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Legislation and Policy Upate

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Legislation and Policy Upate I’m excited to send out our fall 2011 newsletter. At this time of year, campaign season is in full swing in City Hall, with highly contested races for Mayor, District Attorney and Sheriff dominating most of the dialogue. These races are extremely important to the future of San Francisco, and above all else, I hope everyone gets out there and votes on November 8th. While the Board of Supervisors was in recess during most of August, the months of July and September were extremely busy in City Hall. We’ve had a number of heated debates about healthcare and public financing (just to name a few), and my office has spent a ton of time working on events inside and outside City Hall – in particular the Marina Family Festival and my inaugural Fleet Week fundraiser at Fort Mason to benefit our public schools’ Safe Playgrounds Project. This winter promises to be very busy, with obvious interest in the November elections, and all of us in City Hall looking to squeeze in as much as possible before the end of the year. In addition, many of our great neighborhood organizations have held their annual meetings in the last few weeks, and it has been an honor to speak at these events and continue to meet new neighbors. In District 2, we are all very lucky to have a number of very active and well-informed neighborhood organizations with great leaders, and it is one of the best parts of my job as Supervisor to interact and work with these organizations on neighborhood issues. As always, it is an honor serving the residents of San Francisco and District 2 – please reach out if there is ever anything I or my office can do for you. Office of Supervisor Mark Farrell 1 Dr. CarltonLEGISLATION B. Goodlett Place, AND Room POLICY 244, San Francisco,UPATE CA 94102 Phone: (415) 554-7752 Fax: (415) 554-7843 Legislative Aides: [email protected] & [email protected] Film Rebate Legislation Our City’s Film Rebate Program, also known as ―Scene in San Francisco,‖ has been extremely popular and has attracted feature films such as The Pursuit of Happyness, Milk and La Mission. I wrote legislation to bolster our rebate program by including documentary films, docudrama films and ―reality‖ programs in the rebate program. My legislation passed unanimously at the Board of Supervisors meeting in October. In the past, reality shows used to be fairly low budgeted productions - now, we are seeing more with substantial budgets to work with, and we would like to attract them here in order to have them spend their production dollars in San Francisco and hire local crews. We have also had requests lately from large documentary productions interested in our rebate program. My legislation also decreases film use fees to $100 a day for productions with budgets less than $500,000 for the filming of any commercial, corporate media, industrial media, video, short subject or web video. As a comparison, New York City has a permit fee of $300 for the whole production, no matter how many days they film – for all size budgets. In Vancouver, permits cost $100 per day. In New Mexico, they are $25 per day. In Louisiana, they are free. This legislation will make our permits more affordable and will continue to make our rebate program as attractive as possible – already my office has received calls from major reality programs and documentary film companies wanting to do business in San Francisco. Public Financing Legislation The United States Supreme Court recently held in McComish v. Bennet that Arizona’s public financing system was unconstitutional because it chilled political speech when public funds were doled out to publicly financed candidates under certain circumstances. The Supreme Court opinion is extremely important and relevant to San Francisco because our public financing law also provides candidates additional public funding in response to spending by other candidates or third parties. Thus, I introduced legislation to reform our public financing system to comply with the Supreme Court decision. My legislation would have avoided a potential lawsuit putting taxpayer dollars at risk while preserving the constitutional aspects of our public financing system. This ordinance required 8 votes for passage instead of 6 because changes made to the Campaign and Government Conduct Code requires a supermajority for passage both by the Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance passed out of the Ethics Commission but only received 6 votes at the Board of Supervisors, with Supervisors Avalos, Campos, Kim, Mar and Mirkarimi voting no. I will continue to push this issue forward to avoid costly lawsuits to the City. The Aftermath of the King Edward II Debate: Noticing Legislation At the October 4th meeting of the Board of Supervisors, the King Edward II project was approved with a 10-1 vote. Despite my opposition to the project, moving forward I am committed to making the King Edward II a development we can all be proud of. To prevent another similar development debacle in our City, I introduced legislation to increase noticing requirements to neighbors on City projects. It establishes minimum public notice requirements for certain projects funded directly by the City or administered by the City through the use of federal, state or other funding sources. As I said during my campaign, and have continued to practice now in City Hall, bringing the neighborhood into the conversation and getting their input on these neighborhood projects is extremely important. Current noticing provisions on City-funded projects come too late to allow the public to provide meaningful input to City decision makers. As many of you are very aware, neighborhood notice and input was lacking in two major transitional aged youth projects proposed in District 2 – the Booker T. Washington project and King Edward II. The proposal to convert the former bed and breakfast at 3155 Scott Street (King Edward II) into transitional youth housing for at-risk youth and to increase the number of allowable units from 16 to 25 suffered greatly from a lack of neighborhood notice from the start. The City and County of San Francisco entered in a purchase and sale agreement to purchase the building before members of the surrounding neighborhoods were ever notified, communicated with, or given a chance to provide input on the proposed project. My legislation will require the Mayor’s Office of Housing to post on its official website an updated list of all proposed projects and provide email notice to those who sign up for such notice about those projects that apply for funding in response to a Notice of Funding Availability, when a department decides to fund a pre- development study, or when a department takes any step towards potentially funding or administering a proposed project. I don’t believe any development, specifically in the middle of our neighborhoods (whether affordable or market rate housing), should be constructed or approved that is not responsive to the concerns of the neighborhoods in which they are placed. We cannot lose sight of the fact that engaging the neighborhood earlier in the process will best benefit the youth that will ultimately reside in the neighborhood. Non-voter Approved Debt (Certificates of Participation) This past April I held a hearing to discuss San Francisco’s use of Certificates of Participation (COPs), a mechanism for issuing non-voter approved debt. The City currently has nearly $1 billion in COPs on its books. After the hearing I worked with our City Controller to come up with effective policies to restrict the use of COPs. Thus, I recently introduced legislation stating that COPs may not be used to finance ongoing operating costs for the City, that realistic repayment burdens must be placed on the General Fund for such debt, and that the City may only use COPs to fund capital projects only if the cost of servicing all such debt does not exceed 3.25% of General Fund discretionary revenues. City Hall should not be financing operating costs and creating unseen debt without voter approval. This legislation will provide us with the flexibility to use COPs where necessary and curb fiscally irresponsible behavior in City Hall. This legislation is scheduled for a hearing in the Budget and Finance committee on October 26, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. Special Sign District Legislation – Target Target is coming to District 2! I’m pleased to report that my legislation to establish the ―City Center Special Sign District‖ to help Target redesign and reinvigorate the signage at the old Sears store at Masonic Avenue and Geary Boulevard passed unanimously at the full Board this month. The Target team has put much thought into producing signs and improving the property so that people will be easily directed into the right parking lot and business. This legislation will help Target meet the deadline for its planned opening in spring of 2013. Police in the Community Housing Program My hearing on the status of San Francisco’s Police in the Community Program (PIC) and workforce housing issues will be heard on November 10th in the Government Audit and Oversight Committee. We expect speakers from the Mayor’s Office of Housing, the Department of Human Resources and the Police Officers’ Association. The PIC Program has been in existence for close to a decade and provides down payment assistance loans to police officers purchasing their first home in the City and County of San Francisco to encourage them to live in San Francisco. I do believe that having police officers live in our City makes our neighborhoods safer, yet despite this program’s existence the vast majority of our first responders live outside the City.
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