M&R take a swipe at the school bond

The Chron's Matier and Ross dig for dirt on the upcoming school bond and strike out.

Fast play: It took a trip to the political emergency room and some pretty heavy surgery, but San Francisco's $450 million school fix-up bond appears to have come back from the dead.

For months now, school officials -- under the gun to comply with the settlement terms of a disability access lawsuit -- have been pushing to get the megabond on the November ballot.

But the shaky findings of the district's own poll -- combined with open criticisms from everyone from Mayor Gavin Newsom to landlords to the business community -- suggested they had moved too quickly for their own good, leaving so many stepped-on toes in their wake that even the measure's consultants were threatening not to take the campaign unless they cleaned up the mess.

Hence the rush for some political doctoring.

First up: A big sitdown a couple weeks back with the city's major landlords who were talking up an anti-bond campaign unless the accompanying tax hike could be passed on to tenants.

On one side was a delegation led by acting school Superintendent Gwen Chan and veteran school board member Jill Wynns -- on the other, major apartment owners and landlords represented by Coalition for Better Housing executive Brook Turner and political strategist Jack Davis.

'He (Davis) barked at them, and they jumped like trained Chihuahuas,' is how one insider described the meeting.

By last week, Supervisor Tom Ammiano was carrying a bill at the Board of Supervisors (with a promise of backing by no less than six board members) to close a loophole in a 2002 piece of legislation and allow the costs of the school bond to be split 50-50 between landlords and tenants. Even tenant activists had signed on in support.

Next up, the Service Employees International Union, which was threatening to withhold its support of the bond over some recent layoffs -- most notably a couple of employees assigned to asbestos removal.

Quicker than you can say lung cancer, a new agreement was hammered out to allow the two workers to be rehired in other jobs.

The district also cut a deal with the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council for a new agreement ensuring that any nonunion contractors doing school construction work would abide by union rules.

Then there was the teachers union, which was unhappy with being left out of the planning process for the new bond. After school board members reminded the teachers that they would need the district's support down the road for the passage of a parcel tax to help pay for higher salaries and the like, the teachers quickly got in line.

Finally, there was the unfinished business of getting the mayor and Board of Supervisors on board. The mayor, in particular, was unhappy about being kept out of the loop -- particularly when it came to the size of the bond. So school reps fanned out across City Hall, meeting with the mayor and just about every supervisor to win over their support.

Now, the school gang is finishing up meetings with downtown business interests -- everyone from the Chamber of Commerce to the Committee on Jobs to San Francisco Restaurant Association -- the folks whose support and money they'll need to eventually get the bond over the finish line.

Sounds like routine back room maneuvering to me. I'm glad the facilities problem in SFUSD is being addressed, and glad we'll have a chance to vote on this bond. It is a big price tag, but we've knonw for some time that it would take more than one large bond measure to really address the backlog.

What M&R fail to mention in their digging is the potential benefit of passing this bond measure at the same time that a state initiative is on the ballot to allocate more state money for projects like these. I'll report more on this synergy later.