Muni officials hold off on ending free parking perk

Last year, the Municipal Transportation Agency's governing board approved a plan as part of its budget to charge its employees for parking. The hope was to both generate revenue for the perennially cash-strapped agency and honor the city's long-enshrined policy to discourage driving private automobiles.

On Tuesday, the board was to consider setting a $55 fine for workers who park their wheels without paying the $80 monthly permit fee - cheaper permits would be available for weekly, daily or hourly parking. But board Chairman Tom Nolan requested that the proposal be yanked at the start of the meeting without comment.

He later told the Insider" Employees, already feeling picked on, are angry and he wants some extra time to cool things down. "We heard from a number of employees and we want to give them a chance to air their concerns," he said.

Nolan said the parking program could be resurrected in a matter of weeks. However, Nathaniel Ford, the transportation agency's executive director, said it also could be killed. "It's a possibility," he said. "It's a policy decision; we're working with the board to see if they want to reconsider."

Cheryl Brinkman, a board member who supports the paid-parking plan, said she hopes it will go forward, both to discourage driving and to send a message to the public that there aren't double standards when it comes to parking.

"It's probably not good in terms of public perception," she said of Tuesday's delay. But, she added, she doesn't want to be dismissive of employee concerns.

Among those concerns, said Rafael Cabrera, acting president of Transport Workers Union Local 250-A, the operators' union, is that many of his members work early-morning or late-night hours when there are few options besides driving. In addition, he said, forcing workers to pay for something that long has been free is seen as another hit on his members who, in the November election, lost their guarantee of the second-best pay in the country, then were told by management they may not get their traditional year-end payouts of up to $3,000.

"Everything that comes out of the MTA looks like they're attacking us," Cabrera said.

The push to squeeze parking revenue from its own employees comes as the agency is looking to make more money from parking from the general public and other city departments who park vehicles on the street. Parking revenue helps fund Muni operations.

There currently are more than 1,000 free parking spaces available at the transportation agency's various facilities, including bus and rail yards. If the plan had been approved Tuesday for full implementation March 1, agency officials anticipated the program would generate $500,000 in the current fiscal year that ends June 30, and $1.3 million annually after that.

Posted By: Rachel Gordon (Email) | Jan 18 at 06:15 PM

Nothing says "Watch this TV show" like mediation rallies

Quick, you're trying to promote a new TV show with a racy name ("Fairly Legal") a beautiful brunette star (Sarah Shahi) and a stunning setting (San Francisco, duh.) How do you attempt to draw an audience?

Well, the USA Network thinks rallies to promote mediation are the answer and will hold events at Union Square, Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square on Wednesday. With gray cookies. And signs reading, "No Litigation, Only Mediation." And a sweepstakes with a five-day trip to San Francisco. Where, presumably, you already are if you are at one of the mediation rallies.

Confused yet? So were we. Here's the scoop: Shahi plays Kate Reed, a laywer turned mediator with a complicated personal life. The show debuts Thursday night.

Rallies to promote mediation - and the show - will take place in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Mediation advocates hope to encourage people to resolve their conflicts outside the courtroom and will hand out gray-colored cookies reading, "Justice isn't always black and white. A classic cookie in a shade of gray. Because for Kate Reed, life is never black and white." And apparently the sweepstakes is targeted at residents of those less fabulous cities.

It's always fun watching shows set in San Francisco, but don't get too attached. Remember "Trauma"? "Women's Murder Club"? We didn't think so.

Posted By: Heather Knight (Email) | Jan 18 at 02:54 PM

Muni employees set to lose free parking perk

San Francisco's long-enshrined, but controversial, Transit First policy that aims to discourage driving may soon hit home for employees who work at the city's transportation agency.

The Municipal Transportation Agency's governing board today will consider putting a $55 fine on the books for Muni operators, their supervisors and other employees who park their private wheels on agency property without paying.

There currently are more than 1,000 free parking spaces available at the agency's various facilities, including bus and rail yards.

By March 1, if all goes according to plan, a paid-parking program will be up and running at all the job sites.

The proposal calls for charging employees who drive to work $80 for a monthly permit. Weekly, daily and hourly permits also would be available. The monthly charge is set at $10 above the cost of the monthly transit Fast Pass but in many neighborhoods still falls below the market rate charged at private lots.

Once implemented, agency officials anticipate the program will generate $500,000 in the current fiscal year that ends June 30, and $1.3 million annually after that.

In addition, agency officials, who also oversee San Francisco's parking cops, have vowed to crack down on their employees who park illegally on the street and sidewalks around their job sites.

The proposed policy shift comes as the city is overhauling how it manages parking on the street and in city-owned lots, partly to generate more money and partly to get people out of their cars.

''As the SFMTA requires San Franciscans to pay for parking, SFMTA employees should lead by example,'' agency CFO Sonali Bose said in a memo to the governing board to press the case for the parking charge. In addition, she said, ''free or subsidized parking at work encourages people to drive, and these trips contribute to traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.''

Muni workers have been grumbling about the proposal to change what has been a longtime benefit and what in effect would amount to a pay cut if they continue to drive to work.

However, the governing board already signed off on the idea with adoption of the budget last year. Today's action is to set the amount of the fine.

Posted By: Rachel Gordon (Email) | Jan 18 at 08:32 AM

Muni on-time rate slides

Last July, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom crowed about Muni hitting a modern-day record for buses, rail and cable cars arriving on schedule -- a whopping 75 percent -- during the first three months of 2010.

Since then, however, there's been a lot less to brag about. Muni's on-time performance has been on a slow but steady slide.

A report to be presented to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority board Tuesday says that 72 percent of Muni vehicles showed up on time in July, August and September of last year.

In the preceding quarter -- March, April and May -- Muni's on-time performance was estimated at 72.5 percent.

All of those figures, of course, fall far short of the 85 percent standard mandated by voters when they passed Proposition E in 1999. The measure gave Muni until 2004 to meet the goal, but the agency has never come close.

Posted By: Michael Cabanatuan (Email) | Jan 17 at 05:00 PM

Ed Lee and labor readying to talk budget, pension

New to the job, Mayor Ed Lee said that trying to untangle the city's budget mess and helping to craft a plan to rein in escalating pension costs would be among the top priorities of his nascent administration, and today he told a gathering of San Francisco's labor leaders, ''We've got a lot of work ahead of us (and) I want to do it with you.''

That may be an understatement. The city employees unions, which wield tremendous political clout, can make the annual budget-balancing act a real nightmare or merely an unsettling dream for the mayor.

During last year's budget season, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and his labor relations team initially charged hard against the unions to shave a projected $50 million off the deficit by sending pink slips to 15,000 city workers with the intent of hiring most of them back under shortened workweeks. Newsom said the scheme would save thousands of city jobs.

In the end, the plan was yanked. Instead, the administration negotiated a deal in which most city workers agreed to $250 million in concessions over two years to help erase the deficit.

Now, as the city faces another billowing budget shortfall of $360 million heading into the new fiscal year that starts July 1, city workers may be asked to give back more or face layoffs.

As the process begins, Lee told the audience at San Francisco Labor Council's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast, ''We'll be honest; we'll be open.''

Tim Paulson, who heads the labor council, said that at Lee's request he is tentatively scheduled to sit down with him this week to talk budget and other labor issues. One possible topic: the city's new local hire law that will give more city contracting jobs to San Francicans. Lee told the gathering that he would like to see the concept expanded.

Bob Muscat, chair of the Public Employees Committee, the umbrella group that negotiated the concessions deal with the Newsom administration last year, said that when it comes to the budget and pension reform, the public-sector employee unions ''are pretty encouraged'' that Lee's team will bargain fairly and in good faith.

Muscat said he hopes that ''the discussions are fact-based and that the resolution doesn't lend advantage to anyone's political agenda but is in the best interests of the city.''

Posted By: Rachel Gordon (Email) | Jan 17 at 03:32 PM

Ed Lee: Vows community partnerships

Mayor Ed Lee already has set the tone of his administration during his first week on the job -- starting with his inaugural remarks Tuesday in the ornate City Hall rotunda moments after the Board of Supervisors tapped him for the job to speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration on an asphalt yard in the Western Addition this morning.

To sum up his talking points: ''Community is so, so important,'' Lee told the MLK Day gathering, in offering a quick assessment of his two decades-plus tenure working for the city, including stints as public works chief and city administrator.

''If I've opened the doors for anyone, it's been community leaders throughout the whole of San Francisco. ... It's at that level,'' he said, ''that we create collaboration and partnerships.''

Later, the former civil rights attorney attended another King Day event hosted by the San Francisco Labor Council and promised to ''open up our government even more.''

His style, in delivery and message, is a marked about-face from his two predecessors in the mayor's office, Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown, whose political oratory skills are off the charts. Lee, by early accounts, can take ownership of humble.

Posted By: Rachel Gordon (Email) | Jan 17 at 01:30 PM

Does D.A. Gascón clear the field?

When Police Chief George Gascón was named District Attorney, many political observers thought he'd cleared a potentially crowded field for the D.A.'s race in November.

After all, he's been a popular, successful police chief who's not afraid to make big changes. He's engaging, media-savvy, has good name recognition and has high favorability ratings in polls.

But there are big question marks, too, which are giving challengers hope he's vulnerable. He said he would seek the death penalty when appropriate, and San Francisco's liberal voters for years have elected District Attorneys who rule out the death penalty.

He's never undergone the rigors of a campaign. (And when he tried to promote the seismic bond measure on last June's ballot, he famously put his foot in his mouth by talking about Arab terrorists blowing up the Hall of Justice.)

And he was - wait for it - a lifelong Republican until re-registering recently as decline-to-state. And just last week he became a Democrat.

Deputy District Attorney Paul Henderson and David Onek, a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, had both entered the race before Gascón's appointment and haven't said whether they're staying in.

Jim Hammer, a former prosecutor who serves on the Police Commission, is also eyeing a challenge, and progressives are hopeful he could beat Gascón by challenging him from the left. Matt Gonzalez, who ran for District Attorney in 1999, is rumored to be considering another run though he didn't return a call for comment.

Other contenders being mentioned are retired judge Quentin Kopp and Bill Fazio, a former deputy district attorney.

Jim Stearns, a political consultant who's running Henderson's campaign, said Gascón could be the big loser of ranked choice voting.

Voters who would never vote for a longtime Republican who supports the death penalty wouldn't pick him, even for their second or third choices. Stearns contends that could be up to 45 percent of the city's voter base.

But Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who has historically been more politically aligned with the likes of Gonzalez and Hammer, said beating Gascón will be tough.

"Unless there's a major screw-up either by Gascón or by that office, he's going to have the ability to define himself as a D.A. over the next nine months and run on that record," Adachi said. "Right now, he has the floor to himself."

Posted By: Heather Knight (Email) | Jan 16 at 10:30 AM

Ed Lee wants to boot Gavin Newsom's hybrid Tahoe

Gavin Newsom may have been the green mayor, but Ed Lee wants to step it up a notch.

The city's new mayor wants to ditch Newsom's suped-up hybrid sport utility vehicle.

"You know, I fell out of it this morning," Lee laughed Friday on the KGO morning show. "It's such a big piece of ..."

He didn't complete that sentence. He was probably going to say "machinery."

Lee, at 5' 5", is considerably shorter than Newsom. Regardless of the clearance on the Chevy Tahoe hybrid, Lee said he wants to go electric.

"Obviously, I have to save the taxpayers money, so I can't be doing things that might cause more cost to happen," Lee said. "But to be quite honest, I'm looking for an electric vehicle. I'm a big, big supporter of our electric vehicle movement. I want to get off oil."

Lee, as city administrator, had overseen the city's fleet conversion toward hybrid and electric vehicles. Short of being able to get an electric ride for an extended test drive, Lee earlier told City Insider he'd like to keep the compressed natural gas-powered Toyota Camry he was assigned while heading he Department of Public Works more than five years ago.

"It's a favorite car that's been with me from DPW days when I was doing graffiti painting and picking up garbage, so it's got all my equipment in the back," Lee said. "You should see that trunk."

He's even got boots in there for wading into flooded basements and parking lots and whatnot.

"I've never changed that because I never know what's going to happen," Lee said.

So why isn't he driving the Camry now? It conked out the day before he was sworn in, and it's in the shop. Talk about timing.

Posted By: John Coté (Email) | Jan 14 at 03:15 PM

Muni chief Nat Ford: I'm not going anywhere

Nathaniel Ford, executive director of the Municipal Transportation Agency, said this morning that the ramped-up rumors of his impending departure are false. ''I'm not going anywhere,'' he said emphatically.

The persistent rumors that he's on his way out the door has picked up steam in recent days, driven by two truisms.

The first: Sunday marks Ford's fifth anniversary with the city, at which time he will be vested and eligible for the city's lucrative benefits package once he hits retirement age. The second: Earlier this week he released a reorganization plan in which he promoted Carter Rohan, former director of Muni's capital programs and construction, to deputy executive director, a post that had been vacant.

Some insiders say the move creates a natural line of succession should Ford depart. Rohan followed Ford from Atlanta's transportation agency and regularly fills in for his boss when he's out of town.

Other top administrators at the Municipal Transportation Agency were handed new responsibilities, or had some taken away so they could better concentrate on the ones with which they were left, such as negotiating a new contract with Muni operators.

In a three-page memo to agency employees, Ford said the changes, effective today, are intended to improve response time ''to issues as they develop,'' and allow the agency, which runs the city's transit, bike, pedestrian, taxi and traffic programs, to ''provide a greater focus on the day to day operations.''

His impending departure to take a job elsewhere has been the subject of speculation on and off for years. Tom Nolan, chairman of the agency's governing board, said he is aware of Ford's vesting date, the reorganization plan and the rumors they have fueled. ''The last time I talked to him -- which actually was today -- there was no news to report,'' Nolan said Thursday evening.

Two other high-profile department heads left recently in the waning days of the Newsom administration: George Gascon, the police chief who was appointed district attorney, and public health chief Dr. Mitch Katz, who went to Los Angeles to run the health system there.

Ford said he still has a lot to achieve during his tenure, including securing a full-funding agreement with the federal government for the Central Subway project that will bring rail into Chinatown. His other top priority, he said, is getting a new contract in place with Muni operators. There's a lot riding politically on the upcoming negotiations, since voters in November gave Muni management considerably more leverage at the bargaining table.

Ford described the two challenges as ''legacy'' opportunities.

Posted By: Rachel Gordon (Email) | Jan 14 at 10:31 AM

Bridge board delays decision on firing all toll collectors

Concerns about costs and the consequences of laying off all toll collectors convinced Golden Gate Bridge directors to delay action on a plan to move to an all-electronic toll collection system next year.

A number of directors at today's meeting of the bridge district's finance committee said they weren't willing to back the plan without more information.

"I've got questions about laying off people who do a good job for us," said John Moylan of San Francisco. "I don't like any part of this."

Bridge officials argue there would be an estimated $19.2 million savings over the next 10 years by moving to a toll collection plan that combines the existing FasTrak system with a method that photographs the license plates of cars going through the toll plaza and mails a bill to the registered owners.

About two-thirds of the people driving on the bridge now use FasTrak. There would be no change for those drivers.

While the annual savings might not seem like much, "the costs of (electronic) collecting have dropped over time ... while the cost of manual collection has risen greatly," said Joseph Wire, the district's auditor-controller. The change is designed to reduce expenses and strengthen the district's long-term financial stability.

But toll collectors are the bridge's ambassadors to the motorists who use it and firing them could cost the district its public face, some directors argued.

"I'm incredibly ambivalent about this," said board President Janet Reilly of San Francisco. "We're not a (toll) road in Colorado, we're the Golden Gate Bridge ... The idea of those toll booths standing vacant makes me nervous."

Bridge officials agreed to come back in two weeks with more information about the plan and possible modifications. It could go to the full board for approval as soon as Jan. 28.

Posted By: John Wildermuth (Email) | Jan 13 at 04:30 PM