Joe Blue’s Response to Questionnaire

I do believe that there is an adequate amount of affordable housing, but I do not believe that the project should simply be limited to rental housing.  Additionally, the issue of parking needs to be more adequately addressed.  I would propose to negotiate a wider mix of affordable housing for renters plus home ownership assistance to help middle class families be able to buy some units within the Extension property.  To do this, I think that, under the Housing Bond, the maximum income limits should be raised to those originally proposed by Mayor Newsom.  To that end, I will introduce legislation to raise the income limits for families to qualify for home ownership assistance under the Housing Bond back to the levels proposed by the Mayor, and I would fight to have this change applied to all affordable housing projects.

First, I will select and support a new director who has credentials in running successful municipal programs, whether in San Francisco or other similar municipalities.  One of my endorsers, for example, is a former head of DPW.  We should look to hire individuals who know what it takes to get things done in a complex government bureaucracy.

Furthermore, I do not want to hamstring this person by being beholden to the current City budget for Parks and Rec.  What are needed across the board in this City are public/private partnerships between private businesses, both large and small, and our leading civic organizations.  Through such programs, we can maintain and improve our existing parks, raise funds for future public parks, and create programs that can truly change the lives of at-risk kids.  For example, to help curb crime I have been proposing that businesses create job training and career education training programs that can provide at-risk youth the skills to be able to get skilled trade jobs, administrative/office jobs, and other types of careers in which they can be trained and mentored.  In addition to placing such programs directly in the housing projects, we can create additional programs surrounding Park and Recreation themes, such as the summer youth program that the non-profit civic organization Friends of the Urban Forest conducts every summer.

I support and encourage historic and architectural preservation.  What has made SF great is its architectural and cultural uniqueness.  We need to preserve and protect what we have while creating new development opportunities.  I would support and would make it a priority to designate certain parts of the neighborhood as historic districts.  I particularly understand the importance of these architectural treasures having lived in a home that dates back to 1879 and is listed as a California landmark.

I believe we need more pedestrian malls/squares along and off the boulevard that can be auto free areas to allow safer pedestrian access both on and off the boulevard and would promote greater neighbor interaction.

I believe community policing is a balanced effort between local citizens and police to 1) increase police patrols and general police presence throughout the day, 2) to share concerns and ideas and to become better acquainted with one another, and 3) to give citizens a sense of empowerment when it comes to confronting crime in their neighborhood.  I have attended and visited the forum three times and I am not impressed with the results.  Police-Community relations Forums are good, but when we have kids dying in our streets and others falling into a life of crime and drugs, we need more than talk.  We need people to be bold enough to confront the youth perpetuating crime and drugs in order to show others in the community that they can stand up and take their streets back.  This is exactly what I have been doing in my part of Western Addition, as noted by Adriel Hampton in his August 24^th profile of our campaign in the SF Examiner.

The elements involving traffic calming and provisioning shopping zones with safer pedestrian access are of utmost importance to Hayes Valley.  Additionally, if it is not fully covered within the current version, we must allow Hayes Valley residents as well as other City residents and workers to discuss provisions regarding Fell and Oak streets.  Safety for pedestrians is of the utmost importance, but we should respect any opposing views on certain provisions of the plan that affect us all.

The key crime areas are those around the Hayes/Buchanan, Hayes/Laguna, and the areas around the housing projects on Golden Gate and on Turk.  As I noted in my response to number five above, I have directly been working on these issues as a local resident and as head of my civic organization, the Committee on Regional Empowerment.

My only problem with the legislation would be any bias against certain types of chain stores that can contribute key services to local neighborhoods (like banks and drug stores) while not blighting the character and aesthetic of those neighborhoods.

Again, referring to my answer to number two above, we must think out of the box and bring in private business and civic groups to create unique programs to fund this park and other at-risk parks and park projects throughout the City.  An example of this type of partnership is the current Hearts in SF exhibit, which was co-funded by Wells Fargo Bank, receives additional donations, and benefits the SF General Hospital Foundation.  As the project is described on the Hearts in SF Website, “The goal of this project is to become a unique hybrid of fund-raising, compassionate community involvement, and a positive nurturing of artistic expression at a time when it is sorely needed.”  A hybrid type of program is what is needed to save this and other parks throughout our City.

I would not be extremely hard on the green space requirement, due to the proximity of Golden Gate Park, the Panhandle, and the many neighborhood parks in the area.  I would propose that they have some minimal green space in addition to a general landscaping plan for the campus that would include substantial numbers of trees and shrubberies.

I do support providing incentives for companies in emerging industries such as biotechnology, but not at the expense of existing small businesses.  We need industries such as biotechnology not just for the prestige that their work in finding cures for life-damaging and life-threatening diseases can bring to SF, but also for the high paying jobs they can provide, which can help to reinvigorate the City’s middle class ranks.  I do not support the new gross receipts tax, nor any other taxes that burden the small businessman or woman.  As a mark of what I will do once elected, I have publicly stated my opposition to the proposed 11% PUC tax increase because it would substantially increase the cost of doing business for our City’s small businesspeople.  I will introduce legislation to repeal this tax if it is passed, and I will work to provide other tax incentives to small businesspeople to begin and nurture their ventures here in San Francisco.

I am one of few candidates in the district 5 race to have a record on transportation issues.  As Chairman of CORE (formerly Adopt-A-Muni), I am the only candidate who can claim to have directly improved MUNI. Adopt-A-Muni single-handedly took on the reclamation and restoration of the Forest Hill station, transforming it into a clean, safe, efficient MUNI hub that now allows many of our neighbors in the Sunset and beyond to get into the heart of the city quickly and conveniently. These are the types of reforms that lead to increased ridership, which results in better revenues, which then gives us the funds necessary to increase service levels. This is a cycle of virtue that I will bring to bear on public transportation 

When elected I will not support any cuts to MUNI service, and will work to rollback the fare increases that were imposed last year.  Additionally, I support the more widespread use of bike lanes throughout all commercial districts and, particularly for Hayes Valley, propose providing better service on the Hayes 21 line with more frequent buses so people can more easily use it to get to and from the Hayes Valley shopping district.

I refer back to my answers for numbers five and seven.  I will directly work with local citizens to hear their concerns and then to directly confront the people and problems they face that are a detriment to their quality of life, as I have been doing for my friends and neighbors in the Western Addition.  More specifically, my anti-crime plan calls for:

We should have safer, expanded facilities that are located in key, centralized areas to receive passengers from multiple transportation modes and routes.  Then, we should have Jitney bus shuttle services (like those run by UCSF for taking its employees and students to the BART and Caltrain stations) for those central depots, particularly when there are events at the center.  Expanded parking garages could be an option, but only if they do not blight the neighborhood, create unsafe streets/zones, or negatively impact the environment.

Once again, following an overarching theme of my policies, we must bring the businesses that will be affected and/or aided by such improvements into a dialogue so we can negotiate that they contribute to the funding of such improvements.  We must face the fact that money will be tight in City budgets for some time to come, and that when other critical services in health care, senior care, and education are being starved of money, we must come up with creative public/private partnerships that can provide additional money for civic projects.  We cannot simply create more funding for these programs by increasing the already heavy tax burdens on our City’s homeowners, renters, and small businesspeople.