3 Bat Thursday: Walton loses reparations office but gets free 49er tickets and a waterfront park; Ronen's favorite gang member caught in extortion scheme; Reno beating homeless crisis
Also: Judge debate tonight; Preston crhttps://www.yelp.com/biz/four-barrel-coffee-san-franciscoies for Gaza but not for the Tenderloin; Valencia businesses struggle with center bike lane
“We as a community felt like if we didn’t get ahead of this, we would fail like San Francisco. So we on the public and private side put our heads together on what we could do about it.”
— Par Tolles, local real-estate developer and business leader, on Reno’s battle to solve homelessness
First up in today’s Three Bat Thursday we have some time sensitive news: there will be a Superior Court judge debate TONIGHT from 7 TO 8:30 p.m. at the San Francisco County Fair Building, 1199 9th Ave (just inside Golden Gate Park). All four candidates running to serve as San Francisco Superior Court judges in the March 2024 election will participate. Incumbent Judge Patrick Thompson will debate Assistant District Attorney Jean Myungjin Roland, and Judge Michael Begert will debate attorney Chip Zecher. This is the first judicial debate of this election cycle. The event is sponsored by the Chinese American Democratic Club, Stop Crime Action, Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, Fishermen's Wharf Community Benefit District, West of Twin Peaks Central Council, SHARP, SOAR, DUnite, SUN, SensibleD7, Hi5D5, Golden Gate Heights Neighborhood Association, and other civic groups.
For more information contact Frank Noto at 415-830-1502 or info@stopcrimeaction.com.
Nobody pushed harder for an Office of Reparations than District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton and District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen. In September of 2023, the pair presented their case before their colleagues on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, despite the fact Mayor London Breed told Walton earlier this year she would not support a $50 million appropriation for the office. In June of 2023, during the budget process, supervisors set aside $4 million. While it may sound like a consolation prize for Walton, that amount theoretically could fund 20 jobs at $200,000 a pop. But this week, Breed, facing a brutal fiscal future — and a brutal election year — ordered budget cuts, including nearly $23 million in planned spending for an array of programs. In those cuts is $2 million for Walton’s baby, the Office of Reparations. I wrote in my Marina Times Reynolds Rap column for December that Walton has no problem strong-arming businesses like Amazon for “community benefits” in his district. He also uses his close ties to developer Lennar, like he did in 2014 as executive director of Young Community Developers (YCD). A few months before a trust indenture was issued for over $20 million in bonds (and a $10 million “subsidy” from Lennar) for Pacific Pointe at the Shipyard, 60 permanently affordable family homes in Bayview-Hunters Point, Walton created an LLC called YCD MGP I, listing himself as the sole agent and signing the document as “President of Young Community Developers, which is the sole member and manager of YCD MGP I, LLC.” No one at City Hall blinked an eye when Walton and YCD got a no-bid deal as the managing general partner on the project (despite zero experience in the field).
While Walton’s dreams of a reparations office are over for now, he still has plenty of grifts… I mean, gifts… to be grateful for, like free tickets to San Francisco 49ers games. The Enforcement Division of the Fair Political Practices Commission assessed a $600 fine on Walton for accepting $872 worth of tickets (gifts are limited to $500).
But Walton may be getting an even bigger gift: a $50,000,000 waterfront park for India Basin. At Tuesday’s board meeting, he and Breed sponsored a resolution authorizing the Recreation and Park Department to accept and expend a grant valued at approximately $50,000,000 from the San Francisco Foundation for the India Basin Waterfront Park Initiative. Most interesting is that Breed and Walton are requesting a “behested payment waiver” for the project, which authorizes “the Mayor, officers and employees of the Office of the Mayor, and officers and employees of the Recreation and Park Department to solicit donations for the India Basin Waterfront Park Initiative from nonprofits, private organizations, grantmakers, and foundations for six months from the effective date of this Resolution, notwithstanding the Behested Payment Ordinance.” In other words, more opportunities for Breed and Walton to bring in their cronies. Perhaps YCD MGP I, LLC will be managing general partner.
If you want in-depth coverage of the state and federal courts in San Francisco, with an emphasis on violent crime committed by repeat offenders, there’s one website you need to visit every day and that’s San Francisco Public Safety News (you can also follow them on X at @sf_safetynews). The December 6 edition brings stunning news in a case I’ve followed for years involving Mission District Norteño gang member Fernando Madrigal.
Once considered a “youth activist” by gullible City Hall leaders for “turning his life around,” Madrigal, known as “Nando,” spoke at a July 30, 2019, rally against gun violence on the steps of City Hall alongside Sha’ray Johnson, mother of 15-year-old Day’von Hann, who had been tragically gunned down at 24th and Capp Streets 11 days earlier. Ronen and Walton nodded empathetically as Madrigal hugged Hann’s grieving mother.
Hann’s killing remained unsolved until August 2020, when the FBI announced a diabolical twist straight out of a Dateline episode: It was Madrigal who had killed Hann. In fact, at the time of the rally where Madrigal hugged Hann’s mother and garnered support from Walton, Ronen, and other leaders, the police, in partnership with the FBI, were already investigating the case.
As I wrote last April, in an email I obtained via a public record request and dated Aug. 2, 2019, Supervisor Ronen’s chief of staff, Carolyn Goossen, presented the extensive work done on Madrigal’s behalf after he was stabbed at his apartment building, all at Ronen’s request. “Spoke directly to Sam Moss [Executive Director at Mission Housing Development Corporation] and the management company of that building. Sam Moss: Could only move them if there was a vacancy, but no vacancies. Even so, would be hard because of federal financing laws which don’t allow people to jump wait lists.”
Along with a lack of vacancies and not being allowed to jump the line, Goossen bluntly points out that Madrigal has even bigger issues: “The justice system sees him as being gang involved … He was arrested for another case after the stabbing. They were treating him as a perpetrator, not a victim . . .”
Ronen was now well aware of Madrigal’s continued gang involvement and that he had been arrested for another case since the stabbing, but instead of reaching out to law enforcement for more details, Ronen asked a judge to give Madrigal preferential treatment. In a letter obtained in the same public record request, on Aug. 28, 2019, Ronen used her official city stationery to write to San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan requesting that he “allow Fernando to be terminated early from probation so he can focus on his rehabilitation.” Ronen even tells Judge Chan that Madrigal worked with her office on “legislative efforts” and has “experienced repeated gun violence and physical and mental traumas and needs to relocate to a safe place as soon as possible.”
Now SF Public Safety News reports Madrigal will be sentenced in federal court to a minimum of three decades in prison, and the hearing turned up even more disturbing details — the sentencing was “significantly delayed due to the sudden and unexpected departure of his two attorneys – who were permitted to leave the case by a judge after a series of hearings earlier this year. It turns out they quit because of a jailhouse plot masterminded by Madrigal to have a female acquaintance impersonate one of his lawyers to extort his girlfriend into paying her $10,000.
The plot surfaced when jail officials intercepted Madrigal’s letters to someone he refers to as “Hellur” detailing the plan. Madrigal instructs Hellur to impersonate his attorney in what he says is a second attempt to reach out. “I told her I owed my attorney $15,000 & I’ve only paid $5,000…so you’re going to tell her you need the rest.” Madrigal ends the letter, “I know you can sound convincing and real…” So who is “Hellur”? As C+C Music Factory said, "Things that make you go hmmm..."
According to a reader, employees at Everlane on Valencia Street say their foot traffic is down significantly because of the controversial center bike lane, and they’re certainly not alone. On Tuesday, around 40 a group of protesters made up of business owners, local residents, and even cyclists briefly occupied the lane outside Blondie’s Bar, some holding signs calling for the resignation of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Director Jeffrey Tumlin. “We’ve been in business for 33 years and this was the worst six months we’ve ever seen,” Nikki DeWald, owner of Blondie’s Bar and a director of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, told Mission Local. “We love bikes, but not this bike lane.”
Businesses say the loss of roughly 70 parking spaces and new limits on turning for cars are the main culprits. On a recent Saturday I took a rainy day stroll down Valencia, and stores along the corridor were empty. I asked one clerk if the rain was to blame but she shook her head and said, “The bike lane, mostly.” One place that wasn’t empty? Four Barrel Coffee (375 Valencia St.), though the clientele appeared to be mostly Mission locals. My coffee date, coming from another part of town, was actually quite late because he had trouble finding parking.
Cyclists have also expressed frustration over the design. At an SFMTA board meeting, transit advocate Luke Bornheimer suggested, as he did to me prior to the lane’s approval, that the center lane should be replaced with protected lanes at the sides of the roads (as they are in other parts of the city). The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition doesn’t even like the center lane, and they supported it (along with just 13 percent of residents). Tumlin is a big fan, continuing to support the lobbying group with taxpayer money via the SFMTA. In 2020, the Bike Coalition was awarded $846,649 in noncompetitive, "sole-source" contracts from the SFMTA. That means there was a non-competitive bidding process and only one supplier (source) was determined to be capable of delivering the required product or service. A database maintained by the San Francisco Controller’s Office shows the Bike Coalition also received nearly $500,000 from the SFMTA in 2019. According to their 2019 tax filings with the IRS, their entire budget that year was $968,354, which means in 2019 the Bicycle Coalition received over 50% of its funding from the SFMTA.
California has spent about $20 billion over the past five years to combat homelessness, yet we still have half the nation’s homeless population. Reno, Nevada, doesn’t want to follow in our footsteps, especially those of Gotham by the Bay. “We as a community felt like if we didn’t get ahead of this, we would fail like San Francisco,” Par Tolles, a local real-estate developer and business leader, recently told the Wall Street Journal. “So we on the public and private side put our heads together on what we could do about it.”
John and I were in Reno just before the pandemic and I was shocked at how bad it was. “This looks like a mini Tenderloin,” I said at the time. Not anymore. Reno teamed with neighboring city Sparks and surrounding Washoe County to create the Nevada Cares Campus in 2021, building “a horseshoe-shaped fabric structure almost the size of a football field.” The campus sits on 15 acres a mile east of downtown Reno and accommodates over 600 people, while rows of tents occupy a former baseball field can hold another 50.
No longer hamstrung by a federal appeals-court order that prevents cities from clearing streets without providing enough beds, Reno now enforces no-camping rules. The result is a cleaner, safer downtown casino district more inviting to tourists and locals alike.
The project sounds a lot like Community First Village (CFV), the groundbreaking model just outside of Austin Texas that I visited and wrote about in 2019. For example, once people are off the street and in the tent, the next phase kicks in, helping them find a job and access other services so they are eventually able to move into permanent housing. Also like CFV, rules are strict — residents have to pass through a metal detector to enter, drugs and alcohol are prohibited, and no visitors are allowed, including family (CFV doesn’t prohibit drugs or alcohol, but if a resident’s usage affects the community or their ability to meet obligations, they’re out). Is it tough? Yes. And it works. The Journal interviewed Jorge Ramirez-More, an ex-convict with substance abuse issues who now works as a production operator. “It’s like having someone on your side helping you in the most difficult time of your life,” Ramirez-More said. After 15 months of living in the tent, Ramirez-More was able to rent an 8-by-8-foot room in a low-income housing complex nearby for $555 a month.
The cost for acquisition and development was under $20 million, comprised of federal Covid-19 emergency funds and private donations. Like CFV, the campus will eventually include a healthcare clinic and other wraparound services at a cost of $80 million “in other federal funds, donations and local public funding.”
This week’s X Marks the Spot is a twofer because it also happens to come from an Account We Follow. A partner at @RootVC, the wry-witted Lee Edwards posted on Monday, “Looks like Dean Preston is moving forward tomorrow with a resolution by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. (Which is not a place in San Francisco fyi.) I’m sure the open public comment session is going to be normal.”
Interesting side note: The capital of Silicon Valley is unable to call for a Gaza ceasefire, despite some residents calling for its council members to do so. A bylaw prohibits the San Jose City Council from “passing resolutions related to foreign policy matters,” a rule that Mayor Matt Mahan pointed to when asked Wednesday whether he would support any legislative action related to the conflict.
The document states the council “shall not act or take a position” on “matters concerning the foreign policy of the United States of America nor its relationship to other countries of the world…” As the San Jose Mercury points out, the policy, which created guidelines on the passage of resolutions by the council and was first passed in 1979 and updated in 2016, allows for an exception “if a federal official requests the city take a position.”
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, District 5 Supervisor Preston did indeed introduce a “non-binding resolution” (which is exactly as it sounds — it means nothing and does nothing) calling for “sustained cease-fire.” Preston, who is Jewish, wiped away tears as he introduced his legislation. “Just this morning, I heard from a Palestinian-American friend here in San Francisco who informed me ‘Seven more members of my family have been killed overnight, and at least 100 have already been killed since Oct. 7th…’”
Co-sponsor and frequent Preston collaborator Ronen said that “because of, not despite" her Jewish identity, she “must speak out loudly against the overwhelming killing of innocent lives in Gaza, including close to 7,000 children. Anything less would be a betrayal.”
Hundreds of people waited for hours to comment, with lines stretching down the block to gain entrance to City Hall in what officials described as one of the best-attended Board of Supervisors meetings in history.
Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 Israelis, over 15,000 Palestinians have been killed and an estimated 1.7 million displaced, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t condemn these atrocities and the tragic loss of human life; however, Preston’s resolution will do nothing to change the situation in Gaza. His job is to represent San Francisco, a city that saw 692 people die of drug overdoses in the first nine months of this year — more than during the entirety of 2022. Most of those deaths occurred in the Tenderloin, a district Preston represents, yet I’ve never seen him shed a tear for the atrocities and tragic loss of human life there. Too bad hundreds of residents don’t pack Board of Supervisors meetings to call on Preston to do something to end the fentanyl epidemic in his district, and to call him out for the grandstanding, do-nothing politician that he is.
Preston's resolution is meaningless and immoral. He's siding with the aggressors in this conflict. Israel did not initiate the killing, Hamas did. And it's Hamas now that prevents the Gaza Palestinians to leave the war zone, that puts their military operations underneath their homes, schools, hospitals, and it's Hamas who shoots the Palestinians who try to leave the area. Of all the Palestinians killed, how many were killed by Hamas, either directly by fire, or indirectly by placing their military under/around/besides civilians? Force or reason are the only two possibilities of discourse or interaction between any two or more humans. Reason is the moral choice; the initiation of the use of force to get what one wants is the immoral choice. Hamas is the initiator in this conflict, and as such, deserves what it gets. The civilians involved are tragic but it's Hamas primarily who is getting them killed, not Israel.