Decommissioning the Potrero Power Plant, the City’s largest single source of polluting air emissions, continues to be elusive.  Technical flaws discovered in the Trans Bay Cable may delay the plant’s expected closure at the end of this year.  Last month tests found a component of the 53-mile long cable wasn’t working properly.

Google District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and you’ll get the standard biographical information.  Wikipedia lists her terms in office:  elected to a transitional two-year term in 2000, re-elected to two four-year terms in 2002 and 2006.  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ website provides a description of her work related to environmental justice, clean energy and equitable distribution of public resources.  But, if you continue down the list of entries you’ll find links to blogs and articles calling for her ouster.  In fact, a recall petition failed as recently as February, just 10 months before Maxwell’s final term will come to a close. It seems that even as she prepares to leave office, some believe that exit can’t come soon enough.

In 2006, Gap founder Don Fisher’s sons – Bob, Bill and John – established the nonprofit City Fields Foundation. The Foundation quickly partnered with the City to form the Playfields Initiative, dedicated to installing synthetic turf and lighting at San Francisco’s athletic fields.  Within the year two athletic fields, Garfield Park and Silver Terrace, were outfitted with synthetic turf, lights, and new fencing.   Over the next two years the Playfields Initiative invested $45 million, a bit less than half of which was paid for by the City, to install synthetic turf at more than 15 playing fields in the Sunset, Mission, Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, and Western Addition neighborhoods.  In 2008 San Franciscans passed Proposition A, the Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond, which allocated $185 million in bond money for capital improvements to parks.  A portion of the funds was earmarked to match private money to renovate athletic fields with synthetic turf and lights.