, and it showed just how far our society has come in accepting the LGBT community.
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San Franciscans are now debating how to pay for seismic upgrades to 44,000 San Francisco housing units vulnerable to collapse during an earthquake. The discussion concerns so-called soft-story buildings — structures in which multistory wooden-frame buildings sit atop garages or businesses with few internal walls. Such buildings famously collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
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As most people who have tried it know: Catching a cab in San Francisco is not simple. There is no centralized dispatch service and far too few taxi stands, and wildly waving one’s arm for taxis on the street is hardly useful — although often good exercise.
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Past efforts to clean up homeless encampments in various parts of San Francisco have not had a lasting impact — the occupants merely return after a short time and set up their belongings and communities again. These pop-up communities are not only unsavory elements of any big city, but also dangerous and unhealthy places for people to live.
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Riders on Muni can be singularly focused on the service issue that affects them at that very moment. And rightly so, for being late to work or to an appointment is a frustrating experience, especially when the delay is caused by a service snag on Muni. Just as infuriating is when Muni stops short of the end of the line — a practice known as a switchback — and riders have to wait for the next vehicle.
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The handful of blocks that are bounded by Sixth, Seventh, Market, Mission streets are not quite San Francisco’s worst neighborhood for criminal behavior and public safety, but they are perhaps The City’s most high-profile symbol of those urban ills. This hotbed of addiction, homelessness, and crime has long vexed city leaders.
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After a long, contentious battle in which both sides walked away numerous times, a deal to build two new hospitals in San Francisco has been brokered, marking a win for everyone in The City.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/editorials?page=2
