Over the past three years the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM), located in the Yerba Buena Garden children’s quarter, has experienced an influx of families with children under the age of 6. In 2010 only 35.5% of children visiting CCM were under 6, in 2013 that number jumped to 64.9%. As the museum’s Early Childhood Specialist I provide educational opportunities for young children, with specific attention paid to infant and toddler development. As this neighborhood continues to add more families, the need for developmentally appropriate, safe, and educationally informed play environments also grows. I am writing today to advocate for a toddler-safe play-space in the Yerba Buena Gardens (YBG). As an early childhood educator working in YBG, the following are my thoughts and recommendations regarding such a play area.

Developmental Benefits of an enriching toddler playground:

• Playgrounds provide opportunities for free play. Free play allows a child to explore according to their own curiosity. A toddler-safe play-space ensures that the play interactions will be developmentally appropriate, safe, and enriching

• There is substantial research showing clear links between free play and cognative development, motor skills, and social capabilities.

• Cognitive Development

  • Our brains work via connections called synapses.  Play helps define and strengthen these vital brain connections. When a young child practices a skill, experiences something new, or interacting with another person their neural connections are strengthened. If these synapses are not used they are simply lost. Children’s brains function on a “use it or lose it” system. By age 3 children have about 1000 trillion (with a t!) synapses, but by late adolescence that number is cut in half to only 500 trillion for most children.  New experiences, interactions, and explorations – all of which unfold through play – directly correlate to heightened brain development.

  • Infants and toddlers are in the “sensorimotor” stage of development (according to theorist Jean Piaget). This means that their cognitive development is tied to sensory and motor experiences. Playgrounds designed with young children’s sensory and motor needs in mind will help children develop essential cognitive skills such as: understanding object permanence (i.e. when something is out of site it still exists), circular reactions (i.e. I shake the rattle, it makes a sound) and basics of making and pursuing goals.

• Physical, Motor, and Sensory Development

  • A recent article by By Donna Thompson, Ph.D., Susan Hudson, Ph.D., and Mick G. Mack, Ph.D. in Early Childhood News states, “[recent research] suggests basic gross motor activities and sensory motor experiences should occur before age two (Gabbard, 1998). This means that as children grow from infants to toddlers, the importance of play activity is much greater than previously thought.“ The authors continue by citing research that indicates that children with poorly developed motor-skills by age five will likely never develop efficient motor-skills. I highly recommend that anyone interested in the benefits of developmentally appropriate playground equipment read the whole article here

  • In order to develop, children need opportunities to practice gross motor skills: pulling up, cruising, walking, running, jumping, climbing; and fine motor skills: reaching, grabbing, grasping, spinning, pulling, twisting, etc. While many of these skills can be practiced at home, what city apartment really has space for sophisticated gross motor development!? A playground offers physical space, equipment specifically designed to develop motor skills, novel (and therefore interesting)challenges, and – perhaps most importantly – other children.

• Social/Emotional Development

  • Children learn from those around them. When a 15 month old plays next to a 18 month old at a playground the younger child observes, absorbs, and learns from the actions of the older child. This is referred to as the “zone of proximal development” and it is one of the most meaningful ways that children learn.

  • As children begin to explore the world through their own mobility (crawling and walking) it is important they be afforded independence from adults.  This independence allow for essential trial and error, both physical and social, that is the backbone of early learning. A secure play area gives parents the peace of mind to let their children explore, without fear of them wandering off or being overpowered by much older children.

  • Parallel play (two children playing side by side by not necessarily interacting) is the key way in which children under four interact. By just playing with engaging equipment side by side children form the building blocks of sharing, compromise, collaboration, empathy, and other essential social skills.

 

An enriching toddler playground should have:

• Sensory exploration panels, including varying textures, sound exploration, cause and effect discovery, bright engaging colors, etc.

• Items for fine-motor exploration, for example: cranks, gears, things to turn, items to grasp and pull and open and shut, etc.

• Space for gross motor exploration, for example: low bars for “cruising”, unencumbered open space for new walkers and runners to test their skills, low platforms to practice jumping, short flights of stairs, opportunities to practice balance, etc.

• A secure and engaging perimeter. Security insures children remain safely inside (and older children stay out), and engaging look and experience encourages toddlers to walk from one side to the other and “map” the space – an important cognitive skill.

• Equipment that several children can use simultaneously. This encourages parallel play and builds social skills.

• Conversely: items that can be used individually. Toddlers are essentially egocentric and they benefit from exploring at their own pace.

• Spaces that encourage adult/child interaction. Swings are a standard example of this – though I encourage us to think of other, and more innovative, examples.

• Open-ended equipment. For example: a toy car has one intended purpose, while box of sand can become a million things. As an early childhood educator I recommend the later.

• Equipment that encourages dramatic play. This form of play bolsters children’s creativity, helps them work through fears and questions in a safe away, and provides opportunities for collaboration (both with adults and other children).

• The playground should feel safe to parents (soft ground, structures low to the ground, secure perimeter) but still offer opportunities for learning through risk, challenge, and trial and error. This article advocates for the cognitive and emotional benefits of risk on playgrounds – and I tend to agree.

Written by Emmy Brockman, Children’s Creativity Museum’s Early Childhood Specialist.

Feel free to email emmy@creativity.org with any questions, and visit http://creativity.org/programs/early-birdles/ for more information about the museum’s early childhood programs and outreach.

One issue that I am hopeful SEVERAL will take up is the claim by the Recreation and Parks Department’s Director Phil Ginsburg that “We want as much open space as possible, but we also need to have a way to care for it.” That was his quote in reference to why the City’s Recreation and Parks Department is unwilling to accept the donation of the park built in front of the new Rincon Green Apartments at 333 Harrison Street. Read the article here (hopefully, the shared full article will appear: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Creating-new-park-no-picnic-for-broke-city-4490422.php?t=27ec6d327d3f99889e

This is a lie from Phil Ginsburg and it should infuriate everyone who lives in the Rincon neighborhood or nearby. Why do I say it is a lie?

Rincon Hill’s non-redevelopment zoned blocks pay property taxes every year, and there is an explicit CIty Charter set aside that funds Phil Ginsburg’s Recreation and Parks Department. You can find it under Article 16 of the San Francisco City Charter, Section 16.107, PARK, RECREATION AND OPEN SPACE FUND.

Here’s the most relevant text that tells us how much is collected for the Recreation and Parks Department’s operations from each of our property tax dollars:
“The City will continue to set aside from the annual tax levy, for a period of thirty years starting with the fiscal year 2000-2001, an amount equivalent to an annual tax of two and one-half cents ($0.025) for each one hundred dollars ($100) assessed valuation. Revenues obtained thereby shall be in addition to, and not in place of, any sums normally budgeted for the Department and, together with interest, shall be deposited into the Park, Recreation and Open Space Fund.”

In plain english, this means that for every $1.00 of property tax collected (of the base Prop 13 1.00% portion), there is 2.5 cents set aside for Phil Ginsburg to maintain parks for residents.

You can look up the municipal code for yourself here: http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/charter_sf/1996charter?f=templates$fn=default.htm$3.0$vid=amlegal:sanfrancisco_ca$sync=1

Okay, so how much does Rincon Hill contribute? God Bless Phil Ting because he provided the public of San Francisco with an Excel spreadsheet of all 200+ thousand parcels and their assessed values as of May 2012. You can find it here: https://data.sfgov.org/Property/San-Francisco-Property-Assessment-Roll-FY1112-Q3/d5pu-ci4g

That file along with a $10 map of Assessor’s Blocks from the Department of Public Works will help you figure out how much was paid in property taxes with some basic formatting of block numbers from the data set and the use of PivotTables in Microsoft Excel.

The non-redevelopment blocks of the Rincon Hill neighborhood (basically 2nd Street to the waterfront, Folsom to Bryant Street) were valued at $2.8 billion last year (Fiscal Year 2011-12). That translates to base Prop 13 1.00% property taxes of about $28 million.

The City’s General Fund receives 56.59% of that amount – so $15.8 million.
Phil Ginsburg’s Recreation and Parks Department’s Open Space Fund Set Aside is 2.5% of the $28 million – or $698 thousand.

Let’s be clear … $698 thousand dollars of money absolutely went to the Recreation and Parks Department from Assessor Blocks 3764, 3765, 3766, 3767, 3768, 3769, 3744, 3745, 3746, 3747, 3748, and 3749. Big contributors include the block that includes The Infinity condo complex (block 3745) and One Rincon Hill (block 3765) which were valued at $727 million and $388 million respectively, and contributed about $182 thousand (out of the $7.3 million in base Prop 13 1.00% property taxes) and $97 thousand (out of the $3.9 million in base Prop 13 1.00% property taxes) just from those buildings completed in 2008 to specifically add funding for parks operations to the Recreation and Parks Department set aside fund (where it cannot be cut by the Mayor or Supervisors). Any guess what the City’s property tax receipts for those two blocks were prior to the developments of the 400′ twin Infinity Towers (which, by the way, have almost twice the assessed value as what’s being noted for this planned Warriors Arena all by themselves) and the 600′ One Rincon Hill tower? Any guess what the buildings under construction will add on top of the $28 million in base Prop 13 1% property tax revenues each year? I’m going to guess  our base Prop 13 1% taxes will ratchet up to $40 million per year, easily, starting in 2014-2015 with 333 Harrison, 45 Lansing, 201 Folsom, and one or two of the four buildings approved for Fremont Street built out.

Phil Ginsburg doesn’t count these new property tax revenues of $698 thousand dollars from the buildings in Rincon Hill as money intended to take care of a DONATED park like Rincon Hill Park at 333 Harrison Street? Really?!?

Maybe $698 thousand is peanuts … but keep in mind, Emerald Fund got a quote for maintenance costs for Rincon Hill Park, and it came out to be around $30,000 – that’s the cost you can see in the Rincon Hill CBD’s stale service plan spreadsheet here: http://www.rinconhillcbd.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Service-Plan-2013-1.xlsx

God bless the public worker unions, I’m sure that the costs for cutting the lawn and spraywashing the kid’s playground equipment at Rincon Hill Park will be pricier than $30,000 per year when the City does it. Let’s just say it costs 3x’s as much … $90,000 per year. Well, that would still mean Rincon Hill buildings are contributing $608 thousand dollars to the Recreation and Parks Department under the FY 2011-12 valuations for maintaining other parks in the City.

Here’s the bottom line. Someone needs to go to the Mayor’s Budget meeting on Monday and tell him (and Supervisor Kim, though she’s already aware of this) that Rincon HIll is NOT a redevelopment zone, and as such, 100% of our property tax dollars get distributed to the taxing entities and the set asides as any property tax dollar paid in the Sunset or Excelsior or whatever other neighborhood. In fact, $698 thousand dollars of our tax dollars went to Phil Ginsburg’s Recreation and Parks Department.

What the hell is the problem with the City when residents of Rincon Hill are already contributing 7x’s (21x’s the private company annual maintenance estimate) the costs to maintain Rincon Hill Park and the City’s Parks Director says there is no money to accept the donation of a new park for this new residential neighborhood?!?

By the way, thank you very much to our Mission Bay neighbor Corinne Woods who along with Isabel Wade led our 5 community meetings in the fall of 2009 where myself and other neighbors helped design Rincon Hill Park. It is an insult that the City won’t accept this community park when we contribute much more than what most other neighborhoods in the City contribute to the Open Space Fund for Rec. and Parks and we get told “You can look at the menu, but you cannot eat … but you do have to pay for this other neighborhood’s dinner, you starving suckers.”

Oh, and don’t forget we were cut out of Muni 12-Folsom bus service as a neighborhood on December 5, 2009 so that we are encouraged to drive our cars and shorten our lives with more air pollution and pedestrian deaths (and injuries).

How confident do you feel about the City actually implementing anything they promise to this neighborhood, much less the mitigations that the community is asking for in order to accept 3 million or so additional visitors per year for the Warriors Arena? If the track record tells us anything, we had better not hold our breath (except to stay alive a little longer because the air pollution is going to get worse with all the City-encouraged and approved car congestion increases).

Thank you to Arlen and Ryan for allowing the community to use their meeting space to discuss the formation of a CBD in the Rincon neighborhood!

In my personal opinion, we are trying to hold off a gang rape of our health and well-being in the SoMa waterfront so that a thoughtful discussion can happen about how our health will be spared and our lifespans unaffected by the arena at Piers 30-32.  However, no one seems to be grasping the thought that the location of an arena can KILL people. Anybody read about a fertilizer plant blowing up and killing people recently? – that killer project (or at least the residential apartment nearby) was approved by some government entity that supposedly protects citizens from harm. Our Department of Public Health, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and the World Health Organization all tell us that air pollution increases cancer risks, increases risks of cardiac disease, and increases instances of asthma in children. Meanwhile, Rincon is quickly becoming the most densely populated 10 acres of land west of Chicago, in case folks haven’t noticed the 300′ to 600′ residential towers beside the Bay Bridge yet.

How bad can the traffic be near the homes of thousands of residents in the Rincon neighborhood on weekday evenings? Take a look at the video below from my home’s corner. While SFMTA has painted some crosswalk stripes at this intersection (Main Street and Harrison Street) and increased crosswalk signals times to help pedestrians survive crossing the street to/from home during non-rush hour times, the weekday rush hour still looks pretty much the same today as it did in 2011 when I filmed this video footage. There is no humanity, and if we create a drunk tank at Piers 30-32, even more SoMa residents will be killed by cars driven by DUI drivers. How does that fit into the Mayor’s “Pedestrian Safety Strategy?”

Folks who have a financial or “legacy” interest in the arena getting built at Piers 30-32 have a rapist mentality, in my opinion, about just doing it and sticking it in the SoMa waterfront’s Piers 30-32 without any indication that legitimate changes will be made in City services (transit, public safety, congestion pricing) to try to keep air pollution levels and other health dangers from increasing for nearby residents. Hell, the 12-Folsom bus service even got cancelled on December 5, 2009 for the growing Rincon neighborhood to force us to drive to neighborhood serving businesses and grocery stores, more or less – they want to ENCOURAGE more driving and the accompanying air pollution and harm to pedestrians as it is by taking away our local service bus!! If the Mayor can get a Twitter bus to start running (83x) with hardly any passengers, why the hell can’t they make the move now to re-route the 12-Folsom 4 more blocks eastward and turning up Main Street instead of 2nd Street?

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Dear Current, Past and Future Members,

South Beach Democratic Club has scheduled an informal planning meeting for Thursday May 2nd, 7:00PM at the Java House ( pier 40 ) to discuss the issues important to the neighborhood such as (parking, safety, waterfront development or that incredibly annoying air plane that circles 4 hours before every Giants game). Democratic Clubs are strong advocates on local,state and national levels by actively endorsing positions and candidates.

The South Beach Democratic Club needs participation by the membership to define and develop it’s objectives.

Please invite your neighbors. I have attached a membership form.  To qualify for membership, you must be a registered Democrat and have a residence in the South Beach or District 6 area of San Francisco.

Sue Bushnell
President
South Beach Democratic Club

I think of it as a springtime taste of Burning Man brought to the pavement of downtown San Francisco. Please try to check it out and donate $10 or whatever you’d like to help keep this SoMa street faire’s engine running into the future as costs for public safety and other necessities for street fairs keep going up.

The problem is that since the Willie Brown administration, San Francisco City government has been doing its best to use public relations professionals and other alliances to make everything seem just fine even when honest evaluations indicate everything is not fine.

Recent revelations that the City and County of San Francisco’s employees who should be looking out for the best interests of the residents of our great city failed us again by allowing the America’s Cup Organizing Committee (ACOC) to agree to “endeavor” to raise money instead of commit to pay the City’s costs for transportation, public safety, trash pick-up, and so on has fueled more distrust among residents of our City government. Such incompetence by City employees will cost us taxpayers about $8 to $10 million in other needed services (reference: L.A. Times article from March 29, 2013, San Francisco all wet in regatta deal). With the reminder of terrorism in Boston fresh in our minds, these costs may go up significantly for the City’s taxpayers. Why should the City taxpayers subsidize a boat race by billionaires? And now we have the Warriors Arena proposal …

Combine the financial resources of billionaires proposing projects, the strings that political lobbyists influence over our elected politicians at the local and state levels, one of our local newspapers more interested in upzoning of their properties for real estate deals to come instead of fixing a dying newspaper, building trades labor unions that only care about next week’s job opportunities and not about murdering residents with the ill health effects of the projects they’re building, and non-profits that find themselves willing to sell out their principles of social justice as long as they’re only selling out people who they don’t know, and you have a very stacked deck against residents of San Francisco who naively think that the City government is looking out for the best interests of the people of San Francisco.

The San Francisco Waterfront Alliance has the following goals on their website:

1. Stop the shortcuts. Developers and the city are rushing the process, conducting an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) while changing the project behind closed doors. We believe the city should reformulate the schedule, including a restarted EIR process with new public comment, and provide adequate time for the Citizens Advisory Committee, local and regional regulatory bodies, the Board of Supervisors and the public to understand all the facts and impacts of this project before making a decision.
2. Protect the Bay. Right now, the developer is pursuing state legislation to remove Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and the State Lands Commission — both well-respected Bay watchdogs — from the approval process. This legislation must be withdrawn or defeated or the developers will have a blank check to do whatever they want to the Bay and the waterfront.
3. Erect story poles so the public can see the true mass of the project. Instead of changing drawings behind closed doors, the developer should erect story poles so that San Franciscans can see the true mass of the private parking garage and basketball arena to be built right in our Bay.
4. Reduce or eliminate the $120 million gift of public funds to developers. The current plan calls for San Francisco to subsidize the project by up to $120 million – including paying an exorbitant 13% rate of interest to billionaire developers. This subsidy must be reduced or eliminated.
5. Explore alternative sites. Instead of asking the developers to review alternative sites that are not on the waterfront, the City has embraced building this massive structure on the Bay and refused to disclose what other sites might be considered. The Board of Supervisors should hold hearings to determine whether there are other viable sites that require less taxpayer subsidy, have less negative impact on transit, and don’t hurt our environment.
6. Determine the real transit impacts before approval. The City, MTA, Caltrans and BART have yet to disclose what the real impacts of this development will be on MUNI, BART, pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists. The Board of Supervisors, sitting as the SF Transportation Authority, should immediately begin hearings to determine the real costs of this development to our transportation systems – to ensure transportation and transit costs of serving the entertainment complex are identified now and payment by the developer is guaranteed in the term-sheet.
7. Give SF residents an independent process. The official voice of citizens on this project is the Citizens Advisory Committee. Yet, they have been denied the funding to hire their own transportation and financial experts. The developer should be required to fund independent experts for the CAC, so they don’t have to rely only on information supplied by the developer.

The next public meeting related to the Piers 30-32 and Seawall Lot 330 project is the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee meeting on May 6, 2013 at 1:30 p.m. Keep an eye on their agenda for the May 6, 2013 meeting date when it comes out 3 or so days beforehand for any changes to the time and for the room location as their meeting room varies from room 250 to 263 depending on the anticipated interest in the agenda topics (crowd size). There is also a Piers 30-32 Citizens Advisory Committee that is planning to meet on that same date, Monday, May 6, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. at The Port of San Francisco’s offices at Pier 1, but also check their website a few days beforehand to confirm as one could get whiplash trying to plan their calendar around the moving menagerie of meeting dates related to this arena project proposal.

The San Francisco Waterfront Alliance has a very credible group of neighbors who have joined together to start the organization, and I plan to support them 100%.  I hope you will too by first signing up as an endorser for thoughtful, due process for the arena project.

Watching pedestrians play russian roulette with their lives after a Giants game wraps up as cars tangle up to get on the Bay Bridge with absolutely no San Francisco City traffic control officers at the intersection of Bryant and 2nd Street to keep some order, you should erase any foolish notion that the City has any plan of action whatsoever in regard to your well-being and quality of life.  Please endorse the San Francisco Waterfront Alliance.

Congratulations to all the neighbors and friends who helped to take a vision of one neighbor and turn it into a reality.  Thanks especially to neighbors Adhamina, Ranee, and Bill along with Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, the San Francisco Parks Alliance, and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department!

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TOMORROW : Walk to Work Day – Meet-up @ 8:45am at the Folsom/Russ crosswalk in front of Victoria Manalo Draves Park. We will try and wait a little bit if folks are running late, but want to hit the road to promote the hearing on our way to work! ATTACHED you will find a copy of the flier that I’m hoping folks can pass out tomorrow. Feel free to make copies and bring some on our walk! The Mayor will be coming from Powell Street, and who knows – maybe we can meet up with him at Sixth and Market on the way to City Hall and you let him know that pedestrian safety is a huge priority for your neighborhood! The press conference will be from 9:30am on the Polk Street steps of City Hall until 10:00am. There’s also a Walk to Work Day Happy Hour later on that evening on Market Street – you should definitely go and meet some new folks that care as much about pedestrian safety as you!

8:45am – Folsom/Russ —-à walk up Sixth Street and through Plaza to City Hall
9:30am-10:00am – Walk to Work Day Press Conference – Polk Street steps of City Hall
5:30pm-7:30pm – Walk to Work Day Happy Hour, Showdogs, 1020 Market Street

MONDAY, APRIL 15 : Supervisor Kim & Yee’s Hearing on the Mayor’s Pedestrian Strategy

The Mayor’s office just did a walk-around to bring everyone a FINAL version of the Mayor’s Pedestrian Strategy, prepared by the Mayor’s Pedestrian Safety Task Force.

It will be released as part of Walk to Work Day tomorrow. I included it as an attachment, but it can also be downloaded at the following link:
http://www.yousendit.com/download/UVJoR0lUQ0NHa05Yd3NUQw

We are Item Number 1 on the agenda – so please be there by 1:30pm on Monday! I will try and some stickers ready for you to wear. The flow of the presentations will be DPH, SFMTA, SFCTA and then SFPD – at which point you will have an opportunity to get up and give public comment.

1:30pm – Committee Room 263 (John C. Taylor Committee Room)
2:30pm – Public Comment (rough estimate)

Can’t wait to see you all,

Sunny Angulo
Legislative Aide, District 6