Mayor Gavin Newsom: Making City Clean, Livable

As many of you know, my mantra since taking office has been: "As a city, we can do better."

As a new year begins, I am dedicated to continuing to build a more beautiful and livable city. However, I cannot do this alone. I need your assistance to help me meet this challenge.

To begin, we must set higher standards for making our City look its best. Meeting this challenge requires fresh ideas and innovative thinking.

On Feb. 15, the SF Department of Public Works (DPW) and the San Francisco Clean City Coalition joined me in hosting a Clean and Green City Summit at the San Francisco County Fair Building, with "World Class City, World Class Standards" as its theme.

The daylong program of workshops and inspirational guest speakers brought together merchants, residents, civic leaders, community organizations, city officials and front-line agency staff to discuss and define world class standards for the City's cleaning and greening programs, beginning with our new "Livable City Initiative."

Launched last June after the signing of the UN World Environmental Accords, the "Livable City Initiative" is a major effort to make our City a world leader in city greening by 2010. It calls for a bold public/private partnership with our neighborhoods to dramatically improve the beauty and safety of our streets, create new green spaces for residents and businesses, and improve our urban environment by making greening a core priority of the everyday work of city departments and the management of the city's infrastructure.

Over the next year, we will invest $11 million to plant the medians of our major thoroughfares, create distinctive gateways for our retail corridors, add 25,000 new street trees to the urban canopy, make schoolyard gardens take root, and transform unused public rights-of-way into landscaped green spaces.

We will also create a matching grant program called the Community Challenge Fund to encourage neighborhoods to partner with the City and transform unused public lands, medians and sidewalks into landscaped, friendly green spaces.

Many of these issues and programs were highlighted in our recent Clean and Green City Summit. The forum proved to be a great resource for exchanging information and ideals about creating a greener San Francisco. Equally, the forum generated lively and thought-provoking exchanges that are expected to produce both public policy initiatives and nuts-and-bolts solutions.

The summit offered members of the community a chance to interact with representatives of city agencies, members of the SF Board of Supervisors and myself in order to create a world class vision for a more livable and sustainable city. You can get more information on the Clean and Green City Summit by visiting the Department of Public Works Web site at www.sfdpw.org or by calling 55-GREEN (554-7336).

For those of you who missed the summit but want to get involved, we will turn our talk into green action by hosting a series of community tree planting events and a community fair on Arbor Day, March 18.

Last March, I set a goal of planting 5,000 trees in San Francisco by Arbor Day in March 2006.

During the week leading up to Arbor Day, DPW will plant more than 500 street trees and other city agencies will "lead by example" by providing staff to participate in the plantings.

On Arbor Day, the SF Recreation and Park Department and the Friends of the Urban Forest will join DPW in planting many more street trees at community sites. We will need many willing hands to meet our goal. If you would like to join me in celebrating tree planting and care by becoming an Arbor Day volunteer on March 18, please call (415) 554-5447 or log on to www.sfarborday.org for more information.

With each new tree that we plant, each neighborhood park that we create, and each commercial gateway or thoroughfare that we green, our city becomes more livable. Your energy and commitment can help plant the seeds.

I look forward to seeing you March 18 to take part in our Arbor Day celebration!

Gavin Newsom is the mayor of San Francisco.