Step toward sanity on city project appeals
Rain in the Bay Area. Snow in the mountains. News of a potentially promising coronavirus vaccine. An incoming president who believes in science, facts and grammar.
It feels like hope has arrived in San Francisco — at long last. And here’s one more example: It will likely soon be impossible for one cranky person to stop a city project if it’s important for public safety or health, if it can be reversed, or if it’s temporary.
Also, the bar will soon become higher to challenge transit projects, requiring 50 signatures or five supervisors to schedule an appeal hearing, rather than the current ridiculous standard of just one person.
These changes will be adopted if legislation by Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Matt Haney that’s scheduled to be introduced to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is passed.
The proposal comes after this column in September highlighted how two longtime City Hall gadflies — David Pilpel and Mary Miles — were responsible for freezing five emergency projects by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency during the pandemic.
Between the two of them, they appealed two phases of the Slow Streets program to prohibit through traffic on
some residential streets to allow pedestrians and bicyclists to socially distance; temporary changes to streets to make room for coronavirus testing sites and popup food pantries; emergency transit lanes for buses to get essential workers to their jobs without getting stuck in traffic; and a protected bike lane on Fell Street to alleviate the crush of people exercising in the Panhandle.
Defending each appeal cost more than 100 hours of staff time, according to Jeffrey Tumlin, director of the SFMTA. They also resulted in long hearings before the Board of Supervisors that cost tens of thousands of dollars of time spent by city officials and attorneys. And, as was obvious, each was eventually dismissed by a unanimous vote of the board.
Most astoundingly, each project was put on hold while this silly process played out. Yes, during a pandemic.
“With fewer frivolous appeals, staff could instead spend time on the city’s recovery,” Tumlin said.
Democracy is great — but not when it’s taken to such an extreme that one grumpy person can stop a project that benefits thousands of others. And it’s also the opposite of progressive when one person can halt progress, often with conservative and reactionary arguments.
But San Franciscans are starting to see how thick red tape hurts the city and are moving to cut it. Voters were wise last week to approve Prop. H to make it far less burdensome to open a small business. The city next needs to tackle the byzantine bureaucracy related to building housing, which makes developing even a single unit far more expensive and timeconsuming than pretty much anywhere else.
Breed, who has made cutting San Francisco’s notorious red tape a priority, said allowing one person to thwart emergency projects can no longer stand.
“This is about whether or not we want things in San Francisco to get done on time and on budget, or whether we’ll continue to allow just one person to stand in the way of progress,” she said in a statement. “San Francisco is capable of accomplishing big things, as we’ve shown it in our response to the pandemic. The lesson we should learn from this is that more bureaucracy, more process and endless appeals only set us up for failure.”
She pointed out that the legislation still allows for appeals, but sets “clear, reasonable requirements” for filing them that should prevent unnecessary delays.
Haney said 19 such appeals have been filed in the past five years, and they’re almost always tossed out. But only after costing the city a lot of time and money to defend its projects.
“It’s costly, it’s burdensome and it slows projects,” Haney said. “Unfortunately there are still parts of our laws that are not common sense. When that’s the case, we have to change them.”
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Walk SF, the pedestrian advocacy group, also support the legislation.
Janice Li, advocacy director for the Bicycle Coalition, said the changes might sound like “inside baseball and very technical,” but that they’re crucial for implementing the quick transit projects needed to make it safer to walk and bike around the city and to increase transit ridership. She said it also preserves the democratic process and should make the supervisors take notice when an appeal is filed with 50 signatures, because that shows there’s real concern.
“It’s a winwinwin,” she said.
Pilpel could not be reached for comment. Miles, an attorney who says she represents the Coalition for Adequate Review ( yes, CAR), did not respond to requests for comment.
The two had argued that the five transit projects should have been subject to regular review process under the California Environmental Quality Act, signed in 1970 by thenGov. Ronald Reagan to mandate that state and local agencies disclose the environmental impacts of projects and try to mitigate them. CEQA allows agencies to bypass the regular review process during an emergency, and that’s how the SFMTA has gotten so much done so quickly this year.
Local governments can decide the rules for whether and how people can appeal projects that are exempt from CEQA review — and San Francisco being the supposed bastion for progress while also making it way too easy to block it, let just one person appeal a project and halt it until the appeal’s resolution.
The new legislation would change the process in two important ways. One is that projects that are appealed could continue to be built and expanded during the appeals process if a department head or city commission says the project is necessary to protect public health, public safety or public property.
The work would also be able to continue during an appeal if it’s temporary and will last for only 180 days or fewer, or if it’s reversible, such as the striping of transit lanes or the placement of bollards to direct traffic. This new rule would apply to a host of city departments including Public Works, the SFMTA, the airport, the port, the Public Utilities Commission and the Recreation and Park Department.
Another change would apply only to the SFMTA and the Port of San Francisco, both of which are independent bodies under the City Charter and often don’t need approval from the Board of Supervisors for their work. Appeals to transit projects or port leases which aren’t subject to board approval would require 50 signatures from city residents to schedule a hearing before the board. Five supervisors could also appeal.
It’s clear that San Franciscans back the recent projects being appealed. SFMTA data shows more than 6,200 San Franciscans have given input to the agency on the Slow Streets program, and 78% support it. The rest were split between not liking it and having no opinion. The agency is about to start its fourth phase of the program, closing even more streets to through traffic throughout the city.
Sorry, Mr. Pilpel and Ms. Miles. It’s what the majority of San Francisco supports.