By SABRINA SHANKMAN
District 9 Supervisor David Campos got to cozy into Tom Ammiano’s still-warm supervisor’s chair a month early, thanks to Ammiano’s move to the state assembly. The early start allowed Campos a jump on other incoming Supervisors also elected Nov. 4, John Avalos, David Chiu and Eric Mar. While his committee tenure has not yet begun, Campos will vice-chair the Government Audit and Oversight Committee and the Budget and Finance Committee, and sit on the Transportation Authority. The other newbies will join Campos on the Transportation Authority, but, thanks to their later start, won’t sit on any other committees.
The supervisors took a break last week, but in the week before, the newly inaugurated group of 11 voted unanimously on the following recommendations:
• Dust off the argyle and head to the fairway, the supes voted to give half a million dollars of revenue from the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) tournament agreement to the Harding Park Golf Course, for “staffing and improvements”.
• A zoning change for the northwest corner of Divisadero and O’Farrell streets means the corner has gone from a “small-scale neighborhood commercial zone” to a “moderate-scale neighborhood commercial zone.” Cue Jefferson’s theme song … “We’re moving on up …”
• Taxi fares and the gate fee cap will remain the same. In other news, BART is still expensive and closes early, and gas – while cheap now – is bound to bounce back and render us all impoverished. The good news is, as businesses go under in this economic downturn, there are bound to be sales on shoes.
• In the one vote that did not ring of a unified board, 7 out of the 11 supes voted to overturn Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto on an amendment that requires “conditional use authorization” for any elimination of existing dwellings through mergers, conversions, or demolitions of residential units. A very patient planner who had the misfortune of answering my phone call, translated this into English. Basically, this amendment would make it harder for someone to convert a two-family home into a single-family home. So, Patient Planner explained, the added pain-in-the-butt-factor of a “conditional use authorization” protects housing, although it might not make any friends among those trying to make the most out of selling their home (a single-family home is likely to sell for more). A 2/3 majority were needed to overturn the veto, and with only supervisors Avalos, Campos, Chiu, Daly, Mar, Mirkarimi, and Maxwell saying “aye,” this is a no-go.