Dear D5-ers SFBCers, and Green Party people: I wanted to update you on some recent developments in the Prop G campaign. I was called last week by someone on the SPUR board who asked me to represent the opposing viewpoint on Prop G for the SPUR endorsement meeting. Since I am still in New York, he agreed to put me on speakerphone. Imagine my surprise when he called me the next day and told me that the person I would be debating against was...Mike Ellzey, the head of Warren Hellman's front group, the MCCP. As soon as I realized that Ellzey is the one who is going around stumping for this initiative, which is being heralded as a coup for the left, any hopes I had about the possible upside of this initiative promptly vanished. My suspicions were confirmed even further during Ellzey's presentation, when he was attempting to sell Prop G to the SPUR board as community-friendly, and giving the people the power to design MLK Drive the way WE want it. He said, by leaving it in its current configuration, we leave the door open to add transit lanes, bike lanes, whatever the community wants. Then a SPUR board member asked him, "What if, when the Academy of Sciences opens in 2007, the number of cars entering the south pod of the garage via MLK is so great that we realize the current configuration cannot accommodate them? Will we then be able to go back to the ballot and overturn this initiative, and re-dedicate those lanes to cars?" "Of course," Ellzey assured him. "That won't be a problem at all." I think anyone who believes this ballot initiative is a good thing is living in some kind of a pipe dream. As long as the southern entrance exists (and this initiative AMENDS Prop J to legalize that entrance in a way it was never legal before), Prop G is at best] a stopgap measure until MLK turns into the nightmare this initiative pretends to prevent. The reality is, until the Academy opens, there is no real reason to widen MLK anyway. So the likelihood is that construction on MLK would have waited til then no matter what we did. Once it does open, given the direction SF is moving in, to accommodate more and more and more cars all the time, it is highly doubtful that any effort to prevent its being widened would succeed. For the record, I suggested that the section amending Prop J be removed from Prop G, and was told something to the effect of "The City Attorney won't allow it." When the City Attorney starts telling us what we can and can't have on the ballot... well, to me, that's really scary. That, in itself, is a reason to oppose this thing. Sincerely, Kathy