Lakewood Tenants Association

655 John Muir Drive, San Francisco, CA lakewoodtenants@hotmail.com (415) 334-0465

May 9, 2008

Suzanne Gautier
Communications and Public Outreach

Public Utilities Commission

City and County of San Francisco

1145 Market Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

Dear Ms. Gautier:

Lakewood Tenants Association (LTA) comments on the presentation at the Lake Merced Watershed Plan Community Meeting of April 22, 2008 by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) are as follows:

1.) Our organization opposes placing a wildlife care center at Lake Merced, and notes that the one proponent brought just a few other persons to the meeting to repetitively state a desire for such a facility without stating any rational reason for locating such a facility at the lake. Our organization does not believe that there is any good reason to locate a wildlife care center at the lake and plenty of reasons not to, the primary one being that it conflicts with the goals of restoring, enhancing and maintaining the natural and recreational resources of the lake.

2.) By far, the preponderance of public opinion expressed at that meeting was that the Pacific Rod and Gun Club should continue its exclusive use of the site it now occupies. Our organization also supports the gun club's continued exclusive use of the site. Our residents would be negatively affected should new buildings be constructed across from us that not only could block our views of the lake but bring with them more traffic, more noise, more crime and less available on-street parking than has been the case with the gun club.

3.) PUC presented the concept of a nature center as a done deal. We do not recall at previous meetings that there had been any such decision. Nor has there been any clamor that we have heard by the public for a nature center. PUC has not demonstrated that there is any desire for such a center nor has it presented any evidence that such a center would actually receive significant use. We view the nature center concept as a solution looking for a problem rather than vice-versa.

4.) PUC has failed to meet its commitment to issue responses to the written comments submitted by the public to the March 18, 2008 Workgroup #2 meeting. Those responses should have been provided prior to the April 22, 2008 meeting so that they could have been further discussed/resolved at that time. Now, as the May 9^th deadline for public written comments on the April 22^nd meeting is coming to a close, PUC has still not responded to the public's written comments on the March 18^th meeting. On May 7^th, we received an email from PUC indicating, for the first time, that it is not going to respond to the written comments submitted as follow-up to the March 18^th meeting. That is in direct conflict with both the manner in which PUC responded to the written comments submitted as follow-up to the February 14^th work group #1 and their commitment, reiterated at the April 9^th Lake Merced Task Force meeting, to provide such responses to written comments submitted as follow-up to the March 18^th meeting. We believe this is not only inconsistent and irresponsible but that it suggests the public's opinions do not really matter.

5.) At the March 18, 2008 meeting, PUC made a commitment to hold a separate meeting to address the concerns expressed by our organization and others as to a conflict of interest of its consultant and concerns as to the fairness of PUC's public process. PUC made that commitment so as to avoid responding to those concerns at the March 18^th meeting, where they should have been heard. The fact that PUC has made no mention of its commitment to hold a separate public meeting to address those issues now some two months later (especially after being reminded) suggests that PUC was simply evading those questions.

6.) PUC's presentation on April 22^nd did not incorporate the suggestion by a representative of San Francisco 's Department of Recreation and Parks (DRP) that PUC consider an additional site in its evaluations: the former parking lot across Lake Merced Blvd. at Brotherhood Way. We support the suggestion.

7.) PUC promoted as desirable the idea of distributing uses throughout the lake shore areas to reduce congestion at certain "choke" points such as Harding Road. We strongly disagree that distributed uses are desirable. To the contrary, distributed uses will simply accelerate the rapid development of the entire lake shore, to the detriment of the natural environment and wildlife. It would be much more responsible to limit development to a few small areas, those already developed such as the Boathouse, Sunset Circle and the Rod and Gun Club. It has not been demonstrated that Harding Drive would become a choke point and, therefore, it is premature to conclude that the Boathouse site cannot accommodate all of the currently proposed uses of boat storage, nature center, cafe, boat and fishing concessions. We believe the development should occur in the following order of priority: Boat House, Sunset Circle and gun club. This is because it is already a given that extensive work must be done at the Boat House site and that the public is already accustomed to use of that site. Sunset Circle should be the second place development occurs, if absolutely necessary, because such separate development would only be justified if it were determined that there would be too much traffic on Harding Drive to accommodate all uses. Sunset Circle is already an area where there is high traffic flow so there will be no detriment to wildlife to an increased use of that site. The gun club site should be the last place we should consider further development because John Muir Drive is the quiet side of the lake and bringing more traffic over there is going to impact wildlife with more noise and lighting.

8.) PUC suggested the possibility of introducing a bike lane on John Muir Drive. Several years ago the Department of Public Works (DPW) was persuaded to provide a traffic-free center lane across from the apartments. It was a disaster because the traffic lanes had to be reduced in width, forcing traffic closer to the parallel parked cars on the lake side of the street. Because the street is curved at the north end, it made it very dangerous for drivers to exit their parked vehicles as approaching traffic cannot be seen around the curve. DPW was later persuaded to eliminate the center lane after it was demonstrated that the design violated the "sight distance" requirements of CalTrans design standards. Out organization will vigorously oppose any effort to endanger the lives of our residents by again narrowing the traffic lanes.

9.) Because PUC ceded management responsibility of the lake to the DRP in 1950, it is no longer PUC's domain. Furthermore, common sense suggests that planning for recreation at Lake Merced should be performed by DRP and not PUC because recreation is DRP's expertise. PUC could have and should have deferred to DRP in planning for recreation at the lake.

10.) There is currently a separate planning process in place by the DRP to review the future of San Francisco's public golf courses. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/05/06/BAAS10H4N6.DTL] It makes no sense whatsoever for that process to go forward without incorporating that review of the Harding Park course into the present master planning effort. As demonstrated in LTA's written comments on the March 18^th meeting, it is the City and County of San Francisco, not PUC, that owns all of the Lake Merced lands, including not only the lake but everything within the area bounded by John Muir Drive, Lake Merced Blvd. and Skyline Blvd (it also owns a small portion of land between John Muir Drive and the Vista Grande canal). That means the City and County of San Francisco owns the land under the police pistol range, the Pacific Rod and Gun Club and all of Harding Park. There is no justification to exclude any of those lands from the planning process, especially the golf club.

Sincerely,

Mona Cereghino, President

Ross Wilkinson, Vice-President

cc.: members@lmtf.org

Sean Elsbernd, District Supervisor (Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org)

Ed Harrington, General Manager, SFPUC

Yomi Agunbiadi, General Manager, RPD