Dear D-5 and SFBCers, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is holding a meeting today at 11 a.m. to discuss whether he should sign off on the ballot measure proposed by John Rizzo of the Sierra Club and Susan King of the Green Party. Although the genesis of this proposed initiative is shrouded in secrecy (which is its own issue), it appears that Mary Hughes of Warren Hellman's front group, the MCCP, and possibly the Museum trustees' legal team had a hand in writing it. The initiative purports to extract a promise not to widen MLK Jr. Drive in "exchange" for adding an amendment to Prop J which legalizes having an entrance inside the Park. Prop J clearly states that such an entrance is illegal. That means we would be taking an already horribly flawed and problematic document (Prop J) and making it worse instead of better. The second thing this initiative does wrong is that it _doesn't_ prohibit turning MLK into a four-lane road -- which is supposedly the "concession" _we_ got. Instead, it only prohibits widening MLK to accommodate "privately-owned vehicles". Nothing would stop them from building dedicated lanes for taxis, limos, and tour buses -- the only vehicular traffic the museums really care about. Shades of Prop J -- voting in an initiative that allows them to roll all over us and get exactly what they want -- and this time we would be working to help them get it. Another classic bait-and-switch -- which is why I'm calling this one "Prop J Redux". I'm leaving out arguments about the legality of all this -- i.e. the fact that the MCCP violated Prop J by siting an entrance inside the Park, got caught by citizen watchdogs, responded by coming back with something even worse, found a corrupt judge to validate that, and are now forcing all of us to bust our butts to implement the plan they wanted in the first place -- while conveniently allowing Mike Ellzey to scapegoat the watchdogs for causing all this trouble in the first place. For the record, Judge Warren's validation on the project is _not_ a final ruling, and Trees Not Cars is appealing it in its entirety. No polls were done by either side to determine the so-called "winnability" of any proposal. I've got an idea: why don't we do something truly shocking and try to create what we really want -- no entrance inside the Park and no widening of MLK -- or else step aside, stop wasting our energy on all of this, and let them stew in their own juices. In a democracy, people have the power to vote for anything they want. Why waste this awesome power on something this mediocre? Please call Ross at 554-7630 and tell him _DO_NOT_ sign off on this initiative. We need one more bit of flawed legislation like we need a hole in the head. If we haven't learned this from Prop J, we haven't learned anything. Peace, Katherine Roberts