The unemployment rate continues to drop in San Francisco and all over California, according to new numbers released today by the California Employment Development Department, which were trumpeted by Mayor Ed Lee as vindication for his economic development policies.Read more »

Larkin Street Youth Services does great and important social work with homeless youth in San Francisco, for which it receives generous support from city taxpayers, as well as federal grants. That’s why its employees and some prominent local officials are questioning the organization’s aggressive, deceptive, and anti-union resistance to the request by a majority of its 88 employees to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021.Read more »

 San Francisco Housing Action Coalition and San Francisco Magazine posed an intriguing question at a forum they sponsored last night in the W Hotel: “San Francisco’s Housing Crisis: Can the Tech Boom Help Us?” Unfortunately, it wasn’t a question they ever really addressed at an event of, by, and for developers and their most ardent supporters.Read more »

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise to dangerous levels, but still our political leaders delay taking meaningful actions to address the looming crisis. The latest example: Gov. Jerry Brown is borrowing $500 million from the state’s new cap-and-trade program -- money designated specifically for efforts to address climate change -- to help balance the revised state budget proposal that he released today. Read more »

The California Coastal Commission today upheld San Francisco’s plan to replace the Beach Chalet grass soccer fields at the west end of Golden Gate Park with artificial turf and high stadium lights after an emotional five-hour hearing, but not before voicing concerns about the loss of natural terrain and urging the city to do wildlife habitat restoration work on adjacent land.Read more »

The California Coastal Commission will decide tomorrow (Thu/9) whether San Francisco and its Recreation and Parks Department violated the Coastal Act in approving a renovation of Golden Gate Park’s Beach Chalet soccer fields that uses artificial turf and stadium lights and seating. [UPDATE 3pm: The commission just approved the project. Full story coming soon.]Read more »

City Attorney Dennis Herrera today announced another batch of settlements with restaurants that have been fraudulently using surcharges on customers’ bills to cover their city-required employee health coverage and using some of that money to simply pad their profits.Read more »

Board President David Chiu is calling for San Francisco to add to its broadband fiber network every time a contractor or utility tears up a street, joining other cities in expanding high-speed Internet capacity. But will this new network be a municipal utility or corporate-controlled? An upcoming hearing he has called for could begin to answer that question.Read more »