Matt Smith of San Francisco Weekly about knocked me flat with some great stuff he wrote recently. He nails it again with his new column, out today. San Francisco's civic obsession with promulgating "medical" marijuana clubs in city's neighborhoods is lunacy of the worst kind, as far more pressing issues languish in the background.

Last Thursday, 140 San Franciscans packed a City Hall committee meeting to consider the greatest outcome puzzle of all: NIMBYs versus Potheads? The putative issue at hand: how might San Francisco regulate the three dozen or so marijuana dealerships that have sprung up around the city under the aegis of the 1996 Proposition 215, which permits toking on doctor's orders.

The clubs have pissed off neighbors with their riffraff, crime, stench, and filth, while pleasing the rest of San Francisco, which feeds off an image of itself in which long-haired waifs toke unperturbed in loose-fitting, colorful clothes. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi represents the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that's the setting for this collective historical fantasy, and he's spent the better part of this year working on legislation aimed at preserving the maximum number of dope stores while fending off neighbor complaints. He's enlisted his own staff; employees at the City Attorney's Office, the Health Department, and the Planning Commission; and the full-time services of a Harvard-trained city planner who wrote an inch-thick report, drafted reams of detailed maps and graphs, and otherwise playacted in a Mirkarimi-directed game in which sprinkling marijuana stores around San Francisco was the most significant city-management issue of our time.

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval represents a blue-collar district in southwest San Francisco with little patience for such nonsense. Residents have deluged his office with complaints about three crime-generating dope stores in a four-block stretch. Mindful that political ideas become sacred here when couched as efforts to preserve the city in an imagined previous form, Sandoval wrote up a bill of his own that said, in essence, you can have your precious pot stores anywhere you want, but keep them away from my constituents.

Reeferzilla, it seems, met NIMBY-Ra, and for the moment Reeferzilla has prevailed. Sandoval's measure died in committee Thursday. Mirkarimi's version, which sets minor limits on pot stores such as keeping them 500 feet from schools, will be heard by the full Board of Supervisors next week. Sandoval plans to reintroduce his no-pot-stores-in-my-backyard provision as a proposed amendment.

Whether or not Sandoval prevails, his maneuver to me seemed to be a brilliant bit of political jujitsu, offering a possible route out of our age-old malaise in which policy discourse consists of narcissistic fretting about an imagined version of what San Francisco was once like.....As we feed off images of an imagined past, real issues such as crime, housing, government spending, public safety, and the quality of schools languish in favor of nostalgia-driven topics such as "preservation of neighborhood character" or medical marijuana, a supposed health-care issue the legitimate medical profession won't touch.

Note Smith's use of the word "district" in his introduction of Supervior Sandoval. At least under San Francisco's district elections for the Board of Supervisors, a no-B.S. advocate of middle-class taxpayers can get elected from certain parts of the city. No such luck yet here in Seattle, where the City Council's "at large," or city-wide election scheme for all council members currently ensures that winning candidates must adhere to prevailing Liberal-Left dogma in every area of policy and priority-setting. I voiced support for a 2003 district elections vote in this Seattle Times column (free reg. req.). An excerpt:

Districts mean cheaper, local campaigns; doorbelling, not dollars. That notion likely has many Seattle political fixers and consultants quaffing Bombay Blue Sapphire martinis, or doing yoga, to cut stress....Districts will strengthen government oversight and accountability, and buttress solid — but overlooked — community support for law enforcement. Districts will better harness citizen input, ensuring fairer distribution of resources in times lean and flush.

But alas, my distilled wisdom wasn't quite enough. The measure missed by seven percentage points. With a few professionals assisting the effort next time around (it was a painfully sketchy "Yes" campaign), better funding, and turnout better than 34.7 percent of registered voters, a district elections bill could pass in Seattle. Say in 2007. The benefit: both council races and council members that are more focused on better delivery of core municipal services, economic growth and maintaining quality of life in the face of ever-increasing urban density in Seattle.

TECHNORATI TAGS: MEDICAL MARIJUANA, SAN FRANCISCO, DISTRICT ELECTIONS, SEATTLE

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at October 12, 2005 06:33 PM