September 29, 2014
The Examiner
By Jon Golinger
I love walking into City Hall. My spirit lifts as I
approach that sparkling dome, gleaming with promise, making every other
building in its shadow seem half-asleep. Striding up the broad-shouldered Polk
Street steps, I think about how they have been host to thousands of protests,
celebrations, announcements, civic gatherings over the years, with one
sometimes underway as I pass by.
Moving through the heavy, gold-trimmed City Hall doors, I
now remember with a smile the day just over a year ago when I stood and watched
couple after happy couple burst through those doors to announce to the outside
world that they were finally, legally, married, period. Finally, I step into
the well of the City Hall rotunda. I always remind myself to turn my eyes
upwards to catch a glimpse of that gorgeous Beaux-Arts ceiling hanging in space,
captured in place for our permanent viewing pleasure when it was rebuilt from
The City's ashes a century ago.
But then, after I head up the grand staircase and walk
past the hopeful Harvey Milk sculpture to the second floor -- where the real
business of City Hall gets done -- that's where the bright glow of "The
People's House" slowly, but inexorably, starts to fade away these days.
Because now, more than ever, City Hall seriously needs some fresh air.
Just look at the way the current mayoral administration
and most supervisors react to independent policy critiques or outside,
objective proposals for change: as attacks on their turf that they
automatically reject. A prime example was the dog-and-pony show of a public
hearing before the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight
Committee this month about the civil grand jury's report on the trials and
tribulations of San Francisco's waterfront titled "The Port of San
Francisco: Caught Between Public Trust and Private Dollars."
The independent civil grand jury is a healthy part of San
Francisco's often-dysfunctional democracy, comprised of 19 volunteers from all
walks of life who selflessly devote hundreds of hours over the course of each
year to scrutinize the conduct of public business in The City. This year's
civil grand jury recognized the things the Port has done well, such as steadily
expanding the parks, walkways and open space that allow more public access to
the waterfront than ever before, such as the newly opened Pier 27 public park.
But the civil grand jury also examined the deep
dysfunctions with the current Port Commission's approach to managing the
waterfront that resulted in two overwhelming votes by the people over the last
year roundly rejecting the Port's drive to rewrite waterfront height-limit
rules for tall luxury condos and high-rises. The civil grand jury's offered
recommendations to guide the Port out of its political morass and reconnect it
with its mission of stewarding the waterfront, not dividing it up amongst the
highest bidders.
Key recommendations from the civil grand jury report
include: 1) Strengthening enforcement of the Waterfront Land Use Plan to break
the pattern of rewriting existing rules for politically-juiced developments; 2)
Expanding public outreach and citizen engagement in Port operations and
decisions to reduce the disconnect between the people and the Port; and 3)
Putting a ballot measure before voters in November 2015 that would begin the
process of restructuring the Port Commission to ensure a balance of perspectives
rather than continuing to allow only the mayor to appoint all five Port
commissioners.
But instead of even attempting to follow the civil grand
jury's carefully designed road map, the current regime at City Hall simply
crumpled it up and tossed it out. Mayor Ed Lee dashed off a letter rejecting
the civil grand jury's key recommendations. In response to the grand jury's No.
1 recommendation that the Port Commission be balanced with people who have
perspectives other than the mayor's, Lee scoffed: "This recommendation is
unnecessary and there appears to be no perceivable benefit."
Similarly, the Audit and Oversight Committee failed to
engage in any real oversight at all at the public hearing on the civil grand
jury's report. Committee Chairwoman London Breed simply read from prepared
remarks that went down the line discarding nearly all of the civil grand jury's
recommendations as either redundant or unnecessary.
I still love walking into City Hall. But we need a fresh
breeze to blow through and cut the stale air that makes it all too easy for
public officials to dismiss independent voices like the civil grand jury and
continue with the business-as-usual that is turning San Francisco into such an
unaffordable and inhospitable city.
City Hall needs to again live up to the promise of the
place, captured in words by former Mayor Edward Robeson Taylor and carved into
stone high in the rotunda, calling out to all who look up: "San Francisco,
O glorious city of our hearts that hast been tried and not found wanting, go
thou with like spirit to make the future thine."
Jon Golinger is an environmental attorney who lives in
North Beach.
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