By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt – (video link)
Small protest features tents in a sign that Wiener supporters are using homeless people as a wedge issue
The Mission High School auditorium is a big venue, room for more than 1,000 people, and it was packed last night for an event featuring Sup. Jane Kim, former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and BART Board candidate Lateefa Simon talking about housing and transportation policy.
It was part of the Jane Kim for state Senate campaign; Kim sent out mailers promoting the event and her team worked every possible social media angle to get people out…
Kim talked at some length about housing and homelessness, and while there wasn’t anything new that she hadn’t said before, she got a rousing reception.
This is part of her political strategy – to use events to get the word out and increase enthusiasm. “We know we are going to be outspent,” Eric Jaye, her campaign manager, told me. “So we need 1,000 people to each tell ten people why they are supporting Jane.”
It’s something that Dean Preston, who is running against incumbent Sup. London Breed, has also been doing. He’s been holding workshops on housing issues, attracting large numbers of tenants who are worried about staying in their homes…
So the campaigns are heating up even before Labor Day. And from the way Wiener’s folks are acting, it’s just going to get more ugly… (more)
Jane gets in a lot of her issues on a regular basis no matter what the subject matter is. She covers Prop X to keep the arts and at risk jobs in the city, the temporary housing, disparate charges for corporations and the public. There is a link to the video and a little transcript of some of Janes’ comments that relate to transportation are below.
Produced by laborvideo on youtube
Around 57:37 Jane starts talking about the commuter bus shuttle fees…
According to Jane, “I just want to add two more things to that. One of my biggest issues with the commuter shuttle bus program when it came to the board 2 years ago was the one dollar per stop fee. I know that we have said that we raised those fees, but, when we are towing cars away for over $400 and we’re are putting the Director of SFMTA’s salary (Reiskin) into their cost recovery, and then we are saying $1 dollar per stop for a commuter shuttle bus, I want to know that we have a consistent standard for how we do the cost recovery fee….I sit on the Board of Supervisors and I don’t understand how SFMTA does cost recovery.
One of the questions I had asked a lot about during the CEQA appeal that was filed by appellants 2 years ago, ‘Just how did you get to a dollar? How do you know you don’t need more parking control officers to regulate this many buses on the street? And why is it that a mother that is dropping her kids off to school at the bus stop gets a $179 ticket cause she has no where else to stop her car for her kid safely to go to school? And we are only charging a dollar for those shuttle buses. (This gets a lot of applause.)
There has to be a parity issue. There are countless stories of families that have gone bankrupt, that weren’t able to get to jobs because we towed and then kept their car because they couldn’t afford to get it out.
That is a huge issue when you are looking at a fine system and who is being burdened by that system. You really need to question how cities generate revenue to pay for services and on whose backs…
Number 2, and I said this when I sat down with facebook, google and apple.. I like the commuter shuttle bus program I just think it needs to be regulated better and we need to charge more for it. I don’t think they need 200 stops in SF. I think you can walk 5 or 10 blocks.
Our transit system is overloaded and this is he private solution to the public problem.
I ask the corporations, ‘ do you go into the cities and the towns where your janitors and secruty guards work and offer them the same service? Cause they don’t live next to the campus. I think it would totally change the picture if they were picking up everyone that worked in the tech company.
Transportation is not just a cost to the engineers it is a bigger cost to the service workers that work on those campuses… (more)
Grassroots Actions 
Reblogged this on Meter Madness and commented:
Jane Kim shared her concerns about on the inequality of standards she witnesses at the SFMTA, and suggests some areas that need improvement. We are hoping that Prop L will pass so we can start to empower our supervisors to do what they think needs to be done.
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