San Francisco Mayor Pushes Tap Water While City Slates Huge 25% Price Hikes

by hearit

We've noticed something odd: San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is kicking off "Shape Up San Francisco"--a soda-free summer (supposedly) designed to tackle obesity and diabetes in the Bay Area. But the mayor's got one interesting, very specific suggestion that could make waves. Water may be good for health. But local tap water may be good for financial health, of a city. It seems Lee seems to have "coincidental" timing in his push for the "tap": The city's prepping for a steep, 25% price hikes for residential water rates for consumers.

Just days ago, on June 20, it was officially announced: San Francisco city health officials are urging a summer filled with what they deem healthier options than sodas like Coca-Cola. The northern California area wants residents to choose healthier stuff to ingest -- like totally pure fruit and vegetable juices, low-fat milk or water instead of sodas or drinks packed with sugar.

But Mayor Ed Lee is making what seems to be a very personal push for water: "San Francisco is fortunate to have pristine tap water from Hetch Hetchy that is among the cleanest and best tasting in the world," Mayor Lee recently announced. "This summer, I encourage everyone to rethink choosing sugary drinks and rehydrate with clean, refreshing tap water."

Mayor Lee may be a bit more successful in an attempt to at least push fruit juice, with some flavor, over the suggestion of water to kids. But perhaps more interesting is that, while soft drink manufacturers like Coca-Cola and other companies offer bottled water for sale, Lee isn't suggesting those. Coca-Cola makes Dasani brand water. In fact Dasani would fit the mayor's bill, in terms of eliminating sugar: The Coke manufacturer has admitted Dasani is nothing but tap water. But it seems not just any "tap water" will do. The San Francisco mayor's suggestion of residents drinking "tap water" is aimed specifically at local sources -- provided by the Hetch Hetchy reservoir that flows from Yosemite.

But Mayor Lee has is specifically suggesting the city's "tap water" provided by Hetch Hetchy, and that part is most intriguing -- fascinating, even, when considering that slated Bay Area water bills to residences will (coincidentally) see a major price increase in coming months. While Bay area water agencies have trained consumers to use less through cost, Mayor Lee now pushes the concept of upping that personal consumption through swapping out sodas for the tap. If San Francisco residents are already on the verge of huge prices hikes from upped prices, they could see even bigger bills if they follow the mayor's lead.

It all equals money headed for San Francisco city coffers -- in water sales -- which logically leads to the question: Does the mayor's suggestion of local "tap water" consumption seem to represent a conflict of interest? Just a tad of one?

San Francisco residents will see water bills become 25-percent more expensive just months from now when, by late 2012, price hikes of four-tenths of a cent per gallon begin -- causing the average monthly water bill to rise to about $36 per month for the standard 2.5-member household.

San Francisco’s water department plans to raise water rates for that water it sells: Price hies mean water cost is going to increase quickly for 26 Bay Area utilities and cities. That water price increase will be heading upward -- up to 47-percent, the price boost slated to start just days from now on July 1, 2011. Rates charged by companies to Bay Area residents are slated to have price hikes of 15 to 16 percent.

It all adds a new twist to a local San Francisco city battle over a Coca Cola sign the city claims isn't so popular with at least one local resident. Recent months have seen a fight over a vintage Coca-Cola sign that decorates the side of a San Francisco house in Bernal Heights which the city says supposedly violates local anti-billboard laws -- and must come down.

In February, media reports claimed it was locals who wanted removal of the sign, the billboard accused of promoting obesity through advertising a sugary drink. Yet, despite claims that a resident is complaining about the sign, its removal seems to fall oddly in line with the city's campaign against sugar intake.

Supporters of the Coca-Cola sign say it's a vintage ad thought to date back roughly 70 years or even more, supporters arguing the sign to be a relic from the neighborhood's working-class past. No one can argue the ad pushes alcohol or cigarettes. But for San Fran city officials that's not good enough.

San Francisco Bernal Heights residents are contesting a San Francisco city officials' decision that says the vibrant, 15-by-7-foot, Coca-Cola sign has got to go. What the city says is an ad hangs on the side of a home at 601 Tompkins Avenue -- and that sign's been dubbed by the city as a billboard that, the city says, violates laws. Local residents says it's a piece of history that needs to be exempted from 2002 legislature.

Bernal Heights resident Todd Lapin -- website owner of "Bernalwood" -- calls the Coke billboard, with its sun and silhouetted figure of a woman drinking from a Coca-Cola glass bottle,"vintage commercial art".

Lappin says the sign once served as part of an area store during the 1940s, where San Francisco kids could place lunch orders in the morning and pick those lunches up later in the day. At some point, Lappin says, the Coke sign got covered with asbestos siding where it wasn't visible. But in 1991, when siding was pulled off, neighbors intervened when the Coca Cola sign's property owner was about to paint over it. Ever since, the sign has been cared for and even retouched and painted. Lappin's working on finding sufficient evidence to provide to San Francisco, in hopes the sign is old enough to be grandfathered in or bypass the billboard regulations linked to the more-recent legislature.

There's seems to be an awfully interesting timeline of when the battle over the Bernal Heights Coca-Cola sign came to the forefront: Supposedly, in or near January 2011, a vague 'someone' is said to have e-mailed a city planner -- with specific complains about the sign. The Coca-Cola sign happens to be located visibly across the street from Paul Revere Elementary School.

It all feels strangely suspicious: The Bernal Heights complainer’s identity seems to have been redacted from city records. Coincidentally, at the time of the complaint is when San Francisco City planners inspected it -- to rule the Coca-Cola ad "illegal".

The property owner for 601 Tompkins Avenue, Richard Modolo, was first forced to respond to a violation notice from the San Francisco Planning Department -- where he subsequently applied for a permit to cover the Coca-Cola sign. The city told the billboard's owner that he'd be looking at one hundred bucks per day in fines -- plus an extra fee of $1,200 -- for violating Planning Department guidelines in what Modolo says "takes your breath away". The City Planner, Dan Sider, says there are no exceptions and that the Coca-Cola sign "very much appears to be illegal no matter how you cut it.”

There weren't a lot of options related to the Coke sign that resides on the Modolo property, and two of those options -- outside of meeting the city's demands -- required money. Neither amount was insignificant, though one cost a lot more, and avoiding the issue altogether meant big fines for the residence's owner. San Francisco says that because the Coca-Cola "billboard" doesn't have an advertising permit, the property owner was given 30 days to remove the sign. The only two alternates other than ripping the vintage sign down: apply for a permit through the city, or request a reconsideration notice.

The option for a "reconsideration notice" would've made Modolo pay the better part of four thousand dollars, just for the hearing and related fees.

The city claims to be enforcing legislature pertaining to what it calls "illegal" billboards. In 2006, San Francisco's Planning Department launched a program to enforce regulations on signs deemed as "advertising" after city voter approval of Proposition G, legislation which passed four years prior in 2002, banning new billboards in the city.

San Francisco is currently engaged in legal battles with two companies who are accused of putting up illegal billboards -- which are currently accruing combined daily penalties of about $7 million.

In the three-year battle over billboard enforcement, San Francisco officials document 1,672 signs the city dubs illegal, taking legal action in some of those cases. While about 600 San Fran billboards have already been removed due to that "illegal" status, there are currently over 190 instances where the "illegal" status is being fought -- including the Coca-Cola sign that resides in Bernal Heights.

Simultaneously, a major San Francisco landmark is seen by thousands daily: That landmark is no less than a Coca-Cola sign. While it's recently gone "green", the Coca Cola sign -- physically located on the eastbound approach to the San Francisco Bay Bridge -- has been up since 1937.

That Coca-Cola sign shares a birthday with an other landmark, the Bay Bridge that was built in 1937.

Ironically, the late 1930s timeframe for the Coca-Cola sign erection is likely in the same timeframe as the sign being battled by city officials in Bernal Heights -- the Bernal Heights version thought to have been hand-painted in the 1930s.

The famous Bay Bridge Coca-Cola sign has recently been switched with upgrades to energy-saving lights, where the Coke sign now uses LEDs which cut energy consumption by 80-percent -- and is the city is footing the bill to power the newly-updated sign with alternate wind energy.

While the city helps pay for one Coca-Cola sign, the Bernal Heights Coca-Cola sign instead costs nothing to "run". It's got no fancy lights or needs -- and yet there's a great battle being waged over the sign's very existence. Perhaps it has to do with that Paul Revere Elementary School across the way. And maybe a push for water -- a very specific tap water. After all, the city can't be effectively running its own ad campaign for clear liquids with such an enticing ad -- for a cool and crisp Coca-Cola -- right across the street from kids' school. One is more appealing than the other. But one could be quite more profitable than the other.

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