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Board reviews Tenderloin CBD reports amid praise for services and calls for greater transparency
Summary
The Board reviewed annual reports for the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District; staff and the interim executive director described cleaning, safety and beautification services, while residents and former board members praised programs but raised transparency and governance concerns.
Trina Villanueva (Office of Economic & Workforce Development) and Dina Hilliard, interim executive director of the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District, presented the district’s annual reports covering multiple fiscal years and summarized programs that provide cleaning, beautification and safety services in the Tenderloin.
Hilliard outlined operations: scheduled hand-sweeps for each property twice daily, sidewalk scrubbing and monthly power washing, graffiti abatement, needle pickup and targeted cleanings at hot spots. She said the CBD has planted about 182 trees (through 02/2011), runs Safe Haven sites and a Safe Passage youth-chaperone program, and contracts with San Francisco Clean City Coalition in part because of that organization’s job-training and placement services.
Public commentators included residential and nonprofit stakeholders who praised services—Safe Haven, needle reduction, youth programming—but also current and former board members who raised governance issues: noncompetitive contracting (about 80% of the CBD’s budget to a single vendor), inconsistent application of Brown Act/Public Records Act rules versus the Sunshine Ordinance, limited resident representation on the board, and the need for stronger oversight. MOEWD staff said most CBDs had provided their reports and that the office would work to bring remaining reports and compliance issues before the Board.
The Board accepted the reports and asked MOEWD to follow up on outstanding compliance items and to return to the GAO agenda with a status update; the chair also referred some specific complaints to the district supervisor for follow-up.
