San Francisco Department of Public Works

MOVED: 1155 Market St, 3^rd Floor
Expected level of bureaucracy for a simple task — removing a 30-​year-​old permit from my property title that allows you to build a road through my house, that no one bothered to remove 29 years ago. Reasonable responsive by email. Reasonably pleasant in person and on the phone.

The guy calls back after I filed a 2^nd complaint. He stated on the phone call that it’s now correct, that street cleaning on our block is Tuesdays. I’m wondering how long it will take them to replace the wrong Monday sign with the correct Tuesday sign.
Any bets?

Potholes, potholes, potholes. I’m impressed by the DPW and «311» partnership resolving potholes. Every time the UPS and FedEx trucks drive by, I hear a bone jarring bang. I feel sorry for their driver’s bones, the packages and their tires.
I worry about the potholes growing deeper. I googled «SF potholes». Surprise! I found a DPW online form to report potholes. The same day, I received an acknowledgement email, a tracking number and a link to track the work status.
One week later, the potholes in the intersection were beautifully patched (see photos). My neighbors, UPS, FedEx drivers and ! appreciate the DPW. Here’s a 4-​star review to help raise your Unilocal rating.

DPW is a total rip off. A disgrace of the City. I have dealt with many other Departments of the City, both as resident and as a professional in my field collaborating on services. And I generally get clear, fair direction or service (yes, including the infamous Planning Department).
But how is it that home owners are responsible for the maintenance of the trees on the sidewalk, and the sidewalk itself — and have no influence on the trees selected? Did we vote on this? I have spent over $ 50,000 on 5 trees on the sidewalk over the last 10 years.
As home owners, we didn’t select the trees, nor can we have them removed without paying through the nose for an application for removal (most get denied), and then the trees are killed. So much for «caring about our trees», DPW. And DPW themselves admit this particular kind of tree is destructive to the pavement, cars, roofs, and house foundations. And if the arborist we hire to trim the trees (to the tune of $ 1,000 per tree) does it in any way that DPW disapproves… guess what, we get fined by DPW! A lot. Even when the tree is healthy by everybody’s professional assessment.
Carla Short of DPW is a rude rip off. She gets the details wrong, and doesn’t seem to care about trees much. Instead, she spends most of her time fining home owners and collecting money. She has no problem yelling, hanging up on the phone, and standing everybody up or coming in late into the courtroom. Yes, I have successfully appealed all this nonsense. To this day, she refuses to tell me who her manager is.
It seems that the rest of Carla Short’s mission is to make untrue allegations (the latest one being that I removed a tree)…when in fact all trees are still standing and are still healthy. She even admitted that she hadn’t been out to see the street. But she is still threatening to put a lien on my little property.
So now I have a choice: Pay the over $ 5,000 fine for an allegation of tree removal (and the trees are all still there and healthy) or look after the trees via a professional arborist.
If you think it is just me up in arms, try. The NYTimes and the SF Supes are also trying to stop this madness:

This is for Management, not directed at the hard workers who do as they’re instructed.
Please clean Grant street. Parked there today for an extra long lunch and was thoroughly disgusted how badly it needed cleaning.
Sorry to piss off the people in that neighborhood (including my Aunt’s tenants) but Street Cleaning NEEDS to be set up here!
Newsflash in case you missed the memo: lots of tourists walk this street on their way to both Columbus & Coit Tower. It would be a little more welcoming if our streets weren’t filthy. Just a suggestion. (see pic)

The pothole conditions in San Francisco really are becoming sick and not in a good way either! They’re a serious hazard to cyclists, runners, pedestrians, cars, and have been growing in increasing numbers over the years.
This week while driving to my SF office I began counting how many were in the street and lost track when the count went past seventeen! Less than a decade ago there used to be several DPW crews driving around the City looking for potholes and filling them. Now residents have to call 311 in order to report them?!
Maybe SF can learn something from Seattle where you can log online to either publicly or anonymously report a pothole. They also relate a goal to repair the street within 48 hours of notification and a success rate of 94% in fixing the problem–
Get with it already SF!!!

Dept. of Public Works, shame on you!
And the companyies that you contract with! Towed cars, bolts in the road which got stuck in my husband’s tire and caused his flat, the fact that there is ZERO parking within a 8 block radius. So what do people do? They are forced to park illegally. And sometimes they get towed and sometimes they don’t. I was one of the lucky residents that got towed yesterday AFTER one of the workers from A. Ruiz Construction came to my door and told me that I needed to move my car. Great, thanks. I moved my car to an area that she said would be ok and guess what? I GOT TOWED!
And to think, the city has hired this company to do this?! OUR tax dollars! All the people that I spoke with that day who worked for the company and were supposedly «in charge» were not helpful in the slightest. Unbelievable.
$ 373.75 later plus a ticket from the city for $ 53. Many phone calls 311, to the construction company’s voice mail plus 3 emails to them, 2 calls to the city and me walking around the neighborhood warning the residents about not parking their cars even if the workers say it’s safe… and that’s just the beginning. I will be attending a City Works meeting to complain to them about how their poor planning has created this fiasco once they post their 2010 calendar which they have not. There’s no where to park not to mention they leave our streets looking like crap! No respect. None.
How on earth can you block off streets and streets with these damn signs when, WHEN no one is even working there? Yeah, so the signs say that you can park there after 12 noon if construction hasn’t begun. Um, how does that help? The tow trucks are there, like sharks, waiting with baited breath, for the morning chaos.
This all really really leads me to believe that my beloved city ain’t so.
This is OUR city. Don’t let this happen in your neighborhood!
Call 311 to file a complaint!

I’m sorry what do these people do again?
Oh that’s right, they hook up their friends with jobs. They get paid a hundred grand or more in overtime. They sit around in their trucks and eat, pick up women/​men and talk on their cell phones.
This department is utterly useless! Mayor Newsom, it’s time for a re-​org! I beg you! Do an audit and revamp this organization from the top to the bottom.
Give these jobs to people who aren’t corrupt and will take their work seriously. Then send them over to Glen Park and get to repaving roads and sidewalks (where tree roots have busted through) so citizens don’t have to walk home from BART looking down at the ground so we don’t trip and fall.
See? …win/​win!

Someone explain why San Francisco can pay to have mostly clean residential streets «cleaned» every week (if you can call brushing the schmutz all over cleaning) but can’t pay to actually repair the horrible streets?
Let me suggest a way to really improve this city for its residents: cut the cleaning to once a month or so in non-​commercial less busy zones (I’m sure a simple survey would show which streets actually need cleaning on a weekly basis) and use those funds for fixing the streets, tending to street drains, and dealing with graffiti. Add a hot line for any real issues or email contacts that actually respond.
Color me bitter but I don’t see this, or many things that really are about what is good for residents ever happening though. The stream of revenue from ticketing and towing cars parked in street cleaning zones is too persuasive and in general the Supervisors only seem interested in pushing through pet projects vs, determining anything their constituents want/​need.

Our office is located in a small alley in the Marina. People and business consistently leave large objects like refrigerators, safes, pallets, computer printers, broken mirrors, car parts and general trash on our street.
It’s a great place for Katamari to meet.
The residents hardly ever move their trash cans back into their garage where they belong after trash day.
It’s embarrassing when a client visits us and our street looks like a piece of shit from the Tenderloin.
This being said, I got sick of the trash one day and went on
and filed a complaint online. Within three hours of the e-​mail, four DPW trucks were outside that cleaned our entire alley and pruned the mugger trees obstructing the side walks.
I was pretty amazed with this level of service. Keep it up guys!

That I gave my first car and 300 hours of community service to the city of SF to pay off my parking ticket debt? Totally my fault.
That I had two separate police tows, requiring me to surrender my car to the city while I was actually driving it? Completely my [ex-bf’s] fault.
That the DPW towed my scooter, costing me half of its actual value to reclaim? Yep… my fault again.
That riding an 1983 aluminum racing bike around the city is a painful choice on less smoothly paved streets? Uh… still pretty much my fault.
That I consider myself incredibly and undeservedly lucky each time I make it home by bicycle undead because every road leading to Glen Park is a treacherous obstacle course of potholes, trench plate covers, deep cracks and bad patch jobs? NOT EVEN REMOTELY MY FAULT.
Seriously, DPW, I might be safer riding my bicycle home on Highway 280. Blindfolded.

I noticed about 5 weeks ago that the street was starting to have a dip
in it and I called DPW. It took about 1.5 weeks for them to come out and spray paint the word PAVE in big white letters. Another 1.5 weeks
passed by and I called again last Monday the 12^th of March. The «DIP»
that I am talking about is now the size of a goldfish pond. I called again Monday the 19^th and they told me someone was coming out.
Well, someone came out and put out some orange cones and yellow
caution tape and threw a couple of shovels of asphalt in the goldfish pond. The following day they came back with mucho asphalt
and filled the goldfish pond and then left. About 30 minutes later, we
have a grand canyon sized hole in the street. The new asphalt that
was thrown on was so heavy that it created the sinkhole which was
a work in progress anyway. I called again yesterday afternoon and was told that they would make a note of it. NO STARS for DPW but I have to click one to post the review.
4÷28÷2007 update: Still have cones, barricades and yellow tape and
a giant eyesore/​hole in front of my house… ERRRRRRRR

Why are San Francisco’s streets in such terrible condition? It does not snow here and it rarely freezes so the elements can’t be to blame. The City has an annual budget of $ 5 billion, that should be enough for some asphalt and road crews. Riding down Valencia today the road was in worse condition than fire roads in the Marin Headlands.