Potrero Hill History Night 2022 on YouTube!

from Potrero View 2023: March

Why I Choose to Raise My Family in San Francisco

Daylight

“This has not been an easy road,” said Francesca Vega, Vice Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. “I want to thank you for your engagement, for your brutal honesty.”

“One of my mother’s favorite expressions was: ‘the difference between involvement and commitment [is], if you look at a plate of bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig was committed.’ I look around here, and all I see are committed people,” Julie Christensen, Executive Director of the Dogpatch and NW Potrero Hill Green Benefit District, said.

Melissa, Bonnie, and Kristin had their dogs laying leisurely by their feet during the ceremony. Melissa said she’d been coming to the park daily for more than five years, led by her pet, Lola. The three friends said Esprit has created a community of dog owners, with both people and animals making friends.

“Lola loves the park,” said Kristin.

Nikita Khetan of Red Bridge school, whose students assisted in the groundbreaking, was asked whether the presence of dogs in Esprit Park had ever prompted concerns. Khetan declined to characterize dogs as threatening, instead remarking that “we are always alert to aspects of a public area,” while noting that Crane Cove Park is used by the school more frequently since it’s closer to campus. about the February launch of the Mission Bay Library Garden Club, which over the next several months will convene to discuss such topics as container gardening and growing micro greens, along with plant and seed exchanges.

Departing the groundbreaking, the sense optimism in the air was tempered, only slightly from your correspondent’s perspective, by a shoe bearing the unmistakable imprint, and smell, of something that shouldn’t have been left on the grass.

Mission Bay is one of only five SFPL branches that has a vinyl collection with records available to borrow; the others are located in the Marina, Eureka Valley, Park Branch, and Western Addition.

“We have a nice collection that we rotate in our window display,” De Brauwere said.

Knitting club members select an LP to play before they get down to business in the programming room.

The branch is located in a building owned by Mercy Housing, the nation’s largest nonprofit affordable residential developer; many regulars are lowincome seniors. With 70 percent of the residents native Chinese speakers, De Brauwere partnered with a colleague at the Main Library to host classes that teach how to access SFPL’s vast digital collection of Chinese newspapers, books, magazines, and audio books.

“Our Chinese-speaking seniors can drop in, ask for help, do printing, play with computers,” said De Brauwere.

In addition to Chinese, she noted that the Russian and Spanish adult collections are consistently used.

On the other end of the patron spectrum are the branch’s pint-sized visitors. De Brauwere noted that Mission Bay experiences constant turnover, with families in particular often only staying in the neighborhood for short spells. In line with San Francisco’s demographics, many young parents decide to relocate to be closer to the elementary school they select for their child, a phenomenon that could change after the Mission Bay school opens in 2025.

“We see a lot of babies to preschoolers, but usually nothing after that,” said De Brauwere.

The branch wants to hire a full-time children services librarian.

“The job is a demanding position, especially for this community. Today, we do one Storytime a week—Tuesdays at 10:15 a.m.—and can only let 54 people in. At a minimum, we have 80 people show up; they line up half an hour before we open to get tickets,” she said. “While Storytime is geared towards toddlers, we see all ages, and would like to split the event to accommodate different ages. If we had five story times a week, people would show up for that. And we want to let everyone in.”

The library holds a monthly Storytime in partnership with local preschools, such as Mission Bay Head Start, and Kai Ming Head Start. As a carryover from the pandemic, the library also offers craft kits for all ages, containing pre-cut pieces that can be assembled at home into a pinecone birdfeeder, rain cloud, or a melting snowman.

The branch is located near South-ofMarket, with the City’s highest concentration of unhoused people. It’s been subject to disruptive and inappropriate behavior. While library staff have been trained on how to handle safety situations, De Brauwere feels fortunate to have a security guard present five days a week and hopes to extend that to daily coverage.

“Everyone is welcome to use the library as intended,” she noted.

As at all SFPL branches, anyone who can show a picture identification and proof of California residence is issued a card. Living in San Francisco isn’t a requirement.

Another draw for readers is the

Timothy C. Benetti

May 8, 1964 - January 11, 2023

On January 11, 2023, Timothy C. Benetti, 58, passed away in his sleep with his cat Joey at his side, an enormous loss for all those fortunate enough to know him.

Tim was born in San Francisco on May 8, 1964, to Irene and Ernie Benetti. In 1974, Irene remarried, and Raymond DeVita became a devoted father to Tim and his brother David.

When he was three years old, Tim began his lifelong love affair with baseball. His childhood was spent playing ball and watching heroes like Willie Mays and McCovey chase glory at Candlestick Park. Tim was himself a great baseball player, also excelling at other sports. Tim loved his San Francisco teams: the Giants, 49ers, and Warriors.

Tim grew up in the Portola District, with McLaren Park as his backyard playground. He attended Corpus Christi Grammar School, Riordan High School, and Santa Clara University. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in the same class as Vice President Kamala Harris. Tim practiced law briefly at McCutchen.

After his first year of law school, Tim was in an automobile accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. In the face of what’d be insurmountable adversity for most, Tim met the ensuing lifelong challenges with grace and strength that were inspiring to witness. His resilience and unwillingness to yield to limitations made him outlast all predictions for his life’s scope and length.

Tim and his brother Dave created and became owners of the Bottom of the Hill, a world-renowned music venue in Potrero Hill, in 1991. Tim remained a partner with Kathleen Owen, Ramona Downey, and Lynn Schwarz, until his death.

Tim was a dedicated public servant. He was a San Francisco Deputy City Attorney from 2004 to 2006. He was a legal advisor for the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System from 2006 to 2019. He served on the San Francisco

“Lucky Day Collection.”

“The principle is to have a browsable collection of bestsellers; those that are just appearing on New York Times lists, books that have hundreds of holds on them,” De Brauwere explained. “We incentivize patrons to come to the library and browse the collection. If it’s your lucky day, you get to check one of these popular books out.”

Volumes are identified by a light green “Lucky Day” paper band around the cover.

The branch also has an expansive Blu-ray and DVD collection.

“We have a lot of DVDs from the Criterion Collection being published to Blu-ray,” said De Brauwere. “These movies are normally not available on streaming services. Our collection is vast, and we keep ordering.”

De Brauwere shared a unique patron benefit; the ability to check out a California State Park pass, which provides free vehicle day-use entry to more than 200 state parks.

“We have about 20 of those available at Mission Bay library. People can check them out for three weeks—just like a book—and go to visit state parks.”

Entertainment Commission from 2010 to 2014, where he fiercely advocated for protection of the City’s live music scene, a job that combined his loves: the law, his venue, and San Francisco’s wider music ecosystem.

Tim was different things to different people, with an easy, good-natured charm. He was equally at home with old-school Italians, tough bikers, PC indie rockers, City Hall elites, and the working-class people that he crossed paths with daily. He had an understated confidence; there was always a hint of a laugh in his voice when he spoke. He was a gifted communicator, both in verbal storytelling and the written word. Tim was a dedicated and generous friend to many, offering guidance and support, not asking anything in return. He was a good son and a pillar of strength to his mother.

Tim will be missed by many, in San Francisco and in the Sacramento region, where he later moved. He’s predeceased by his father Ernie and stepdad Ray –both of whom he adored – and survived by his mother Irene, sister Anna Lisa, beloved cat Joey, and countless friends.

A funeral mass will take place at 10 a.m. on March 7, 2023, at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, 459 Somerset Street, San Francisco. A celebration of life will be held at 1 p.m. on April 16, 2023, at the Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th Street. All are welcome to attend both events.

Laura Dudnick, SFUSD interim communications director, said when students are chronically absent SFUSD deploys a “care coordination strategy… intentionally organizing student and family services and sharing information with all of the people connected to a student to achieve more effective care and better outcomes. The Student and Family Services Division has a dynamic role in the District’s approach to coordinated care. We have staff assigned to various school sites who hold this work; school social workers, wellness staff, and school nurses. We have central teams of staff who support consultation, direct work with students and families, and tiered supports such as compliance work.”

SFUSD implemented group tracing for COVID-19 in March 2022. The method allows students who are close contacts to stay in school unless they have or develop symptoms or test positive for COVID-19. Despite this approach, according to Dudnick, SFUSD saw the greatest attendance dips during the September and January 2022 COVID-19 surges.

Rebecca Kee, Daniel Webster Elementary School Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) president, said the school’s administration is “really excellent” at targeting issues rather than having a “one size fits all” approach.

“They invest in getting to know our families so that they have a sense of who’s out due to illness and who’s missing school for other reasons they can help address. Fortunately, I don’t think most absenteeism is due to things other than these relentless germs!” said Kee. Scholars and their families can seek help through the Student Family and School Resource Link, which provides a way to navigate SFUSD resources. The District’s Coordinated Care Team follows up on truancy cases, partnering with schools to find ways to support the family, such as assisting with transportation if that’s an issue.

“The effort includes…school attendance review boards, suspension, expulsion, focus population work such as LGTBQ, Refugee and Immigrant Solidarity in Education, a SFUSD program to increase access to education for refugee and immigrant students,

ABSENTEEISM continues on page 10

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as prices continue to rise, and reliability falter.

Well-off families are installing battery-supported photovoltaics. Industrial, commercial and agricultural energy users are doing the same, at larger scales, adding wind and other resources.

Where they can’t entirely flee, captive customers add expensive redundancies. As of last year there were 9,121 backup generators (BUGs) in the Bay

Area, with a collective capacity of more than five gigawatts, ninety percent diesel powered. This excludes smaller gensets located at residences. In San Francisco alone there are 1,208 non-residential BUGs, with a combined power producing capacity of 736 megawatts, enough to energize all the City’s homes and businesses on a mild spring day. PG&E’s performance is so untrustworthy that a redundant fossil fuel “shadow grid” has emerged, at the cost of billions of dollars, to safeguard reliability.

CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO Community Outreach Public Notice

San Francisco Board of Supervisors Board or Commission Vacancies:

Participate on a Board or Commission!

The Assessment Appeals Board (AAB)

The AAB resolves legal and value assessment issues between the Assessor’s office and property owners. Board vacancies are as follows: Board 1 – one; Board 2 - four; and Board 3 – five. Hearings are quasi-judicial, conducted in a manner similar to a court setting, with evidence and testimony presented by the parties. The Board then evaluates the evidence and testimony and renders its decision.

To be eligible for seat appointment, you must have a minimum of five years professional experience in California as either a: (1) public accountant; (2) real estate broker; (3) attorney; or (4) property appraiser accredited by a nationally recognized organization, or certified by either the Office of Real Estate Appraiser or the State Board of Equalization.

For a full list of current or upcoming Boards, Commissions and Task Forces, please visit https://sfbos.org/ vacancy-boards-commissions-task-forces

LOCAL BUSINESS DIRECTORY CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO Community Outreach Public Notice Potrero View English 5"x7.75"

Potrero View English 5"x7.75"

Like many a bad long-term relationship, it’s hard not to fill stuck with PG&E. A clean break isn’t possible, at least not everywhere all at once. Instead, an orderly retreat is required, one that’s place-based and sensitive to those left behind. Local governments that can should municipalize their portion of PG&E’s system, buying the monopoly out, supported by state legislation that makes the process quick and fair, with a big, ugly, stick poised over the monopoly’s head if it doesn’t cooperate. Communities vulnerable to wildfire risks should be encouraged to replace PG&E’s poles and wires with their own microgrid, islanded, where possible; if not connected at the transmission level to a substation they own. In areas in which utility distribution is best mixed with autonomous household, business, and campus-level energy systems, an open access approach should be imposed, enabling anyone to convey energy through utility wires at a reasonable price. Afterall, we paid for this infrastructure. The retreat must be managed carefully, lest those who have no choice but to continue to pay PG&E rates are stuck with an extra burden. But hard isn’t impossible. A status quo that’s already unacceptable will become intolerable if left unmolested. Present state policy would have the state’s investor-owned utilities electrifying transportation within a few decades; upwards of $40 billion-plus in additional revenues in California alone. Do we want PG&E to take on even more responsibility, with the political power that comes with a supersized piece of the economic pie, and a full-speed ahead mandate to proceed as a for-profit monopoly? No, we do not.

“We are experiencing higher volumes than usual of pediatric respiratory illnesses for this time of year, driven by RSV and the flu. We are also seeing an uptick in flu and COVID hospitalizations. We encourage everyone to get their flu shot this year and bivalent COVID-19 booster when eligible,” said Gonzalez.

Gonzalez said that although Kaiser is now seeing a decline in flu cases, it anticipates new surges of influenza and COVID-19 over the next few months.

“Parents should keep kids home from school if they are sick. Parents and teachers should also remind children to wash their hands frequently at home and at school. Properly worn masks remain an effective option to reduce the risk of respiratory viral infections,” said Gonzalez.

According to Gonzalez, flu testing isn’t recommended for everyone but is important for high-risk groups. RSV testing isn’t required for most people.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, SFUSD has worked closely with the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH).

“We have shared information from DPH with families and staff this year as it relates to RSV and the flu, including how families can access vaccines and other general health messaging such as to stay home if you are sick,” said Dudnick. “We have also partnered with DPH to create informational videos about COVID updates in multiple languages, with subtitles. In addition, we have provided testing resources and hosted vaccine clinics at schools,”

Department Announcements Notice of Public Hearing and Availability for Public Review and Comment

Draft 2023-2024 Action Plan

The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD), Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) and Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) invite you to join us for a public hearing. We would like your input on the Draft 2023-2024 Action Plan, which include funding recommendations for fiscal year 20232024. This public hearing is part of the annual process to receive community input on funding recommendations and in accordance with the City’s Citizen Participation Plan for federal funding.

Date and Time of Public Hearing

Thursday, March 21, 2023, at 5:00 p.m.

You may attend this public hearing online or in-person. Four (4) hybrid meetings, one in English, one in Filipino, one in Cantonese, and one in Spanish, will be held simultaneously. To attend virtually, please register below for the meeting that meets your needs.

Virtual (Zoom) Registration Links

Englishmeeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rgz_vokwTdWYtsGPlQFpBw

Filipino meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYldO-pqTMoEtbHiq63V-Sc9ZLx1KHYeJOm

Cantonese meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vANmtdDCQSulYRAbLnqmKw

Spanish meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Fmoq8ybUT0SV6kkiWCmzCQ

PLEASE NOTE: After registering, you will receive a confirmation email from Zoom containing information about joining the online meeting.

To attend in-person, the meetings will take place at the MOHCD office located at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, 5th Floor in San Francisco. Please register for in-person attendance by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, March 20, 2023, by emailing Gloria Woo at gloria.woo@sfgov.org

The Draft 2023-2024 Action Plan will be available for public review and comment from March 13, 2023 to April 11, 2023. The draft document will be available electronically on the MOHCD website at https://sfmohcd.org, OEWD website at https://oewd.org, and HSH website at http://hsh.sfgov.org on the dates listed above.

Members of the public who wish to provide feedback on the draft document, including funding recommendations, may do so at the March 21st public hearing or by submitting written comments to gloria.woo@sfgov.org. The deadline for receiving written comments on the draft Action Plan and preliminary funding recommendations is 5:00 p.m. on April 11, 2023. For more information, please visit https://sfmohcd.org. If you have questions, please email Gloria Woo at gloria.woo@ sfgov.org

ABSENTEEISM from page 9

Foster Youth Services, and Students and Families Experiencing Homelessness… The past two years have been among the most exceptionally challenging for school, which means we must be, and are, committed to exploring new opportunities to engage with families,” said Dudnick.

Kee said what matters most is having a strong sense of community.

“We feel so lucky to have such a tight, connected group of people at Daniel Webster. (We) care enough about each other to not send kids to school sick or keep info hidden. We worked closely with the admin team to strategize every event or mitigation together…parents helped set up a new outdoor patio for safer meals. We have our community events outside most of the time,” said Kee.

Tyrone S. Hillman, III, one of two Mayor-appointed commissioners on the 17-member Youth Commission, which advises the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Mayor on policies related to young people, believes effectively addressing absences requires working with parents, having COVID-19 tests available at schools, and encouraging teachers and administrators to reach out to students.

“If teachers are more involved, absence rates will be lower. Teachers can improve communication with students by checking in with them outside of school. They can show students they are people students can talk to,” said Hillman, who is 16 and a junior at Rise University Preparatory, an independent high school in Bayview.

The City and County of San Francisco encourages public outreach. Articles are translated into several languages to provide better public access. The newspaper makes every effort to translate the articles of general interest correctly. No liability is assumed by the City and County of San Francisco or the newspapers for errors and omissions.

Dr. M. Cecilia Gonzalez, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente’s Mission Bay campus, said this winter the health care provider has seen a significant number of viral illness cases, mainly COVID-19, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and influenza.

CNSB#3674250

Vermont Street resident, Athena Raade, age six, a first grader at Sunnyside Elementary, wrote and illustrated this story for the View getcruise.com

It was winter, and Octopus and her friend Jelly needed mittens. A boat came by, and there were people who had extra mittens! They were trying to give them to the sea animals. Octopus and Jelly asked "May we please have some mittens?"

And the people said, "Of course!"

Octopus and Jelly had a great, warm, winter holiday!

(Sadly, Fish was jealous.)

Kids 12 years and younger can submit a short story, cartoon, or picture, twice a year, before the 20th of the month, with the winning item receiving $20. Teenagers from 13 to 17 years old are eligible for a $40 prize. Please send submissions to editor@potreroview.net.

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