Next door to the Hall of Flowers building in Golden Gate Park, near 9th Avenue and Lincoln, is the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, a place I had never visited in my 35 years in San Francisco.
The 55-acre garden has been much in the news lately because the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department are facing a 12 million dollar budget deficit this year and are looking for any way they can to raise funds.
They proposed an entrance fee for the garden last year, but the attempt was beaten back by a dedicated consortium of neighbors and lovers of the garden, so this year they have tried to wedge in an admission fee of $7 for adults if they live outside of San Francisco.
The department is being supported in this new fee increase by a combination of union organizers who want to keep revenue coming in to pay their members and the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, a "Friends of" group that acts as if they own the public space and would rather the peasants not come in unless they pay or are invited.
Recently, the Society has been paying $10,000 a month for a political lobbyist while pleading poverty when it comes to helping out with operating funds.
The Inner Sunset neighborhood is again up in arms about the proposal, as are quite a few other San Franciscans who are horrified by the creeping privatization of public facilities that we see all around us.
It wasn't that long ago that the Golden Gate Park's Conservatory of Flowers and the Japanese Tea Garden were also free of charge to the public, but those days feel like ancient history.
The passions on both sides have been raised to fever pitch as the issue seems to resonate far beyond the simple fate of the Botanical Garden.
On Wednesday afternoon, there was a hearing at the Budget and Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors, where an uptick in the Coit Tower elevator fee was also proposed, and for hours citizens from the Society and those on the other side spoke quite eloquently about their vision of the garden and its place in the public commons.
Phil Ginsburg (above), The Rec & Park General Manager, testified for hours and kept pulling figures out of his ass about projected revenue from the proposed fee which were convincingly disputed by opposition commenters who had completed their own surveys. Rather like the Muni fare inspectors whose salaries are higher than the actual revenue they take in, the new fee will probably be eaten up by the overhead required to collect and audit it, and the visitor numbers will probably go down dramatically.
Supervisors Elsbernd, Avalos and Mirkarimi came up with a couple of amendments before voting to pass the measure on to the full Board of Supervisors next Tuesday. Those amendments asked for a sunset clause for the fee after a year if other revenue magically pops up, and another sunset clause if the $250,000 annual revenue figure that Rec & Park is claiming they will collect turns out to be so much hot air.
The Botanical Garden is a San Francisco treasure in every season, good for hours of wandering. My mother goes there to paint, and the idea of an entrance fee breaks my heart. The fees at the De Young, the Tea Garden and the new Science Museum are so high, it's made a great deal of the park inaccessible.
ReplyDeleteI love those spaces as well and have spent many a happy hour sketching or just plain day dreaming. I would not mind paying a small fee if it would go directly toward operating expenses and not toward some bureaucratic b-s. But $10,000 a month for a political lobbyist - that's disgusting!
ReplyDeleteEverywhere you look, the spaces that make urban life more civilized are being closed against the "us" peasants.
A public park is a public benefit; it is our commitment to working people for their recreation. We should not be asked to show our papers of passport or pay a fee or tax so that my friend and I can walk together hand in hand in the Golden Gate Park Arboretum
ReplyDeleteAs a docent for the garden for the past 2 1/2 years, I am greatly saddened at the prospect of entry fees, which will turn this public garden into a plutocratic enclave. I will no longer be volunteering my free time if entry to the garden isn't free, and, I understand, a great many of the other current volunteers have similar intentions. I will miss the garden, but I refuse to buy into Michael McKechnie's (director of private SF Botanical Society) vision of a plant museum that is constantly being developed (often in questionable taste) for fewer and fewer people.
ReplyDelete"First, I would like to congratulate Mayor Newsom and his agent Phil Ginzberg for their ability to get this unpopular tax shift before the board and thus having the board take responsibly for taxing the poor while the Mayor moves to Sacramento.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once said that what you do to the least of us you do to me. And in this case this tax helps move along the privatization of our very public parks. This is, in a word, wrong.
The board can stop this!
Let right be done."
To Supervisors - May 25, 2010
ReplyDeleteRe: Today's unpopular tax shift before the board
First, I would like to congratulate Mayor Newsom and his agent Phil Ginzberg for their ability to get this unpopular tax shift before the board and thus having the board take responsibility for taxing the poor while the Mayor moves to Sacramento.
Someone once said that what you do to the least of us you do to me. And, in this case, this tax helps move along the privatization of our very public parks. This, in a word, is wrong.
The board can stop this!
Let right be done