San Francisco parklets an insulting display of government incompetence | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco parklets an insulting display of government incompetence

sfchronicle.com

33 pointshncurious31 comments

And yet they vote for the same incompetence time and time again. The SF political machine is more powerful than Tammany Hall ever was. An unresponsive corrupt machine that curries favor for the elite and connected with complete disregard for small businesses and individuals who are not politically connected. The definition of political virtue signaling is the SF political machine.

For some odd reason the rules never applied to the restaurant owned by Gavin Newsom, former mayor of SF and now Governor of California. Even the old smoking restrictions were off limits.

All the comments on the chronicle article are surprisingly negative toward them. I've been a huge fan of parklets -- they make the city feel much more vibrant and alive.

The article's current title, "S.F. made parklets permanent — but added so many rules that many restaurants plan to tear them down", is not nearly as inflamatory as what I see here, "San Francisco parklets an insulting display of government incompetence"

It's a combination of the headline and subtitle (“It’s the most uncoordinated, messed up, insulting display of government incompetence,” one supervisor said) to fit in the character limit and reflects the overall message of the article.

https://archive.md/XL6Yv

Public space for private use should come with no costs and free of regulation. Short-term solutions made during a pandemic should be grandfathered in perpetuity. /s

As far as I can tell, there was cost and regulation and both changed. The uncertainty makes things hard for people.

Personally, I like to extract as much value as possible from society so additional space for my car is no problem. I can always get a reservation indoors.

Also, all else being the same, I’d prefer a more expensive restaurant to a less expensive one because it prices out other people and makes it easier for me to get in.

If they didn't want to keep them around then don't make them permanent. Instead SF took it's usual tactic of corruption to bring the worst of both worlds. Permanent structures for the politically connected, fines and endless ever increasing hoops to bully the ones they don't like into going away

I hate it that public space is taken over by restaurants and bars. No I don't want to buy a €4 cappuccino I just want to sit here in this public park sorry for my poverty.

I don't support government incompetence, but when you look at the reasons they need to update and enforce the code on these parklets, it is entirely reasonable.

For example, they need to make sure the parklets aren't blocking access to the building by firetrucks, or aren't too close to buildings where they would catch debris in the case of a fire. The parklets were approved rather hastily to support restaurants, but now that they could become a permanent fixture, things need to change.

Anecdotally, I have seen a dramatic reduction in people wanting to sit in parklets when indoor spots are available. So this all might be moot in a year or two.

Half of SF households don't have cars, but apparently it's considered "public space" when you park your $50K Tesla there, while it's considered private space if you spend $15 on a lunch there.

The parking meter and fine business was over $100M and that was 5 years ago. Most of the city east of 19th Avenue is permit parking. While it should cost more, that’s capped by the legislature and not the city.

If anything,I'd say the building owns that space more than the people parking there for free. Free overnight parking was one of the worst policy decisions ever made.

I like the parklets, what don’t you like about them? I can’t read the article bc no chronicle subscription

TL;DR the restaurants paid mucho bucks for parklets that the city said were okay and now city has altered the deal. The restaurants now have to pay additional bucks to bring it up to the new code. This makes it infeasible.

Wouldn't they have paid the money last year for setting it up ? At the time by no means it was certain that this arrangement would be permanent?

City government also had to evolve the rules for what is brand new type of structure regulations like that take time, all code change reasons highlighted seem reasonable on why it is required.

What other options the city has ? Ignore fire and pedestrian safety ?

Options: probably spend a day or two thinking through "what if these become permanent" before incentivizing restaurants to spend what is easily low six figures.

Now, there aren't good options -- blocking sight lines in intersections in intersections is intolerable, as is a lack of fire safety. Nonetheless, an ounce of prevention, etc.

My understanding is these permissions were given originally last summer during the height of the pandemic. I don't think anyone could have anticipated at City government level how long they will be needed or imagined they would become permanent .

It looks obvious in hindsight, but with pandemic a lot of rapid changes at all government levels had to be made and plenty of them had mistakes, sometimes costing lives.

If restaurants went ahead and bought the parklets after the announcement became permanent I can understand the complaints (vast majority were bought last year) at that time there was no intent to make it permanent. To me it sounds like restaurants are just being greedy on the amount of extra space they have for free especially with relaxing /removed capacity restrictions indoors.

There was no rush to get parklet rules out in March 2020: there were no lives at risk here. The "rapid changes" could have been delayed by a week or so to think through them and the city wouldn't be screwing restaurant owners -- things like intersection sight lines and disabled access were a concern from the very beginning, already discussed in a briefing in june 2020.

I cannot make "Rapid changes" on things in my team in weeks, I would wager that is the same for anyone on this forum, any bureaucracy (company or city) takes many months if not years to come up with plans for new policy, delaying the temporary relief to businesses to get inputs from all departments in the middle of the pandemic especially frontline staff like in Fire Service were working non stop does not seem realistically feasible.

My recollection is that temporary permissions only happened in late June 2020 [1] not before. It was announced always as temporary it was sold as a way to help businesses comply with aggressive seating capacity restrictions then and still make some money.

Those capacity restrictions are broadly relaxed now, additional costs for compliance to make it permanent, a change that is also bringing in additional new revenue - given capacity restrictions are largely removed doesn't seem unreasonably harsh to me. [2][3]

---

[1] https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/61107/6... . This is Emergency Order for San Jose, I don't think San Fransisco did it much earlier than SJ

[2] The low /weak recovery argument cannot really made either, if there is no demand then indoor is adequate, what is the point of outdoor extra seating when no one is eating? .

[3] Some people do prefer to eat outside more so than before the pandemic, but unless most customers refuse to eat indoor, this does not seem to be major factor as far as i have observed.

I don't know why you invested in the belief it's just impossible to have a tight turnaround on review (it isn't), but let's just start with this: "frontline staff like in Fire Service were working non stop". The frontline staff in the fire service -- EMTs and firefighters -- are not the people who review city code for fire safety.

The "review" can be largely copied from other cities who have already developed similar policies. SF is not the first, second, or 20th city in the US to have such parklets. ADA, fire, and daylighting concerns are not in any way unique to sf.

Shanty’s are shanty. If the city is going to cede spaces permanently, pave the parking spaces and move the curb out. Retailers buy umbrellas for tables and lease space.

No site lines, no fire code, no ADA violations, no cars crashing into you, no campers in shanty at night… and a million other reasons.

Are you for or against homeless people sleeping in the parklets at night? That almost seems like a reasonable way to provide temporary housing to the city’s homeless since we seem so incapable of building actual housing.

I agree that the site lines can be a bit dangerous. There should be regulations on that. Have many cars crashed into parklets already?

California is an insulting display of government incompetence.

and yet it continues to have an incredible economy and provide enormous numbers of people with homes and food. If it did any better, it wwouldn't be the 7th largest economy in the world, it'd be the 2nd.

I wonder how much longer this will last.

Probably longer than the other, insolvent states.

Why is government competence measured with GDP? The function of the government is not to maximize GDP.

Here's an analogy: if I complain that a beachside restaurant has shitty food and you say "yet it continues to have plenty of customers", that doesn't really disprove my point. All it says is we're likely to be stuck with shitty food for a long time.

Actually it does disprove your point. There are clearly plenty of people who think that the food is good enough to pay for it and keep the restaurant in business so it is far more likely that you have no idea how to properly value the food or run a successful restaurant.

> provide enormous numbers of people with homes

Citation needed. California is probably the most NIMBY state in America, they don't build housing anywhere except in exurbs closer and closer to places of high wildfire risk.

I don't think California's success is because of the government. It's largely because of momentum, and because of other intangibles like good weather year-round.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com