From an SFSOS email today (sorry, no web link for this, so published in its entirety here)

So now what are we supposed to think?

The Board cruised through the Peskin/Daly planned-congestion measure as expected last week, with the same “party line” 7-4 vote with all four moderates and the Mayor opposing the extreme left’s keystone attack on regular people being able to stay in the City.

The Peskin-Daly 7 are taking political gamesmanship to new depths with this issue. With each passing day of debate, the “public transit only” allies are carefully muffling any voice from the average resident, especially families, who will find parking scarcer, more expensive, and compounded by increased congestion downtown. They continue to avoid any defense of their issue, nor offer any proof, any data, any case studies suggesting that their limitation of parking might lead to a decrease in traffic. They just say it’s so because they know it’s so, and they sure don’t need any legally-required independent studies to contradict them.

Instead they are making this solely an anti-development issue. Trot out the stale rhetoric opposing “fat-cat developers” (how dare they ask to create housing and jobs!?!), and pass out free “Eat the Rich” stickers for their backpacks. Ignore the overwhelming public opposition to the anti-parking plan and play along with the media who absolutely insisted on being factually incorrect when calling this a debate between developers and transit advocates. It never was. It isn’t now. It won’t be the next time the parking wars are fought.

A reminder on the key points on this debate:

Daly’s original intent was to railroad his version of parking legislation for the C3 zoning area. Despite the now-evident controversy over the facts, he managed to get his idea up to a vote without an environmental study, an economic impact study (Prop. I), or a housing impact study. He had the seven voting as a bloc, so the analysis-free legislation was poised to fly through the land use committee with barely a chat.

SF SOS filed a CEQA appeal, forcing a hearing to debate the need for a CEQA study. When it was clear that the 7 would vote the way they always do on the issue, we and other appellants withdrew and instead fought to support Michela Alioto-Pier’s alternative legislation. Her measure is still alive and is following in committee.

The Alioto-Pier legislation was originally very similar to legislation Peskin himself considered. Yet when Daly cashed in a political favor, Peskin swooped in and took over the Daly legislation with fire in his belly to get it passed.

In the Land Use Committee, Committee Chair Sophie Maxwell left  the meeting prior to the C3 parking vote. Peskin seated himself, with voting privileges, on the committee alongside members Sandoval and McGoldrick to ensure that it was passed. Even though it was substantively amended, he pushed it to the full Board rather than have the new version subject to continued public comment (read: protest) in committee.

At the February 7th Board meeting, as Supervisor Alioto-Pier made her argument against the Peskin/Daly version, she cited a statement from Planning Director Dean Macris that raised several concerns. This sent Peskin into a frenzy, for until then he had been wildly distorting the position of the Planning Department and planning staff as fully supportive of the measure.

Still during the February 7th Board meeting, Sup. Daly is heard screaming on a cell phone (audible all the way in the back of the chamber). He hands the phone to Peskin. Mirkarimi joins. Peskin then skips over the item and moves on in the agenda.

No one in the media has yet to ask whether that phone conversation was with Dean Macris. No one in the media has asked Macris whether he was strong-armed during that conversation. No one in the media has asked Macris, Peskin, or Daly whether Daly, as head of the Budget and Finance Committee, specifically threatened Macris with cutting the funding of the Planning Department if he didn’t rescind his statement questioning this legislation.

Parallel to pushing the Planning Department their way, the Extreme Left bloc further attempted to promote their conspiracy theory cover that the Planning Department is in fact being manipulated by back-room dealings with the Mayor, developers, SF SOS, and others in the black-helicopter brigade (tri-lateral commission?). Daly went to great lengths to inflate a Guardian article vilifying an evil empire of those of us who — go figure — build housing, create jobs, and represent residents and stakeholders damaged by this legislation.

Such is the body of work the Extreme Left 7 are putting together in the interest of creating a “livable” City. A vision of such a City is now easily imagined:

With no available parking and traffic congestion-by-design, the average Jane Citizen is virtually banned from car ownership…

She sticks her thumb out for a cab, but realizes that cab fares have been priced out of the market for reasonable use.

So she loads her child, stroller, and five bags of groceries (ice cream, eggs, whole pies, fresh fish, 10 lb. bag of dog food) onto the full-to-capacity MUNI bus (two, actually, with transferring) that takes in excess of an hour to travel a couple miles, only to drop them off three blocks from home in the rain and cold…

She schleps her load back to her apartment (she’s not allowed to own her home here), being sure to avoid the needles and human waste along the way…

Finally she tries to figure out how to go about picking up her oldest child from basketball practice at the school across town he’s forced to attend instead of his neighborhood school.

There you have it. A Norman Rockwell-gone wrong snapshot of modern San Francisco quality-of-life. Brought to you by the Board of Supervisors

And their fact-finding continues,

Relish this golden Peskin quote from a Rachel Gordon story 3 years ago:

“There are a lot of poor and working class (people) who also use cars,” Peskin said. He said Muni advocates are well-organized, but “people who drive cars and need to park cars do not have anybody who speaks for them.”

From a USA Today Story:

“Similarly, on Sept. 11, 2001, Lower Manhattan was in the commercial doldrums, mostly because it lacked Midtown’s parking and commuter rail links. The market for office space was glutted.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.