In response to a fatal stabbing, San Francisco has tightened admission rules for homeless shelters to bar access to people who are acting violently or making such threats outside a facility.
Read More
As a small Massachusetts town became the first U.S. community to ban the sale of single-serving plastic water bottles Tuesday, even eliminating such packaging from large events continues to elude San Francisco despite years of discussion.
While The City hasn’t been shy about taking on plastic bags or plastic foam food containers, water bottles have thus far managed to avoid its ever-growing ban list.
Read More
A self-described “blue-collar politician,” the 63-year-old Norman Yee is set to become the oldest member of the Board of Supervisors when he’s sworn in Jan. 8. He said he wants to bring a thoughtful, independent style with a mix of progressive and moderate politics to his new job.
Read More
The charismatic and outspoken London Breed, 38, is bringing passion and a breadth of experience from a tough childhood in the Western Addition to City Hall, where she wants to connect residents to meaningful jobs at flashy tech companies and reform public housing policies.
In November, Breed decisively won the District 5 race and will represent the Fillmore and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods on the Board of Supervisors when she is sworn in to office Jan. 8.
Read More
As San Francisco struggles to control the cost of its health care obligations for government workers and retirees, it is putting more emphasis on actually improving its employees’ health.
New data suggest this emphasis is overdue.
A recent analysis of Kaiser Permanente users covered by The City’s Health Service System — the group of government employees considered healthiest — found that a staggering 66 percent of adults were obese or overweight. Meanwhile, 35 percent of dependent children were overweight or obese.
Read More
Starting in July, each member of the board was allocated $100,000 in city funds to spend as they chose. Halfway through the fiscal year, some supervisors have spent all or a portion of their allocations, others none at all. The spending varies from community events to rebuilding playgrounds, and provides a glimpse of the respective supervisors’ priorities.
Read More
In worst-case scenarios, public construction projects in San Francisco can drag on for years, suffer from cost overruns, end up in litigation and have workers complaining about not being paid.
Mayor Ed Lee issued an executive directive Wednesday aimed at improving public construction contracting by requiring better communication and new payment requirements for The City and its contractors.
Read More
With the release of new rules for the use of nonpotable water in businesses and apartment buildings, San Francisco is riding a new water conservation wave.
Read More
At its inception, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom hailed the SF Carbon Fund as a pioneering effort to let local residents, businesses and government agencies mitigate their own pollution while helping to build a local renewable energy economy.
“This program differs from existing carbon-offset programs that seek to offset carbon pollution far away from where this pollution is actually created,” Newsom said when he unveiled the program in December 2007.
Yet five years later, the Department of the Environment is struggling to live up to its mandate.
Read More
Energy-saving streetlights and wireless systems controlling them will be tested in three San Francisco neighborhoods next year, and ultimately the technology could be used to control all 18,500 city-owned lamps and other devices such as traffic signals and surveillance cameras.
Eight companies have been selected under a San Francisco Public Utilities Commission pilot program, and they will each receive a $15,000 stipend to demonstrate what their wireless streetlight systems can do. The technology will be tested in the Sunset, Presidio Heights and downtown neighborhoods.
Read More
While David Chiu is considered the odds-on favorite to become the first person to lead the Board of Supervisors for three straight terms, no fewer than four colleagues are jockeying to replace him as president.
Moderate Supervisors Malia Cohen and Scott Wiener and progressives David Campos and Jane Kim are all seeking the post, City Hall sources say. Progressive supervisors first elected Chiu as their president in 2009, but two years later he cut a deal with moderates to secure a subsequent term.
Read More
With tech firms seemingly the beneficiary of much of the love coming out of City Hall these days, small businesses feel somewhat neglected in the wake of the realization that a voter-mandated report on how to make life easier on them is now years past due.
Read More
Large-scale events proposed for San Francisco’s public parks could receive more public scrutiny under a proposal introduced Tuesday by Supervisor John Avalos.
Avalos wants the Recreation and Park Commission to hold special informational hearings for any event that would occupy 25 percent of a park and run for more than 48 hours.
In October, Avalos created a stir when he criticized the Dew Tour — a skateboarding, bicycle and freestyle motocross event — for shutting down Civic Center Plaza for weeks. He questioned whether it was the best use of public park space.
Read More
Mayor Ed Lee is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward San Francisco Housing Authority Director Henry Alvarez, who is the subject of two lawsuits filed by two top-ranking agency attorneys alleging racism and other discrimination.
The Housing Authority Commission has contracted with the law firm of former City Attorney Louise Renne to investigate the lawsuits and present findings to the commission and the mayor. Asked Tuesday if Alvarez should be suspended or step down from his post in the interim, the mayor displayed no intention to do so.
Read More
San Francisco is snuffing out smoking one law at a time.
The City is on the verge of enacting a smoking ban at public events like Carnival and the Fillmore Jazz Festival. And on top of banning smoking at the public events, the Board of Supervisors may today nudge apartment owners to eliminate smoking by requiring landlords to designate all units either smoking or non-smoking and to disclose such information publicly.
Read More
URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/people/joshua-sabatini?page=6&quicktabs_6=1691&quicktabs_1=0
