San Francisco Weekly — May 23, 2012
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Sucka Free City
MISSED CONNECTIONS
Conditions necessary to receive state funding for the Central Subway might finally be met in 38 years.
A disconnect over the meaning of the term “connectivity” is at the heart of the latest debate over Muni’s Central Subway project. But it’s more than semantics at stake. If Muni loses its argument, it also loses out on $61 million in state funds — and would have to resort to debt financing to make up the shortfall.
Muni’s hopes to use state Proposition 1A funding to fill that hole were quashed when Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the expenditure last year. Prop. 1A allots state dollars to local transit projects providing connectivity to California’s still-mostly hypothetical high-speed rail system. Brown, however, denied Muni’s grant application because a direct connection between the rail system and the proposed Central Subway was notably absent in the California High Speed Rail Authority’s business plan.
Earlier this month, Muni appealed to the state once more, submitting a revised grant proposal in hopes of landing that $61 million. In doing so, Muni requests connectivity dollars — even if conventional definitions of connectivity aren’t precisely met. “So long as Fourth and King remains open as an interim or permanent HSR station,” the Muni proposal claims, the Central Subway will offer a direct connection.
Of course, the $61 million question is, will Fourth and King become a stop for high-speed trains? The California High Speed Rail Authority’s revised business plan states that high-speed trains on the Caltrain corridor will only serve the stop “if necessary.” Although the agency says that it does not expect to use the station, if demand or ridership increases by 2050, Fourth and King would serve as an overflow stop.
Central Subway critics lambasted the notion of pulling in high-speed trains at Fourth and King, given that the planned Transbay Terminal Center — the end of the high speed rail line — is just a mile away at First and Mission. “They’re asking for an advance of that money long before knowing if there’s actually going to be a connection,” says transit expert Jerry Cauthen, a former Muni engineer. Muni officials, meanwhile, insist that the Fourth and King stop will remain a connection point between the high speed rail and the future Central Subway. If so, San Francisco might just have another anomaly to add to its list of oddities; most high speed rail stops are plotted at least 15 miles apart.
If Muni’s pleas for state dollars fail again — or if high-speed rail never comes to fruition — there is a backup plan. The agency is considering taking out bonds to finance the shortfall — the servicing of which figures to cost millions per year. That could cause a serious disconnect on Muni’s balance book.
HOOKY FOR HOMOPHOBES
SAVE CALIFORNIA DENOUNCES HARVEY MILK … FOR THE CHILDREN.
BY ERIN SHERBERT AND ALAN SCHERSTUHL
There’s a chance that yesterday morning’s commute was a touch easier than usual. Turns out that Tuesday, May 22 — also known as Harvey Milk Day, in honor of the 1930 birthday of the martyred gay activist — has become a day of protest for a teensy chunk of Americans who believe in denying their homosexual countrymen and -women the basic civil right of marriage … and, like all such anti-progress movements, this crew is most concerned about the children.
Last week the Sacramento-based anti-gay nonprofit group Save California demanded that parents take their kids out of school on Harvey Milk Day so that the youngsters weren’t subjected to curriculum, lessons, or positive information about Milk, a man whom Save California’s online videos refer to — with weirdly stiff phrasing — as a “sexual predator of teens.” The video goes on to claim that “science has found no biological basis for homosexuality, bisexuality, or transsexuality,” to quail at photos of Milk “and his many boyfriends,” and to insist — in classic wing nut fashion — that the day of commemoration of Milk is the brainchild of “Democrat” politicians. (Apparently, science has also found no biological basis for the “ic” at the end of “Democratic.”)
The group went on the radio with its controversial campaign, which purports to protect children from state law requiring public schools commemorate and teach children about the state’s first openly gay elected official. Milk, who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, was slain along with Mayor George Moscone by fellow Supervisor Dan White.
Even before his election, Milk made his meteoric rise in politics with a cutting-edge civil rights agenda — and not just one that served San Francisco’s gay community. Yet Save California claims Milk, who would have been 82 on Tuesday, was not a leader but an immoral “sexual role model.”
SF Weekly came this close to contacting Save California President Randy Thomasson to discuss all this, but then we saw this promise on the S.C. website and decided there’s no way we could ever take them seriously enough to bother with: “Whether it’s a one-on-one interview or debate format, with Randy, you’ll get it real and you’ll get it straight.” Hey, Save California, when denouncing the “homosexual agenda,” maybe you should try not to sound like an ad for lube.
What it comes down to: If there were fewer noisy teens on Muni yesterday morning, we hope you enjoyed the respite. But any peace gained is evidence of something more disturbing: local parents who live in fear of the values that make this city great.
Conditions necessary to receive state funding for the Central Subway might finally be met in 38 years.
A disconnect over the meaning of the term “connectivity” is at the heart of the latest debate over Muni’s Central Subway project. But it’s more than semantics at stake. If Muni loses its argument, it also loses out on $61 million in state funds — and would have to resort to debt financing to make up the shortfall.
Muni’s hopes to use state Proposition 1A funding to fill that hole were quashed when Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the expenditure last year. Prop. 1A allots state dollars to local transit projects providing connectivity to California’s still-mostly hypothetical high-speed rail system. Brown, however, denied Muni’s grant application because a direct connection between the rail system and the proposed Central Subway was notably absent in the California High Speed Rail Authority’s business plan.
Earlier this month, Muni appealed to the state once more, submitting a revised grant proposal in hopes of landing that $61 million. In doing so, Muni requests connectivity dollars — even if conventional definitions of connectivity aren’t precisely met. “So long as Fourth and King remains open as an interim or permanent HSR station,” the Muni proposal claims, the Central Subway will offer a direct connection.
Of course, the $61 million question is, will Fourth and King become a stop for high-speed trains? The California High Speed Rail Authority’s revised business plan states that high-speed trains on the Caltrain corridor will only serve the stop “if necessary.” Although the agency says that it does not expect to use the station, if demand or ridership increases by 2050, Fourth and King would serve as an overflow stop.
Central Subway critics lambasted the notion of pulling in high-speed trains at Fourth and King, given that the planned Transbay Terminal Center — the end of the high speed rail line — is just a mile away at First and Mission. “They’re asking for an advance of that money long before knowing if there’s actually going to be a connection,” says transit expert Jerry Cauthen, a former Muni engineer. Muni officials, meanwhile, insist that the Fourth and King stop will remain a connection point between the high speed rail and the future Central Subway. If so, San Francisco might just have another anomaly to add to its list of oddities; most high speed rail stops are plotted at least 15 miles apart.
If Muni’s pleas for state dollars fail again — or if high-speed rail never comes to fruition — there is a backup plan. The agency is considering taking out bonds to finance the shortfall — the servicing of which figures to cost millions per year. That could cause a serious disconnect on Muni’s balance book.
HOOKY FOR HOMOPHOBES
SAVE CALIFORNIA DENOUNCES HARVEY MILK … FOR THE CHILDREN.
BY ERIN SHERBERT AND ALAN SCHERSTUHL
There’s a chance that yesterday morning’s commute was a touch easier than usual. Turns out that Tuesday, May 22 — also known as Harvey Milk Day, in honor of the 1930 birthday of the martyred gay activist — has become a day of protest for a teensy chunk of Americans who believe in denying their homosexual countrymen and -women the basic civil right of marriage … and, like all such anti-progress movements, this crew is most concerned about the children.
Last week the Sacramento-based anti-gay nonprofit group Save California demanded that parents take their kids out of school on Harvey Milk Day so that the youngsters weren’t subjected to curriculum, lessons, or positive information about Milk, a man whom Save California’s online videos refer to — with weirdly stiff phrasing — as a “sexual predator of teens.” The video goes on to claim that “science has found no biological basis for homosexuality, bisexuality, or transsexuality,” to quail at photos of Milk “and his many boyfriends,” and to insist — in classic wing nut fashion — that the day of commemoration of Milk is the brainchild of “Democrat” politicians. (Apparently, science has also found no biological basis for the “ic” at the end of “Democratic.”)
The group went on the radio with its controversial campaign, which purports to protect children from state law requiring public schools commemorate and teach children about the state’s first openly gay elected official. Milk, who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, was slain along with Mayor George Moscone by fellow Supervisor Dan White.
Even before his election, Milk made his meteoric rise in politics with a cutting-edge civil rights agenda — and not just one that served San Francisco’s gay community. Yet Save California claims Milk, who would have been 82 on Tuesday, was not a leader but an immoral “sexual role model.”
SF Weekly came this close to contacting Save California President Randy Thomasson to discuss all this, but then we saw this promise on the S.C. website and decided there’s no way we could ever take them seriously enough to bother with: “Whether it’s a one-on-one interview or debate format, with Randy, you’ll get it real and you’ll get it straight.” Hey, Save California, when denouncing the “homosexual agenda,” maybe you should try not to sound like an ad for lube.
What it comes down to: If there were fewer noisy teens on Muni yesterday morning, we hope you enjoyed the respite. But any peace gained is evidence of something more disturbing: local parents who live in fear of the values that make this city great.
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