![]()
by Joshua Sabatini
San Francisco's renewed focused on undergrounding the overhead utility lines along hundreds of city blocks is raising more questions than answers.
But if city officials don't come up with any answers it will take 600 years to underground the remaining 470 miles of wires.
Funding is the biggest obstacle to the remaining blocks, work that's estimated to cost in the millions. No one has figured out the exact cost; estimates put it at between $2.8 million and $5.9 million per mile.
While PG&E provides a portion of the cost to underground the wires, San Francisco used up its share and borrowed against future funding. It will take another 17 years just to pay that off.
A new report circulating City Hall takes a fresh look at the issue, which in recent weeks was heard by San Francisco's Capital Planning Committee and other government bodies. Most of the funding options detailed in the report seem unrealistic.
Cities like San Diego lobbied for a higher franchise fee to help pay for the undergrounding work and imposed a surcharge. That seems like a long shot for San Francisco.
"Unlike other cities, the San Francisco franchise agreement with PG&E dates back to 1939, and provides for a .5 percent fee and no renegotiation," said the report, which was commissioned by the Local Agency Formation Commission, upon which members of the Board of Supervisors serve.
It took $115.9 million of the PG&E undergrounding funds to bury 520 miles of overhead wires, which cost The City a total of $173.2 million. That left 470 miles to go.
San Francisco often asks voters to approve bonds backed by property taxes to fund capital projects, such as for a hospital rebuild, housing or fire stations. While one option would be to ask voters to approve a bond for undergrounding the wires, it's unlikely since there is already a long list of capital needs for things like public safety.
Other financing possibilities include increasing the existing 7.5 percent utility users tax on cellphone and gas bills. It would take a two-thirds vote at the ballot for approval.
The 3.5 percent surcharge on San Diego's power users nets that city $50 million annually.
The report suggests another funding stream could come from increasing the tax on the sale of real estate.
Perhaps one of the report's most significant findings was the idea of coordinating the undergrounding with the building out of The City's fiber-optic lines to close the digital divide.
"One analysis of the undergrounding of fiber-optic cables projected that coordination with utility projects could yield a savings of 5-15 percent of project cost," the report said.
To that end, the report also recommends that The City actually develop a master plan for the undergrounding work.
"All previous research has found cost-savings when work is done in coordination with other projects," the report said.
That could help realize more novel approaches, such as helping businesses pay for undergrounding if they form what's known as community benefit districts, which allows business owners in a certain area to tax themselves for neighborhood improvement work.
Board of Supervisors President London Breed was supportive of undergrounding during the May 11 capital planning meeting, focusing on the area near Ninth Avenue and Irving Street.
"I've talked to some of the residents there. They want to see these utilities underground. It's one of the major gateways to Golden Gate Park and it just looks so horrible," Breed said. "We need to be creative, especially about those areas that highlight The City."
A finalized report is expected to be heard June 19 by LAFCO.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
by Jonah Owen Lamb
San Francisco’s new probation chief, Karen Fletcher, sat down with The San Francisco Examiner recently to talk about her more than two decades in law enforcement and the nature of her work here compared to Santa Clara County, where she was the deputy probation chief before coming to The City. Fletcher replaced probation chief Wendy Still, who retired in 2014. Q: How does San Francisco differ from Santa Clara County when it comes to your work?
A: It is much larger than San Francisco and has more law enforcement agencies to deal with; there were 13 police jurisdictions there. But the major difference is that San Francisco has far more resources and the closely knit nature of law enforcement, so as not to duplicate efforts. Q: How do the caseloads compare?
A: Santa Clara has far more people on probation. We had about 18,000 cases in adult probation there. In The City, there are only about 4,000 in all. In Santa Clara, most people who went through the court system were released and then under probationary supervision. In The City, those on probation are really the high-risk people. Q: Why is that?
A: The DA’s Office and the courts have a different philosophy when it comes to criminal justice, but San Francisco is also just a smaller county so there are fewer on probation here. Also, sentencing practices in The City have been ahead of much of the state when it comes to restorative justice. Fewer go to state prison from The City, for example. Q: How does managing probation in San Francisco differ from doing so in Santa Clara?
A; In Santa Clara, we had a much larger department. In Santa Clara, there are about 900 staff — 350 in adult probation — compared to 155 total staff here. The smaller operation here gives me the ability to be much more hands on. Q: Why come to San Francisco?
A: I was drawn to The City for its size and nature, as well as its philosophical approach to justice. But in Santa Clara, like San Francisco, we used evidence-based practices, which means we essentially collect data on people’s behavior in order to assess their outcomes. I want to be part of moving that along more here. Q: While probation officers are technically law enforcement, how do they differ from police?
A: Police may make an arrest and never return to that address. Probation officers must return and build relationships. We might supervise someone for two to three years, so by nature we have a closer connection to them.Q: Do you get frustrated doing this work when at times you are managing problems, like poverty and drug use, that society seems to have refused to solve?
A: We can’t build a factory that will give people jobs in a poor community, but we might be able to help someone get treated for drug addiction, which makes it hard for them to get out of the criminal justice system.Q: Many people have argued that large numbers of people who are arrested in San Francisco are from elsewhere. At least when to comes to probation, how many under your supervision are San Francisco residents?
A: There is a statute in the penal code that requires us to send people back to their legal county of residence, even if they are arrested here. So the majority of people on probation here are from San Francisco.
by Chris Roberts
by Laura Dudnick
by Laura DudnickSan Francisco public school leaders are expected to decide tonight whether to restrict enrollment at a prestigious arts school to city residents only.
The proposal comes after years of concern on the Board of Education that many San Francisco students lack access to the small, highly coveted Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Renamed in 2010 after sculptor Ruth Asawa, known for designing iconic public fountains in The City, the school offers several hours a day of creative arts – including music, dance and theater – in addition to academic courses.“There is tremendous artistic talent in San Francisco, and those students should be supported and prepared to apply and gain admission” to the school, said Matt Haney, the board’s vice president and a co-author of the resolution.
The board had previously imposed a 10 percent limit of students from outside San Francisco Unified School District, but that cap was “regularly exceeded,” Haney said. About 14 percent of students currently enrolled live outside The City.
Additionally, just five middle schools in San Francisco provided about 90 percent of applicants for the 2014-15 school year, and this year no students from Chinatown, Civic Center, Fillmore, North Beach, Pacific Heights, Cow Hollow, Presidio, Seacliff, South of Market or the Tenderloin applied to the arts school.“That’s because the district is not reaching out to those students…and not preparing and supporting them to apply and be successful in applying,” said Haney.
Consequently, the resolution calls for the creation of a task force that would include students, faculty and parents from the Asawa community to explore how the district can strengthen arts education in elementary and middle schools, and encourage a more diverse pool of students to apply.
A summer program to enhance the artistic skills of fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders would also be established per the resolution.
Rachel Norton, a board member who co-authored the resolution, emphasized that the board would not involve itself in the audition process for the school, an idea that was floated in the first version of the resolution. Following an outcry from the school community that felt the board was meddling in its audition process, that clause was removed.
Students who currently have applied, been accepted to and attend the school would be allowed to remain enrolled. The changes would take effect starting in the 2016-17 school year.
by Bay City News
by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez
by Laura Dudnick
by Joshua Sabatini
