Paul Kozakiewicz: Commentary

The Case for Recalling McGoldrick

In March, a dozen community leaders from a broad cross-section of the community gathered for breakfast at the Video Cafe on Geary Boulevard. The topic of discussion was the district's supervisor, Jake McGoldrick, and what should be done to limit the perceived damage the supervisor was doing to the City while serving on the SF Board of Supervisors. There was talk of recalling the supervisor.

In light of that meeting, I decided to take a good look at McGoldrick's record since he got elected in November 2000. The view isn't pretty.

The supervisor has tried to shut Golden Gate Park roads on Saturdays, despite the voters saying twice to not do so; he has used his influence on the Board of Supervisors to force a radical transportation plan on the district, one that could hurt local merchants as well as taking away traffic lanes on Geary Boulevard (which would force traffic into surrounding neighborhoods); he has proposed legislation that would Manhattanize the City and take away the public's right to public debate at the SF Planning Commission; and he has taken numerous other actions that are detrimental to the people of the neighborhood.

Unlike an election where candidates have a clean slate, a recall election looks at the record of the politician being recalled. There is a record and the candidate being recalled needs to be able to defend that record.

This month, I will start to look at some of the facts concerning McGoldrick's record at City Hall. In May, I will report on many more facets of the supervisor's record, including his positions concerning quality of life issues, such as fees, fines and taxes. I will also look at issues important to the neighborhood where the supervisor was a no-show.

According to the SF Registrar of Voters, the signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters in District 1 would be required to recall a sitting supervisor. In the Richmond District, that means about 4,000 signatures would be needed put him on the ballot. If McGoldrick were to be recalled, Mayor Gavin Newsom would appoint someone to serve out the remainder of the term.

Ignoring the Will of the Voters - Golden Gate Park
McGoldrick submitted legislation for Saturday park road closures, not once, but twice, despite voters saying the park's streets should not be closed. The mayor vetoed the first attempt last year, and a second try is still pending at the Board of Supervisors, as of press time.

In 2000, San Franciscans rejected Proposition F, which asked whether or not the park should be closed on Saturdays. It was defeated by 20,000 votes citywide.

In that same election, voters also rejected Proposition G. The proposition said: "Shall the City close John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to automobile traffic on Saturdays after the Music Concourse parking facility is opened?" The voters resoundingly voted, by 62 percent, to reject the proposal.

In the Richmond, voters rejected both park closure propositions by more than 60 percent and in the Sunset voters rejected both measures by a 2-to-1 margin (67%).

McGoldrick:
• Ignores the fact that the SF County Transportation Authority's study was based on a faulty "methodology." The TA took surveys on two weekends in August of last year choosing weekends where the least amount of events were going on in the park. The authority worked hard to find two weekends that are very much atypical of the park on weekends.
• Ignores the fact that the largest draw in the park is the Academy of Sciences, which will not open until 2008 which will be greatly impacted by Saturday closures. The Academy, which is composed of a natural history museum, Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium, gets about three times the number of visitors than does the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.
• Ignores the fact that hundreds of residents living near the park and thousands who drive to the park from outside the Richmond will be adversely affected.
• Ignores the fact that Middle Drive in Golden Gate Park is already closed on Saturdays for the public to enjoy without vehicles.
• Ignores the fact that Saturday closures will limit the ability of some seniors and disabled people to visit the eastern end of the park on Saturdays.
• Ignores the fact that just about every community group in the Richmond and Sunset districts is opposed to the Saturday closures.

Yet, McGoldrick claims the underground garage in the Music Concourse changed the situation in the park and that his plan to shut off vehicular traffic on Saturdays is justified. The facts do not support that claim.

Forcing BRT on District without Notification
The Richmond District's supervisor forced Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) onto Richmond District residents by working behind the scenes to add it to a citywide half-cent sales tax measure passed by voters in 2003 (Proposition K). He never told major stakeholders in the district about the plan, despite speaking at Town Hall Meetings and writing a monthly column for the Richmond Review.

The 28-member group that determined the fate of Prop. K, called the Expenditure Plan Advisory Committee (EPAC), included only one Richmond District resident, Bruce Oka, an advocate for the disabled community. The SF County Transportation Authority, which is comprised of the members of the SF Board of Supervisors, created EPAC.

The Geary Boulevard BRT measure was added to Prop. K during the fourth of eight meetings that were held to shape the language of the proposition. Andrew Sullivan, then-president of the advocacy group Rescue Muni, moved to insert the language. After agreeing that the BRT would be made "rail ready" for a future light rail system, EPAC agreed to include Geary BRT in Prop. K by adding a single paragraph, which was buried in the middle of the 10-page proposition.

Rescue Muni endorsed McGoldrick for re-election in September 2004.

According to McGoldrick, Muni was not making adequate progress improving transit on the #38 Geary bus line so he took the issue away from Muni and transferred it to the Transportation Authority. Members of EPAC were told by its chairman, BART member Tom Radulovich, to make its decisions within the context of running, and winning, an election because Prop. K needed 67 percent of the vote to pass.

Polls taken by the TA and presented to members of EPAC showed 35 percent of the public not in favor of building new light rail systems. Since BRT was slipped into Prop. K, it was desirable from a political point of view to not inform the public about the proposition's potentially negative consequences.

Groups that did not know about the clandestine plan included The Geary Boulevard Merchants and Property Owners Association, Clement Street Merchants Association, Sacramento Street Merchants Association, and numerous community organizations. There were no public meetings in the Richmond, Laurel Heights, Presidio Heights or anywhere else near the district.

After Prop. K's passage, McGoldrick said the TA was only "studying" ways to improve mass transit on Geary.

But the TA wasn't studying whether or not a plan was desirable, feasible or doable, it was studying how to best implement BRT on Geary, with a bias toward ripping up the middle of the busy boulevard, a plan that would have great consequences to our district's residents and merchants.

According to Luis Moscovich, the director of the Transportation Authority, there is a voter mandate to implement the Geary BRT plan.

With Geary BRT, McGoldrick made a decision on behalf of the Richmond District without letting them know about the plan or soliciting their input. The largest public works project since the creation of the Richmond rolled right by the electorate without their knowledge.

Merchants Scramble for Help
When the Geary merchants first got wind of the plan, they became very concerned because parking could be eliminated, businesses located away from bus stops could be forced to shutter their doors, and months or years of construction could scare customers away.

To allay their fears, the merchants requested of the TA an economic impact study to determine the potential affects of the plan. The TA has refused to grant a study, and the District 1 supervisor has refused to support the merchants. He helped force the mass transit option on them and then turns a deaf ear to their cries for help.

The Geary merchants, who have gotten the support of the SF Small Business Commission and the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, continue to fight for a study.

Attacks on Families and Property Owners
Section A: Inclusionary Housing Fund
In the realm of housing in the City, several recent actions point out the destructive nature of McGoldrick's actions at City Hall. McGoldrick tried to make 2-, 3- and 4-unit buildings fall under the city's Inclusionary Housing Fund, hurting families by raising the price for adding a second unit to about $150,000 for every $1 million in construction cost. (See story Richmond Review April 2007).

Under the legislation, property owners who did not want to pay the tax into the city's housing fund would have to rent the unit to the public at below market rates.

At a March 4 meeting of the SF Board of Supervisor's Land Use and Economic Development Committee, there were two hours of testimony about the proposal. Opposition to the plan was unanimous.

Small property owners of all stripes, including Chinese and Russian, testified that the proposal would be anti-family by making it impossible to modify their homes to add another unit for relatives, including aging parents. Every single-family home in a RH-2 zoned area, of which there are many in the Richmond and Sunset districts, would be impacted.

Supervisor Geraldo Sandoval pointed out to McGoldrick during the hearing that he was telling the Planning Department what to do, rather than asking them to research the issue to determine the facts before making a decision. McGoldrick said he was merely expanding a program that was already on the books and that further planning department scrutiny was not necessary.

Some of the citizens who spoke at the March meeting were mad because they saw McGoldrick's expansion of Inclusionary Housing Fund legislation as a way to make up revenues that the supervisor had voted to give away a couple of weeks earlier, when he supported reducing the contributions of developers building projects with 120 or more units. The supervisors voted to reduce the contributions of the largest builders working in the City, many of them from out of town, from 15 percent to 12 percent of the cost of the project.

The lowering of the rate for the largest contractors will reduce, by millions of dollars, the amount of money coming into the fund to build affordable housing.

But, shifting a heavy tax burden onto the backs of small property owners and families, to make up for the tax break, would hurt them, and thwart the building of additional units of housing, which the City desperately needs.

At the end of the hearing, Sandoval and Supervisor Sophie Maxwell amended the language of the proposal so the impacts of making such a drastic move on the families and homeowners of the City could be determined. They sent the proposal over to the SF Planning Department and the mayor's office for further research.

Reason prevailed, temporarily, but the measure to tax "mom and pop" San Franciscans is not dead.

Section B: Better Neighborhoods Plus -A Failed Attempt to Rewrite Planning Code
One of McGoldrick's ill-fated plans included trying to rewrite the planning code, a measure that would have eviscerated the public's ability to question, modify or stop projects in their neighborhoods.

Better Neighborhoods Plus, legislation McGoldrick submitted to the Planning Commission for consideration in September 2005, was condemned by numerous groups, from all sides of the political spectrum, including the SF Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods and San Francisco Tomorrow.

This is how SF Tomorrow described the plan: "Proponents of the Better Neighborhoods Plus legislation, which would enact Redevelopment Authority-like planning legislation, have found themselves out of step with the communities they say they stand for. The legislation would empower project sponsors to fast-track development within a 40-acre area and create new neighborhoods which maximize residential density, minimize off-street parking and derail the usual means of public comment . Neighborhood historic preservation is given short shrift. Neither would affordable housing be a prime goal."

The Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, the umbrella organization representing the city's neighborhood groups, was more blunt: "The very name of this ordinance is a fraud. A more accurate name for this ordinance is Better Neighborhood Planning for Increased Density, Increased Heights, and Reduced Parking. The public's ability to utilize the Discretionary Review (DR) process has been made virtually useless. If one is fortunate enough to win a DR at the SF Planning Commission, the most one can expect is a 5 percent reduction in the building envelope."

Discretionary Review is the process by which opponents to a proposed project can bring it up before the SF Planning Commission for review.

McGoldrick submitted his Better Neighborhood Plus legislation with little public notice and scant public feedback concerning the radical plan.

Section C: Ignoring the Will of the Voters -TICs
McGoldrick is no stranger to ignoring the will of the people. Aside from his effort to close the streets in Golden Gate Park, he ignored the will of the voters in November 2000 when the voters voted to reject the City's limiting of Tenancies in Common (TIC) as a form of home ownership. Tenancies in Common are created when renters pool their resources to buy the building they are living in. Each person owns a percentage of the building.

The voters were asked if a 200-unit annual cap on conversions should be made permanent. They overwhelmingly voted, by a 55 percent to 45 percent margin, to not limit alternative forms of home ownership in the City.

But McGoldrick ignored that vote and sponsored legislation to limit the number of TICs allowed in San Francisco. The legislation was ultimately rejected by the California Supreme Court, which ruled the supervisors' actions were illegal.

Conclusions:
When our elected official no longer represents the will or the wishes of his constituents, it shuts them out of the political process. When someone with a concern in the Richmond approaches another city supervisor about a problem, the person is usually referred back to their district supervisor out of the supervisor's deference to their colleague.

But what happens when your supervisor ignores your pleas or refuses to talk to you, either on the phone or in person? Your problem gets shut out of the political arena and the resolution of of it becomes a daunting task.

Dozens of people have complained during the last six years about McGoldrick's office not returning calls or meeting with neighborhood people with an issue that needs resolution. For example, the supervisor ignored the pleas of Laurel and Francisco heights residents in their quest to modify a 7-story project the Institute on Aging is building on the site of the former Coronet Theater. (More on that next month.)

I endorsed McGoldrick when he first ran for supervisor in 2000. When he ran for re-election in November 2004, I defended him against numerous attacks and hundreds of thousands of dollars from powerful interests that were trying to remove him. His volunteers made copies of that column and distributed it to the voters of the district.

But, McGoldrick's record now makes it clear that his modus operandi (M.O.) is to do whatever he wants, like a dictator, with as little public oversight or debate as possible. He doesn't listen to the concerns of his constituents.

When one looks at McGoldrick's overall record, it becomes impossible to escape the fact that he should be recalled. Voters should have the opportunity to vote "yea" or "nay" on his continued disservice to the community.

Paul Kozakiewicz is the publisher of the Richmond Review.