thank you to rachel gordon for writing all of the articles in "the chronicle." i don't think she ever thought she would write as many darn articles. phil frank would have done 10 cartoons on this bocce court. let's get the recreation and park director -- director and thank his commission for all of the work. thank you, sir. there are a lot of ways to describe our mayor and persistence is one of them. i worked for the mayor in a couple of rolls and this has been on your list for how long? we are thrilled to be able to pull this off. like many things we're trying to do, we cannot do it alone. i want to thank all of our partners, local 261, who we have an incredible relationship with, we just want to the first apprenticeship program, and we are very excited. bocce federation, peter, where are you? peter, so you know, was the driving force but the region behind the renovation in golden gate park. -- was the driving force behind the renovation in golden gate park. supervisor chu, supervisor avalos, thanks to all of you for being so enthusiastic. so, thanks to everyon

rachel gordon, city hall reporter for the "san francisco chronicle" and josh richmond, legal and political affairs reporter for the "oakland tribune" and tom vacar consumer editor for kttv news. tom, did this year end better than it began or worse than expected? >> i think for a lot of people it's a toss-up, and i think for the state it's been a toss-up. we started the year out at about 12.3% unemployment, we are at 12.4% unemployment. we had a slight dip in the middle of the year, but unemploymentwise that is the problem and that's the problem for california, jobs, jobs, jobs, because everything else is impacted by that whether it's taxes, housing values, everything else, so that i think was the biggest thing. and in the united states, you know, the same thing. we started out in the united states in the high nines. we are ending up in the united states in the high nines. so, not much improvement in jobs and the outlook for jobs. in california, the problem is particularly bad because we have the third highest unemployment behind michigan and nevada, and our problem is we've lost 600,000 co

joining me tonight on our news panel are rachel gordon, city hall reporter with the "san francisco chronicle craig miller, senior editor of kqed's "climate watch." and jill tucker, education writer, also with the "chronicle." and john myer, sacramento bureau chief for kqed public radio, joining us from sacramento. john, we're going to start with you. tell us, please, how will governor-elect jerry brown solve this $28 billion budget shortfall? >> boy, belva, i wish i had the answer for that. i'll tell you, sacramento is one of those towns that thrives on information. everybody in the capitol corridor, they want to know the gossip, rumor mills, everybody always wants to know things. nobody knows what brown is going to do. no one has any real information. and he doesn't have a lot of time to actually make a decision. as a matter of fact, we probably expect i would say right about now, maybe next week, governor-elect brown's budget proposal for january actually goes to the printer. so he has to lock in a lot of decisions. it's a $28 billion problem. we thought it was about 25. all of these tax a