Vandals trash plants, tools at state park
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, a state park scheduled to close, has hit an even bigger setback after vandals destroyed $15,000 worth of plants and equipment over the weekend.
On Sunday night, vandals appear to have broken in to the community garden at the state park, located by the football stadium in San Francisco’s Bayview-hunters Point neighborhood, said Patrick Rump, nursery manager of the nonprofit Literacy for Environmental Justice, which is among several groups trying to save the park. The state’s first urban park is one of 70 slated for closure due to budget cuts.
The vandals flipped over rows of tables with thousands of native plants, destroying half of the 7,000 to 8,000 plants in stock, Rump said. They included California seablight, an endangered species, and some plants that had been growing for years.
The plants were intended for the restoration of Yosemite Slough Wetlands, the first part of a project that will return 34 acres of shoreline to its natural state and create the largest contiguous wetland area in San Francisco. The vandals also destroyed gardening tools used by volunteer groups.
The damage erased much of the work done during an Earth Day-themed cleanup April 14.
Rump’s group was at the
site Tuesday, cleaning up the mess. Members of the public are invited to pitch in Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 1150 Carroll Ave.
Rump called the damage, which state parks law enforcement is investigating, a “major setback.” Some of the plants will take months to regrow.
“We can regrow all the plants and fix everything up,” he said, “but there’s this really positive thing in the community and it feels like an assault on that.” Job security: For everyone who has ever wondered why government requires so many bureaucrats, browse the information surrounding a $35 million homeland security grant the Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to accept Tuesday.
San Francisco is the conduit for the money, which flows through the Bay Area. It includes $17 million for equipment, $9 million for planning and millions more for training, exercises, intelligence sharing and administration.
It’s cool to know the feds are paying for things like “Risk Management software, Terrorism Incident Response Equipment, Interoperable Communications Equipment (and) Information Technology Equipment,” not to mention a CBRNE Response vehicle (that’s a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and highyield Explosive response vehicle to those out of the antiterrorism loop), a Specialized Mission Vehicle and Citizen Corps equipment.
But nothing is free, and to get the cash and goodies, the city must comply with 12 tightly spaced pages of rules. That’s 61 separate rules (plus plenty of subsections).
Some of the rules are pretty basic, requiring the city to use the money the way it’s supposed to be spent, provide progress reports and let the feds check the books. But then there are others, including the 11 subsections banning discrimination, including on the basis of drug abuse or alcoholism. Or the requirements to comply with the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) Numbers.
Then there are the rules that can best be described as “Bureaucrats Gone Wild.”
Number 48, for example, requires that the city “comply with all applicable federal statutes, regulations, policies, guidelines and requirements, including OMB Circulars A-102 and A-133, E.O. 12372 and the current Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles and Audit Requirements.”
When you realize that means someone actually has to read Circulars A-102 and A-133, not to mention E.O. 12372, the $35 million grant can be seen as another part of a continuing Government Bureaucrat Full Employment Act.