S.F. weighs easing utility box rules
AT&T urging city to drop beautification obligations
Telecom giant AT&T is going to great lengths to dilute a law the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed unanimously in 2014 requiring the company to spruce up its Army-green utility boxes with trees and artwork.
And the supervisors appear to be listening. A new version of the law, which would relieve AT&T of most of its box-beautifying obligations, will go before the board’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee on Wednesday. “They’re clearly eyesores, they’re magnets for graffiti, they buzz, and they prevent disabled people from getting from their cars to the sidewalk.” Gary Weiss, president of Corbett Heights Neighbors
If the new law passes, San Francisco residents would be left with the basic “surface-mounted facility” boxes — bulky, green or beige bunkers about 4 feet tall that contain high-speed Internet equipment. The company has installed 305 boxes. There are an additional 155 boxes owned by other companies and the city.
AT&T describes the cabinets as critical pieces of Internet infrastructure. Angry neighbors characterize them as sidewalk impediments and ready-made canvases for graffiti artists.
“They’re clearly eyesores, they’re magnets for graffiti, they buzz, and they prevent disabled people from getting from their cars to the sidewalk,” said Gary Weiss, president of Corbett Heights Neighbors, a group of residents whose homes abut the Castro.
In 2011, the supervisors voted 6-5 to allow AT&T to install 726 storage units on city sidewalks, to provide customers throughout San Francisco with Internet, phone and TV service.
Then, in 2014, the board passed legislation by former Supervisor Scott Wiener that required AT&T to festoon its cabinets in greenery and colorful murals, plant a tree near each box unless the city deemed it impossible, and make every effort to put them on private property. The company challenged the private property requirement in court and it was struck down in 2015.
AT&T abruptly stopped applying for box permits in 2014, claiming that Wiener’s law was too onerous. In 2016, it installed 28 new boxes, but didn’t beautify any of them — the company had applied for those permits before Wiener’s law passed.
Now Supervisor Malia Cohen wants to undo several provisions of that law, repealing the landscaping mandate altogether and allowing AT&T to pay fees instead of painting murals on boxes or planting trees nearby — at least $1,489 for each revoked tree and $2,000 for each unpainted mural. The measure would still require AT&T to clean up utility box graffiti.
Cohen, who is running for the California Board of Equalization in 2018, received a $7,300 campaign contribution from AT&T’s San Francisco lobbying firm last month. Lobbyists from Lighthouse Public Affairs collectively contributed more than $8,000 to supervisors’ campaigns last fall, and $2,250 to Supervisor Jeff Sheehy’s offcycle election bid next June.
Cohen and other supervisors denied those political contributions have swayed them. Lighthouse political strategist Boe Hayward said the firm’s support of Cohen “had no impact on this legislation.”
Three years after voting for Wiener’s law, Cohen has shifted positions. She now says the sidewalk cabinets are necessary if the city wants to deliver high-speed Internet to all residents, “including to the disenfranchised communities that I represent.”
“The folks who oppose (these boxes) are trying to make this more controversial than it really is,” Cohen said.
AT&T currently has seven pending city appeals over utility box permits the Department of Public Works denied. Cohen and other supervisors said the company will withdraw those appeals if the new legislation passes.
AT&T spokesman Ben Golombek said that although the company hasn’t made any promises, “I think this ordinance would certainly address our concerns.”
He characterized Cohen’s legislation as an attempt to “clean up” the 2014 law.
“At the end of the day we’re a phone company that provides Internet services — we’re not a landscaping company,” Golombek said. He added that Wiener’s law had a “chilling effect on our ability to deploy infrastructure.”
“We’re seeing a greater demand for data every single day,” Golombek said. “We want to provide better service for our customers.”
But Weiss and other residents who revile the boxes say the proposed fees are too low.
The fees — which are significantly higher than the $500 fees that Cohen pitched in her original version of the ordinance — still represent a discount for the telecom company.
Susan Pontious, who runs the Civic Art Collection and Public Art Program for the San Francisco Arts Commission, said it would cost at least $3,500 to decorate a box, and that doesn’t include the additional expense of managing a city art program.
The tree fee would cover the cost of planting a tree and watering it for three years, according to Public Works.
Though San Francisco residents have long complained about the boxes, saying they take up sidewalk space, attract blight and are just plain ugly, Cohen’s law has faced little opposition at City Hall. Meanwhile, AT&T lobbyists — among them Cammy Blackstone, who has served as an aide to several supervisors — have met numerous times with various supervisors, according to records from the San Francisco Public Ethics Commission.
Ethics Commission records also show how big a player AT&T is in local politics. In addition to campaign contributions from Lighthouse, the company also made at least two big charitable gifts last year, shelling out $50,000 for the Women’s Foundation at the behest of Mayor Ed Lee, and $5,000 for the GLBT Historical Society at Wiener’s behest.
Even the group San Francisco Beautiful, which unsuccessfully sued the city in 2011 in an effort to ban the utility boxes altogether, now seems to be changing its tune. Golombek said the group is in talks with AT&T to start a pilot program in which artists would decorate the boxes.
“I’m conflicted,” said San Francisco Beautiful Executive Director Darcy Brown. “On the one hand, I don’t want these boxes all over the city. On the other hand, people want delivery of (Internet) service.”
Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who chairs the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, said the new law has put her in a quandary, as well.
“I don’t love that (these boxes) are on our sidewalks, taking up space,” Ronen said. “But without this infrastructure we won’t have the availability of high-speed Internet that competes with Comcast. And healthy competition between multibillion-dollar corporations is beneficial to consumers.”
Wiener, who is now a state senator, acknowledged that communications infrastructure is important. Even so, he said, “we also need good standards when we are installing these boxes in neighborhoods.”