PHRA Mounts Effort to Retain Newcomer High School

Legal action is planned by PHRA to keep Newcomer High School in our neighborhood instead of allowing the site to be leased to City College. CCSF seeks to move in at the beginning of July.

Members of the association are urged to donate to defray the legal costs if pro bono counsel isn’t found. Pro bono counsel from interested neighborhood attorneys would be welcomed.

Simultaneously, the PHRA Board is monitoring the progress of Supervisor Alioto-Pier’s legislation to impose temporary zoning measures to prevent CCSF’s move-in and is lobbying the Board of Supervisors for swift passage.

At a recent planning meeting, PHRA President Greg Scott pointed out that Newcomer has never posed any problems for the neighborhood. The school is a good fit for the site, the teachers want to stay, and the students don’t bring cars into the neighborhood.

City College Chancellor Philip Day said at a Town Hall style meeting on the topic that classes potentially moving to Newcomer were selected on the basis that a high proportion of those students use Muni. As angry residents pointed out, however, the area is already in gridlock during the day; a single extra car is a problem.

Parking is an equally serious concern. City College is talking with California Pacific Medical Center about subleasing 25 parking spaces, but those spaces are in the Japan Center garage eight blocks away and would be available only in the evening. CCSF is planning classes six days a week and many evenings. At class turnover times throughout the day, as many as 680 students might be attempting to arrive or leave.

City College wants to move about one third of the classes out of the John Adams campus for 12-18 months while that site gets a state-mandated seismic upgrade. PHRA directors question the necessity of the move to Newcomer. Chancellor Day said during the Town Hall meeting that CCSF runs 110 locations throughout the city. That is necessarily an inefficient operation – and one into which City College ought to be able to disperse the John Adams classes without the added cost.

At the Town Hall meeting Day rejected many suggested alternate sites on the grounds they do not comply with the Field Act, which sets seismic standards for public schools. However, The Board has learned that the Field Act exempts City College if its occupancy is temporary. One such site is the vacant UC Extension site at Laguna and Hermann streets. Also, the principal of Marina Middle School has confirmed there is ample classroom and parking capacity for CCSF evening classes.

PHRA also questions the temporary nature of the move. Day said that he did not have funds for a continued lease of the Newcomer site. However, several people who attended a meeting at Newcomer on March 10 said that Dr. Frank Tom, Assistant Superintendent in charge of Operations for the San Francisco Unified School District, said that City College wants long term use of the space.

The move also poses serious problems for Newcomer. The current plan is for its classes to be moved into a portion of Mission High School which currently has no bathrooms. Further, that area also needs a seismic upgrade, just like John Adams. The upgrade would force Newcomer to move again.

The campaign to keep Newcomer High School involves a major outreach. PHRA has presented more than 500 signed petitions to CCSF Trustees. The petitions are also conveyed to the Mayor’s office, selected Supervisors and our State representatives. Contact has been made with other neighborhood groups that would be affected, such as the Cow Hollow Association. Support has been sought from Fillmore merchants, CPMC, the University of the Pacific Dental School, and the numerous private schools.

PHRA members are urged to join the campaign immediately by writing letters and emails of protest to CCSF Trustees, SFUSD and the Board of Supervisors. These can be sent to PHRA for distribution to appropriate officials.  Members are also urged to alert neighbors and to enlist their help in communicating with our legislators to support our position. These letters can be emailed to info@phra-sf.org or sent to PHRA, 2585 Pacific Ave., San Francisco 94115-1162.
 
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Bush Street Restaurant Okayed

 The Board of Appeals, with PHRA’s support, overturned a Planning Commission decision and will allow Charles Phan to open a restaurant on Bush Street a few doors west of Fillmore.

Phan, who owns the building, is the owner of The Slanted Door, but the Bush Street restaurant would not necessarily be a branch.

Mitigation of traffic and parking problems is yet to be worked out.

At  issue was the question of “equilibrium” in the neighborhood, based on a survey from the 1980s and concern that there might be too many bars and restaurants in the area. A comparison sheet prepared by the Planning Department showed that the number of licensed eating establishments in the area has actually declined over the years and the new restaurant would help restore the balance.

The restaurant case brought to light the fact that the Upper Fillmore Street Neighborhood Commercial District has not be reviewed for many years, despite a requirement for a periodic assessment. Paul Wermer, the PHRA Director who testified for PHRA in support of the Phan’s plans, has been attempting to get the Planning Department to open a review, in conjunction with PHRA, the Fillmore Merchants Association and the Western Addition Neighborhood Association. Dean Macris, head of the Planning Department, replied that the problem has been shortage of funds and staff. Once the department is fully staffed, Fillmore Street may not be its highest priority, he said.

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Cell Phone Antennas Approved

A plan to put six cellular phone antennas atop the dental school at 2155 Webster Street has been approved by the San Francisco Planning Commission.

Only one neighbor attended an information presentation on behalf of T-Mobile in advance of the commission meeting. Only one neighbor – a different one – testified before the commission. He said he had not known of the previous meeting, indicating once again that notification in Pacific Heights often appears to be spotty.

The commission noted once again that cities have very little jurisdiction in these matters.

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Lafayette Park Work Continues

Want to help beautify the neighborhood? Lend a hand to the Friends of Lafayette Park. They gather on the first Saturday of every month, from 9 a.m. to noon at the park’s Washington/Laguna corner. They pick up trash, pull weeds, or do anything else that helps the park look better. More volunteers are always welcome. Starbucks provides the coffee.

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Disaster Plan Moving Ahead

The Pacific Heights Preparedness Committee, an outgrowth of PHRA’s spring Town Hall meeting about disaster planning, is working full steam ahead.

The premise of the effort is that when disaster strikes, the city’s major public safety operations – police and fire, principally – will be overwhelmed by major events, leaving citizens to cope with neighborhood problems on their own for at least 72 hours.

The committee of volunteers who came forward at the meeting has set up four subcommittees: Block Captain Strategy, Community Resources and Assets, Communications and Security, Emergency Supplies (the 72+ hours strategy).

The Block Captain and Communications and Security Committees have met and are making progress.  Decisions have been made about the areas Block Captains will cover. Several captains have been selected, but more are needed. To volunteer, call 929-5201 or 345-1789.

In conjunction with Northern Station, the Security Committee has identified communications loopholes and is investigating solutions, as well as identifying safety issues and the importance of individual family preparedness.

The Preparedness Committee is targeting a Resource Fair for the evening of Sept 18 (Time/Location TBD). Focus will be on setting up the Block Captain structure to support further organizing.

 All interested neighbors are encouraged to join the Pac Heights Preparedness group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PacHeightsPreparedness/). That way they will be copied on meeting announcements, minutes, and links to other emergency sites. 

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As of this date the legislation has not been introduced.  Ms. Ballard reported to PHRA Director Connie McCole on May 2 that she would set up a meeting with the controller's Office to discuss the legislation.

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Double Parking is the Culprit on Congestion at CPMC

It’s the double parking, not the traffic, that causes congestion around the Pacific Campus of the California Pacific Medical Center, according to CPMC’s latest traffic survey.

Chi-Hsin Shao, the consultant, called traffic on Webster and Buchanan streets moderate when he shared his survey with CPMC Neighbors Coalition, a PHRA affiliated group, and other neighbors. The neighbors disagreed.

Chao’s staff counted vehicles on Webster Street at Clay during four one-hour periods beginning at 8:30 and 11 a.m. and 2 and 5 p.m. on February 22. Vehicle totals for the four periods were 473, 511, 513 and 400, respectively.

At the white (passenger loading) zone in front of the Center’s medical office building at 2100 Webster Street,  between 33% and 37% of the cars, depending on the hour, double parked. Double parking and illegal parking, such as at the fire hydrant, was consistently above 50% and at one hour reached 72%.

North of Clay Street, 10 trucks double parked between 8:35 a.m. and noon, mostly for long periods – up to 38 minutes.

To ease the problem, Shao had several recommendations:

• Add a sign beside the existing white zone that cars are limited to five minutes, the driver must stay in the vehicle and violators will be towed. One neighbor said offenders would recognize the threat of towing as hollow.

• CPMC security guards must make an effort to enforce the rules.

• Replace parking meters on the west side of Webster Street in that block with additional white zones.

• Create metered truck loading zones on Webster, north of Clay, 8 a.m.-1 p.m.

• Create “bulb-outs,” extensions of the sidewalk into the street to shorten pedestrian’s route across traffic, on all the corners of the Webster/Clay intersection.

Enforcement was a sore point with the neighbors, who said that security guards have never been any help with managing use of the white zone.

The same was true on the Buchanan side of the hospital, where the biggest problem is double and triple parking by vans – the hospital’s own shuttle vans and numerous para-transit vehicles.

Despite hospital assurances that effort have been made to improve the situation, residents of Clay Street between Buchanan and Laguna say that double parking, including passenger cars at shift-change time, has simply moved onto their street.

Shao’s recommendation for change was to add white zone space on the Buchanan side of the hospital, but apparently residents immediately across the street have already foiled that plan.

One long-standing neighborhood complaint has been that trucks making delivery to the hospital must come on Webster Street, turn west on Clay Street, then back up across Webster Street onto the hospital campus. Jeff Gibson, VP-Support Services, said CPMC is easing that problem by creating the West Bay Distribution Center, which will dispatch smaller trucks to the site.

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PHRA has rejoined the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods to make our views heard on issues that affect us – but extend beyond our boundaries.

PHRA withdrew from CSFN several years ago because the previous leadership took stands on some political issues beyond its purview. Most recently, the previous leadership endorsed Proposition D coming up on the June ballot. The new team is reversing that stand, although it will be too late to pull the endorsement from the voter handbook.

Mary Margaret Ward, a former PHRA director, will be the association’s representative at CSFN.

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A fund-raising, overnight walk which will cross Pacific Heights has been approved by the Police Department. A number of concerns remain, however.

According to the plans for Out of the Darkness Overnight, as the event is known, the 1,200 or so walkers will use Alta Plaza as a “pit stop” about 10:00-10:30 p.m. on the night of July 22, en route from Crissy Field. The tentative route is from the Presidio via Geary, California and Divisadero streets and from Alta Plaza via Pacific, Franklin and Union. Once the route is finalized, neighbors are to be notified one month in advance.

Walkers will be using sidewalks only.

They promise that the lights will be installed to face into the park, not out. They also say that because of the nature of the walk and the walkers – it’s a benefit for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention – there will not be the banter and cheerleading that is typical of big walks. Still, there will be moving, portable toilets, generators, tents, and food vendors.

That big an operation also involves considerable disrupting set-up time in the park on Sunday and tear-down time on Monday.

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An appeal of the initial court decision approving the Housing Element of San Francisco's General Plan was due to be filed in Superior Court on May 30th.

PHRA and a number of other neighborhood organizations have banded together in the effort to overturn the policy statement, passed without any environmental review.  As written, the Housing Element encourages a wide swath of development stretching out form transit corridors and urges construction of secondary ("in-law") units virtually everywhere, without requiring parking.

It is PHRA's view that the city does not have the infrastructure, especially sewer capacity, to handle growth of this magnitude.  The result would also do grave damage to the residential quality of the city's neighborhoods.

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