One arm of city government plans emergency hearings on the lack of recycling in SF, another arm evicts the oldest recycling center in the urban area. The hypocrisy of SF is not only brimming with cruel irony but will also have a hugely negative impact on recycling mandates, small businesses, and communities who garden.
Please come out to City Hall tomorrow from 2-4pm and hear the the urgent discussion with the Small Business Commission on the lack of recycling available in SF. Agenda item 6 covers the convenience zone areas and will deal with this issue. On Dec 10, there will be a full board meeting on this as well.
The Recreation and Park Department refuses to work with any other city agency on this issue and are quite comfortable costing hundreds of business owners-big and small-and thousands of San Franciscan citizens-huge sums of money so they can build a tax-payer funded garden for forty people who pre-reserved their spots in this very, very fancy new space. The Rec and Park garden has no final budget and no published time line-there has been no advancement of work on the plan that is now over two years old.
When our native plant nursery founder and a number of community gardeners expressed their concerns to Sarah Ballard, they were only met with the uncharitable and inequitable answer that Rec Park plans to tear up the the asphalt and the gardens and not to offer any spaces to people who have been growing there for a year now.
Between the lack of recycling and the lack of gardens in this city, there is no rhetorical way to justify removing a nonprofit that provides both. But the Rec and Park Department does not care to justify their work on behalf of the city and its citizens, they also do not care what the needs of the city are, they operate with autonomy and they like it that way. It’s their party and they will cry and take their toys home if they want to.
As of today, the Sheriff has not come to shut us down as Rec and Park would have wanted. We don’t know how much longer we have but its up to our leaders to speak up about this issue NOW.
Eric Mar-hear our call and make a bold statement about a place that serves the community you represent! We need your leadership NOW. Protect the unheard voices of Chinese people and other Asians that help sustain themselves through recycling at our center. Speak for them!
And PEOPLE, demand Sarah Ballard, Marvin Yee and Phil Ginsburg uphold the process they agreed to when this garden plan was initiated. There is to be an advisory council made up of the public that advises Rec and Park how to proceed with their plan. Why is the Advisory Council not in session? Demand they reinstate this policy advising body immediately! The advisory council should be making recommendations on the current gardeners status and future in the space not an autonomous Rec and Park Department.
Hire a neutral, professiional survey taker… Station them across from Frederick and Arguello and have them quizz pasers-by with this.:
1) Would you like to see the KGR (Kezar Gardens Recycing) go away, and all the established “raised bed” gardens…go away, ??
2) Wouild you like the existing blend to stay. ??
3) Do You think the “homeless” with their wagons full of deposit containers would disappear if KGR disappeared and was replaced by “Containter redemption’ on the Whole Foods parking lot, e.g…… ??
4) if the city, weekly, curbside recycling collection, is the “total answer to all residents needs, why do you think all the cars full of recyclables are driving in and unloading??
5) Do you know that in the late 1970s that the folks who run rhe KGR recyclling…were a big part of the team that fought against the trash collector’s “solution” to the “landfill crisis”..: To build a massive, $500,000,000 incinerator, that would have forced all city folks to commit all used paper waste to the burner, and that the reason there is now weekly curbside recycling collection is due to KGR recyclers and their then allies, all of whom are out of business. ??
6) Is choice good?.. Are Americans better off because Chrysler and General Motors still exist?? Should the local trash company be the ONLY recycler in town???
Sorry I cannot be there tomorrow as I teach during the day but will be at the December 10 hearing!
Where and what time at City Hall on Dec. 10?
Send this to me asap and I will promptly post it to TakeBackOjurParks.org and other organizations.
Denis Mosgofian
Monday, December 10, 2012 5:30 P.M.
CITY HALL, ROOM 400
Small Business Commission Meets and Convenience Zone policy is on the agenda. Thank you for posting this info, Dennis! Also, you should be aware that there are ISPN reps that are representing to city gov’t officials that the entire group is against HANC. If there is any way to clarify the truth of how the membership feels to our Mayor and local Supervisors, please do!