Calling the quality-of-life crimes that plague downtown San Francisco appalling and frustrating, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Friday he plans to clean up the area by opening a new courthouse to crack down on such infractions as public urination, aggressive panhandling, graffiti and prostitution.

Newsom returned Thursday from New York City, where he toured the Mid-Town Community Court. Opened in 1993, the court is heralded by supporters as one of the keys to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s transformation of Times Square.

Newsom said he will open a similar court in the Tenderloin as soon as this summer. It would serve the several dozen city blocks bounded by Van Ness Avenue, Sutter Street, Second Street, Folsom Street and 11th Street, the area most blighted by quality-of-life infractions. It would be run by the San Francisco Superior Court but would be in an as-yet-undecided location separate from the courthouse.

"We are bringing it to San Francisco, and I cannot tell you how enthusiastic I am," Newsom said Friday at City Hall. "This is a big deal."

The details of the San Francisco court are still being worked out, but in New York City it works like this: People picked up for quality-of-life infractions are immediately taken to the court, where a presiding judge, representatives from the district attorney and public defender offices and an advocate for the homeless and poor are waiting.

Often, the defendant is assigned community service and directed into social services within hours of committing the crime. When possible, the community service is linked to the infraction; litterers pick up trash, while graffiti artists or vandals wipe down walls covered in graffiti. The court processes hundreds of cases a day, and the city spends $1.5 million annually to run it.

In addition, anybody wanting access to social services — such as drug treatment or job training — can show up at the court to ask for them.

"It’s exactly what we don’t do now," Newsom said.

Currently, those committing infractions in San Francisco are given citations and told to show up at traffic court in 45 days, meaning they can go right back to panhandling or whatever they were doing to get the citation in the first place. Usually, the citations are tossed out. Newsom said police have asked him why they even bother issuing the citations since nothing ever comes of it.

"No one benefits," Newsom said of the current method.

Newsom said respect for those committing the crimes will be paramount. But Jennifer Friedenbach, organizing director for the Coalition on Homelessness, said she doubts that claim. She said she is familiar with New York’s Mid-Town Community Court and called it "a huge waste of resources."

"There is absolutely no reason that somebody should be put into the criminal justice system when they have committed no crime except to be too poor to afford a place to live," she said.

She said anybody who appears homeless or poor is likely to be a target, unlike, say, a wealthier-looking man urinating against a South of Market wall.

"It ends up being profiling," she said.

Supervisor Chris Daly, who represents the area that would be served by the court and is a strong critic of Newsom, did not immediately return calls for comment.

Newsom has been studying the court idea for months and assigned his deputy chief of staff, Julian Potter, to lead a delegation to New York late last year.

She went with representatives of the district attorney, the public defender, the sheriff, public health and social services departments, the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and San Francisco Superior Court. The same delegation has since formed a committee to get the court up and running.

Before getting started, the program must gain approval from the presiding judge of the Superior Court, said Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn. Newsom met with five Superior Court judges to discuss the idea, Potter said.

Kahn said Friday that the court hasn’t seen enough details.

"In theory, there is a lot of support for a community court, but we need to see what the particulars will be," he said.

Lisa Lightman, who directs special drug and mental health courts within the Superior Court, said the idea is "long overdue" in San Francisco and that similar programs exist in 30 cities around the country as well as in London and South Africa.

"It’s really a trend that’s catching on," she said. "When you deal with the low-level crimes, it’s really the jump start to preventing larger instances of crime in an urban area."

Newsom has made combatting homelessness a top priority since he was a supervisor representing the Marina and Pacific Heights. In 2002, he successfully pushed for passage of a ballot measure called "Care Not Cash," which reduced the city’s welfare checks in return for housing the recipients.

The next year, he authored another successful ballot measure to prohibit panhandling aggressively in front of ATMs and on traffic islands and freeway ramps.

In 2004, his first year as mayor, he oversaw the writing of the 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness and began Project Homeless Connect, a bimonthly, volunteer-staffed, one-stop shop for homeless people to get services. He also has started Homeward Bound, which pays for a bus ticket home for homeless people and has pushed for more housing and social services for chronic inebriates.

Nearly 5,000 homeless people have been taken off the streets since Newsom became mayor, according to the mayor’s office. The city’s count of homeless people, conducted every two years, showed a 28 percent decrease to 6,248 from 2003 to 2005. The 2007 count, conducted in January, is to be released soon.

However, many of those housed under Care Not Cash are left with less than $2 a day to subsist, meaning many of them are still on the streets every day panhandling. That gives the impression that the homelessness problem in the downtown core really hasn’t budged, Potter said.

"You walk there and say, ‘Newsom said he did something, but it looks the same to me,’ " she said, noting that the proposed new court intends to fix that problem. "This is the next step."

Newsom said establishing the court is one of the main reasons he is seeking re-election in November.

According to the same release, about 43% approve of same sex marriages while about half of residents disapprove.

This is pretty remarkable stuff when you look at it in the context of the rest of the nation. The bottom line, according to the poll, is that the shift is related to two factors. The first, and more influential, is the generational shift on attitudes towards gay people.

The second, at about a third of residents, is just the straight up changing of people’s views. That is, people have just flat out changed their minds.

Interesting.

One of the quotes that Mayor Newsom refers to most when talking about this issue comes from Dr. Martin Luther King:

“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Of course, Dr. King’s comments were made when African Americans were in a deep struggle for equality. But what is most amazing about the words of great people is how their wisdom seems timeless and relevant.

Today, Gavin Newsom took another step in that direction by saying that he is willing to consider making Muni free. That’s right, free. Now, here is the important part: he said it is an idea worth considering. No commitment to do it, because it might be a terrible idea.

But, it might be a brilliant idea that will change this city and show how acting locally really makes a difference in the world.

That is the hallmark of the Newsom style of governing – try new things; consider the idea that many have dismissed as impossible.

So now we have a good idea to talk about here on ActLocallySF.org.

Our Municipal Transportation Authority is looking under the hood to see if free Muni makes sense.

What is your take on it? Leave a comment. Talk to your friends and family and let us know what you all think.

"THERE they go again.

"The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote today on Jake McGoldrick’s nonbinding resolution urging the city to study building a municipal wireless network rather than proceeding with the public-private partnership Mayor Gavin Newsom worked out with Earthlink and Google. The resolution is ridiculous and redundant. The city’s budget analyst already completed a study that thoroughly examines the municipal idea, and it’s not pretty: A municipal network is feasible, but it would cost $10 million in start-up costs and at least another $1 million a year for maintenance. Oh, and every other major metropolitan area with municipal wireless has a public-private partnership instead. (Boston has approved a municipal network with nonprofit partnerships, but it’s not up and running yet. The only other substantial city to try municipally owned wireless — Corpus Christi, Texas — changed its mind and recently signed up with a private company.)

"Newsom’s public-private partnership has been well-received by technology experts and comes with a taxpayers’ price tag of zero. Still, McGoldrick’s resolution has a decent shot at passage. This defies common sense, but not a sense of political posturing during an election year.

"So, here we go. The script is obvious: After the supervisors pass McGoldrick’s resolution, they’ll have laid the groundwork to reject the public-private partnership, which goes up for a vote later this month, by claiming that all the "research" isn’t in. The city’s quest for wireless will grind to a halt while the useless study takes place. Earthlink and Google, who’ve been welcomed by other municipalities with open arms, may lose patience and go away. The mayor’s opponents on the Board of Supervisors will bluster about how this is about providing San Franciscans with the "best," a tough claim when the city isn’t experienced in building wireless networks and is staring at a $10 million price tag and meanwhile, city residents aren’t getting any wireless at all. Must this story go on?"

The supervisors should reject McGoldrick’s resolution.

Here’s what the Chronicle said:

Wire those jaws
(Monday, January 22, 2007)
 
With San Francisco’s plan to secure citywide wireless Internet access ready to launch, we have to ask the dissenting supervisors a simple question: Do you want to complain, or do you want to do something positive?

For the moment, the former is prevailing at City Hall. Of course the plan that Mayor Gavin Newsom has negotiated with Earthlink and Google isn’t perfect — there are legitimate concerns about privacy and the network’s planned "two-tier" speeds that bear further scrutiny. But because the dissenting supervisors don’t have a viable plan of their own, they ought to concentrate on making the best of this one, not trying to vaporize it.

Newsom’s proposal is a public-private partnership. Earthlink would build a citywide network and provide a "premium" service level of 1 megabit-per-second for an estimated cost of about $20 a month. Google would provide a "basic" service level, at a network speed of about 300 kilobits-per-second, for free. Earthlink would assume the responsibility of paying an estimated $7 million to $10 million for building and operating the network, as well as paying for regularly upgraded service, and the city, in turn, would receive 5 percent of system revenues to fund digital inclusivity programs.

The dissenting supervisors’ only legitimate complaint is about the two-tiered network speeds, but even that is for different reasons than how they describe it. They argue that 300 Kbps is a prehistoric speed that no one will use, and that’s nonsense. A dial-up modem is 56 Kbps, and plenty of San Franciscans still use those. The new, free network will be fine for e-mail and light browsing, though users will get frustrated with huge files and video. Unfortunately, it still can’t compare to the 1 Mbps base speed of other municipalities in the Bay Area. Granted, the Bay Area’s fully online municipalities are quite a bit smaller than San Francisco, and there are other parts of their deals that aren’t nearly as favorable as the city’s is. (Chris Vein, the city’s chief information officer, insists that San Francisco’s deal is the best a large municipality has gotten nationwide.) Still, speed counts in Silicon Valley, and San Francisco may have to upgrade fast.

Less convincing is the dissenting supervisors’ desire to build either a municipally-owned network, or partner with nonprofit enterprises (Supervisor Jake McGoldrick suggested community colleges) to provide free or low-cost wireless access. No offense, but why should we hand over $10 million of our tax money so the city can experiment with building a network? Wireless is an amenity, not a necessity such as water, law enforcement or sewage. The city needs to focus on its core business.

Citywide wireless is the kind of experiment that’s best left to the private enterprises that specialize in the engineering feats that will be necessary to build and maintain a network on the city’s hilly terrain — especially if they’re doing it for free. That’s what convinced our neighbors — Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and Foster City — who have either public-private partnerships or privately owned agreements for their services. "It’s been a positive experience for us, a real benefit to the community," said Ellis Berns, economic development manager for the city of Mountain View. "I’m mystified about the resistance in San Francisco."

Like most San Franciscans, I grew up on 49er football. As a boy, I was captivated by the great moments. Montana to Clark. "The Catch." Young to Rice. And now the exciting promise of this new team.

The tradition of football in San Francisco is proud — and rightly so. The great teams of the 1980s and 1990s were — and will always remain to me — examples of excellence in action.

Now, as mayor, I have the task of trying to keep the team we love in the city we love.

First and foremost, I applaud the 49er ownership for their decision to return to the table with San Francisco. Our discussions these past few weeks have been both cordial and frank. As we move forward with this task, I think it is important to put some issues in perspective.

San Francisco is prepared to offer the team every reasonable accommodation. We are proud of the San Francisco 49ers, and we want to keep them here.

As we once again engage in discussions, there is one simple principle that rises above all others: Keeping our promise to San Franciscans that a new stadium plan brings economic benefit to the surrounding neighborhoods and the entire city.

In 1997, the 49ers made a promise to us. They said that a new stadium would create "10,000 jobs." That it would anchor the revitalization of the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. And in return, the people of Bayview-Hunters Point voted overwhelmingly to support the plan proposed by the team 10 years ago. They have waited patiently ever since for that promise to be fulfilled.

We must keep that promise.

The new preliminary plans for a mixed-use project at Candlestick Point will do just that. The plans call for a magnificent new shoreline park, thousands of units of housing, including significant affordable housing, and new retail areas that will serve both visitors and the surrounding neighborhoods.

This kind of mixed-use plan is a benefit to the 49ers, the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood and the city as a whole.

For the 49ers, it means a significant share in revenues that will help offset the cost of the stadium. For the surrounding neighborhood, it means hundreds of millions of dollars in community benefits, such as the creation of thousands of permanent jobs and rebuilding the Alice Griffith Housing Project for the benefit of Alice Griffith residents. And for the city, it means that we do not need to tap our general fund, saving these dollars for investments in city needs such as parks, potholes and police.

There are many ways we can adapt this plan to make it more agreeable to the 49ers, including the possibility of integrating other adjacent properties. We are looking forward to rolling up our sleeves, identifying the challenges that remain and finding solutions.

But as we do this, there are some compromises we can’t make. We can’t mortgage our financial future as a city. And we can’t forget our promise to the community in order to subsidize a sports franchise.

With creativity and determination, we can keep our promise to San Franciscans and keep our football team. But ultimate success in this venture will rest, like those victories of years past, on "keeping our eye on the ball."

In my view, the ultimate "Catch" for San Francisco is a great new neighborhood at Candlestick Point that helps revitalize the proud neighborhood of Bayview-Hunters Point.