The annual Booster Dinner, the most social Booster meeting of the year, is all set!
We’re on for Tuesday night, May 27 at 5:30 pm, at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, 1675 Owens Street (near 16th). (Click the link for directions.) Many thanks to Audrey Cole of the Boosters, Barbara Bagot-Lopez of UCSF Community Relations, and everyone at UCSF for hosting us!

Here’s the menu:

5:30 pm - No host bar

7.00 pm - Dinner is served, with complimentary wine

Organic Sonoma Greens with Roasted Beets, Baby Carrots & Pecan Crusted Goat Cheese

Entrées – Choice of:

Grilled “Painted Hills” Sirloin Steak with Whipped Bleu Cheese Mashed Potatoes & Grilled Asparagus

Pan Seared King Salmon with Roasted Ginger-Pepper Sauce on Sautéed Napa Cabbage & Steamed Jasmine Rice

Moroccan Saffron Chickpea & Vegetable Taginewith Toasted Israeli Cous Cous (Vegetarian option)

Brulee Poached Pear Vanilla Crème Anglaise & Fresh Berries

This is always a fun event, where we install the new year’s Executive Committee quickly and efficiently, and recognize some of the hardest working among us for what they do in our community. It’s a great chance to bring a neighbor and show them what the Boosters are all about!

For tickets, mail your check today to Potrero Boosters Annual Dinner, 1459 18th St. #133, San Francisco, CA 94107. Write the number of reservations requested on your check and include a note with dinner choice (steak, salmon, vegetarian). Tickets are $40 per person in advance. Your ticket will be held at the door. Park on the street, or at the UCSF garage — we’ll pay for it!

Many of my friends have asked me why I support the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association.  My brief on-the-fly answers never seem very convincing, regardless of my wholehearted belief in the organization.  Hopefully this article will answer that question more eloquently than I usually do in person.

I joined the Potrero Boosters when I first moved to Potrero Hill over 20 years ago.  The Boosters concern themselves with issues that are important to me as a resident of the Hill.  The amount of work some of the members do is PHENOMENAL!  I am not willing to put in nearly this much work to keep up to date on issues that effect the neighborhood, so I am very grateful to, and happy to support from the sidelines, those who are willing to do that work.  The small yearly membership fee is a pittance compared to the efforts the organization makes on my behalf.

Do the issues the Boosters champion affect me directly?  Not usually.  But things like power plants, light pollution from the ball park, density and planning in the Design Center and Central Waterfront affect the neighborhood I love, and because of that it’s important to me.  Not important enough to spend my own nights researching and trying to understand the issues, but certainly important enough to support wholeheartedly those who are willing to do so.

Do I agree with every position the Boosters takes?  No.  But in general the decisions they make and the fights they choose to be involved in are based on a sincere love of the neighborhood and desire to keep it – what? - certainly not “the same”; they’re not that foolish.  To keep it a nice neighborhood where I would want to live.

Do the Boosters win their fights?  They win some and they lose some.  But most of the people I vote for don’t win, either.  I support the Boosters for the same reason I vote – because I can; because I have to.  It’s one important thing I can do with little cost or effort.

Because of the support of neighbors like me, and the hard work of those most involved in the organization, the Boosters is a known quantity in the halls and courtrooms of the city.  It’s important to have at least a little clout so we don’t get completely run over by big developers and others who would profit in our neighborhood at the detriment of those of us who live here.  A strong, active neighborhood organization is a force to be reckoned with.

During one of my discussions with a friend who asked what the Boosters do, he interrupted me, asking “Is all they do fight?”.  He was using my own words.  Yes, they do often fight.  This usually takes the form of trying to keep development down to a dull roar.  They fight big, inappropriate development projects which would seriously degrade the character of the neighborhood we love.  They also fight for - for the parks, for street parking or signs, etc.  They also like to party and are becoming more involved in issues such as support for the local schools and libraries.

I truly appreciate the immense efforts of those neighbors and friends who are willing to spend considerable time educating themselves about important issues and showing up – over and over when necessary - to voice their opinions about things that are important to all of us neighbors on Potrero Hill.  I will continue to support the Boosters in whatever way I can.

Audrey Cole

Tomorrow evening, March 25, at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House:
7:00 pm Business Meeting
Introductions / Welcome to New Members
Treasurer’s Report
7:20 pm Neighborhood Issues and Updates
— agendas for future Boosters meetings
7:50 pm Break
8:00 pm SF?Planning Director John Rahaim

We’ll be taking time at tomorrow night’s Boosters meeting to set our agendas for the coming months. Just in the last few weeks,
• MUNI came out with the recommendations of their Transit Effectiveness Project (discussed last year at the Boosters): www.sftep.com/docs.html
• the City and the Housing Authority named the developer for the planned rebuild of Potrero Hill’s public housing projects (discussed last year at the Boosters); “The remade projects will include the same number of public housing units they do now, as well as hundreds of new affordable and market-rate rental units and homes for sale to help offset the costs.” www.sfgate.com/ cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/12/BALFVI2P5.DTL
• the City continues to lumber forward with Eastern Neighborhoods re-zoniing; we will discussing that at Tuesday’s meeting with John Rahaim, the City’s new Planning Director.

Join us on Tuesday, and tell us what you want to discuss at Boosters meetings in 2008!

The Executive Committee of the Boosters works year-round to make the Boosters more visible in the neighborhood, and to make the neighborhood more visible in the City. These members of the Boosters are nominated for re-election in 2007:
• Tony Kelly, President
• Dick Millet, Vice President / Advocacy
• Audrey Cole, Vice President / Membership
• Robin Talmadge, Treasurer
• Joe Boss, Corresponding Secretary
• Hilary Cohen, Recording Secretary
• Ellen Kernaghan, Sergeant at Arms
• Jean Neblett and Kuzuri Jackson, Auditors

If you’re interested in serving on the Committee, contact Tony Kelly at president@potreroboosters.org or 415 341 8040.

Nominations are due by the end of the Boosters meeting
on Tuesday, March 25; we’ll have a brief election as
part of our regular meeting on Tuesday, April 29.

As we noted in this newsletter last year, 2007 was a very successful year for the Boosters’ advocacy work for Potrero Hill. A lot of that success is due to a large and vocal Hill community that is aware of neighborhood and City issues. Our crime meetings have had a clear impact on public safety and community policing; our two (or more!) helipad advocacy groups have definitely affected, if not stopped, plans for helipads on top of our local hospitals. If you add up all the neighborhood associations, block groups, homeowners associations, the Merchants and Parents associations and other volunteer groups, you’ll find that nearly 2,000 Hill residents belong to at least one neighborhood advocacy group. With a total Hill population of about 10,000, that is just an amazing statistic; other City neighborhoods envy our awareness and activity. But it always bears repeating: we are only strong if we work together. So get involved!
Choose what is important to you on this list, and call or email Tony Kelly or Dick Millet (phone numbers in the newsletter and at potreroboosters.org).

Plan Potrero Hill – new neighborhood re-zoning
• Showplace Square / Central Waterfront planning
• Public Improvements – new parks, infrastructure, services in new neighborhoods
• Biotech companies in Showplace Square???
• Protecting Dogpatch from large office buildings
• Saving open space possibilities on & around Channel Street
• Historic building preservation in the new neighborhoods
• Cleaning up NC-2 zoning in commercial/residential districts
• Enforcement of the Residential Design Guidelines
• Demolitions, monster homes, and luxury housing

SF General Hospital rebuild and helipad

Closing the Potrero Power Plant

The SF Port
• The AT&T Park parking lot / Seawall Lot 337
• Pier 70 – developing waterfront property
• The Blue/Greenway - public access and parks
• Environmental issues: diesel trucking, cement crushing

Quality of Life
• Neighborhood crime watch / Project SAFE
• Neighborhood Emergency Response Teams
• Parks & Rec – improvements, and more public recreation opportunities
• Homeless and street issues – street camping, clean up, services, etc.
• Underground utilities

Social Stuff
• The Annual Dinner, Potrero Hill History Night, the Holiday Party

Government liaison and support
• Volunteer staff support at Supervisor Maxwell’s office
• Support of Webster, Starr King, and other neighborhood schools

Membership / recruitment
• Outreach to other neighborhood organizations
• New homeowners and new tenants

Thanks to some volunteer help with WordPress, the Boosters site is finally back and running. Look forward to a major update of content and archives, online renewal of membership, and regular updates - starting in the next few weeks!

As mentioned in the Potrero View this month -

Click here (PDF) to view the bylaws of the Potrero Boosters.

The conflict-of-interest policy is Article 10, Section 5.

The Potrero Boosters Holiday Party!
Sunday December 16, 2007
3pm - 6pm
at the lovely Axis Cafe at 1201 8th Street
Axis Cafe is close to CCA, near Arkansas and 16th Streets.

Join us for FREE food and drink hand made by Axis Cafe’s chefs.
Come share a cup of eggnog or cider with your friends and neighbors in front of Axis Cafe’s fabulous fireplace or wander outside to the fireplace in the charming semi-enclosed outdoor patio.
Holiday Sweets and Savories galore!
Please invite all your Hill friends and neighbors to come celebrate the season with us!
Beer, wine and non-alcoholic drinks, including specialty coffees, will be available for purchase at the cafe.
If you need transportation, please contact Pat Cleveland at 550-0729

Last month in the Boosters newsletter, I wrote up a list of our neighborhood’s accomplishments at Plan Potrero Hill this year:
• We’ve built a growing consensus around a new land use map, showing the centers of our new neighborhoods, and locations for open space.
• We’ve contained bioscience uses and large offices in one large portion of the Central Waterfront.
• We’ve combined the Showplace Square and Central Waterfront neighborhoods, and added the Port, Mission Bay, UCSF, and public housing land to our planning area.
• We’ve added the Department of Public Health’s ENCHIA standards to our public benefits discussion.
• We’ve demanded that transit improvements have to be part of new developments in our neighborhoods.
• We helped develop one of the best Planning Dept. proposals in years for getting sites for affordable housing.
• We’ve revived discussion about legalizing in-law units.
• We’ve influenced the Planning Department staff consensus, changing their proposed zoning map and getting us closer than we have ever been to good planning for our new neighborhoods.
None of these things were true in December 2006.

As we finish working on Plan Potrero Hill, with a draft workbook due out soon, our success in moving the Planning Department closer to our goals bears repeating, along with our other successes in neighborhood advocacy this year.
• We built a rare City-wide consensus about our energy future, with the able assistance and leadership of the Potrero Power Plant Task Force. With approvals on the way for the Transbay Cable and the (smaller, cleaner, more efficient) peaker plants, Mirant has announced the closure of the Potrero Power Plant in the near future and is actively planning for a new use of that land that doesn’t pollute our neighborhood.
• We discovered (and stopped) a secret City plan to dump an unplanned and unsafe Halloween celebration in our neighborhood, forcing the City to concentrate on maintaining public safety at such events.
• We discovered (and stopped) an overlooked City deal to trade away Channel Street, one of our last potential City-owned sites for open space, to the garbage company; and in so doing forced the City to get to work finding new open space opportunities in our neighborhoods.
• We built a better working relationship with local concert promoters; Live Nation’s Rock the Bells concert in August was noticeably easier on the neighborhood than past concerts at the Port, and we hope that it set a standard for such events in the future.
• Most important of all, we’ve built a large and vocal community that is aware of neighborhood and City issues. Our crime meetings have had a clear impact on public safety and community policing; our two (or more!) helipad advocacy groups have definitely affected, if not stopped, plans for helipads on top of our local hospitals. If you add up all the neighborhood associations, block groups, homeowners associations, the Merchants and Parents associations and other volunteer groups, you’ll find that nearly 2,000 Hill residents belong to at least one neighborhood advocacy group. With a total Hill population of about 10,000, that is just an amazing statistic; other City neighborhoods envy our awareness and activity.

So where do we go from here? We are clearly on the verge of a lot of major successes, but we must continue to organize and share our volunteer efforts. And yes, this is now a pitch to renew your Boosters membership, and bring your neighbors into the organization as well. (click the link on this page!)

We’ve heard from a number of neighbors this year that it’s so hard to keep up – with what the City throws at us, or with the various efforts to improve the Hill. They ask, isn’t there a way to combine all of these various volunteer groups? On one level, there really isn’t, Hill groups value their independence; but we at the Boosters will certainly work in the next year to build stronger connections between the various active communities of Potrero Hill. We’ll upgrade our online resources and work actively to bring new and existing groups together on shared missions. Now more than ever, join us, and work with us!

Booster member Julie Jackson (julie@jacksonliles.com) wrote this recap of the June 26 Boosters meeting with Captain Albert Pardini of Bayview Station. Thanks, Julie!

San Francisco SAFE
To set up a Neighborhood Watch, call 673-SAFE, or get more information at
www.sfsafe.org

SAFE brochures: http://www.sfsafe. org/2os_brochure.htm

Personal safety tips:Thieves are looking for easy opportunities - be aware of your surroundings at all times, walk with confidence
Trust your gut instinct if you feel that you are in danger
Stay on well traveled streets, avoid shortcuts that would take you off the beaten path
Only carry the cash and items you need, separate your money, identification and keys in separate pockets
Avoid gas stations and ATM machines at night, if possible
Stay in well lighted areas at night
Program 911 and the local SF emergency # 553-8090 into your cell phone
Use your cell phone camera to take pictures of anything suspicious or to
capture license plate numbers, this can be done discreetly

Home safety tips: Keep your windows and doors locked, install motion sensor
activated lights at the exterior of your home, get to know your neighbors,
let your neighbors know your typical schedule and when you will be out of
town so they know to be suspicious if they see activity at the house at an
unusual time, set up a Neighborhood Watch with your neighbors, consider
having SAFE come to do a Home Security Assessment on your home

Car safety tips: lock your doors once you get into your car, don’t leave
items in your car when parked, don’t leave your garage door opener in your
car at any time (it could get stolen and the thief would have easy access to
your home), be aware of your garage door area when you are coming or leaving
in your car (someone could sneak in)

Captain Albert Pardini from the Bayview Police Station
Sign up to get the weekly e-mailed report from the Bayview Station by
sending an e-mail request to the Bayview station at:
SFPDBayviewStation@ci.sf.ca.us

There is no easy answer on the crime that has been proliferating on Potrero
Hill, unfortunately. Apparently, there are many “commuter criminals” coming
to the City due to SF’s low prosecution rate. Again, they are looking for
an easy opportunity to get cash or items that they can sell for cash.
Captain Pardini said that the police dept. thinks that gang activity in the
Potrero Hill Housing Development is on a downward trend. No answers on the
many gunshots we hear from time to time, except that the City is *maybe*
looking at thinking about possibly researching a system that detects
gunshots and immediately alerts authorities to the location where the shot
was fired from. Basically, the department is understaffed and the Bayview
station covers a huge area of the City with around 115 officers. Since they
can’t be everywhere at all times, he highly encouraged us to set up
Neighborhood Watches, look out for each other and notify them of anything in
the least bit suspicious.
Tony suggested that we find out what we as a
community can do to pressure the City to allocate more resources to the
department, I hope that can be discussed further at a future Booster’s
meeting.

Captain Pardini stressed that ANY suspicious person or activity should be
called into the non-emergency police #553-0123. He emphasized that no
matter is too small to report to this number, so trust your instinct. You
can call anonymously, or you can leave your contact information and have
them follow up with you after they check out the situation. Of course, in
an emergency don’t hesitate to call 911 or the local emergency #553-8090.
Don’t hang up if you are put on hold or you will have to restart your place
in the queue. If you are on the highway and the 911 call gets routed to the
Vallejo CHP, they will redirect you immediately to SF when they answer the
call.

You can also request “Passing Calls” (officers will make several drive-by
trips to a certain area over a period of time) by calling the station at
671-2300. This is a good way of getting more police presence in your area,
which in itself can discourage crime.

Officers patrolling the Potrero Housing Development carry cell phones in
order to be contacted quickly. Their numbers are below.
Potrero Hill Development
Officers Kelvin Sanders and Alex Rodatos 415-509-1408
Potrero Hill Development
Officers Tim Fowlie and George Ferraez 415-987-6389

For property theft crimes, such as car break ins or bicycle thefts, take
advantage of the online reporting system at:
http://www.sfgov. org/site/ police_index. asp?id=28854

It’s very quick and you will be able to print out the final report which will be sent via e-mail. It also saves the officer the time of having to come out to to take the
report and then go back to the station and input the information the old
way, which results in more officers on the street. It’s still a bummer to
have something stolen, but at least the online version is easier than the
old system of making a police report.

For nuisance issues such as trash or abandoned cars, call 311 and make sure
to take note of the ticket number in case you need to follow up with a
supervisor if the matter is not corrected.

I hope that others will chime in with anything I may have missed and forward
their information to the group. Thanks to Tony for arranging to have the
Booster’s meeting this month focused on safety at the request of many
neighbors on the Hill.

Best,
Julie