PicoBlog

 Clowns to the left of me Jokers to the right Here I am stuck in the middle with you —— "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Joe Egan and Gerald Rafferty, Stealers Wheel, 1972 

It may not come as a surprise, but several of the 2023 nominees for my second annual Hypocrite Hill Awards, which debuted in the Marina Times last January, made the list in 2022. This year’s runner-up, however, isn’t an individual, but rather the nominee for Best Performance by an Ensemble, based on a promise I made in that inaugural issue.

So, without further ado, here are the 2023 nominees for Hypocrite Hill…

After years of calling out the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition for being political activists, the San Francisco Ethics Commission has finally reached the same conclusion, fining the group, former Bicycle Coalition Advocacy Director Janice Li (now president of BART’s Board of Directors), and former executive director Brian Wiedenmeier for being unregistered lobbyists. Yet, the group continues to receive financial support from taxpayers via the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). In 2020, they were awarded $846,649 in noncompetitive, "sole source" contracts from the SFMTA.

According to the San Francisco Controller’s Office the Bike Coalition also received nearly $500,000 from the SFMTA in 2019. Their entire budget that year was $968,354, which means in 2019 they received over 50% of their funding from the SFMTA.

To further complicate their claim of public advocacy, in 2020 Mayor London Breed nominated Jane Natoli, a member of the Bike Coalition’s Board of Directors, to the SFMTA Board of Directors. It was the Bike Coalition’s strong ties to City Hall — and in particular, to SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin — that helped them push through a center bike lane experiment nowhere near ready for primetime on Valencia Street despite just a 13 percent approval rating from residents. Now even the Bike Coalition doesn’t like their Frankenlane, complaining that the SFMTA “needs to immediately make conditions on Valencia safer for people biking...” 

At an Oct. 30 hearing of the Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee regarding bringing the San Francisco Police Department to full staffing, Safaí, along with District 10 supervisor Shamann Walton, and labor organizers, whined about the price tag of $300 million over five years, suggesting “a tax” should pay for it. Safai’s amendments would make the staffing mandate contingent on that “future tax.” District 6 supervisor Matt Dorsey reminded his colleagues that a fully staffed police force “is part of the baseline obligation of what a well-functioning city government should do.”

Now it will be up to voters, as Safaí’s amended measure passed by a narrow vote of 6-to-5 at a Board of Supervisors meeting in November, meaning it moves to the March 2024 ballot. It was so controversial that Dorsey, who originally introduced the plan, voted against the Safaí version, calling it a “poison pill amendment that came in at the last minute.”

Critics accuse Safaí of pandering to labor unions to gain their support for his 2024 mayoral bid. I always find it amusing when a supervisor who has accomplished nothing believes the next rung on the career ladder is mayor (then again, it worked for Governor Gavin Newsom). 

During that same meeting, Walton told a constituent during public comment, “We never defunded the police department” — but that’s a lie. In a Feb. 25, 2021, press release, Walton and Mayor London Breed announced the creation of The Dream Keeper Initiative (DKI), a citywide plan for “reinvesting” $120 million in San Francisco’s African American community over the next two years. And where is that $120 million coming from? The press release addresses that, too: “In June 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, Mayor Breed and Supervisor Walton announced a plan to prioritize the redirection of resources from law enforcement to support the African American community … As part of the budget process, Mayor Breed redirected $120 million from law enforcement for investments in the African American community for Fiscal Years 2020-21 and 2021-22.” In other words, Breed and Walton set up a sort of pre-reparations fund from which their nonprofit cronies are already getting huge payouts. According to the website, between 2021 and 2023 DKI spent $107.24 million of the “redirected” law enforcement dollars on 165 awards, including over 30 new city and county hires (despite Breed asking departments to cut back as she desperately tries to stretch her nearly $15 billion budget). A quick glance at the beneficiaries brings up numerous “nonprofits” with ties to Breed and Walton, including organizations involved in the SFPUC Community Benefits pay-to-play scheme.

For example, the infamous Young Community Developers (YCD) got nearly $4 million. Remember, longtime City Family member Dwayne Jones, who was recently arrested on 59 counts of fraud, was YCD’s executive director from 1998 to 2003.

His self-described mentee Walton held the six-figure position from 2010 until he joined the Board of Supervisors in January 2019 — handpicked, of course, by disgraced former SFPUC head Harlan Kelly, recently convicted on 8 of 10 fraud charges, to head up District 10, where all those Community Benefits supposedly go (but not according to most residents).

I wrote about YCD’s $5 million grant from the San Francisco Human Services Agency Department of Benefits and Family Support to oversee the street violence prevention program called “Interrupt, Predict, and Organize,” or IPO. Recently two DPW workers hired through IPO were involved in a high-speed police chase and crash that resulted in the driver’s death and the passenger’s hospitalization and eventual arrest. Both were part of a car burglary and armed robbery crew.

Current and former DPW employees told me that, despite the huge cost and number of people who churn through it, the YCD-run IPO doesn’t work out for most participants. “I know of some that continued on and became permanent civil servants and actually turned their lives around, but that margin is very slim compared with how many participants have gone through this program,” one worker said. The violence is so real that, according to another employee, “management staff are being issued bulletproof vests.”

At a March 16, 2023, Budget and Appropriations Committee meeting about increasing police presence, Ronen gave one of her most histrionic performances to date, worthy of Blanche’s soliloquy in a high school version of A Streetcar Named Desire.

“I’ve been begging this department to give the Mission what it deserves in terms of police presence all year long,” Ronen lamented. “And I have been told time and time and time and time again there are no officers that we can send to the Mission … In the Mission people are getting shot and killed! … In the Mission people are dying!”

The speech contradicts her stance on policing in 2020, when Ronen tweeted, “I want to make it clear that I believe strongly in defunding the police and reducing the number of officers on our force.” 

As if that wasn’t enough to land Ronen on the list, the cherry on top is her support for Fernando Madrigal, a Mission District Norteño gang member sentenced last week in fed­eral court to over three decades in prison. Once considered a “youth activist” by gullible city leaders for “turning his life around,” Madrigal, known as “Nando,” spoke at a July 30, 2019, rally against gun violence on the steps of City Hall alongside Sha’ray Johnson, mother of 15-year-old Day’von Hann, who had been tragically gunned down at 24th and Capp Streets 11 days earlier. Ronen and Walton nodded empathetically as Madrigal hugged Hann’s grieving mother. 

Hann’s killing remained unsolved until August 2020, when the FBI announced a diabolical twist straight out of a Dateline episode: It was Madrigal who had killed Hann. In fact, at the time of the rally where Madrigal hugged Hann’s mother and garnered support from Walton, Ronen, and other leaders, the police, in partnership with the FBI, were already investigating the case. 

As I wrote last April, in an email I obtained via a public record request and dated Aug. 2, 2019, Ronen’s chief of staff, Carolyn Goossen, presented the extensive work done on Madrigal’s behalf after he was stabbed at his apartment building, all at Ronen’s request. “Spoke directly to Sam Moss [Executive Director at Mission Housing Development Corporation] and the management company of that building. Sam Moss: Could only move them if there was a vacancy, but no vacancies. Even so, would be hard because of federal financing laws which don’t allow people to jump wait lists.” 

Along with a lack of vacancies and not being allowed to jump the line, Goossen bluntly points out that Madrigal has even bigger issues: “The justice system sees him as being gang involved … He was arrested for another case after the stabbing. They were treating him as a perpetrator, not a victim . . .” 

Ronen was now well aware of Madrigal’s continued gang activity and that he had been arrested for another crime since the stabbing, but instead of reaching out to law enforcement for more details, Ronen asked a judge to give Madrigal preferential treatment. In a letter obtained in the same public record request, on Aug. 28, 2019, Ronen used her official city stationery to write to San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan requesting that he “allow Fernando to be terminated early from probation so he can focus on his rehabilitation.” Ronen even tells Judge Chan that Madrigal worked with her office on “legislative efforts” and has “experienced repeated gun violence and physical and mental traumas and needs to relocate to a safe place as soon as possible.” 

Along with being Hypocrite Hill incarnate, Hillary Ronen has the poorest judgement I’ve ever seen in over two decades of covering City Hall (and that’s a massive feat).

Remember when the memo surfaced about Supervisor Walton saying, “It is N-words like you that looks like me that is always the problem” to 43-year-old sheriff cadet Emare Butler because he didn’t want to take his belt off while going through the metal detector at City Hall? He also admitted to using the N-word “several times,” but said he believed that the way he had used it “could be defended.”

Walton’s aide Natalie Gee (who is running to replace her boss when he terms out in 2027) was less subtle, tweeting, “The alleged ‘slur’ is only a slur if someone who isn’t Black says it … In this context it wasn’t a ‘slur,’ it was normal communication. Even a sign of solidarity.”

In an effort to set the record straight, Butler came forward. “I don’t agree that just because it’s two Black males it’s OK to use that word,” Butler explained. “Someone said it was a sign of solidarity. I don’t know what kind of solidarity that would be.” Despite Butler saying he didn’t accept being called the N-word, Walton never apologized.

In last year’s inaugural Hypocrite Hill Awards, I pointed out that only Mayor Breed asked for an apology from Walton, and I said, “If the Board of Supervisors doesn’t do so when they reconvene after the holiday break, every one of them will make this list in 2023.” Well, they failed to ask for that apology, so I nominated them for Hypocrite Hill 2023 Best Performance by an Ensemble. When added to the poor individual performances by the current crop of supervisor nominees, the Board takes first runner-up. Hopefully that rarified air brings them back to their senses (at least the few who had any sense to begin with).

When it comes to a wealthy white guy virtue signaling about capitalism ruining San Francisco while sipping from a chalice of 2023 Champagne des socialistes, no one can top Dean Preston. And that’s why he gets to keep the crown he won in 2022.

A self-proclaimed “tenant activist,” Preston’s in-laws, who own multiple rental properties, prevailed in a lawsuit brought by a woman severely injured at their 18-unit Marina apartment building. How? By blaming the victim. Sara Mast filed a personal injury lawsuit against Goosby Family Trust, LLC, after she fell off the roof of the building during a Blue Angels watch party (no wonder Preston wants to ban the flashy flight demonstration squadron). 

On August 14, 2023, the case was dismissed “with prejudice.” Essentially the Goosbys argued that the building was old, and they don’t need to make the roof safe because they haven’t done any improvements that would trigger bringing it up to code. Then they blamed the victim for being drunk.

Mind you, Dean’s in-laws make around $50,000 a month in rental income from that four-story complex (one of a number of properties in the Goosby family trust), yet they haven’t done improvements or bothered to bring it up to code. You would think “tenant activist” Preston would be pressuring his in-laws to do something about that.

Among the attacks on Mast’s character made by the Goosby family’s legal counsel:“She would more likely than not show high risk-taking activity and a lack of impulse control” and they “owed no duty to protect Plaintiff from the consequences of her unforeseeable, voluntary risk-taking.” Sounds an awful lot like the behavior exhibited by the fentanyl-impaired drug tourists in the Tenderloin, which, thanks to redistricting, Preston (begrudgingly) represents — yet Preston considers them innocent victims devoid of any self-accountability. “Rather than follow the plan backed by health experts that would bring everyone together except the fringe but well-funded we-only-want-police-abstinence-and-nothing-else crowd, the Mayor regressed to Giuliani-esque talk of ‘tough love’ & arresting addicts,” Preston posted to X in May. It appears Preston only believes in tough love for drunk girls who fall off the roof of his in-laws’ rental property.

Preston also reportedly says in a new documentary by UK outlet UnHerd that San Francisco’s homelessness issues were, “absolutely the result of capitalism,” and that it was “counterproductive” to arrest people openly doing drugs: “I think what you’re seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs.”  

Again, Preston got the Tenderloin via redistricting (which he vehemently opposed). Nearly half of San Francisco’s homeless lived in that district as of 2022.

“The biggest driver of why folks are on the street is because they lost their jobs, income or were evicted from their homes, usually for not being able to pay the rent,” a clearly clueless Preston adds. “So you have major landlords literally causing folks to lose their homes, and real estate speculation making it impossible for folks to find an affordable place to live.” (Surely he’s excluding his landlord in-laws from that gem.)

Interesting side note: In 2008, Preston founded Tenants Together, a coalition of more than 50 local tenant rights groups in California. That same year, his grandmother-in-law, Jackieline Goosby, evicted a tenant from the Goosby’s building at 3233 Scott Street. So while Preston may not technically be a landlord, he's married with tenants — and some of those tenants have been evicted.

In another undeniably capitalistic move, Preston and his wife, Jenckyn Goosby, sold nearly 800 acres in a Mendocino nature preserve which they purchased with cash. Juergen Fehr, co-founder of Fehr & Peers, a large firm that specializes in providing transportation planning and engineering services to public and private sector clients, including the City of San Francisco, purchased 567 acres. Fehr & Peers has partnerships with SFMTA and is one of the contractors on both the Park Merced redevelopment and the $2 billion Stonestown development. According to SFOpenBook they’ve received more than $8.7 million from the City over the past seven years.

Perhaps one of the biggest hypocrisies for Preston is that he owes his own multimillionaire status not to hard work, but to a huge inheritance from his father and grandfather, who owned a business that manufactured medical and therapeutic devices called the J.A. Preston Corp.

That’s right — Preston wouldn’t have all those tech stocks, own a $3 million single family home in posh Alamo Square, or be the second richest supervisor at City Hall if it weren’t for … wait for it… capitalism! And that’s why Preston keeps the crown as the King of Hypocrite Hill 2023.

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Follow Susan and the Marina Times on Twitter: @SusanDReynolds and @TheMarinaTimes.

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