Boxer’s ‘farewell tour’ a thank-you to state
With less than five months remaining in her 24-year run as one of the state’s two senators, Barbara Boxer stopped by the Presidio on Friday to relive past triumphs — and remind everyone that she still has clout.
The triumphs include the effort by California politicians in 1995 to prevent portions of the green enclave at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge from being sold to developers. On Friday, she also pledged to see whether there’s a way in her final months in Washington to find federal money to help pay for a cloak of new parkland that would hide automobile tunnels near Crissy Field.
“I would hope so — we have a great
case to make on so many levels,” Boxer said at the conclusion of her brief visit to the 1,491-acre former Army post, now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Boxer made her comments during a media event at the Presidio’s Main Post, with the speaker’s podium set in front of a panorama of the Marin Headlands and the bay. This was the second week of stops on what she jokingly called her “farewell tour,” a statewide swing that began at the Salton Sea to highlight the inland lake’s poor health and will continue through next weekend.
“But it’s mostly ‘thank you’ ” rather than farewell, emphasized Boxer, 75, who has depicted herself as a fighter throughout her political career. “I’m not going anywhere. Imagine me unplugged and uncensored, even more.”
The thank-yous were directed at the officials on hand from the National Park Service and the Presidio Trust. Since the military handed off control of the Presidio in 1994, it has blossomed with new trails and scenic overlooks, while hundreds of buildings were restored and dump sites were replaced by native landscapes.
The Presidio also is the only piece of the Park Service that is required to be financially self-sustaining — a condition imposed in 1996 after Republicans in Washington balked at putting $25 million or more annually into parkland within the borders of notoriously liberal San Francisco.
While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, is the local politician most closely associated with the Presidio, the fight back then also included Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the city’s former mayor.
“Preserving this place has always been a priority. We worked tirelessly to make sure it wouldn’t go to the highest bidder,” Boxer said. “I knew I was going to save this. Rep. Pelosi knew. Dianne knew.”
One Presidio improvement still to be checked off the wish list is the Presidio Tunnel Tops — a 14-acre landscape with a target opening date of 2019 that would conceal the easternmost tunnels that hold the new Presidio Parkway. That seven-lane roadway replaced Doyle Drive, a narrow viaduct that for 70 years was the busiest approach to the Golden Gate Bridge.
The new parkland would extend from the Main Post down to Crissy Field, with a youth education center as part of the mix. But the cost estimate now approaches $100 million, almost twice the original estimate for a project that relies on private fundraising being conducted by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.
After she praised the initiative, Boxer was asked if she might use part of her final months in Washington to attempt to steer funding to the tunnels. She responded without hesitation.
“It seems to me this has all the pluses” in terms of building on past success, Boxer said. “The Presidio has never come begging . ... It’s about educating children, increasing tourism, all of that.”
Boxer, who moved several years ago from her longtime home in Marin to Rancho Mirage (Riverside County), made only one reference to the national political scene.
The preservation of the Presidio was “a wonderful collaboration, and it proves that when we all work together, things can go well,” Boxer said. “Which could lead me into the presidential race, but I’m not going there.”