More District 8 Shenanigans

From: Scott Wiener for Supervisor
Date: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:16 AM
Subject: ALERT: Fraudulent Email Impersonating the Democratic Party

You may have received a recent email claiming to be from the San Francisco Democratic Party and attacking Scott Wiener.

Warning! This email is a fraud.

The web address attached to the email, www.sfdemocraticparty.org,
is NOT the URL of the San Francisco Democratic Party ( www.sfdemocrats.org )
In fact, the http://www.sfdemocraticparty.org domain name was registered on October 25th-- the day before the fraudulent email went out. It is not a functioning website.

Don't be fooled by those trying to swift boat our former Democratic Party Chair Scott Wiener, who is endorsed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Mark Leno, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, and the Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Church.

Not only is the domain name false, but so are the charges: the email is full of lies about Scott Wiener’s position on rent control.

SCOTT WIENER STRONGLY SUPPORTS RENT CONTROL.

Scott fought against Prop 98, which would have ended rent control in California. Ted Gullicksen, the Tenants Union director, was reported in Beyond Chron as stating that Scott has a “pro-tenant voting record” as a member of the San Francisco Democratic Party. In fact, Scott received an award from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights for his work defending low-income tenants from eviction.

Don't fall for these desperate last minute tricks.

Be on alert for false and misleading information in these last few days before Tuesday’s election.

For more information about Scott Wiener’s actual positions and background, go to http://www.scott2010.com

Paid for by Scott Wiener for Supervisor 2010, 538 Castro Street, San
Francisco, California 94114,
info@scott2010.com.

Mandelman's Mularkey

I got two mailers from outside contributors for the Rafael Mandelman campaign in the past week. The California Nurses Association and the SF Tenants Union.

There is an organization called the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth that has contributed to the Scott Wiener campaign, I have gotten mailers from them as well.

I found something very appalling in the Mandelman mailers. The CNA mailer connects these dots... Alliance for Jobs contributed to Wiener. Chamber of Commerce backs the Alliance. Sutter Hospital involved in the Chamber. ergo... "WE COULD LOSE TWO SAN FRANCISCO HOSPITALS IF SCOTT WIENER IS ELECTED SUPERVISOR".

The Tenants Union one is similarly thin. The San Francisco Apartment Association backs Scott Wiener. Ergo Scott Wiener wants to end rent control.

What? This sort of backwards causation is brutal. But effective I guess, Wiener had to respond with a "I support Rent Control" robocall ad. Go on offense, make the other side play defense. But not intellectually honest - and I can't stand that. I'm dropping Mandelman to the third line on my Supervisor ballot - he went from First to Worst.

Here is Gillian Gillete's rebuttal of the St Luke's ad.

This e-mail is to respond to the inaccurate, nasty mailers and telephone
calls that the California Nurses Association (CNA) has been sending out
against Scott Wiener. As someone who has served on the St. Luke’s Hospital
Advisory Council since 2003, was part of the Blue Ribbon Panel process about
the future of St. Luke’s and delivered both of her children at St. Luke’s, I
feel it is important to call MALARKEY when I see and hear it.



CPMC’s St. Luke’s Hospital is a very troubled institution that has been
largely unsuccessful in attracting privately insured patients for decades.
That’s unsustainable and unacceptable. The poor should not receive separate
healthcare from everyone else. St. Luke’s should be great; and a lot of
people, including me, are working on it becoming a model community medical
center that treats everyone by offering the services we actually use.



CPMC has agreed to the United Healthcare Workers (a competitor to the CNA)
unionizing the proposed Cathedral Hill Hospital. Nurses at St. Luke’s are,
and will continue to be, CNA union members. CNA is therefore pushing for a
much larger St. Luke’s Hospital, at the cost of UHW jobs, than has a viable
future. Their mailers to us are about CNA union jobs, and not necessarily
about healthcare or what’s good for San Francisco.



Contrary to CNA’s claims in their phone calls and mailers:



Scott Wiener supports rebuilding St. Luke’s. Period.



Scott Wiener supports HIV and AIDS funding and services. He is a gay man who
co-chaired the original committee that built the LGBT Center on Market
Street.



Davies Medical Center, which serves Noe Valley and the Castro, makes
money--contrary to St. Luke’s. Davies is so successful, in fact, that CPMC
is seeking permits to build a **new* *medical office building there. No one
wants to close Davies.



Please join me in calling MALARKEY and consider Scott Wiener for the next
District 8 Supervisor!





Sincerely,

Gillian Gillett

Letter to Mark Simon of SamTrans regarding Pico

The Pico Boulevard situation continues.

Mark Simon of SamTrans sent out this note.

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the closure to through traffic of Pico Boulevard in San Carlos .

Last December, out of concerns that automobile, cycling and pedestrian traffic on Pico Boulevard presented a significant safety hazard, San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans) staff closed the east-end gate, thereby blocking access to through traffic.

This decision was prompted by several near-collisions between buses and automobiles, cyclists and pedestrians. Pico Boulevard is the only access road to the SamTrans South Base and it is used throughout the day by hundreds of buses.

In the intervening months, SamTrans, as the lessee and principal user of the road, conducted a safety review of the street. A copy of the safety review is attached.

That review is complete and a report concerning that review was provided to the SamTrans Board of Directors at its regularly scheduled meeting on October 13.

As part of that report, staff indicated that the road as currently configured does not meet District safety standards. Therefore, the east gate will remain closed as a continuing safety measure, while further options are explored.

Here are the principal findings of the review:

n Pico Boulevard is an unimproved, privately owned road that is the sole access to South Base for the hundreds of buses that travel in and out of the base every weekday.
n The road is used, additionally, to provide parking for base personnel.
n As an unimproved road, Pico Boulevard is neither designed nor configured to meet California Highway Patrol definitional requirements as a publicly accessible highway appropriate for through-passage use by automobiles, cyclists and pedestrians in traffic interaction with buses.
n Specifically, the road:
o Is not engineered for public usage to accommodate through traffic of any kind, including pedestrians, bicycles and pedestrians;
o Is of insufficient width to support mixed traffic, particularly mixed traffic that could include two buses traveling side-by-side and additional automobiles or bicycles;
o Lacks appropriate safety signage, including speed limit signs and signs designating Pico Boulevard as a private roadway;
o Lacks sufficient lighting. Current lighting on Pico Boulevard is designed and installed to provide minimal safety and security features for the SamTrans base, not vehicular, pedestrian and bicycle traffic in darkness;
o Is not subject to consistent maintenance of the roadway to ensure safe operation of vehicles for the purposes of accommodating through traffic.
n A formal traffic engineering study is necessary to determine what changes and improvements would be required to bring Pico Boulevard to an acceptable standard of safety and to ensure that public access to the roadway would not compromise security and safety at the SamTrans base.
n A determination will have to be made whether such a safety review is warranted and, as lessee of the property, whether an investment of public funds is warranted to improve a privately held roadway;
n In the interim, the gate will remain closed.

In the report to the Board, it was noted that a number of comments were received from cyclists who expressed concern that the alternative to Pico Boulevard , Redwood Shores Parkway is significantly more hazardous for cyclists.

We do not have the expertise to judge the relative safety of one road over another.

We are particularly alarmed, however, that a public thoroughfare designed to be used by bikes and including a well-marked bike lane, is considered unsafe and significantly more hazardous than an unimproved, private roadway that is used by hundreds of buses every day.

We are prepared to assist in facilitating a meeting between cyclists and the City of Redwood City to determine what steps may be taken to improve the safety of Redwood Shores Parkway, which is already designated and designed for pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular traffic. When such a meeting is scheduled, we will notify you.

We believe the city is in the best position to provide, legitimate, safe passage on public roadways and we are prepared to work with the city and cyclists to assure that the right conditions exist for Redwood Shores Parkway .

We understand and sympathize with those who have been frustrated by the decision to close the gate. Our concern for safety – including the safety of bicyclists – must be the paramount concern. We would prefer to have cyclists alive, well, and angry at the agency, than any of the alternatives that might arise due to unsafe conditions.

Sincerely,


Mark Simon

I wrote this letter.

Mr. Simon -

I just read this snippet from a mail you sent out about Pico Blvd and Redwood Shores.

"We are particularly alarmed, however, that a public thoroughfare designed to be used by bikes and including a well-marked bike lane, is considered unsafe and significantly more hazardous than an unimproved, private roadway that is used by hundreds of buses every day."

Words fail to describe my anger at this statement. Redwood Shores was designed to be used by cars - not by bicycles. Just because they slap down some paint on the road that says "BIKE LANE" does not mean the roadway was designed to be used by bikes.

A well marked bike lane on the right side of the road is of no use to a cyclist needing to merge across three lanes of high speed traffic in order to make a left turn. The majority of people using Pico Boulevard were doing so in order to accomplish exactly that - by crossing Redwood Shores using the traffic light, they were able to remove the procedure of merging across three lanes of traffic to get to the left turn lane. Incidentally, the left turn light from Redwood Shores to Shoreway does not trigger for bicycles, so in addition to the hazardous merging situation, cyclists are forced to wait for the rare instance of a car turning left onto Shoreway in order to get a green arrow - the result being that most of them simply run the red light to their own peril.

If this description was not clear to SamTrans, then your review was worthless.

Pico Boulevard is used by hundreds of buses every day. Redwood Shores is used by hundreds of cars EVERY FIVE MINUTES.

The situation is broken. Samtrans has within its control the ability to make a broken situation better. Instead you appear content to pass the buck to Redwood City and San Carlos. You should know full well that any solution that mitigates this on the roadway would be years until fruition - and more likely is simply impossible. Any solution that provides a safe merge across three high speed traffic lanes for cyclists would be met with howls of protests from the drivers who use that roadway currently - it would involve changing light cycles and potentially removing a lane.

If you had simply said "We're scared to death of the liability issue so we aren't opening the roadway", I'd think SamTrans was gutless. Instead I think you are completely disingenuous.

Sincerely

John Murphy

Simon's reply

We do not think the road meets our safety standards. We have said so repeatedly.


Mark Simon
Executive Officer
SamTrans
Caltrain
SMCTA

Remember this part from his first letter...

We understand and sympathize with those who have been frustrated by the decision to close the gate. Our concern for safety – including the safety of bicyclists – must be the paramount concern. We would prefer to have cyclists alive, well, and angry at the agency, than any of the alternatives that might arise due to unsafe conditions.

I'm not sure how closing an "unsafe" road and forcing people onto a "more unsafe" road accomplishes that aim.

If you ever wanted to hear me pontificate with audio

I was on KALW - San Francisco Public Radio this week talking about Caltrain.

Caltrain! Weekend Baby Bullets!!!???

Caltrain has just posted the agenda for the next JPB meeting.

You can read the minutes HERE

Here's the highlight - at least for me!

Further, Staff Coordinating Council recommends that the Board direct staff to implement a minimum of a 3-month weekend Baby Bullet demonstration in response to customer comments.

THANK YOU to everyone who signed the petition - and sent them a LOT of emails!

I love it when we win one. At the last JPB meeting I said "We LOVE Caltrain, I feel that we are in this together, and I think this is a good idea"

John