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Supervisors amend response to Van Ness grand jury report, continue hearing for follow‑up
Summary
The Government Audit & Oversight Committee amended a draft response to the Civil Grand Jury’s Van Ness Avenue report, voted to send the amended resolution to the full Board, and continued the underlying hearing for further action. MTA staff and the grand jury disputed some factual points and acknowledged lessons for future CMGC projects.
The Government Audit and Oversight Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Oct. 7 amended a resolution responding to the Civil Grand Jury report “Van Ness Avenue, what lies beneath” and voted to forward the amended response to the full Board.
The committee’s discussion centered on the grand jury’s findings about schedule delays and cost impacts on the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project. Supervisor Rafael Mandelmann, who led the review in committee, asked agency staff to clarify several findings and proposed language for the board response that ranged from agreement to partial disagreement depending on the finding. “Finding 1 is that the delays in completion of the Van Ness BRT project were caused primarily by avoidable setbacks in replacement of the water and sewer infrastructure,” Mandelmann said during the hearing, and he pressed MTA representatives for specifics on what drove the schedule slips.
Tom McGuire, Streets Director at the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), told the committee that the utility replacements had a major effect on schedule. “The sewer and water delays had a big impact on the overall delay to the project,” McGuire said, adding that much of the problem stemmed from uncertainty about subsurface infrastructure and insufficient information prior to digging.
Civil Grand Jury representative Simone Manganielli said the report’s scope covered developments through roughly June, when the panel submitted the report for publication, and defended the grand jury’s conclusions about insufficient on‑the‑ground problem solving during early construction phases. “We found that [a dedicated liaison] just wasn’t there from the beginning to creatively solve these problems rather than getting caught up in arguments over technical requirements,” Manganielli said.
Public commenters criticized project management. Barry Toronto, describing himself as a nighttime cab driver, said the work on Van Ness was “still horribly managed” and that construction traffic configurations were confusing and damaging to vehicles and businesses.
After questions and deliberation, Mandelmann moved to amend the resolution with proposed responses for each finding (agree/partially agree/disagree as specified in committee materials). The committee voted without opposition (Vice Chair Connie Chan — aye; Member Mandelmann — aye; Chair Dean Preston — aye) to adopt the amendments and to forward the amended resolution with a positive recommendation to the full Board. The committee then voted to continue the separate hearing on agenda item 1 to the call of the chair for additional follow‑up.
Why it matters: The grand jury report and the committee’s response focus attention on how major capital projects manage subsurface risk, contractor readiness, and interagency coordination. MTA staff told the committee they plan to apply lessons learned — including more thorough preconstruction investigations and clearer preconstruction deliverable reviews — to future projects.
What’s next: The amended resolution will be considered by the full Board of Supervisors. The committee continued the underlying hearing on the grand jury report to the call of the chair for additional action and monitoring.
