About 40 neighbors turned out Saturday morning, Dec 16th to continue our neighborhood’s community-based planning process. Here is a summary of that meeting, with my thanks to Jen Serwer, Dick Millet, and Tony Kelly, all of whom supplemented this summary with their valuable notes.
In attendance were residents of Potrero Hill and Dogpatch, representatives from the Planning Department, the Port of SF, and UCSF/Mission Bay. Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, Director of Occupational and Environmental Health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), and Cynthia Comerford, Senior Health Program Planner in the Environmental Health Section of the SFDPH, also attended and gave a thorough and engrossing presentation on the Department’s recently completed (May 2006) Eastern Neighborhoods Community Health Impact Assessment (ENCHIA) and the Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT), ”an evidence-based guide for decision-makers to consider health in land use planning.” This presentation was the morning’s main focus, and there is more on it below.
Tony requested that folks give him their top three interests for these workshops, with an eye toward setting future meeting agenda. You can email these to Tony, at: president@potreroboosters.org, or bring them to the next meeting, when we will also begin setting agenda for future meetings. The next meeting is: Tuesday, January 16th, 6:30pm, at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House (NABE).
There was also a brief review of the first meeting and then a discussion of Supervisor Maxwell’s resolution - Establishing City and County of San Francisco Policy for the Eastern Neighborhoods Rezoning and Community Plans Area - that had been expected to pass at the Board of Supervisors the previous week, but had instead been continued until January, after Supervisor Daly raised last-minute objections. The Resolution’s importance is that it gives to the SF Planning Department clear guidelines regarding the expectations of the Eastern Neighborhoods when implementing the policies already outlined in the City’s General Plan.
Robin Talmadge, a Potrero Hill resident and volunteer in Supervisor Maxwell’s office, announced that she had organized a meeting with Supervisor Daly to discuss his objections, and was inviting all to attend. THE RESOLUTION WAS SUBSEQUENTLY PASSED ON JANUARY 9TH. Thanks to Robin and to many other community members, and to Supervisor Maxwell and her office, who have worked to see it through.
The Planning Department has pledged to follow the guidelines of the resolution in developing area plans for the eastern neighborhoods; we’ll know if they do over the course of 2007, as the City’s new plans for the Eastern Neighborhoods are presented at the Planning Commission and then at the Board of Supervisors.
To read the complete text of the resolution, click on its link, highlighted above, or go to:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/061342.pdf
If Robin or Tony or Joe Boss, or anyone who has been involved in the creation or passing of this Resolution would care to write about it for this website, that would be great. Though it has passed now, it remains to be seen how it will be implemented. The process of having gotten this Resolution passed, the issues involved, and the interests that both supported and opposed it, can provide a great deal of history and context to the current planning issues facing us in the Eastern Neighborhoods. There was a brief summary of recent events and links to recent hearings on the issue, in the email sent out to listserv members on December 17th. (I believe that is archived somewhere on this site.) However, it would be far better to have a comprehensive account.
On that note: Content is welcome for this site.
Cort Dugan, our very generous webmaster, gave a wonderful presentation about the site, how to use it, navigate it, and contribute to it. He’s done an amazing job getting this up and running, adds frequently to it, and maintains it for all of us, on an ongoing basis.
All content relevant to this website and the community-based planning process is welcome. Many of you have been involved in local planning or politics for a while now, and have insight and a lot of history to share that is relevant to this process and our undertaking here.
Please share.
As mentioned above, about 2/3 of the meeting was devoted to the presentation given by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia and Cynthia Comerford of the SFDPH, about the Eastern Neighborhood Community Health Impact Assessment, and the Healthy Development Measurement Tool:
In November 2004, the SFDPH, undertook an 18-month-long process to “assess how land use development in San Francisco can best promote the conditions required for health.” This process and subsequent report - ENCHIA - focused on several San Francisco neighborhoods, including the Mission, South of Market, and Potrero Hill.
Operating on the understanding that the necessities to achieve optimal health are not limited to “health services and individual behavior alone” but rather encompass the whole of the “neighborhood conditions”: from adequate housing, access to public transit and proximity to open space, to things like cooperation, trust, and civic participation, with many more in between. ENCHIA sought to parse the relationship between health and these many conditions, using a set of methods called Health Impact Assessment (HIA). They succeeded in doing this, and achieving a number of other outcomes.
Among the many important products to come from the ENCHIA process, is the Healthy Development Measurement Tool, a set of metrics that addresses a broad range of indicators and data points that lead to healthier neighborhoods. This methodology is significantly broader than the scope of what the Planning Department measures. And while it is not feasible to move all indicators forward, the HDMT seeks to move each indicator, and as many indicators as possible, as far forward as possible, to have the broadest overall/deepest impact on an area.
For example, the tool employs maps that can address specific criteria and multiple metrics at once - measuring for instance, proximity to schools and parks, while also measuring proximity to noise, and at the same time, distance to retail services and health facilities. While there are caveats, this tool can be tested and used by communities to evaluate their actual experiences and unique challenges and prioritize and focus in on what they deem most important. (It is being tested now in Executive Park.)
Both the ENCHIA and HDMT websites are the best sources of information, including comprehensive lists of data points and indicators, examples, and the tool itself, and provide excellent summaries and explanations of the sometimes complex process and Tool. They are well worth taking the time to explore, and to consider how the report and the Tool can be of value in our community-based planning process.
Websites for each can be accessed by clicking on its link, highlighted above, or by going to: http://www.sfdph.org/phes/ENCHIA.htm for ENCHIA or,
http://jcmurray.gotdns.com/sfdph/hdmt/index.php for the HDMT.
Looking forward to seeing you all at the next meeting:
Tuesday, January 16th, 6:30pm, at the NABE.
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