It was an odd vision: Mayor Gavin Newsom spray-painting a public wall on the seedier section of Market Street, an area he's trying to clean up.
The mayor was actually helping an artist from Glen Park, Chor Boogie, create a colorful mural that is meant to help transform Mid-Market into a cleaner, safer and more attractive region for residents and visitors.
Newsom strolled down Market Street from Eighth Street to Sixth Street Friday to point out how new improvements made by The City are reshaping the area.
Read More
As promised, Chief George Gascón has scheduled the first major realignment of the Police Department command staff in decades.
Read More
If you didn’t think volunteers make a big difference, consider this: Between February and October, more than 3,300 volunteers clocked in nearly 10,000 hours to clean and green The City’s neighborhoods as part of one city program, according to the Department of Public Works.
They planted 1,155 trees, bushes and plants; removed more than 58 tons of litter and debris from the sidewalks and parks, plus 22 tons of “green waste”; and cleaned and weeded 55,400 square feet of center islands and lots, DPW said.
Read More
Mayor Gavin Newsom will stroll down Market Street on Friday, possibly to admire how few cars are on the road following recent traffic adjustments.
What the mayor will be doing there is slightly a mystery. The Mayor’s Office has called this a “wait and see” event. But the language promoting the event in Newsom’s schedule provides enough clues:
Read More
City crews are now repairing the ceiling of the Broadway Tunnel that was damaged in July when a too-tall truck attempted to squeeze through it.
The truck, ignoring the maximum vehicle height for entry, scraped off light fixtures and tiles from the tunnel’s ceiling.
The big-rig truck was able to drive into the tunnel, but struck the ceiling at the point where it becomes narrower inside.
Workers will conduct repairs daily between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. so as not to interrupt traffic, the Department of Public Works said Thursday.
Read More
The talks between four major hotels in San Francisco and 9,000 union workers need to stay calm to avoid an approved strike that would deal a blow to tourism, a hotel manager said.
Four major chains — Hyatt, Hilton, Starwood and Intercontinental — are trying to hammer out new deals with their employees, which include room cleaners, bellhops and food-service workers. The union contract expired Aug. 14.
Hotel management told The Examiner Thursday that an impasse over union contracts is far off and that preliminary talks have been cordial.
Read More
After a long-running fight about what type of store should be built on Bayshore Boulevard, the construction of a Lowe’s at the site has begun.
The shovel hit the dirt Tuesday to build the home improvement chain store at 491 Bayshore Blvd., near the border of the Bayview and Bernal Heights neighborhoods, Mayor Gavin Newsom said.
Read More
Mayor Gavin Newsom today accused Attorney General Jerry Brown of spreading lies that the mayor plans to pull out of the governor’s race and instead run for lieutenant governor – on Brown’s ticket.
“You [reporters] have to put to rest the absurdity,” Newsom said at an unrelated event this afternoon. “It’s Jerry Brown who is putting those rumors out, and you guys shouldn’t be taking the bait on that.”
Read More
Police Chief George Gascón was extra clear Wednesday about wanting to hold the Police Department accountable for crime trends in The City.
Gascón told the 10 district station captains during the first of many regular CompStat meetings that they cannot be insincere with him about the crime trends.
Read More
The oft-campaigning Mayor Gavin Newsom has some city business to mind to this afternoon.
At 1 p.m., Newsom – who is running a city while running for governor – will help break ground on a new headquarters for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission at 525 Golden Gate Ave., according to the Mayor’s Office.
Read More
Delayed vaccines for the swine flu may arrive in The City next week, although it’s more likely the shipment to fight off the potentially deadly virus will arrive weeks later.
The fear is that stalled shipments will leave the high-risk population in The City vulnerable to the extremely contagious H1N1 virus just as flu season begins to gain steam.
The federal government is supplying free vaccine doses to municipalities in an effort to combat potential infections and hospitalizations.
Read More
They’ve not only stayed afloat in pricey San Francisco, they’ve turned a crippling recession into an opportunity for success.
Four city businesses that are beating the odds are finalists in the small-business category for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce’s 17th annual Excellence in Business (or Ebbies) Awards. Winners will be announced at a ceremony tonight at the downtown Palace Hotel.
Read More
Composting bins are rolling into place, as the law that mandates proper refuse sorting in The City begins this week.
Starting Wednesday, residents who fail to properly sort their trash will face fines. The rules are part of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to boost The City’s recycling rate beyond 72 percent.The ordinance is the first in the country to make composting mandatory.
The Board of Supervisors approved the law in June, despite concerns that inspectors would aggressively penalize residents.
Read More
Mayor Gavin Newsom has no public appearances scheduled today or meetings at City Hall. The mayor, who spent much of last week on the gubernatorial campaign trail, is gearing up for another online town hall meeting.
Read More
The money has run out — again — for a long-running plan to turn blighted alleyways in Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods into pedestrian-oriented pathways.
An 11-year-old proposal to renovate 31 of the neighborhood’s 41 alleys has hit yet another funding snag since work began in 2000, said the Rev. Norman Fong of the Chinatown Community Development Center, which commissioned a study during the mid-1990s to identify which of the neighborhood’s narrow passageways needed a serious sprucing up.
Like all else, the economy is to blame, Fong said.
Read More
URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/user/178/178?page=174&%3Bamp%3Bfield_author_value=&quicktabs_6=1&quicktabs_1=0
