November 6, 2007
Oh You Should Totally Vote! It Looks Good on You.
Oh is it a voting day or something? It totally sneaked up on us! It still feels like Monday today. Actually it also feels like October. Anyway, you should probably vote yes on A and no on H, because that's what everyone else is doing. Prop A will protect The Mt Soledad National War Memorial and do something to the air force? and will transform some colleges. Also, Aristotle endorsed it it.
Proposition H will make housing affordable and will help people complain more (always a good thing), and will ban achohol, and will also make Ron Paul president.
Ha ha ha, just kidding! Actually Prop A makes Muni work better, by a series of boring changes that have to do with the general fund and labor laws and environmental purchasing regulations, ugh. But it's good, even though it's dull. Prop H is just bad news; they're trying to make it easier to park your car by building more spaces, but it'll be just like if you favorite neighborhood bar builds an addition: it'll just get more crowded. Boooooo!
Seriously, though, please do vote for Tameka Boen. You're in the Boen Zone!
|
People with "I voted" stickers were about as common a sight on my commute as a costumed reveller in the castro on Halloween. The stickers do look great though.
Please, please vote No on H.
Voter apathy is responsible for many a zany (or just lousy) candidate or proposition winning an election.
no on all of the props.
no on gavin.
Yes for Sheriff David Wong!
I voted for Gavin just to piss off the ill-organized "progressives" for finding a new way to completely frak up the election. If A loses I'm blaming them as much as anyone since they did nothing to register voters or do real GOTV. Oh well!
I'm voting for Chicken John because I like his name. :D
Hey, at least I'm voting...
Actually, Prop H, if you read the legal text, is quite conservative in the amount of parking it allows and the changes it makes to the existing law. Sadly, I'm willing to bet nearly no one reads the actual legal text of propositions before voting on them.
And Prop A is the one that's bad news. It gives SFMTA/Muni a *lot* more authority over itself, in other words, less accountability to us about on-time performance, or, well, showing up at all.
It dramatically increases the amount of funding, without demanding any specific improvements in return. It can increase the size of its managerial staff from 1.5% of its workforce to 2.75% (as if that's what Muni needs: more managers as opposed to more drivers or buses!).
And on top of all this authority granted to Muni without any reciprocal guaranteed return in service levels, they demand a stringent limit on parking. So when your bus never comes, you won't even have the option of getting into your car and driving where you need to be.
Please, please, please, take a second look at A before voting for it!
mamcart, if you've read the entirety of the Prop H changes, you know it is NOT a moderate or conservative proposal. Prop H would make deep changes that run counter to the city's master development plan, and blow a big hole in every customized neighborhood plan worked out by the city gov't and residents. Among other things, it would mean property owners could put in a garage & curb cut where there had been a bus stop, trees, or ground-level retail, without challenge. If you push the retail off Geary, Valencia, Castro, 24th, ie out of neighborhoods, eventually everybody's getting a car, driving to malls, and snarling what's left of MUNI.
Better than snoozing through the 60 pages of Prop H, check the Planning Dept's sober analysis: http://www.livablecity.org/campaigns/documents/PropH_Planning_Dept_Analysis.pdf
First of all, who's pushing retail off Geary, Valencia, and so on? I didn't see that anywhere in the text of the law. This law has nothing to do with where retail zones are. And you cannot shove a retail space out just to put in a garage.
Secondly, the law actually defers to the City Planning Dept. throughout the text. There is a statement about being able to provide a curb cut regardless of a tree (provided it is replaced) or bus stop, but then goes on to qualify where and how parking may be planned for, so as not to adversely affect city streetscapes or the "livability" of the neighborhood.
Thirdly, insofar as it tries to change anyone's relationship to parking, it actually increases the space allowed between a residence and its official parking (changed from 800 ft to up to 1,000 ft).
I fall asleep going through the every election's voter guide, but it's worth it to figure out what you are actually voting on. If you'd rather have other people tell you how to vote than figure it out for yourself, maybe you should let those other people vote for you.
From the planning dept analysis of Prop H:
"could lead to a significant loss of retail space in Neighborhood Commercial Districts because of the direct spatial conflicts between providing ground floor retail space and providing garage access and parking." (and) "could result in as many as 1,500 fewer small neighborhood retail spaces in parking is built on these lots."
But hey, why take the Planning Dept's word for it? They just work here, or something. Your billionaire Don Fisher certainly didn't care for their opinion when he bankrolled this thing onto the ballot. Anyway, sorry to get all bogged down in this retail space issue when we could just consider this bit, which pretty well contradicts the main claim of the prop's summary:
"The initiative could eliminate several thousand public on-street parking spaces because it would enable the insertion of new garages and curb-cuts into older residential buildings."
No on H, thank you.