Brett Wheeler’s Response to Questionnaire

www.brettwheeler.org

1) The current proposal for the U.C. Berkeley Extension property, a 6-acre site located between Laguna, Haight, Buchanan and Hermann streets, calls for the development of 500 housing units, with 80-88% market-rate rentals and the remainder income-restricted rentals. Market-rate rentals that are not subject to rent control often have a high rate of turnover, attracting transient renters who are looking for a "temporary" home. On the other hand, "affordable" housing tenants tend to remain in their apartments for many years. Do you believe the proposed amount of affordable housing is appropriate? Further, do you believe that housing on this site should be entirely rental? If not, what will you do to negotiate housing opportunities for a wider mix of income levels or home ownership on the U.C. Extension property?

Building affordable housing for San Franciscans and enhancing neighborhood integrity are two of the most important and difficult challenges facing District Five in particular. They don’t need to be at odds. There are serious concerns with the current design proposal for the UCB property in terms of both scope and design. The problems with the site reflect the inadequacies of neighborhood planning and limited participation of neighborhood groups in initials stages of planning.

As supervisor, I will work with the developer, UC, and especially community groups to revise the plan in order to integrate more diverse income levels as well as limited ownership opportunities. The viability and character of Hayes Valley are clearly at stake. At the same time, the project manifests once again the limited-option model that has brought us substandard design throughout the City. We need more housing, but our choice is not mediocre housing versus no housing. That has been the choice presented to us by Planning and Redevelopment for decades. Our choice must be for great design and for zoning plans that work toward long-term integration of housing and residents into the neighborhood. That current plan does not do that.

Finally, as we plan large new developments, we do need to ensure that open spaces and dynamic street design are integral components. The current project design threatens to privatize open spaces in an area already deficient in parks, and to create excessive setbacks in the street design that imperils fluid exchange between street life and lived space. We’ve made those mistakes in the past to the detriment of Western Addition neighborhoods. We shouldn’t do it again. As supervisor, I’ll work with residents, businesses, and planners to ensure we do not.

2) The Park and Rec Department seems particularly hard hit with layoffs and cutbacks. There will be a new director for Parks and Rec who will have to deal with these challenges. Explain how you will select and support this new director with these specific issues in mind:

Since 1974, San Franciscans have invested over $325 million in acquisition and upkeep of our parks and open spaces. In District Five, that money has bought us barely four acres of open spaces—nearly three of which on Tank Hill the City actually had to buy back for $650,000 after selling it a decade earlier for $230,000. The record for our District is dismal. I support a taskforce to create a long-term plan to administer these funds and to create an Open Space Plan for the City. Hayes Valley residents have already been active in these efforts, and their continued support would be very welcome. Such a plan integrated with the ongoing completion of Better Neighborhoods Plans is essential to provide guidance for a new director of Parks and Rec and to ensure that new resources are efficiently and fairly allocated.

The Board of Supervisors needs to be more involved in the selection and approval of Department heads, including at Parks and Rec. Accountability to residents and voters in the City requires that, just as it is nationally, we work toward Charter changes that will ensure that Department heads are approved by the Board.  A new leader has to have deep experience working not only with communities on local concerns but on public/private partnerships, on which the City increasingly relies to enhance General Fund revenues. The Department of Environment today, for example, gets no General Fund dollars and has turned to non-profit and private partnerships to expand its programs successfully.

I have also proposed new Business Improvement District in District Five that would get matching grant and interest-free loans from the City to leverage local assessments. In return, all BIDs should include a dedicated open space fund dedicated both to enhancement of the space and to programs for residents, including youth and seniors. This is especially important in the eastern neighborhoods of District Five, which are underserved by parks and are densely populated. 

3) Part of the purpose of the recent chain store legislation spearheaded by Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association is that it will help to preserve San Francisco's cultural and architectural heritage from being replaced by the "formula" architecture and interiors of large national chain stores. There is also sentiment in Hayes Valley in favor of designating certain parts of the neighborhood as historic districts as a way of preserving neighborhood character. What is your position on Historic and Architectural preservation?

Preservation and historical heritage have a difficult history in District Five, especially the Western Addition. Our failures are also intertwined with race politics and racist policies imposed on the Western Addition during World War II and the 1950s onward. The destruction of Japantown and the Fillmore Districts during those years occurred because those residents were disenfranchised in various ways by the City and the Federal Government. Remedying those mistakes can only occur by empowering local communities with the formal mechanisms to affect planning and design decisions in their neighborhoods.

I strongly supported the Chain Store Legislation and believe that neighborhood councils should have statutory authority to participate in contracting and expenditure plans when dealing with the Planning Department and the Redevelopment Agency. That is the only way to restore faith in the process. I support Historic and Architectural preservation as part of Better Neighborhood plans so that the broader neighborhood character is considered when making individual planning and zoning decisions. Just as important, I propose more stringent design oversight on new construction so that new architecture is well conceived, whether innovative or traditional. San Franciscohas not been a haven for great architecture over the past few decades. That can and should change.

4) The replacement of the elevated Central Freeway with the Octavia Boulevard presents an opportunity for Hayes Valley to balance automobile traffic with other modes of travel, including public transit, walking and bicycling. What measures do you recommend implementing that would limit auto congestion and encourage the creation of a pedestrian-oriented community where residents can shop within walking distance of their homes?

The work on and completion of the Octavia Better Neighborhood Plan is a model for the City, now as we pursue funding to complete these Plans elsewhere. That plan foresees extensive changes to the way transit is organized in the plan area and adheres tightly to Transit-first imperatives. At the same time, the plan will be implemented over at least a 15-year period and involves at least five City department and agencies. Ensuring that the diversification of transportation options occurs, including the bike boulevard, bicycle parking, revised vehicle parking, and dramatic pedestrian upgrades, will require vigilance by elected officials and neighborhoods. 

I support the Public Space and Transportation Fund for the plan area that will manage funds collected from fees and other revenues. My office and neighborhoods groups should provide careful oversight and advise to the management of this fund. Implementation over the long-term will also require additional revenues during hard times. Given the importance of Neighborhood Plans for the future of San Franciscoin every regard, I will prioritize the full funding of all elements in the plan to ensure its success and its role as a model for future plans and their implementation. 

5) Define "Community Policing" in three sentences or less. How many times in the last year have you attended the Northern District Police/Community Relations Forum?

Community policing must be an inclusive cooperation and collaboration of police departments and officers with residents to define what policing priorities a community has how to implement those priorities in ways that are effective and sensitive to the community. It must include formal ties between the police and residents as well as agreed-upon criteria for the responsibilities and obligations of all parties. 

I wasn’t aware of the forums until recently and haven’t attended them as yet.

6) The Market/Octavia Plan creates a blueprint for a high-density, pedestrian-oriented, urban neighborhood where owning a car is a choice rather than a necessity. Please describe the elements of this Plan that you consider most important in determining the success of the Hayes Valley neighborhood. Please also identify any elements you think should be changed, and explain why.

With a few cautionary notes, I support and would actively seek to pay for the plans included in the Octavia Neighborhood Plan, including:

• Creating a rationalized parking system and access to parking, particularly during evening performance times
• Supporting the integration of the Bicycle Network into the plan, while building a pilot path along the east-west corridor to Golden Park including off-street paths, dedicated traffic lights, and alternative colored pavement. We can also build bike boulevards similar to those in parts of Berkeley, as long as they rely on traffic calming and street beautification methods that do not close streets to traffic. That is a cautionary note: San Francisco’s urban culture relies much more on fluid exchange between sidewalk and street. The Redevelopment plans of the 1960s also taught us to be cautious about fragmenting street access between neighborhoods and of the social dangers inherent in eliminating traffic flow.
• Partial closing Market Street to non-transit traffic and creating fully enforceable transit-only lanes
• Supporting the Van Ness Ave transitway
• Using Transit impact development fee (TIDF) to complete both basic and ancillary projects that are part of the Octavia Plan’s transportation vision
• Employing signal preemption on Hayes Street for transit.
• Creating Citywide Parking Plan with timelines to include targeted reductions in 1:1 parking as foreseen in Octavia Plan
• Considering an active market in daytime use of Residential Parking Spaces for day-time commercial use

7) Name the key crime areas in the Hayes Valley area. Name some individuals, groups, and community based organizations located in the Hayes Valley area that are currently working on reducing crime and improving the quality of life in our neighborhood.

There are many organization and agencies addressing crime in the lower Haight/Hayes Valley neighborhood areas. Our office is on Haight between Webster and Fillmore, on a block that has seen as much violent crime as possibly any in the city. Along with the Northern Station, to my knowledge, the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association and the Neighborhood Safety Partnership sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice are involved in crime prevention and community participation.

8) Please comment in detail on the recently passed chain store legislation.

I strongly supported the legislation and consider it a basic part of neighborhood planning and empowerment. It gives neighborhoods the chance to determine for themselves how to develop and preserve their economic base and their character. I worked on Matt Gonzalez’s mayoral campaign as Campaign Coordinator during the completion of the legislative process, and I applaud all those at both ends of District Five who supported the legislation. Despite resistance at the Planning Commission, our elected representatives came through with a veto-proof vote in the spring.

Beyond the ban in Hayes Valley, I believe we should encourage other neighborhoods to speak out now on their position regarding future formula retail stores so that potential applicants are forewarned about their chances. I’m a resident of Cole Valley. Of course, it was the imposition by Walgreens there that in part prompted the legislation.  I would not say in general that I always oppose formula stores. But I do always oppose the way in which Walgreens and others attempt to bypass neighborhoods to insinuate themselves on us. I will continue to work with neighborhoods in the District and elsewhere to clarify local policies and ensure that the spirit of the legislation is adhered to and possibly strengthened.

9) The Octavia Boulevard Project includes the creation of a new neighborhood park on Octavia Street, between Fell and Hayes. We expect this park to be an important gathering spot for the neighborhood and the performing arts community. The Octavia Boulevard Project does not include any funding for the maintenance of this park. The Recreation and Parks Department has no funding to maintain this park. How do you propose obtaining funding for the maintenance and upkeep of this very important park? 

Please see my response to question 2.

10) What is your position on green space as a requirement for any UC Extension development plan? Please provide as much detail as you can on what you feel adequate green space would be in this major site.

I strongly support the inclusion of Open and Green spaces in new development including UC. That space does not necessarily have to be on site; but it does have to be provided to the immediate community. In response to question 2, I noted the lack of investment historically in District Five neighborhood parks. We should not accept lesser amounts of spaces simply because past poor planning in Redevelopment Projects Areas in particular has created gated parking lots instead of public parks. 

At the same time, new green spaces should not be designed in ways that effectively privatize them in interior courtyards and in street offsets, or that disrupt the fluidity of open space and street life. San Francisco’s parks have been most successful when they were designed with public interaction in mind and not only with specific quantitative guidelines. There should be an Open Space Plan that existing and future development can tie into as we develop effective, public, open spaces.

11) A payroll tax exemption has been proposed for biotech companies while existing small businesses have recently been saddled with a new gross receipts tax. Do you support an exemption for biotech companies? Why? Do you support the new gross receipts tax? Why? How do you propose to help independent, locally owned and operated businesses thrive in San Francisco?

Our planning goal as a city should not be to provide exemptions to specific business sectors but to implement a business tax structure that is fair, can enhance revenue stability, and even encourage job growth. We must conduct studies over the next 18 months on the options to replace the current payroll tax. SPUR has begun this work. I have proposed introducing, pending budget analysis, a value added tax (VAT) to replace the payroll tax and supplemented by a tax on profits. A tax on gross receipts that has returned with the current budget can harm businesses that are reliant on narrow profit margins. These businesses often employ large numbers of people. Most European countries along with Canadause the VAT, and the State of Michiganhas experience with it as well. 

By taxing only the value added to a good, this tax structure has a far lower distorting effect on the economy; it is spread more evenly among producers and consumers; and it supplies more even revenue streams. Moreover, by waiving the VAT on good produced in the City and used outside the City, the VAT is much more effective at encouraging job growth and job diversity, especially in the small manufacturing sector.

Small businesses as well as homeowners need assistance with the permit process and working through City bureaucracy. The recent failure to significantly reform the corrupt permit expediting practices by big companies requires us to provide real ombuds services that have effective authority. I have proposed already greatly expanding a fee-based ombuds office that would be much cheaper and fairer than the current permit expediting services. The millions of dollars that go into private expediting by attorneys and others every year could be much better spent by the City to provide real, efficient, and fair services. I will be working with merchants and other organizations in the first six months of 2005 to get legislation proposed to implement this.

12) In order for our commercial districts to thrive we need to encourage many more customers to visit our shopping areas than can arrive by personal automobile. What creative ideas do you have for encouraging shoppers to travel to shopping districts by walking, biking, public transit or taxi?

There are many measures, at various costs, that we can implement to bring far more people into our business neighborhoods more efficiently:

• Temporarily exempt bicycle path restriping from EIRs in order to save money and speed up projects
• Dedicate a special pool of taxi medallions to drivers using low-emission vehicles
• Expand City Car Share and replace the City fleet with membership in City Car Share as long as future purchases are of low-emission vehicles
• Ensure that the new Transbay terminal includes underground access for future high-speed rail to reduce vehicle use in the city and the impact demands on SFO
• Provide incentives for cooperative bicycle rental among businesses in the City to create a network of pick-up/drop-off locations
• Create true off-street bike paths safe with independent traffic-light system so that kids and seniors are also safe using them.
• Work with merchant associations, neighborhood groups and future Business Improvement Districts to build pools of leased residential parking during the day to accommodate increased business traffic.

13) When you become supervisor how do you propose to reduce crime and improve the quality of life for residents who live within the H.V.N.A. boundaries? Please give specific examples.

How we address quality of life for residents in Hayes Valleymust generally be the same as we address quality of life for the whole district and for San Francisco. We need to think in integrated ways about creating livable neighborhoods by developing job programs and community cultural venues that are alternatives to gang membership and drug sales. The boundaries of Hayes Valleycannot be the limit we consider when we make these plans, even when the beneficiaries of these plans may live within these boundaries. 

More importantly, we want to make sure that we are not contributing to the problems we want to solve: When we emphasize quality of life concerns such as cleanliness or disorderly behavior in public we often mask the underlying causes of these problems that are really the result of mental health care policies or inadequate programs and education for youth. We should not, therefore, even analytically isolate quality of life issues from larger planning concerns. Instead, neighborhoods should be given both the tools and the resources, as they work with the Planning Department and other City agencies, to develop long-term neighborhood plans that integrate their local conception of quality of life with larger conceptions of our urban landscape.

I have laid out the revenues elsewhere through Business Improvement Districts integrated into Better Neighborhood Plans and matching funds and grants from the City to enhance the benefits of these independent revenues to pay for undergrounding wires, planting trees, completing Urban Forest and Open Space Plans, creating effective bike parking, and improving safety. Every year, we fall further behind in street paving and cleaning. Additional General Fund revenues are necessary, be it through bond measures or higher taxes, to get caught up. The political will and economic desire has not been there to do this.

In Hayes Valley itself, existing community policing programs, cooperation with non-profits and the district police should be encouraged. I will meet regularly with the stakeholders in these groups to coordinate efforts along with the Mayor’s Office.        14) Our performing arts center often has performances that draw many more patrons than can be accommodated by personal automobile. What creative ideas do you have that would encourage patrons to use public transit? What other suggestions do you have for effectively transporting patrons to and from the performing arts center? Do you support the construction of additional parking garages, or the expansion of existing garages in the Civic Center vicinity?

Accompanying the Octavia Neighborhood Plan, the Planning Department already foresees a Civic Center Parking Strategy to provide coordinated parking, valet parking, a rationalized use of surface parking outside the immediate area, along with a set of incentives to use alternate transportation. The responsibility for accommodating the additional demand should fall on this plan and not on neighboring communities. 

The effectiveness of future plans will depend on the installation valet services and technologies guiding occasional motorists attending performing arts events to available spaces in the area. Again, the costs and responsibility for that should fall in part on the City and the large cultural institutions in the area.

15) Funding for the traffic calming/pedestrian safety portions of the Octavia Boulevard Project's "ancillary projects" has been budgeted at $5 million. A large portion of this money will likely be spent on enhancing the livability of the South of Market neighborhood located near the touchdown ramp. This South of Market area will require a great number of amenities to maintain any reasonable quailty of life. Spending the majority of the "ancillary" project money on South of Market, leaves very little money to spend north of Market on traffic calming or on developing "living streets" on the alleyways crossing the Boulevard. Pedestrian safety and the enhancement of the livability of our alleyways are key elements to the success of the overall Octavia Boulevard Project. How do you propose funding these improvements

The $3-4 million needed to complete at least minimal ancillary projects outside the SoMa area of the Plan can be easily raised from a collection of developer fees, General Fund sources and cooperation with other agency projects, including DPW and Redevelopment. I don’t foresee opposition, but do promise to work with the District Six supervisor to allocate these funds.