OK. So now it’s time to get serious. I’m going to write 5 essay’s this week and try to make a point. If you want to keep up, you are going to have to do some reading. Do it. Read this whole thing. Get activated.

My intention is to get 2,000 signatures on this petition by next week, then present it to RPD and demand that they figger out some way to put the damn trailer on the curb and promise to never sell a lease for a commercial entity on the green parkland of Dolores Park again. I can’t fight every battle. None of us can. When privatization comes to your park, you have to stand up. I’m taking a MASSIVE beating on this one. I would appreciate some support. You can support me by participating in the shit storm on the blogs (now 34 articles), you can re-tweet some things or you can write something or pass any of the 5 thesis’ I’m sending out this week. Please do it. I am really, really taking a beating.

Obviously, the Puke In is a publicity stunt made to trick the press into writing gossip. Now this week, it’s our duty to flip the message around and make this about the issue. Do we want RPD to sell the names of our parks? They are SELLING parkland to developers for condos. Gone forever. SF has more green space then any other city. Is that a good reason to sell it? How many food trucks would it take to have Dolores Park pay for itself? Oh, about 33. How much increase taxes would  it be? Three cents per taxpayer. Privatization is coming to our park. We are trying to stop it. We are most certainly not trying to stop people from selling tacos, sandwiches, beverages or what have you. We think that they should be on the curb, where cars, trucks and trailers belong.

Here is the petition, it’s written by a lawyer, so they can’t dismiss it this year like they did last years’….

http://www.petitiononline.com/dpTBOP1/petition.html

Please pass it along!!!!!!

And if you don’t really understand what privatization is, here are a few links…. 

http://americancity.org/magazine/article/the-high-cost-of-free-parks/

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/26/apple_to_spend_4_million_on_chicago_subway_station_renovations.html

I spent $750 on fake puke and make a small, cardboard trailer. Ha. We will be in Dolores Park Saturday the 30^th, at 2:00 to collect signatures. Please join us. We’ll have a picknic type thing going, make a few rounds, collect some sigs… talk about privatization. Some people are getting quite hysterial about the puke thing, which is amuzing. I’ve got 1,000 square feet of fake puke. It’s all just hyperbole, to make a point. I’m getting hysterical death threats. The new one is that I’m racist against Latinos. These people are taking me seriously after telling them that we will fill Dolores Park with vomit and watch the trailers float away on a river of puke… you really can make a show out of anything…

 OK, Monday… our thesis on privatization today is about what is happening at our:

 Botanical Gardens!!!!!!!

 The Protagonists: RPD/Mayor, The S.F. Botanical Society (a private non-profit corporation) vs. grass roots community groups (loosely represented by Keep Arboretum Free)

 The Thesis:

-          The Arboretum/Botanical Garden is a public space of 55 acres –that’s 5 ½% of the GG Park. It has been free and open to everyone for the past 70 years of its operation. It is operated ½ by funds from taxpayers (RPD Budget) and ½ from the Botanical Society.

-          Since it is on public land and since it has been partially operated by public funds – all members of the public have an ‘ownership’ stake in the garden and in Golden Gate Park.

-          Deciding to curtail access to this space would need a broad decision by the public – instead, it has been a decision driven by the Botanical Society’s goal to make it a “world class” garden and hence the need to charge fees for everyone.

-          The community feels that the budget crisis is being used as a premise to introduce permanent infrastructure for fees (applied to non-residents initially) and eventually introduce fees for everyone. This is exactly what happened at the Japanese Tea Garden and now everyone pays fees and SF Residents rarely visit it - it is a revenue-generating resource for the RPD and no longer of value to SF residents. The Arboretum is a large chunk of the park and should not be appropriated in that way.

-          The basic conflict is between an agenda that would like to dress up public space to “extract value” (words from RP Commission Chair Mark Buell) from Park assets and the community’s desire for rest and access to nature in the parks. In the of process ‘extracting value’, public spaces are being privatized and the Arboretum, like Dolores Park has emerged as another battlefield in that front.

What the community wants:

-          The community has voiced their voice clearly and loudly in three campaigns to keep the Arboretum fee and open. We don’t want a ‘world-class’ garden, we want the garden that has existed for all these decades free and open to everyone.

-          If there is a temporary budget issue, then let’s manage the finances of the garden to get through the tough times, but then come back and allocate the resources needed to keep it as it has been.  Using park space for revenue generation is not what the community wants.

-          The community would like funds for the parks to come from the General Fund of the city and the tax base – we worked to get extra tax funds to the city by helping pass Prop N this past November. In this way, Parks and Rec truly remains for everyone and not just those who can pay for these resources.

-          A non-resident fee is seen as a stepping-stone to fees for residents. Also, we feel that visitors need free places too and should not be exploited to pay at every step. Already, the Academy of Sciences, the DeYoung Museum and the Japanese Tea Garden charge high fees, occupy public land and are not directed towards to local citizens.

 

History:

-          Spring 2009: April 2 or 3, 2009 – word gets out that there is a  meeting at the hall of flowers by RPD to put-up fees at the Botanical Garden. The notice from RPD was very hard to find, only one person saw it and then plastered the neighborhood with posters about it asking folks to come-out.

-          RPD meeting draws a couple of hundred people and there is fury in the room. A second meeting a couple of week later is even more angry.

-          Board of Supervisors budget committee rejects the fee after a big turnout at the board.

-          Spring 2010 – RPD comes back with a fee for non-residents and says will allow residents for free – for now (then RPD director Blumenfeld is quoted saying “we’ll start by charging non-residents” at the RP Commission hearing). Phil Ginsburg ties the fee to three gardeners being fired or moved from the Botanical Gardens and gets the leader of local 261 union to support him. That intimidates some supervisors. He also promises to raise $250,000 from the fee and says that the budget situation is so dire, that it isn’t too much to ask tourist to ‘pay their fair share’ which gives some other politician cover to act to avoid a hard call.

-          Meanwhile, the Botanical Society hired Sam Lauter as its lobbyist and pays him $10,000/month (this was reduced to $7,500/month this year). We estimate the society has spend $100,000 to $150,000 in lobbying fees during this campaign so far.

-          The community argues that the non-resident fee will not be successful – we did surveys that show that 70% of non-resident visitors and 88% of resident visitors will stay away if there is a fee charged. We find major flaws in the forecasts that RPD and Botanical Society provided for the financials of the fee and we predict it will fall short.

-          In May 2010, the Board passed the non-resident fee over the community’s objections by adding clauses that it will be just for one year and if new tax revenue is found to offset it, it would end right away.

-          Spring 2011 – it turns out the fee has done very poorly. Non-resident attendance is down 74% compared to the pre-fee estimates that RPD was using to justify the fee. RPD lowers the revenue forecast they had for the fee twice and a shortfall in their budget looms as a result. The Botanical Society decided that it was in their interest to make RPD whole and says they will cover (for this year only) the shortfall out of their funds – subsidizing the shortfalls of the fee.

-          Meanwhile, the community worked on a campaign to raise revenue and helped pass Prop N in November – sponsored by Sup Avalos of the 11^th district. Avalos introduces ordinance to apportion money from Prop N funds to offset the fee income and remove the gates and the fees at the garden.

-          Immediately, the new Mayor/RPD decide that the fee should be continued indefinitely and proposes ordinance to make it permanent and deny tax monies that would come to the RPD from Prop N – deactivating Sup Avalos’ ordinance.

-          The issue comes to the Board of Supervisors on April 6^th of this year between a solution that would use new Prop N funds (less than 1% of it) and keep the garden open and balance the RPD budget vs. make permanent a failing fee program that had devastated attendance. In a 6/5 vote on April 12th, the board decided against the pleas of the community and despite the fact that the fee has actually generated just $60,000 after 8 months of operation (while reducing attendance severely).  The Board ‘compromised’ to extend the fee for another two years (through Sep 2013) to gather ‘more data’.

 

The RPD’s tactics have been an issue:

-          There has been a lack of public notice – the original plans were very quietly noted and it was happenstance that someone heard of the fee program.

-          RPD has used the threat of layoffs and used the budget as a foil for strong-arming politicians (who have been looking for a reason to avoid a hard decision anyway).

-          This year, when faced the with the stark facts of the failure of the policy, and the actual potential for a solution (through Prop N funds) RPD has still managed to introduce the red herring that “we need more data” and this was again picked-up by some of the politicians to justify playing ball.

-          The original fee was placed with a one year time frame to see how it does, now that it has failed, the “we need more data” argument has effectively moved the goal-posts for another 2+ years. The strategy is to grind down a grass roots opposition and it might prove successful.

 

KEEP ARBORETUM FREE.ORG

*** PRESS RELEASE ***

REVENUE SHORTFALLS MEAN THE TIME HAS COME

TO DISCONTINUE THE ARBORETUM FEE

February 25, 2011: New information from the Recreation and Park Department (RPD)

reveals that the non‐resident fee at the Arboretum and Botanical Garden is performing

poorly compared to expectations. Given the devastating impact of this fee on non‐resident

attendance, the facts argue it is time to discontinue the fee and provide support for

ordinance #110113 currently sponsored by Supervisors Avalos, Mirkarimi, Mar, Kim and

Campos.

The Arboretum, now named the Botanical Garden at the Strybing Arboretum, was

established by Helene Strybing as a gift to the City and was free for nearly 70 years until

Mayor Newsom’s RPD directors, pushed to establish a fee for all as a means of turning the

55 acres of Golden Gate Park into a tourist revenue‐generating destination.

Contrary to RPD director Phil Ginsburg's claim that the non‐resident fee was initiated in

2010 as a pilot program, the initial effort to establish the fee was by then director Jared

Blumenfeld in 2009 when it failed to gain support and was rejected by the Supervisors of

the Budget Committee. It was at this point that Mr. Blumenfeld informed the Rec & Park

Commission that, "We will start by charging non‐residents."

In 2010, new director Phil Ginsburg re‐introduced the non‐resident fee in the midst of a

fiscal crisis and tied it to firing gardeners from the Arboretum, claiming that it would

generate $650,000 of revenue and $250,000 of net income. It was intended to be

permanent until Supervisor Avalos, with support from his colleagues on the Board,

introduced amendments demanded by citizens active in keeping the Arboretum Free that

included a clause to ‘sunset’ the fee on June 30, 2011, and also allowing it to be eliminated

by authority of law if new tax money was adopted which could be used by RPD at the

Botanical Garden for operations and maintenance. This latter amendment led to

Supervisor Avalos introducing ordinance #110113, to be heard shortly before the Budget &

Finance Committee that can terminate the fee as soon as March 17, 2011.

Also contrary to Mr. Ginsburg’s recent claim that the fee was partially intended to support

recreation directors, the RPD fired 166 recreation and assistant recreation directors

(average pay $37,000/year) in August 2010, after the fee was passed by the Board, and

then hired seven property managers and other senior managers at salaries of

$125,000/year.

The fee has fared poorly: Analysis of gate returns suggest that the fee program is falling

short. Now, RPD Director Ginsberg estimates that about $405,000 can be generated this

year – a roughly 38% shortfall from the $650,000 promised. Mr. Ginsburg proposes to still

deliver $250,000 of income, but this figure is a result of unsustainable accounting

maneuvers such as counting capital costs and membership dues towards the fee program’s

bottom line. By using accounting gimmicks and not reflecting the true costs of operating

the fee program, RPD’s forecasts appear disingenuous. San Francisco law‐makers are urged

to consider the facts about the fee and not the failed promise and financial maneuverings of

the RPD.

The impact of the fee has been harsh: Gate counts also suggest that non‐resident

visitation is down 70% from the pre‐fee estimates the RPD was using. The severe drop in

non‐resident attendance means that many Bay Area visitors are permanently turned‐off

from the Arboretum. Resident attendance is also down with many visitors comparing the

inside of the garden with a tomb. Hours of operation are down to 10am to 4pm since

operating the gates now costs money ‐ prior to the fee, gates were often open at 8am, and

closed very late afternoon. All this is a grave disservice to the legacy of the Arboretum, to

the citizens of San Francisco and to all who visit our city.

To maintain this misguided fee program is harmful: RPD’s forecasts regarding the fee

have proven unreliable and to again depend on them to formulate policy would be careless.

Our Mayor and Supervisors must direct the RPD to find a solution that keeps the

Arboretum free and open to all as before and reverse the goal of converting it to a revenuegenerating

tourist attraction. The Arboretum is a special public garden occupying 5.5% of

the Golden Gate Park and has been operated free for 70 years. The financial benefit of the

fee is too little and the harm to the Arboretum is too great to follow RPD’s goal of making

this under‐performing fee program permanent. Eventually, RPD’s goal is to institute fees

for all – including residents.

Keep Arboretum Free urges RPD, the Mayor and our Supervisors to work with the

community to reverse the fee and find sustainable sources of funding for the RPD. A

first step would be to implement ordinance 110113 to remove the fee program and

halt the damage being done to the Arboretum.###

www.keeparboretumfree.org

keeparboretumfree@earthlink.net

Tomorrow we will have another thesis including some words from Rev. Billy and more people. There are many people activated on this issue. Please pass this around....

chicken