CALL TO ACTION:
Call or write London Breed, Scott Wiener, and David Chiu, asking them to hold Wiener's proposed CEQA legislation until both Jane Kim's and Wiener's can be heard at the same time before the Land Use Committee and the Board of Supervisors. Wiener's legislation is scheduled to be heard before Land Use on Monday, April 8.
Here's why:
Two pieces of legistlation regarding local implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act are now making their way through the legislative process at San Francisco City Hall. Representatives of the Community CEQA Improvement Team are supporting the legilsation sponsored by Supervisor Jane Kim and hope that the legislation serves as the basis for improving local application of CEQA.
It is important to remember that CEQA was first passed four decades ago, in 1970, to:
- mandate environmental analysis of projects that may have environmental impacts;
- require alternatives to and/or mitigation of those projects that do have environmental impacts;
- mandate public disclosure of the environmental findings;
- allow the public ample time to appeal those findings.
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District 5 Supervisor London Breed was featured at the March HANC General Membership meeting. For many of the 70 people who attended it was their first chance to meet the Supervisor and ask her questions about important neighborhood and City wide concerns and issues. She was joined by former Supervisor Beven Dufty, who is now Director of the SF program HOPE (Housing Opportunity, Partnerships and Engagement) which addresses solutions to homelessness in San Francisco.
The Supervisor began by sharing some of her background including the fact that she grew up in public housing in the Western Addition and emphasized that fixing the public housing problems in SF is a major issue on her agenda as Supervisor. So is working to connect young people with job and other opportunities to help them build successful lives. She believes the solutions to crime must include economic and social solutions along with a police component.
The questioning started off with queries as to her position on the Weiner/Farrel TIC condo conversion give away legislation that many in the audience and HANC oppose, seeing it as a major threat to the maintenance of affordable rental stock in the City. She refused to state her position one way or the other, maintaining that both sides of the debate were providing questionable "facts" and she was doing more research via the City's departments and reports to get the real information before making up her mind. When queried as to what her research had turned up she was unable to state any of the facts she had found so far.
The next major topic to be addressed was homelessness both in the Haight and as a larger social issue in San Francisco. She stated that the non-profits and agencies which the City funds to deal with the problem need to do a better job of getting services to the people who need it. She felt that people who break the law should be prosecuted but that a police solution alone was not the answer to homelessness and that sometimes the police can escalate a situation.
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