In March, the color pink is all the rage in San Francisco. No, it wasn’t the latest in summer swimwear or a flash mob singing Pink’s big hit “So What” in unison. We’re talking about the type of pink that comes in the form of a letter from your employer saying, in essence, “cutbacks are forcing us to eliminate your position.” That’s right, March 5 was Pink Slip Day in the City and County of San Francisco — and although the estimated 15,000 workers who received the notices are in a furor over the layoffs, there is a silver lining to the situation.
Category: City Hall
Posted inCity Hall, Labor, News
City workers decry layoffs, demand alternatives
City workers are demanding alternatives to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hard-nosed fiscal approach as he attempts to close a $522 million projected budget gap through mass layoffs and de-facto furloughs.
As San Francisco grapples with a ballooning deficit for the coming fiscal year, Newsom laid off 17,474 workers two weeks ago, but promised to hire back “most” of them at 37½ hours per week. For the rehired, that represents a 6.25 percent pay cut — which city workers’ unions intend to challenge in court.
Toting 8½-by-11-inch “termination of employment” pink slips, angry city workers lined up at last Wednesday’s Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee hearing to decry the layoffs and urge city leaders to explore other sources of money.
Posted inCity Hall, Education
Besides taxes, few solutions at town hall on education
The organizers of what was billed as a town hall-style meeting on education funding in the Marina Thursday said their intention was to have a conversation with the community about solutions to money woes for the coming school year. But the evening’s talk, moderated by Michael Krasny, host of KQED-FM’s “Forum,” fell short of those expectations for some parents, educators and others in attendance — as evidenced by booing and hissing that punctuated the meeting.
Posted inCity Hall, Education
Intercept truants in early grades — Q&A with Abraham Simmons
Abraham Simmons, the volunteer chairman on the San Francisco civil grand jury report on truancy, says the situation in San Francisco hasn’t changed much in the past seven years: around 5,000 students are habitually truant each year.
Posted inCity Hall, Land use
In crackdown, SF abandoned building fee hiked ninefold
In a shift that suggests a new zero-tolerance stance on blight, San Francisco officials said Friday they would raise the annual fee to “register” more than 200 abandoned buildings to $6,885 each, the maximum allowable under a recent city ordinance. “We’re going for the full amount,” said William Strawn, a spokesman for the Department of Building Inspection. “We have to make people aware that this is a new law and we’re going to enforce it.”
Posted inCity Hall, Economy & Business, Social Justice
City to carve out more contracts for ‘micro’ businesses
In a bid to make it easier for local businesses to grow in a down economy, San Francisco supervisors want to give more small, city-based firms a competitive edge in city contracts.
Posted inCensus, City Hall, Homelessness, News
Census methods could provide lift to hidden homeless
The 2010 Census may address an old problem in dealing with San Francisco’s homeless population by getting an accurate head count. The city’s homeless figures have ranged between about 6,500 and 8,600 people in the last decade, but the real number is anybody’s guess. The sketchy knowledge of who is living on the street has been a big impediment to perennial attempts to solve the crisis.
Posted inCity Budget Watchdog, City Hall, Labor
City finds millions to rehire laid-off nurses, clerical workers
San Francisco city leaders have found an extra pot of $8 million they hope to use as a patch on the summer’s tattered budget, potentially rescuing more than 500 frontline workers already given pink slips or downgraded to lower-paying jobs.
Posted inCity Hall, Elections, News
Special sign district on SF’s Mid-Market faces ‘uphill battle’
Warfield Building owner David Addington said he spent several years, working to bring general advertising back on Market Street from Fifth to Seventh streets, in hopes of returning the central city stretch to its former glory days as a theater district.
Although his enthusiasm for the special district hasn’t dimmed, a sense of reality has crept in as opposition to the initiative, Proposition D, mounts.
Posted inCity Hall, Elections, News
Half reviewed signs are ‘illegal’
Planning Department Ombudsman Dan Sider probably knows more about billboards than anyone in the city.