tv ABC7 News Getting Answers ABC September 19, 2023 3:00pm-3:31pm PDT
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your hairline. or that thing where your knee just gives out for no reason. but... you can choose your doctor who will care for all the things you didn't choose. kaiser permanente for all that is you. and overdoses and increase housing mayor london breed will join us. but first, why are gas prices so high? well past the usual summer peak, but prices
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just keep going up. i'm christine zee. nationwide drivers are feeling the pain at the pump, paying an average of $3.30 $0.88. but check out prices here in the bay area as largest cities, san jose, 544. oakland. 549. san francisco. 565. and if you think that's bad, los angeles is paying even more. joining us live now to discuss what's driving this price surge, energy and public policy expert severin borenstein , a professor in the haas school of business at berkeley, and faculty director of the haas energy institute. professor borenstein, thanks for your time . >> thanks for having me on. >> are these prices actually close to record highs? no we're we have a ways to go about a dollar a gallon before we would hit the record highs for california. >> unfortunately and sadly, i think we're going to get close because cause we have seen the wholesale prices skyrocket over the last few weeks. some of that
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has come through, but not all of it. and if those wholesale prices stay high, we are going to see much higher retail prices than we see right now. >> even you're telling me we can push $7 a gallon here in the bay area? >> that's possible. i'm pretty sure we're going to go over $6 a gallon given where the wholesale prices are today. uh- it all depends on how tight the market gets. in california, two things are driving this. one is that the price of crude oil has been going up and of the 50 cent a gallon increase over the past month, probably about half of that is attributable to gasoline or to the crude oil prices. the other half is a california phenomenon that is not a general phenomenon, and that's because we use this special blend of gasoline. and this time of year, it's not unusual to have this eruptions. you might remember that last year, starting around the same time we saw sky high gas prices and eventually the governor actually moved forward
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. the switch over to winter blend, gasoline. and that's because that creates a more supply in the system and brought prices down. right now, we haven't done that. those wholesale prices are extremely worrisome. and when those filter through to retail, i'm pretty sure we are going to see prices over $6 a gallon. >> okay. you mentioned two key things, right? the fact that california has this unique summer blend that our law requires and then the crude prices. so let's address the crude first. what are the reasons that that prices are so high? is the supply down? is it the russias war in ukraine or is it some of the opec countries cutting supply? what is it? well it's all of those things. >> it's a reminder that the oil producing countries are out to make as much money as they can. and the saudis, who really are the ones who run the show, have decided that now is a good time
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. with demand starting to pick up china is weaknesses. they're sort of coming out of some weakness and there's more world demand to cut back supply and drive those prices up. and they are perfectly happy to see the prices hit $100 a barrel, which seems quite possible in the next few days. >> yeah. which we had seen before. and nobody wants to go there, but that may be a possibility here. okay, but what about our summer blend? i mean, most people here in the bay area in california are aware of it, but we do have a lot of newcomers. so what is it that we have to do during the summer? why do we have to produce, i guess, cleaner gas? that's more expensive, i guess, to produce and when does that end? when can we move to the cheaper process? the winter blend? >> well, just to be clear, california uses a special blend of gasoline year round, even our winter blend is different from used anywhere else in the world . our summer blend is particularly highly exacting and that's because we've had such huge air pollution problems in the state due to automotive exhaust. you know, if you live
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in la 2030 years ago, you really couldn't see the mountains around la and now you can't. so it has done a lot to clean up the air. but unfortunately other areas haven't also moved to this cleaner burning gasoline. when we went to it, we were hoping places like salt lake city and other polluted areas would and denver would move to this cleaner burning. but they haven't. and so california is really a fuel island. that means that if we have a disruption, we don't really have a lot of other fuel sources to fall back on. and unfortunately, in the fall, we tend to see a lot of refinery maintenance because they're getting through the summer to produce to keep up with the demand. and then they do maintenance in the fall. and if there's any sort of delay, as we saw last year, that can send prices sky high. i don't know what the problem is this year. usually we usually don't find out for months afterwards, but it looks like we're running into
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the same situation this year. we don't have enough supply. and as a result, those wholesale prices have already gone through the roof. and i think the retail prices are going to follow. >> so what are the levers that the state can pull to provide some relief to consumers? i mean, could they temporarily suspend the gas tax? can they move to the winter blend sooner ? >> well, suspending the gas tax is always one of the things that people talk about. the problem is if there's a real shortage of supply and you suspend the gas tax, most of those benefits are going to go to the sellers, not to the buyers, because we still have the same amount of supply and the price is still going to go up. one thing we so what we really need to do is increase the supply. there aren't many things we can do. what the governor did last year is he actually moved forward the switch over to winter blend because winter blend can use more blending components and effectively increase the supply of gasoline we have. so i wouldn't be surprised if he ends
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up doing that again. and i think that would help quite a bit. it takes a while though. once that wholesale price goes through the roof, it takes a while even when it comes down for the retail prices to follow. as we saw last year. so i'm worried that we're going to wait the prices, the retail prices are going to get over $6 a gallon and then when even if we do lower the wholesale prices, it'll take a month or two before we really see the impact at the pump. >> look, even though we're not at record highs, i mean, we're in high territory and we've seen a recent surge, none of it feels good to consumers. how does that play in terms of the move to renewables? is this maybe a push towards that? and given that we've been pushing towards that in california, i mean, you see how many electric vehicles there are now. why aren't prices already lower and demand lower? >> well, high gasoline prices do push people to electric vehicles. there's some good research on that. but we still are. and we have been selling a lot of electric vehicles. about
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a quarter of the new vehicles sold are electric these days, but that's a still very small share of the total fleet of vehicles in california, and particularly of the heaviest gasoline burning vehicles. the lower mileage vehicles and the heavier pickup trucks and so forth. so it's had a little bit of impact on demand, and we're starting to see it in the total consumption numbers. but not enough to really bring down uh- price, bring down the stress, particularly because we've also lost some refining capacity. a couple of refiners have switched over to producing biofuel diesels and a couple one has gone out of business and so we're losing supply as well as demand for gasoline. and right now, that still means that when we get to this fall period, when we're switching over, we can get into a real supply crunch. it's something we have to address in the longer run through a more coordinated policy. but in the
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short run, there are limited number of levers we can pull. >> all right? i mean, it doesn't make me feel much better, but at least we understand some of the reasons. severin borenstein, professor in the haas school of business at berkeley, thank you so much. >> sure. take care. >> take care. san francisco saw a huge boost in economic activity and cleanliness during the dreamforce conference, but can residents expect the city to keep it up? mayor london breed joins us live in the studio to discuss new efforts underway to make the city more livable and hospitable for visitors, businessesnd residents alike. that's c
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moscone center, and the city hopes it's another step toward economic recovery after last week's successful dreamforce conference. joining us live now in the studio to talk about new measures to build a better city from the economy to housing to public safety, is san francisco mayor london breed in the house? mayor breed. nice to see you. >> good to see you, too. >> all right. so all these conferences disrupt sf, you're probably going to get out there. you always go dreamforce. but last week, the big international summit, of course, apec coming up with all the world leaders. are these all real signs that the economic activity here is coming back? >> well, i think so, because here's the thing. we have a lot of people who want to hold conferences in san francisco, and we're doing everything we can to ensure they have a great experience because of how much money is generated in our economy. but also, we love playing host and we love welcoming visitors and we want to make sure we're able to show off the beauty of our city. >> right now, i want to ask you about dreamforce, because marc benioff was very impressed. right. but he did say, why can't san francisco be like this all
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the time? and he had indicated that when there isn't a big conference, perhaps public safety isn't taken as seriously . how do you respond to that? >> well, first of all, i would respond to that by saying that every time we have a conference, it is a huge success because of the work that we put into making it a success. dreamforce has been in san francisco from the beginning, and every single time they've had a huge conference, but it is definitely an expensive undertake ing to ensure that we provide the level of protection and support and the responsiveness that we do during dreamforce and during tech crunch as well as apec and some of the big conventions. so it is very expensive, very taxing on our very limited resources, but we are committed to making sure that all the conventions that are held in san francisco are a huge success. our goal, of course, we want it to be like that every single time. but the complications around the challenges that exist with homelessness, with substance use disorder, with mental illness, continue to be a problem. those things just didn't disappear. they were
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still in the same areas of san francisco that they sadly are still in, where many of our city workers and nonprofit agencies we work with are continuously working to help people get the help and support they need. right? >> you're right. it didn't all go away. i think the first day of the conference i had to drive through the tenderloin to get to the orpheum, and i did see it was very sad. yeah, there were a lot of tents out there. a lot of folks who looked immobile on the street. yes. and you mentioned the challenges that go into that or obstruct the efforts to resolve that problem. so what are some of the challenges, if you can explain to our viewers? >> well, i think the injunction with the courts has been a bit of a challenge in permitting our ability to move people off the sidewalk. we have behavioral health beds. we have shelter beds. we have place cases for people to go. and i think when we have places for people to go , they should have to leave the streets. when we're offering them shelter to in order to go into a place where we can help support them. that has been a
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bit of a tug of war. we think we're headed in the right direction and our hope is that we can continue to help people get treatment. i was on willow alley, a place that was notorious along with some of the other alleys off of venice avenue. there's usually hundreds of people all sleeping on the sidewalk. there were only about 16, and four of those people were already housed and six people that day accepted help. so our teams are out there working really hard to try and get people into treatment. we just got to keep at it. we got to be as aggressive as possible and we don't need obstructionist and people who are pushing back against what we're trying to do. this is not homeless sweeps. this is homeless help. this is trying to get people into help. and into treatment and to obstruct it and to allow it to just happen makes our job a lot harder. all right, mayor, i also want to ask you about last night, because i know you attended a community meeting in west twin peaks and there have been a homicide that made a lot of residents nervous. >> and i know you want a certain
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measures taken to improve public safety and surveillance in that area. what are you doing? >> so twin peaks, as you mentioned, there was a homicide , a very targeted incident, very unfortunate. that is currently under investigation by the san francisco police department. and twin peaks has been a bit of a hotspot for some time now. and, you know, car break ins and other violence incidents that have taken place. but it's the most beautiful, iconic destination in san francisco. and so we have to look at some solutions. and part of the solutions is putting up a new gate, new security systems, a number of camera systems in the area to ensure that people know that when they come to this area , they are under surveillance and that surveillance will hopefully lead to some assistance when those crimes occur. and we're also looking at ambassadors and other security measures and also closures of certain time periods, making sure that access to twin peaks
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at a certain time period is not allowed. so we're still in conversation with some of the neighbors and having talks about some suggestions. but the gate system, the camera system and other things are being worked on as we speak. >> okay. you also talked about car break ins. that remains an issue. and our media partner, the san francisco standard, actually has a new article out and we'll be talking to them in the next segment about tipping. i never heard of the term before, but i guess it's become a cultural phenomenon, slang for car break ins. and i want to ask you, because i know a month ago you and the da and the police chief kind of came out and stood together and said, we're going to have new crackdowns that involves bait cars and other measures. talk about how well some of those new measures have worked. if you've seen any evidence of change in the past month, well, more recently, we i think it was last week and the excelsior some of our patrols did a really great job in capturing someone along with a lot of the merchandise that they had stolen out of cars. >> they were able to recover that and make an arrest. the bait cars are already making a
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difference because we're focusing on the touristy areas where we are seeing the most, most challenges. and so our police have been able to make arrests. our district attorney has assured us that people will be charged and so i think so far it's going okay. but we definitely know that more law needs to be done to address this phenomenon. >> do you think san francisco perhaps waited too long to take very decisive, concrete action? >> i don't think i don't think so. i think it's complicated because, you know, the issues around the charge being based on the amount of merchandise has the ability to catch someone. and what we have on video, what we don't have on video, i mean, the laws have changed. the statewide laws as well as some of our local laws from my perspective, you know, there are a lot of policy makers that are making decisions that are impacting our ability to keep the public safe. in san francisco. i think, unfortunately, the police commission in san francisco is a real problem. people are
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wondering, well, with all the motorcycles that came into san francisco at that time that they came in, they weren't following the laws. they were riding against traffic, driving on sidewalks, potentially running into people. and because of some policies that have been implemented by the police commission of san francisco, they weren't able to pursue or weren't able to take the steps necessary to address the issue. so i think that we have some real challenges that we need to overcome. and my hope is that we can get to a better place and make some aggressive policy changes to protect public safety . all right. >> well, we only have about a minute left, so i'm going to ask you to put on your speed talking hat because i want to give you a chance to talk about what we're doing to improve housing stock. but also, i've got to talk about the night market. okay >> let's talk about the fun stuff. the night market was amazing. and i got to give credit to supervisor joel engardio. it was in the avenues, the outer sunset neighborhood. it was packed. it was for blocks, vendors, bars,
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restaurants, places. it was amazing. >> i don't think we have video of you, but we know you made it out there. and i wonder if you think, given the success, we might be looking at expanding it either in terms of bringing it to more pockets of the city more regularly or maybe extend ending how many blocks you got there? >> oh, we definitely need to extend. we need to expand it to other neighborhoods. san francisco has a lot of festivals and events. there was a haight street fair that was this weekend. there was comedy day and all kinds of other events. but people want to come together to do some family friendly activities in the evening and this night market with all the kids, with all the seniors and all the families was a great opportunity to bring the community together. so we definitely need to move in that direction. and i'm looking forward to seeing that happen. >> all right, mayor bree, thank you so much for coming in. really appreciate it. yes. all right. well, we talked about with mayor bree the efforts to crack down on car break ins. perhaps that may also impact the use of a popular term associated
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and looting it of anything worthy of value. our media partner, the san francisco standard, published an article today exploring why san francisco is now considered bip city. joining us live now is senior reporter with the standard who wrote the article. jonah owen lam. hey, jonah. >> nice to be here. how are you doing? >> good, good, thanks. so when did the term beeping first become a thing in the bay area? >> we don't have an exact point in time, but about the last 5 or 6 years, this is a term that has become popular, kind of a slang sort of appearing in some youtube rap songs. and then it appeared in other places as i've been covering crime in the city
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for about a decade, and i hadn't heard of it up until last couple years. and the people i interviewed for my story seemed to have started hearing it around 2016, 2017. it just seems to be one of those words that came out of the ether. folks were using it and then it appeared in kind of cultural form. and that's what made me interested in the story. >> all right, so why has san francisco, though, become bip city? >> well, i don't know if you need to ask me that question. i mean, the mayor was just on i think everybody knows that san francisco is one of those hotspots for car break ins. obviously, oakland is, too. and, you know, you might have an argument about where bip city is. exactly. there's a video that i saw maybe 3 or 4 years old where some some folks were in coit tower rapping about beeping, saying this is bip city. this is just a place where there's lots of cars. oftentimes tourists leave stuff in those cars and they're just kind of prime locations for people to
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steal. you're going to go where the money is. you're going to go where the things that are left in cars are. i mean, there's been instances in the past where federal agents left their guns in cars in san francisco and they've been stolen. if you recall. so in this case, you know, lots of folks, locals, maybe not locals, i can't say who all the shippers are, where they're from, what their motivated to do. but i can say we're most of car break-ins occur and it's like fisherman's wharf. yeah. >> in fact, let's go ahead and ask our producer to pull back up your article. right? because if you scroll down you'll see there is that map that you're talking about where you see the neighborhoods in red versus dark red. and i think it's very telling. it's right there. all right. so darkest red and black. what are those neighborhoods and what's the rate there? >> so we have the presidio and then we have fisherman's wharf, north beach, that area. those are just tourist hotspots, right. if you want to go to the golden gate bridge, you're in the presidio. if you want to go to baker beach or crissy field,
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you're in the presidio. these are places where lots of visitors and locals like to go put stuff in their cars and folks take advantage of that. the other location. fisherman's wharf? yeah because if you click on the fisherman's wharf area in black, then the number pops up where you can see for 10,000 residents, you have 2200 incidents. >> that's like one out of every five residents may suffer a break in. >> indeed, i think i think all this is important to point out, important to point out these focus points. but it is also in the context of car break-ins over time. so we're still not at the peak, which was like 2016, 17, 18 were close, but we're not at the peak. so i think people all are focusing on it for good reason. but also we need to remember that it was worse before for the covid pandemic and there were efforts which you mentioned in the previous segment, like bait cars and officers and the police department have done this kind of interdiction in the past. i think at this point it's just
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become such a common thing here . and the bay area has invented a word to describe it. beeping and i think the fascinating part about this, regardless, you know, whether you think this is a bad thing, no one's going to say it's a good thing. but the fact that there's a kind of cultural aspect to it, to me is really fascinating. and i think this is why i wanted to write the story and kind of look into what for memes have been invented that have taken on bip and added it to bip city. i mean, there's t shirts, there's stickers. i was in a bar like six months ago and i look up and there's like this shattered glass and it says bip city. and so all these things to me are another kind of element of what happens when there's just a phenomenon in culture, like in the world, right? this is happening right? this is happening here, jonah. >> this is very fascinating. and i encourage you people to check out your article at sf standard.com where they'll find your story and other original reporting. we'll take a short break and be right back
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tonight, breaking news here in new york city. the disturbing discovery inside that day care. after fentanyl killed a 1-year-old, authorities using narcan to bring back three other young children. and tonight, federal authorities warning the nation. ukraine's president zelenskyy here in new york. his plea before world leaders today. and a delta flight, the emergency landing, reports of multiple systems failures. first tonight, federal charges now filed, multiple suspects charged with murder after the death of that
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