Dennis but still no Jack

Yes, Stephen, I remember my letter very well. Pretty good letter, actually. And it was succinct, unlike your rambling, irrelevant communications. The Presidio has nothing to do with Golden Gate Park, though I understand that you're trying to tie all of this disparate information into a grand theory of "privatization." Maybe theoretical work isn't your strong suit, not that dealing the specifics of the issue is either, for that matter. Congress mandated that the Presidio be self-supporting in 2013, but it's still a park. Just because you disagree with the Planning Dept. doesn't make them "terminally corrupt." I often disagree with them, too---about the Bicycle Plan, Rincon Hills, and the Market/Octavia Plan---but they seem painfully sincere in their support of residential highrises and overdeveloping neighborhoods that have the misfortune to be anywhere near "transit corridors."

Rob,

In response to my commentary on Antenore's spin, you wrote (BeyondChron):

To the Editor:

Stephen Willis continues to claim that Golden Gate Park is being "privatized," though there's no evidence to back up his charge. Just because both the de Young Museum---owned by the city---and the new garage underneath the Concourse---which will be the city's when the revenue bond is paid off---were built with private funding doesn't mean the park has been "privatized." In fact, both of these projects represent enormous gifts to the people of San Francisco. Accusing those who disagree with you of being "corrupt" should also be out of bounds in the city's political dialogue.

Regards,
Rob Anderson

To the Editor,

If I were simply attacking Antenore's character, I wouldn't have provided information that he so skillfully obfuscates with his reply.There are a lot of self-serving political opportunists in the City, but that's nothing new. I stand by the facts that he ignores. The facts illustrate that while Antenore poses as a populist defender of public processes, behind the scenes he serves the very forces behind the privatization of our city services. The rationale for Better Neighborhoods Plus seems to be that the current Planning Department is so terminally corrupt and incapable that it must be bypassed to create a process that everyone will like. So, rather than face the challenge of correcting the problems at Planning, they suggest bypassing it with BNP. The larger issue here is the bipartisan support for increasingly privatizing government services to make up for the loss of revenue from downtown corporations such as those represented by the Committee on Jobs and the Chamber of Commerce. At City Hall, there is a new emphasis across the board for "creative financing" and the development of public-private partnerships to foster increased reliance on corporate funding for city services, while providing opportunities for "private investments in public equity." While the original privatization ideologues were libertarian Republicans, local Democratic politicians including Mayor Newsom and Board President Peskin have embraced privatization schemes at City Hall without discussing it's impacts on public oversight and accountability. They were both critical players in the creation of a 35-year ground lease containing a $32 million revenue bond for a private corporation to build the deYoung garage, but they didn't hold a single public hearing to discuss the merits of the privatization. When I interviewed Antenore, I asked him about a meeting he attended with Warren Hellman where he apparently first learned about the 35-year ground lease/revenue bond for Hellman's Music Concourse Community Partnership (MCCP). When queried, Hellman smiled and commented, "Pretty clever isn't it?" Whether or not you support privatization, it appears to me that privatization's greatest promoters have nothing to gain from discussing it. That applies whether you are discussing the "noble cause" of Bechtel/Halliburton's privatization of Iraq's oil fields through production sharing agreements (PSA's), or the privatization schemes in the Presidio and Golden Gate Park funded and supported by Don Fisher and Warren Hellman with the cooperation of Democrats Pelosi, Feinstein, Newsom, Peskin and Antenore. It is this blending of political and economic interests between Republicans and Democrats that epitomizes the corrupt bipartisanship at City Hall, and which to me Antenore so perfectly symbolizes. Othewise, he would be willing to discuss the facts instead of spinning a new story.

Stephen Willis
ndmedia