Thursday, January 3, 2008

What the New Year Brings

Happy New Year everybody!

All of us at San Francisco Beautiful wish you a healthy and beautiful 2008!

The San Francisco Beautiful staff and board are anticipating a busy and challenging year ahead, as our fight to keep illegal billboards out of our city continues unabated. We had a setback last month when a judge of the Superior Court granted the billboard companies an injunction to stop the City's Planning Department from making their recently completed billboard survey available to the public. We are astonished at this decision, as the Department conducted the survey on its own, with city dollars, making that information, we believe, appropropriate for public access. Au contraire, said the judge. We are awaiting the City's decision on whether it will appeal the judge's decision, but in the meantime, the entire question of whether the sign survey will be available to the public will go to trial this spring. We will be working to make sure that this information, so vital to city residents' ability to protect the livability of our neighborhoods, is accessible to the public.

For those with Comcast cable tv, you can view my recent interview with Arthur Bruzzone on his program, "SF/unscripted" which airs on cable channel 11. It is a regular news program in which Arthur interviews local opinion leaders on current civic issues of the day. We discussed San Francisco Beautiful's work related to past and present livability concerns, including the condition of our neighborhood parks and streets, new high rises and family housing, the Golden Gate Park windmills and more. The interview will air on Jan. 3rd at 6:30 pm, Jan. 4th at 8:00 pm, and Jan. 6th at 8:00 pm. If you don't have cable tv you can go to the program's website at www.sf/unscripted.com. The video will be uploaded within the week.

Until next time,

Dee Dee