Well-connected community members rallied Wednesday in support of extending an unusual Japantown parking garage lease with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency as members of the Board of Supervisors questioned the deal.
The nonprofit parking garages begun in the 1950s allowed The City to issue bonds to expand and improve the structures. The main role of such organizations became obsolete when voters in 2008 approved a ballot measure granting the transit agency the power to issue bonds.
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Mayor Ed Lee carefully weighed in Tuesday on the hotly debated condo conversion bypass proposal by encouraging a compromise to bring relief to thousands of tenancy-in-common owners amid worries about the loss of rent-controlled units.
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The condo conversion debate is gaining more political intrigue less than two weeks before a Board of Supervisors committee holds its second hearing on the controversial legislation. A vote was already postponed to allow the opposing sides to negotiate.
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To succeed where his predecessors have failed, Police Chief Greg Suhr will have to overcome a strengthening message of opposition to his plan to outfit some officers with stun guns.
The last of three community meetings on the stun gun proposal, held by Suhr in collaboration with the Police Commission, is scheduled for this evening at the Bayview Opera House. The commission will use the input from the meetings as it makes a decision on whether some officers can use the devices, which are intended to immobilize people by delivering 50,000 volts of electricity.
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Residents who predate the current tech boom could benefit from having access to jobs in what has become San Francisco’s most exciting and talked-about business sector, under a plan by Mayor Ed Lee.
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Sunset district residents will have to wait 30 days before they find out who will be appointed to represent them on the Board of Supervisors.
Mayor Ed Lee announced Wednesday that he plans to name current District 4 Supervisor Carmen Chu to the vacant assessor-recorder position, setting off political intrigue over who will eventually replace her.
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After years of debate and study, San Francisco on Tuesday laid out a plan to make “soft-story” buildings more resilient during the next big earthquake.
The proposal targets the 4,300 wood-frame residential buildings of three or more stories that contain at least five units and were built before 1978. Nearly 3,000 such structures are mostly found in the Mission, Western Addition, Richmond, North Beach and Marina neighborhoods.
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Developers of residential projects would be able to exceed parking caps by adding spaces designated only for car sharing, under legislation that advanced out of committee Monday.
While the proposal was praised by supervisors on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee, others called the legislation a wrongheaded approach to tackling the adverse environmental impacts associated with cars.
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One of the supervisors whose support is seen as instrumental to passing a condo conversion bypass proposal may have committed to support the controversial legislation when on the campaign trail last fall.
The most politically charged issue at City Hall these days is whether there are enough votes on the Board of Supervisors to pass legislation that would give relief to San Francisco tenancy-in-common unit owners who are complaining about high mortgage rates and the long wait to convert to a condo, which would allow them to refinance.
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Hundreds of San Francisco bicyclists report the theft of their two-wheelers annually, and victims include city supervisors who are now looking to curtail the rising crime.
Thieves appear to be doing anything they can to score a bike — cutting locks and riding off within minutes, peering through mail slots of old Victorian homes and busting in if bikes are spotted, and sneaking into garages when the doors open to make away with stored bikes.
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Mayor Ed Lee said Tuesday that a compromise agreement is imminent for California Pacific Medical Center’s planned $2.5 billion project to rebuild St. Luke’s Hospital and construct a new hospital on Cathedral Hill.
“This is the last extension,” Lee said on the day the Board of Supervisors postponed a vote on the projects until March 12. Lee said people can expect an announcement of an agreement leading up to that date.
“We are very, very close to the kind of compromise that needs to get done,” Lee said.
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After nearly four hours of debate Monday afternoon, a vote on a proposal that would give San Francisco tenancy-in-common owners a one-time opportunity to bypass The City’s condo-conversion lottery system by paying a fee was postponed by a Board of Supervisors committee.
Emotionally charged tenant advocates and homeowners squared off against one another over the years-in-the making legislation proposed by Supervisor Mark Farrell with the backing of Supervisor Scott Wiener.
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Doubts are being raised about the likelihood of the success of San Francisco’s ambitious CleanPowerSF just months before its planned launch.
The worry is that the rates customers of the public power program would have to pay are too high compared to those offered by PG&E. And some advocates are disappointed that the proposed 100 percent renewable energy program does not include a more aggressive expansion of local renewable energy projects, which would create jobs and bring down rates.
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San Francisco is on the verge of settling for $465,000 a lawsuit filed 10 years ago in federal court over strip searches conducted by the Sheriff’s Department.
Political activist Mary Bull filed the lawsuit after she was arrested, along with other anti-war demonstrators, on Market Street in November 2002. She was charged with vandalism. Bull repeatedly refused to sign consent forms for a strip search.
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The first of three scheduled community meetings over a proposal to equip a number of San Francisco officers with stun guns showed the sharp divide between top Police Department brass asking for the devices and community members fighting to keep them out of cops’ hands.
Ultimately, the seven-member Police Commission will decide whether to approve Police Chief Greg Suhr’s proposed stun-gun pilot program. The devices are intended to incapacitate someone by delivering 50,000 volts of electricity.
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