A Spoonful of SF‘s Sneaky Parents, Charging Wars, and Numbers for Nextdoor
Week of July 9, 2018 — San Francisco by the municipal spoonful
SF parents get schooled…for lying about school
Ever been between a mama bear and her cub? Neither have I — the thought is too terrifying. It therefore comes as little surprise (to me at least) that parents are willing to do whatever it takes to get their young into the best SF schools. Turns out the hoard of fiercely ambitious-for-their-children parents is on the rise with 53 instances of residency fraud reported for 2017–18. Many seem to sympathize with the parents and their smarty pants children, though, as the Board of Education decided to soften the blow a bit on repercussions for residency fraud. Families caught with suspect residency documents will now have 14 days to the appeal the charges and another 15 days to get their child the heck out of dodge (i.e. back into their proper school district). Interestingly, the majority of parents committing the fraudulent deed are homeowners in other countries. And what are the most sought-after SF public schools, you ask? Lowell High School leads the way, with Presidio Middle School, Aptos Middle School and George Washington High School not far behind.
Scooters after dark: Lessons SF can learn from San Jose about future charging wars
If scooter companies and San Francisco policymakers thought the worst of their scooter nightmares ended with reckless scooter parking, scooters swimming (drowning?) in the Bay, and scooters as weapons of Google shuttle protest war, they were wrong. It’s only a matter of time before scooters return to San Francisco (see below), so we should probably start thinking about the best way to charge them. Looking to the example of our southern neighbor San Jose, the charging challenge is not to be underestimated. Gig workers have jumped at the new opportunity to make a quick buck by collecting and charging scooters in their homes ($6/scooter) as soon as the clock strikes 9pm and the scooters (not in use) shut down. Trouble is, some eager charging beavers have begun collecting scooters as early as 6pm. Some even go so far as to hoard scooters until their batteries die, allowing “juicers” to collect an additional $20 bounty per scooter. Get ready SF scooter police.
**Scooted right out of the loop? Here’s the backstory on SF’s e-scooters
Electric scooters appeared seemingly overnight as Bird, Lime, and Spin unleashed their fleets onto SF streets in April. Just as quickly, they vanished after city lawmakers ordered the three companies to cease all operations by June 4, or suffer a $100 fine per day for each leftover scooter. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has consequently become the most popular girl in town as ten plus scooter companies compete for the much coveted SFMTA-issued permits, which will be granted to just five scooter operators for a one-year pilot program. As of this publishing, no scooter permits have been issued.
Lyft and Uber tease their city planner siblings with data secrets
Rideshare companies Lyft and Uber are driving (it’s a pun!) city planners bonkers by refusing to hand over data about the number of Lyft/Uber cars on the road, where to find SF’s hottest pickup spots (the literal kind), and how often SF residents are shuttled to and fro. Planners would very much like this sort of data so they can plan (hehe) for things like congestion and equitable transit access. According to a 2012 filing to the California Public Utilities Commission by Lyft, though, trip data is a precious “trade secret.” Can’t we all just get along?! said the friend to both tech and government.
What to tell your neighbors on Nextdoor
My imminent death in SF never feels so real until I go on Nextdoor and read the countless posts about a “Strange Man Spotted Outside Window.” Something to put us all at ease, however, is a shiny new statistic showing that killings in the Bay Area’s fifteen largest cities are the lowest they’ve been in decades. And the drop is heavily spurred by significantly less homicides in San Francisco and Oakland. In SF, killings have dropped by 41% compared to this time last year, with just 20 killings through the end of June. Although the reasons for the homicide drop are not conclusive, we can, perhaps, give a bit more credit to the SFPD, which has seriously upped its homicide clearance game — 112% — and gotten 700 guns off SF streets in just the first half of 2018 (compared to 460 in the first half of 2017).
A Spoonful of Sass
“We’re going to tell the president that here in San Francisco we don’t put children in cages. We put them in the classrooms.” That’s what SF’s new 45th Mayor, London Breed, said about the U.S.’s not so new 45th President, Donald Trump, during her inaugural address. What else did she say? Basically that we need to crack down on crime, build more housing, and improve our mental health services.
