but not by susan polk.o be her own lawyer. >> she thought no one could do as good a job as she could. >> reporter: carol pogash is a journalist who lives in the orinda hills near the polk home and has covered the case from the very beginning. >> she was convinced that this was her only chance to speak out and she was going to say what she had to say, and she wouldn't give in. >> reporter: and especially to a prosecutor susan polk seemed to despise. >> susan polk really hated paul sequeira, and at times paul sequeira, the d.a., really hated susan polk. >> she'd say i was a baby. she'd say i was a liar. >> reporter: cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, but the drama inside was more bizarre than any fiction. polk accused the prosecutor and the judge of conspiring against her. she objected hundreds and hundreds of times, demanding almost daily a mistrial. >> probably the most memorable thing she said about the judge was the judge was trying to explain to her the law saying you're arguing apples and orange

one of which is on polk. the polk street corridor is much longer than what staff has presented, as you know. in fact, there are about eight places where you can get paid, both hardware stores and professional paint stores. this is an issue about formula retail. this neighborhood when you stretch it in the upper freeway is filled with many local independent businesses, and also a share of formula retail folks. sherwin williams who's basically the slogan is cover the earth. there currently trying to cover the city. they have three stores right now. they're hoping to get seven or eight throughout the city. i am sure they will be here on other projects as they are protested for their development in the city. in essence, they are basically trying to take money out of san francisco, send it to corporate headquarters come and take it out of locally-owned businesses. when someone buys of a gallon of paint from brownie's hardware it cetera, money from that sale is recycling and recirculating in our community in doing

i own the gallery on polk street, and i am the treasurer of the polk street merchants association. i just want to say that i completely agree with my colleagues. this is not the type of business that we feel would add anything to the neighborhood, and we hope that you will reject their request. thank you very much. president olague: thank you. is there any additional public comment on this item? >> good afternoon. my name is david tutor, a commercial real estate broker. i have been involved with commercial real estate in san francisco for approximately 35 years. i wanted to submit to the commissioners a list of currently published rental rates in the polk street area. starting at two dollars a square foot, which is what the current owner is asking for his party, running up to $3.33 a square foot. larger retail stores, in my experience, and the formula of retail stores do not tend to drive prices up a matter of fact, they usually draw the hardest bargains, mainly due to their credit balances, their availability of funding, and they're strong financial positions. sometimes this is no

pacific at polk provides you with the type of parking, and you can do those kinds of things. i have to basically say that i am in support of the concerns with the local merchants, that this is not the right location for this application. i would like to make a motion to disapprove. >> second. commissioner borden: i think this is a difficult case, because on the one hand, i sympathize with the vacancy issue of that particular space. i used to live in this neighborhood and i remember when the old theater was a vacant, vacant for a long time. finally it was torn down. it was sad, and the new building -- the marquee does look nice, but i have noticed the space has been vacant for a long time. so that has been a very unfortunate outcome. obviously we would like to see that space activated. on the other hand, i used to shop all the time at brownie's and knew all the different merchants there. for me, the most compelling thing is when he said 20% of his business were for painting in painting sundries, which is pretty surprising. i did not expected to be so high. that is a pretty goo

considering the uniqueness of polk street, is something that we have to take into very heavy consideration. and i would be leaning to the small merchants, at the local merchants. the argument that the money is kept locally when you deal with local merchants has great ability -- great validity. everything i have ever read, nationally and in california, has supported that. i see no financial information, a county information, that gives anything other than the fact that there is nearly a 10-1 differential, the reports i have seen. and that is one of the reasons, of course, i think san francisco enacted this formula retelling the first place, for such neighborhood districts. i will not make any motion at what i have. president olague: commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: i disagree in some regards. ironically yesterday i was in hayes valley not far from here having a bite to eat, and the discussion came up about formula retell being entirely banned, and what would -- one would expect that the prices and rents are low. actually, that is not true. everything is expensive, and it is a w

we did sit down with middle polk, lower polk, and the merchants association. we came right -- we came up with some ideas to give the neighborhood some comfort. a list of licenses was actually from myself. i said an e-mail letter with my contact information and did not receive a single phone call. >> -- commissioner moore: -- commissioner borden: i love the job shop. is that still on the meeting? >> what would it was asked about problems. commissioner borden: it was a list of asking who are the problem liberalizes is. >> we went out to every liquor license, everyone we knew we could not obtain a license from -- safeway, and it like that -- anyone like that -- was eliminated. we sent a letter to every other business asking if they were interested in selling their license. we then went back to lower polk, the only group that reach out to us and was willing to have conversations about mitigation measures and give us a short list of licenses that were real problems. commissioner borden: sounds like you have been to one meeting. >> i have also been to the middle pol

for example, on polk st., at&t is about to put up a macro site. according to our preliminary information, it appears that that site could be configured to cover whatever coverage gap exists. they have not even evaluated that macro site as part of their current in not -- their current analysis. nor have they evaluated updating the three microbe sites that they have. they say they have hay infrastructure that is not able. that is their situation. they have not evaluated the opportunity to upgrade the existing micro sites as well as the macro sites. we do not believe this is the least intrusive. we think the least intrusive is the proposed macro side on polk street and upgrading the 3 micro sites. that said, we are not the expert said. we are prepared to accept an independent expert, as you have suggested. supervisor wiener: to be clear, even if we assume a significant gap in coverage, is your current position that this is still an inappropriate location because it is not the least intrusive? >> that is correct. that is the two-part test from the tel

they do not have to look around on polk street to find a new paint store without any question. and truthfully, i think -- i believe any way, at least in my mind, that if they were going to open on van ness avenue, this might be a different consideration. maybe not, but it could be. after all, when we turned down american apparel on valencia, we told them to look more at mission street. when we had a small pet store on neighborhood streets, we said to go to a more major commercial street. in my mind -- and it was also a little hint of something saying they were professional, and they are. i am not questioning the staff at sherman williams. but having known the reputation of brownie's and others and cole's, these are as professional as you can find in san francisco, as are their staff. so i see no problem in those arguments whatsoever. commissioner borden: i want to reiterate, there are three sherman williams stores, and the city is only seventh-by-7. it is not like you can drive to another town or, you know, even another city. for me, that is the reason that it is different. i u

i'm so hope that polk street is in it as well. it's my daily commute. i hope that in the next two years that i have the honor to be here as well to get some profit off this workshop as well. the third one with wiggle i think is a quite interesting one. we don't have a wiggle in the netherlands. we don't need a wiggle in the netherlands. but i -- i thought what an interesting word that is, wiggle. where does it come from? is it a san francisco-invented word? so i looked it up yesterday in the oxford dictionary. to my surprise i found the origin of the word "wiggle" is in dutch. sorry about that. it's to wiggle. to move to left to right. that's something we do in the netherlands. in politics as well. and even i find out that the name beggler, somebody who wiggles, is a common name in the netherlands and in the dutch translation of harry potter, the lady who writes all the booklets for the school in the harry potter school is madam wiggli. i thought it might be good to contact her to get some additional support for this workshop and then i find there's no

polk street, dewiggle and central market. our expectations are very high. we're very grateful to the nether land consulate and the folks who have come here, some of who you'll hear from this morning for bringing their time and expertise and lover and passion for cycling to us here in san francisco. we do have a great advocate for cycling here, although sometimes he says he needs a little bit of an electric motor to get up that hill by his house. he is 100% supportive of increasing the bicycle use in this city. been focused on the development of places like central market, which is one of the focus areas of this workshop. without further ado, i'm happy to welcome up to the mike our mayor, mayor ed lee. [applause] >> thank you, ed. morning, everyone! welcome here to city hall in san francisco. delighted to join this wonderful opportunity here and council general, thank you very much for bringing a wonderful team from netherlands to help engage us even better and to excite not only us who work here at city hall but our traffic engineers, our bicycle coalition,

polk is the place. what happened is that the firemen had to take control. the police do not even try. the captain says there is nothing that he can do. he only has five officers. the sergeant says that there is nothing they can do. then they describe how somebody tried to get taken away because of the complaint from the bar owner. and all of their friends came and stopped the policemen from taking her away, and then the have to call and five more police. this time, the brief fire man stepped forward, without anybody even calling them, trying to take control of the street and cleared it. it is very dangerous. we had a meeting with the city attorney this week about shutting down these places as a public nuisance, about how people came out of the bars on another occasion, lit fire to cloth, then threw it at a car. propane tanks are used under the senior housing, under their windows. this situation is horrible. last weekend, i had to go to abc for a hearing to try to. -- to try to prevent the license from being put in on the same block. they said, well, abc is

polk is the place. what happened is that the firemen had to take control. the police do not even try. the captain says there is nothing that he can do. he only has five officers. the sergeant says that there is nothing they can do. then they describe how somebody tried to get taken away because of the complaint from the bar owner. and allo

on polk street, there are many incidences of drug dealing and prostitution. in some of the entertainment quarters, we of shootings that happened. these are perennial issues that the police department needs to continually tackle. i am a big fan of the concept of community policing. that is the idea that our local police officers need to establish a better relationship with members of the community, residents, and merchants. through that community partnership, we have seen true successes in being able to combat crime. you have eyes and ears on the street cooperating with the men and women in blue. that helps to reduce crime. i have been pushing our police department to implement that. >> your district is a well-known nightlife destination. how do you balance the needs of the residents with the needs of the restaurants and bars? >> i moved into my neighborhood in part because we have such a wonderful vibrant nightlife. san francisco is famous for our restaurant scene, are seen, club scene. -- are sbar scene. we have had too much violence around these nighttime v

it's pretty much what polk county and des moines is like today. host: what exactly is your job in these final days specifically, mr. funk? guest: as the cochair, our job is not to be about individual candidates but about the logistics of pulling off a good caucus. i don't want a campaign to look at us in a month or so, and say, jeez, if you guys haven't screwed it up on caucus night, we would have won the iowa caucuses and i would still be a viable candidate. our job with more than 108 precinct sites across the county, some with a population of 1,000 or 2,000 with a maximum population of around 3,500, we could have several hundred attendees at each of these precincts. so we've had to logistically find the spots do it. fortunately it's not rocket science. you know, they've been doing the caucus since the mid 1960's. so we have schools available. we have churches some businesses, community centers, that sort of thing, across the county. and then a few sites and areas where we don't have a big republican presence. for example, some of the inner city

i have to businesses on polk street. this is -- the church is a mess. the security and the vagrant situation there as well as the dilapidation, i stopped three fires in the alcoves there that vagrants were starting. it isd a real concern. my daugthter -- daughter's had when she slips is 30 feet away from this building. it is an ugly tower. thank you. president chiu: thank you, next speaker. >> good afternoon, president chiu. i live on russian hill. at&t is a giant force in the telecommunications industry. their capability as far and wide. with all the technological know- how that at&t possesses, they cannot explain why they cannot meet the area supposedly needed by reconfiguring 3 micro-sites. and one macro-site. no serious attempt was made to identify less harmful side. they need to use their abilities to investigate west's interests of alternatives. the church at 240 larkin street is located within a residential area, considered a category seven area. it is the least preferred area. the church being public domain gives easy access to at&t. if the chur

polk street merchants have been going to some of the meetings. trader joe's has been to every one of the meetings, has had a representative employee. cvs -- we have never seen an employee at any of the meetings. we have never heard from them. we have actually written, and all we have gotten our e-mails was just cannot in the last three or four days from the consultants on the project. cvs does not want to seem to do anything with this except for use a consultant. this is not part of our neighborhood. the polk street merchants does not have a problem with trader joe's, looks forward to having it. having cvs is a problem. we urge you to split this up as it should be. and consider each one of them. how many drug stores are there? how many grocery stores are there? these are two separate companies. they do not have any ownership altogether. i appreciate your time. >> afternoon, commissioners. i have lived in the neighborhood since 1997. my wife and i enjoy shopping at trader joe's. we think it is a very good store. we personally welcome their locatio

it's pretty much what polk county and des moines is like today.ost: what exactly is your job in these final days specifically, mr. funk? guest: as the cochair, our job is not to be about individual candidates but about the logistics of pulling off a good caucus. i don't want a campaign to look at us in a month or so, and say, jeez, if you guys haven't screwed it up on caucus night, we would have won the iowa caucuses and would still be a viable candidate. our job with more than 108 precinct sites across the county, some with a population of 1,000 or 000 with a maximum population of around 3,500, we could he several hundred attendees at each of these precincts. so we've had to logistically find the spots do it. fortunately it's not rocket science. you know, they've been doing the caucus since the mid 1960's. so we have schools available. we have chuhes some businesses, community centers, that sort of thing, across the county. and then a few sites and areas where we don't have a big republican presence. for example, some of the inner city sections o