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Wildlife rescue center vs. gun club
The campaign to put a wildlife rescue center at Lake Merced is completely misguided. This is an inappropriate place for such a facility, which should not be located in the middle of a major city. I also don’t think it is an accident that some activists are trying to place a facility that they have no funding to build or maintain at this location. That is because it would displace the Pacific Rod and Gun Club, which has been at this location for 75 years and is one of the few tenants on city property that actually pays rent to The City instead of being subsidized by the city.
911 emergency phone ‘fee’ muddle
The California 1st District Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 3-0 last week that local governments cannot charge phone customers a monthly fee for access to the 911 emergency phone system without two-thirds voter approval. The judges said such user fees were actually special-use taxes requiring direct voter balloting as specified by Proposition 218 in 1996.
Los Angeles adopts conservation-minded building code
Many large construction projects will have to be built according a design standard that requires conservation-minded elements such as energy-efficient heating, cooling and lighting under a new city ordinance.
Landlords leaving the business
Writer Joe Mac makes a good point (“Landlords have assets,” The Examiner, April 12-13) when he suggests if rent control forces a landlord to lose money the landlord should get out of the business. In fact, Supervisor Aaron Peskin says the same thing. Concerned about the loss in rental stock from conversions to TIC’s and hoping to stop it, he called a meeting in North Beach to call for ideas. |