RE: Beacon St

[Alan Gevins]

Hi Fred, Thanks for all your efforts in successfully negotiating with the city to cut the high weeds on Billy Goat Hill to help eliminate a fire disaster just waiting to happen. Thanks also for your personal efforts in sweeping up the cuttings. For my part, I picked up a bunch of trash that was thrown onto the sidewalk and street by the cutting operation.

I think the bigger picture here is how are our property tax revenues being spent by the city? I do not think that we are receiving the services that we are paying for. The simple answer is that under Willy Brown's administration, the city payroll expanded enormously although the population of the city remained static. Has there ever been an audit by independent management consultants of the staffing levels of the various departments of our city government relative to the services provided? I recently needed copies of the plans for a property I own in the city and was subjected to a Kafkaesque experience that required two personal trips to the building department office and which took several months and cost several hundred dollars. I think my experience is quite typical of how much of the city government serves its constituents.

What can we as taxpayers do about this?

-alan

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred LaCosse [mailto:Fred.L...@lacosse.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 7:28 AM
To: 'Obrien, Teresa'; 'Bowman, Kristin'
Cc: 'Lockwood, Darlene'; 'Wayne, Lisa'; Alan Gevins; 'David Ehrlich'; Lenn...@aol.com; 'Jeanne Koelling'; 'Jane Lidz & Bill Johnson'
Subject: Beacon St

Dear Teresa and Kristin,

The fire hazard on Beacon Street has been reduced tremendously. Will did a great job Saturday morning. He said that he borrowed the John Deere tractor from a friend. That way he could do the complete job in a couple of hours.

Just so you're aware, Will did not have equipment or time to pick up everything he had cut. Much of the cut grass and weeds blew into the chicanes. Therefore, to prevent the clogging of sewage drain pipes caused when dead grass is blown to the west side of Beacon Street and to all of the chicanes , I swept up as much of the dead grass as possible into small piles at curbside so that the huge street sweeper could remove it on his regular Monday morning shift. I watered the piles so they wouldn't blow around. It worked. Now, let's hope that the thick coating of clipped grass that still sits atop the area between the curb and the sidewalk on the east side will not be blown by heavy winds that do occur here on Billy Goat Hill.

I totally understand that more manpower and equipment would be needed to remove everything that is clipped, manpower that you no longer have.
Therefore, I am happy, as usual, to help out when I can.

Also, for your information, Will's equipment could not trim the thick weeds that grow between the curb and the street pavement. Twice a year we hire gardeners to trim growth around our house. They're coming again tomorrow morning, and we'll have them also trim those 'hard to get to' weeds between the curb and the street.

Thank you again for arranging for Will to accomplish the trimming last Saturday.

Take care.

Fred


Fred LaCosse
415-643-9060
[fax] 415-643-9063
P.O. Box 31276
San Francisco, CA 94131
www.lacosse.net

[Alan Gevins]

You're welcome, Kristin.
May I ask if you have an organizational chart for PSA 5 and the department of which it is a subdivision?
Thanks, -alan gevins

-----Original Message-----
From: Bowman, Kristin [mailto:kristin...@sfgov.org]
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 6:27 PM
To: Alan Gevins; Fred LaCosse
Cc: Wiener, Scott; Lockwood, Darlene; Wayne, Lisa; 'David Ehrlich'; Lenn...@aol.com; Lita Sam-Vargas; 'Jeanne Koelling'; Obrien, Teresa; Jane Lidz & Bill Johnson; friends-of-bi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Beacon St

Thank you Fred and Alan for your follow up email. For the past 5 months PSA 5 has been short 6 gardener position. We just hired a gardener who started on June 23rd and we are thrilled for this relief. Teresa plans to follow up with Will any additional immediate work that needs to take place at Beacon Street. Thank you. Kristin

[Lisa and Mo]

Thanks so much Fred for helping to make sure this was taken care of - I saw Will out there with his John Deer but didn't appreciate that this was personal equipment!  Mo joked that maybe we should just buy a push mower for the park - maybe he is right! 

If there is something we can do for Will to show our appreciation, I am supportive of this.

Thanks also for the clean-up and for having your gardener cut the hard-to-get weeds. I have some free time this Saturday if there is anything else you see needing attention, I can work on it then.

Rec and Park has taken the series of hard knocks over the last several years with budget cuts. We are all hopeful that the worse is over and hopefully we can get back to a reasonable level of support for our gardeners. 

Lisa

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