By Patrick Monette-Shaw

July 13, 2008

Budget and Finance Committee
The Honorable Jake McGoldrick, Chair
The Honorable Ross Mirkarimi
The Honorable Chris Daly
The Honorable Sean Elsbernd
The Honorable Carmen Chu
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA  94102

In a report just released by San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury, “Accountability in San Francisco Government,” a footnote reveals that Supervisor Tom Ammiano noted in October 2007 that “There doesn’t really seem to have been anyone in charge of the store.”

As a candidate to replace termed-out Assemblyman Mark Leno, Ammiano’s admission is startling, given that voters have been paying Ammiano’s City Supervisor salary for over 12 years, expecting he is partly responsible for being in charge of the store and paying attention to the City’s finances.

Since Gavin Newsom took office as Mayor in 2004, fully one-third of the increase in the City’s budget from $5.1 billion to $6.5 billion can be traced directly to the $543.9 million increase paid to City employees earning more than $100,000 annually, while City Supervisors have turned a blind eye toward minding the store and keeping an eye on the cash register.

Last March, the San Francisco Daily (now known as the Daily Post) broke a story that 8,180 City employees who are paid more than $100,000 annually are costing San Francisco over $1 billion, or more than half of the total $2.3 billion the City budgets for wages and salaries.

In 2003, I placed a public records request for salaries greater than $90,000, which salaries Supervisor Ammiano claimed at the time were a huge problem.  Now four years later, salaries over $100,000 are an even greater problem, given the three-quarters of a billion dollar increase, and the increase of 5,262 employees now earning six-figure incomes.

Back in 2003, Supervisor Ammiano (bless the bleeding heart on his sleeve) made great noise about the number of City employees earning more than $90,000 annually, although he made no substantive effort to do anything about reducing their drain on the City’s budget at the time.  All eleven members of the Board of Supervisors are now reported on the City’s salary database available on the Internet to be earning $98,660, at a combined cost to taxpayers of $1.08 million annually, without including their fringe benefits valued at 30 percent of base salary.

Now four years after Ammiano’s initial concern but gross inaction, we have nearly three times more City employees earning more than $100,000.  His bleeding heart concern was not translated into meaningful action.  Ammiano and the Board of Supervisors have done next to nothing to reduce this wasteful spending, or to take serious aim at reducing the amount of City fat, each time you have passed annual salary ordinance’s and the City’s budgets, as if you weren’t in a position to have been minding the store.

For his part, sitting Supervisor Sean Elsbernd authored Board of Supervisors Resolution 474-07 in August 2007 that is documented in a second Civil Grand Jury report released in June 2008, “Fits and Starts: The Response of San Francisco Government to Past Civil Grand Jury Recommendations.”  Elsbernd’s Resolution 474-07 “resolved” that the Board of Supervisors should review the status of Civil Grand Jury recommendations as part of annual budget processes, and stipulated that the Budget and Finance Committee on which he sits should hold hearings on the Mayor’s and Controller’s implementation of Grand Jury recommendations.  None of this has happened, as Supervisor must surely know, and the full Board of Supervisors is about to adopt the Fiscal Year 2008–2009 budget in the absence of such oversight.

The attached testimony provides you with an analysis of where “low-hanging fruit” management fat might be trimmed.  To that end, you should delay considering passing the City budget for Fiscal Year 2008– 2009 until such time as the Budget and Finance Committee gets serious about cutting the low-hanging fruit management fat from next year’s City budget, since Supervisors Peskin and Ammiano, and Mayor Newsom, have done precious little to reduce the low-hanging fruit themselves, as documented in the attached testimony.

Patrick Monette-Shaw

Go Figure!

From Our City Hall Correspondent

Hatchet-wielding overpaid City hall bureaucrats have quietly devised a plan to cut the annual costs of street cleaning by depriving the West Side of San Francisco from weekly street cleaning from the current once a week program to twice a month street cleaning.

The eastern side of the city would continue to receive weekly street cleaning, sources say.

The new plan would primarily affect Districts 2, 4 and 11.

[Read more →]

In December 1962, when Lenny Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, the police broke open his candy bars, looking for dope. They checked the IDs of audience members, including George Carlin, who told the cops, “I don’t believe in IDs.” Then they arrested *him* for disorderly conduct, dragged him along by the seat of his pants and hoisted into the police wagon.
“What are *you* doing here?” Lenny asked.

“I didn’t want to show them my ID.” [Read more →]

Introduction
Jean Michel Folan, a Belgian artist, has illustrated brilliantly, in bright color form, the desolate voids of 20th century cities and their inhabitants. This blank verse of “A Political Urban Legacy” was obviously influenced by Jean Michel’s graphics. Jean Michel is best known for his illustrations of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”.

A Political Urban Legacy

Bureaucratic-honed streets of emptiness, where, in angst silence,

most pass each other by.

Elongated spaces, rimmed by offish, impermeable concrete erections.

Looming Parnassus like, these structures dampen the hum

of moving toxic engines.

Everywhere, separation intoned.

Strangers all, to all

A Nietzeschian fear embalmed.

A Zeitgeist Nihilism embraced.

As light and evening to dusk fades

Hear now a cry!

A muffled shriek!

A loud reverberating booming sound

Screeching, skidding wheels

A distant siren, wailing.

Notated; another victim

Yet roaming still at large unfettered marauders,

Meantime, laconic officials

In catatonic mien,

sleep unperturbed

indifferent.

June 24, 2008
Joe O’Donoghue

Joe O’Donoghue, past president of the Residential Builders Association of San Francisco, is a prime earth mover in the new Oakland Builders Alliance of Oakland. He is also a poet.

Memo to the Editor

A Metaphor for America: Triple Crown Forebodings for Obama

From John B. Shanley

I just got back from the Belmont and what a spectacle it was. Over 100,000 people all seeking the same thing…and none of them finding it. It was a scene.

Pauly Walnuts of Sopranos fame was hanging out with the insiders private dick - Bo Dietel in the highroller area. Me I was hanging with an interesting crew myself, including a vice-president for the New York Stock Exchange, who knew nothing about the horses, but alot about buying cocktails.

For me there is not much worth learning that can’t be picked up at the track. For there are many lessons a horseplayer learns over the years. Many the hard way.

Over the past two months, I have been to the track in three different countries - the USA, Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Irish have a great understanding and respect for the horses. I spent two days at Ireland’s biggest jumping festival at Punchestown, where by happenstance, I picked three straight winners and ran into Bertie Ahern, who was in his last week as Prime Minister of Ireland. Now you don’t meet too many Prime Ministers at Bay Meadows. And the Irish will look at you different after you pick three straight.

But an Irishman’s luck rarely travels north well. My luck went south as I went north to catch racing action at Down Royal, in a lovely countryside setting outside Belfast in Northern Ireland. My buddy is an editor for the Daily Mirror, which sponsored the bank holiday race in early May.

I was in Belfast during that horrible spectacle that was the Preakness, in which the filly Eight Belles, who valiantly came in second to the monster that is Big Brown, was euthenized on the track. There is nothing worse than watching a large animal die. And it is why I have turned on American horseracing. Horses should only run on grass and at long distances, but that is another story.

What a metaphor for American, I told my friend. “Don’t miss it. Hilary is done,” I declared. “No. She can’t be,” he replied, for all of Ireland loves the Clinton’s for their work in the Northern Ireland peace process.

“Yes. She is finished and all her supposed friends wil turn and run from her,” I warned. “She is in no better shape than that filly they will now put down in the dirt. In America - one day your a king and the next you are done…like milk gone bad.”

“So,” my friend asked. “Do you think it will be Obama?”

“Let’s watch the Belmont,” I responded. “The Belmont will give us our answer.”

Well, last Saturday, with over 100,000 New Yorkers in 90-plus degree heat we got our answer. Obama will fade in the strench…and to the shock and horror of many will fade as quick as he rose. And you can take that to PaddyPower or Ladbrokes.

Immediately following the Belmont stakes (and before the 12th race of the card), a retired NYPD cop, whom I befriended and worked up a nice little friendship with (horseplayers have a way of befriending each other) gave me what proved to be a helluva piece of information. He spent years in the NYPD organized crime unit and he knows a wise guy when he sees one.

“You see that pizzano over there,?” he asked in his thick New Yorker accent. I did. “He just put $20,000 on number 12 to win.” While I did not have 20gs handy, me and the ex-cop put a little of our own on the 12 in the 12th. And while he was nowhere to be seen coming into the last turn, this 25,000 claimer came on from the outside like he was on a rocket and paid off a 11-1. It pays to listen.

Over the past 20 years, the Hospice at Laguna Honda Hospital has cared for over 2,000 dying persons and many more bereaved loved ones. About 50% of our deaths occur in the home-like Hospice, a 25-bed ward with a lovely garden. Patients come from every San Francisco neighborhood with illnesses that range from AIDS to Alzheimer’s. Laguna Honda has received heart-felt community thanks for its Hospice care.

I started Pastoral services on Hospice in 1988. Later, interfaith Chaplains were hired as Spiritual Care Coordinators to provide broader and more consistent support. I was shocked when our valued Hospice Chaplain who earns a mere $26,000 yearly, got a layoff notice for July 1^st! This amounts to 0.01% of the hospital’s budget for 1500 employees, only 6 of whom were laid off. Of all the cutbacks, cutting the Hospice Chaplain is the worst. Compared to the hospital’s expenses for remodeling offices and conference rooms, it’s a pittance. Such small savings have big emotional costs. We have no substitute for this unique job. Now, dying patients, their families and friends face needless distress and spiritual isolation.

Doctors have acknowledged the role that spiritual support has on physical health and well-being. Pastoral or spiritual support is crucial to help our patients and loved ones cope with death and dying. Hospice without spiritual services is wrong. This is especially true at Laguna Honda where spiritual needs are enormous but resources are limited. Many here are burdened with disabling illness, poverty and broken relationships. We try very hard to give them spiritual support at this time of their lives. From experience we have learned that dying patients need someone there as they approach the end of life, especially the elderly. And, that each death affects the entire community.

We have volunteer Chaplains, but the time they can spend with patients is limited. Counseling grieving relatives, and arranging for Memorial Services for 100 bereaved families a year is just part of the job of the Spiritual Care Coordinator. The heart of it is regularly visiting the dying, and staying with them through trials and sorrows, and supporting their faith. Without these services, there will be more suffering and grief. More will die in crisis.

Because the need is so great on Hospice, a full-time Chaplain must be available. Community support is urgently needed. If you would like to help the dying at Laguna Honda please contact Sister Miriam Walsh 415-292-3471 or John Farrell (Pastoral Care Volunteer LHH) 415-218-6337.

Sign the petition to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to

“The George W. Bush Sewage Plant”

An early San Francisco Alms House — from The Annals of SanFrancisco, 1855

Supervisors Vote Would Doom Venerated Hospital as Home of Last Resort For the City’s Elderly Poor

Board Puts Off Final Action, Schedules to Again Reconsider Vote Next Week

Elsband, Heeding West of Twin Peaks Outrage, Succeeds in Delaying Tactic; Daly Plays The Reasonable Card, Questions Why Laguna Honda Should Be Downgraded to 720 Beds

AT ISSUE: TRASHING THE WILL OF THE VOTERS

San Francisco Senior Citizens In Need Would Be Increasingly Sent to Nursing Homes Outside The City; As Elderly Population Grows, The Beds for Them Would Be Gone

By Patrick Monette-Shaw

When, and if, the rebuilt Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center opens on schedule in late 2009, a light will have gone out in San Francisco — Spanish for St. Francis,the patron saint of the city — with extinguishing help from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. St. Francis of Assisi, co-founder of the Franciscan Order that focused on providing care for the poor and sick, would himself be sickened to learn that Laguna Honda will undoubtedly open with far fewer beds than originally approved by the voters. [Read more →]

McCain’s Underbelly - His Anger

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Until last week John McCain’s political handlers had been complacently sketching out their basic strategy: to portray Obama as a mere novice in statecraft, devoid of those powers of mature wisdom and sober judgment with which the seasoned McCain is so richly endowed. [Read more →]

Mayor Gavin Newsom had the cojones to ask the bureaucrats to see if an All Free Muni could be the answer to the city’s transit problems and Muni’s chronic deficits. The bureaucrats recently came back with the answer: No Can Do. No surprise there - imagination on the traditional part of the city’s bureauracy and transit jockeys has long been a zero sum game. In the Take-Another-Look Department, consider this article about the way New York City could have free public transit, the view of veteran New York negotiator and lawyerly fixer Ted Kheel. It it well worth a read in terms of the originality and daring of the scope of his concept, based on core on congestion auto pricing, which the smaller and just as crowded, street wise, city of San Francisco will eventually have to deal with. If it could be possible for New York, more than six times our size, why could it not be possible for San Francisco? Back to the Drawing Board time, folks. - Ed

This article originally appeared in The New York Press

TEDDY’S LAST JAM

93-year-old Theodore Kheel wants to make mass transit free. A crazy idea? Yes. A good one? Maybe.

By Matt Elzweig

Ted Kheel

Ted Kheel’s not wearing a watch. At 93 years old, what’s the point?

To any New Yorker over 50, Kheel is a household name —or was—because he understood that it didn’t matter what time it was; the clock was always ticking, a deadline always loomed. As the city’s chief labor negotiatior through the 1960s and 1970s, he helped settle urgent strikes by teachers, transit workers and cops that threatened to paralyze the city he loved. He bridged the often distant gaps between belligerent workers and a cash-strapped city government, and averted crisis after crisis with his conciliatory methods. [Read more →]