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March 21, 2013Good Government Awards: How Ted Egan Fixed the Business Tax SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country. Ted Egan was a key player in the effort to reform the payroll tax system in San Francisco. His work culminated in Proposition E, the fall 2012 ballot measure that created a tiered gross receipts tax. Prop. E’s passage, which ended a decade of attempts to devise a tax structure that...
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March 21, 2013Good Government Awards: How Jaime Flores-Lovo Modernized SF Public Works SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country. Jaime Flores-Lovo was honored for his vision and leadership in the development of enterprise-level technology projects for the Department of Public Works, most significantly in the system migration for the department’s contract automation. This represented a major departure from the...
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March 21, 2013Good Government Awards: How Lea Militello Tamed the Streets of San Francisco SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country. Lea Militello was honored for her critical leadership in building a security plan for San Francisco streets, especially during public events. Her accomplishments over the October 2012 “busiest weekend in San Francisco” — when more than 1 million people converged to...
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March 21, 2013Good Government Awards: How Michelle Ruggels Helps San Franciscans Get the Health Care They Need SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country. Michelle Ruggels was honored for her leadership in overseeing $490 million in annual contracts to 200 community-based organizations that provide community health services to San Franciscans. An employee of the Department of Public Health since 1997, Michelle led the Mental Health Medi-Cal...
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March 21, 2013Good Government Awards: How the Crime Data Warehouse Team Made SF Safer SPUR’s 33rd annual Good Government Awards, held March 19, 2013, honored City of San Francisco employees who have performed exceptionally, becoming models for other agencies and cities around the country. The Crime Data Warehouse Team was honored for building a web-based, real-time, searchable database of criminal reports that police officers can access on the ground. Susan Giffin, with the support of visionary team members Rodrigo Castillo, Alan Honniball and Leo Solomon, put together a...
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March 11, 2013Making Better Places: Urban Design Lessons Along the Peninsula By Benjamin Grant, Public Realm and Urban Design Program ManagerHow do we create the kinds of compact, walkable environments that can have a real impact on car use and carbon emissions? SPUR San Jose’s Urban Design Task Force is working to foster well-designed new development that will support the city’s 2040 General Plan goals of a more walkable, livable and transit-friendly built environment. To understand the current state of development practice, we spent a recent Saturday visiting projects up and down the peninsula, focusing on large, multi...
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March 5, 2013Sacramento County Approves New Sprawl, Rejects the Sustainable Communities Strategy By Egon Terplan and Ethan Lavine The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is facing heavy criticism and a lawsuit for its decision to approve the Cordova Hills subdivision, a new development for 25,000 residents on what is now rolling hills and ranch land 22 miles east of downtown Sacramento. The development would add thousands of new homes far from the region’s center, violating the Sustainable Communities Strategy that every city and county in the region agreed upon last year. As the Natural Resources Defense Council...
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March 5, 2013Discovering San Jose by Bike By Leah Toeniskoetter, SPUR San Jose DirectorAn enthusiastic group of 45 urbanists on bikes kicked off a crisp Sunday morning to tour a few of San Jose’s historic neighborhoods with SPUR. Using the new bike lanes on 10th and 11th streets, along with a number of established bike routes and separated bike paths, we wove our way through three amazing gems — Naglee Park, Palm Haven and Willow Glen. Setting off from the San Jose State University campus downtown, we made our way to our first stop. Naglee ParkThe first...
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February 26, 2013Reimagining the Caltrain Railyards By Tomiquia Moss, Community Planning Policy Director, and Sarah Karlinsky, Deputy DirectorCould the Caltrain station and railyards at 4th and King streets be San Francisco’s next big planning opportunity? The current station is the node that links San Francisco to Silicon Valley and the peninsula. It’s also the hub of an extraordinary network of Muni rail lines: the N Judah, the T Third and soon the Central Subway, which will run down 4th Street before heading underground to Chinatown and North Beach. In addition, the area is served by numerous Muni bus lines. Very few...
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February 26, 2013South Bay Ag Tour: Many Farms, Many Business Models by Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program ManagerThe array of food grown within a couple of hours of San Francisco makes our region truly unique. Along with an astounding amount of agricultural diversity, the Bay Area's farms and ranches employ a wide range of business models. This is an asset to their economic vibrancy, but it also means there are few "one size fits all" policy recommendations to support regional agriculture. I got a firsthand taste of this complexity on a tour of farms and ranches in San Mateo County...
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