Belmont is evaluating pedestrian and bike improvements to Ralston Avenue. These improvements build on the Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan.

There is pretty good cycle access all the way from the eastern tip of Foster City to the Belmont Caltrain station.

However, the cycling access from the Caltrain station to Safeway, NDNU or Carlmont Village falls down a little bit. There is a huge intersection at Ralston and ECR with no bike paths. The bike plan says cyclists should ride on Emmett past City Hall and rejoin Ralston further west, but there are no bike lanes in this area.

Emmett has no bike lanes and parking on both sides.

If you are riding east it is difficult to get from Emmett to the Caltrain station - cars can make a left turn across two lanes of ECR into fast moving traffic and then merge right, but this is dicey on a bike. I usually ride on the sidewalk past the Panda Express to the intersection. The sidewalk is narrow and passes the ECR Rapid bus stop.

The bike plan (page 72) calls for a HAWK crossing at ECR and Emmett to allow bikes to get across, then a bike lane on the east side of ECR. HAWK intersections are confusing for drivers, and no guarantee for ped/bike safety - your author recently spotted an instruction sign for drivers on the side of the road near a HAWK beacon on El Camino Real in Redwood City.

It would also require cyclists to make a dangerous crossing across ECR that no one currently attempts, cross the driveway for the parking lot, and add an additional stop that reduces vehicle/SamTrans ECR bus levels of service along El Camino Real.

How else could we get bikes from Caltrain to Emmett? One idea would be to have a two-way cycle track on the south side of ECR where there is currently a bus stop and a lane of parked cars. The bus would stop in the lane on ECR, like in this photo - we wouldn't have enough room for a bench to the left of the cycle track, but this should give the basic idea.

This would do a few different things, all of them good.

First, it does not introduce an additional stopping point for cars and SamTrans buses along El Camino Real, which means those roads will have a higher level of service.

Second, it would remove the need for a dangerous HAWK crossing and add a protected path on a dangerous section of road for cyclists. Particularly if you are heading east toward Caltrain, there are currently no good options for getting to the station.

Third, it would make the bus faster. Bus speeds are a problem for SamTrans that led to the introduction of the "ECR Rapid" bus route. Part of the problem are stops that require the bus to pull over, load passengers, then wait for a gap in traffic before merging back in. In-lane boarding would allow the bus to continue its journey without needing to merge back into traffic, saving up to 40 seconds per trip.

Fourth, it would likely be faster, by allowing bikes to piggy back on the existing pedestrian crossing at Ralston and ECR. HAWK beacons require all traffic to wait for the beacon to stop traffic, which can take thirty seconds or more.

Fifth, it could permit installation of an ADA compliant bus stop. The current bus stop offloads onto a brick sidewalk on a slope, intermixed with trees. A treatment in the cycle track segment could include a level boarding space for wheelchairs.

There are some problems, notably that there is not much room for this. Curb-to-median, this stretch of El Camino Real is 32 feet. The preferable alternative would be a bike lane protected by a bus island, like this one on Church St. in San Francisco. We can't do this because the recommended minimum width for bus islands is 8 feet, space that we don't have.

There is a one foot gutter next to the median and the car lanes are 10 feet each, giving us 11 feet for a 4 foot cycle track in each direction, plus a small buffer zone between the track and the car lane, which could include a railing for additional safety. The entire cycle track/buffer would be raised to the level of the current curb.

If you moved the limit line on ECR on the south side of Ralston back ten feet, you could add a treatment like this for crossing ECR on your bike:

Which would result in a bike route through town like this, in both directions.

What do you think? I am not super happy with this design, but I'm not sure how else cyclists should be expected to get from Emmett St. to the Caltrain station. Moving the bus boarding in-lane would be a big win.

There is a meeting October 10, 6pm at City Hall where Belmont Public Works will be revealing plans for the HAWK beacon and other bike improvements. Please show up and provide your feedback.

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Twelve days before Christmas 2017, Otto LLC, a company that wanted to produce smart locks, shut down with little notice. Employees were given no severance and contractors were left with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid invoices. This incident was widely covered in the press, and one board member has since quit the venture capital industry.

Otto has sold all of their assets to a company that specializes in liquidation and is now going through an "assignment for benefit of creditors."

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but that said, here is how this works at a high level. Everyone submits their claims to the Assignee. These claims have different levels of priority; people who lent money to the company have one priority, people who are owed money for services have a different priority, people who own shares in the company have a different priority. Generally, all of the claims at one priority are paid out before proceeding to the next class.

The Assignee is required to post notice in a newspaper, that's it - they don't have a requirement to notify you personally. I found the address for submitting claims, though. If Otto owes you money, go here to submit your claim: https://fileaclaim.info/Otto-ABC. You have until November 2, 2018.

Yes, that is the real URL.

I wish you the best of luck, however, I fear that there is not very much money left to pay claims, so you might not get very much. Still, a little bit is better than nothing.

If there are any questions I can answer for you, or if there's anything I can help you do to find a new position, please get in touch.

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Belmont is finalizing plans to build affordable housing on two parcels it owns across from the Caltrain station along El Camino Real. The proposal from the developer, LINC Housing, would construct around 20 large-family affordable units (2 and 3 bedrooms) and 20 senior housing units (one bedroom).

Belmont reduced the parking requirements for new construction last year as part of the Village Specific Plan update. The large-family units would require 1.5 parking spaces each, and the senior units would require 1 parking space each, for a total of around 50 units. It is likely this parking would have to go underground. At a cost of $60,000 per below-ground parking space, it would cost around $3 million to build all of the required parking below ground, or about 15% of the total cost of the project.

Changing transportation technology and services are already starting to cut into parking demand in some places (see this story from San Diego).

In the event that the below-ground parking becomes redundant, it will be difficult to repurpose for a more productive use. You can’t build apartments underground, and it’s unattractive space for businesses. So it would be prudent for the city to consider alternatives to building more parking than it may need.

Quite a lot of parking already exists in close proximity to the proposed sites, north of the Caltrain station across the street. A June 2017 Caltrain parking analysis indicated that just 2% of the spaces were occupied on the given weekday.

I snapped these photos of the lot at 1pm in April 2018.

What if Belmont were to enter into a parking sharing agreement with Caltrain? Caltrain could issue permits to residents of the proposed new development. Even 50 permits would not result in the lot being full, and the extra cars would mostly use the lot at night, when commuters are gone and the Caltrain lot is empty.

There is a precedent here. Caltrain and the City of Mountain View developed a shared parking agreement with a townhouse developer near the San Antonio station, as part of the San Antonio Station Precise Plan.

Using the parking lot across the street would free up about $3 million. What could Belmont do with that money? For $200,000, the city could build a HAWK pedestrian crossing at Hill St, shaving 4 minutes off the walk to the train station and the northbound ECR bus stop. This crossing is proposed in the Belmont Pedestrian Master Plan.

Further, lifting the on-site parking requirement might make it feasible to develop Site C (780 El Camino Real), which is owned by the city. LINC Housing's proposal did not include development for this site. A sloped, funky-shaped lot would be a lot easier to develop if it didn't require a parking ramp and additional driveway.

What do you think? Send your thoughts to the Belmont City Council (CityCouncil@belmont.gov), as well as the city’s project lead, Jennifer Rose (jrose@belmont.gov) and community director, Carlos de Melo (cdemelo@belmont.gov).

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In the middle of a housing crisis, cities up and down the Peninsula are moving forward with plans to add a ton of new office space and no new housing. These plans will add many more new commuters, without any corresponding housing for them.

• Last year the Apple Park launched in Cupertino. 2.8 million sq ft of office space (room for 18,000 workers), no new housing.

• Brisbane just put a plan for the Baylands on the 2018 ballot. 4 million sq ft of office space (room for 26,000 workers), 2200 housing units.

• South San Francisco is moving forward with Oyster Point development. 1.5 million sq ft of office space (room for 10,000 workers), 1200 housing units.

• San Francisco is moving forward with the Central SOMA Plan. 6 million sq ft of office space (room for 40,000 workers), only 7000 housing units.

• Facebook wants to add 35,000 employees in Menlo Park, with only 1500 housing units to match.

Where are all of those commuters supposed to live? No one is planning on adding housing to match the new office space being added.

We have seen this story play out already. Those rich new workers are going to want apartments near their offices, so they'll bid up the price of existing housing. This will lead to gentrification and displacement. Everyone who can't afford to do that will commute from Pleasanton, Gilroy and Stockton. This will clog 101 and the San Mateo Bridge, leading to even worse traffic.

It cracks me up when folks say "Why doesn't Google just build their next office in Bakersfield?" Your own City Councils are rolling out the red carpet to host their next office, so they can get that sweet revenue, and don't care/don't want to add any housing to match. This is what "local control" has gotten us and the results have been ruinous.

My brother and sister have already left the Bay Area. My best friend grew up 300 yards from me and now is raising his family in Savannah, GA. I'm worried I'm going to be next. All of these new developments are the world's slowest moving steamroller, driving up rent and housing prices. $3m for a home and $4,000 median rents are in our near future.

How can we turn these traffic and displacement bombs around?

• Call your Senator and Assemblymember to support SB 827, which could actually add enough new housing near transit to reverse our traffic problems and slow the explosive growth of rents.

• Support new housing in your town. The State is adding bonuses for adding new housing units, but developers are choosing not to use them, for fear of community backlash. Tonight, for example, there's a meeting about 935 homes at Concar Drive at San Mateo City Hall at 7pm, and another at Millbrae City Hall about the Serra Station project adjacent to Millbrae BART. These could use voices in support.

• If you're someone who does not benefit from a fixed rate mortgage and Prop 13, or if you are and you're worried about where your kids are going to live, consider running for City Council or applying for Planning Commission in your town. Sign up for mailing lists to get notified about new events happening: I run one (kev@inburke.com) or yimbyaction.org/sanmateo.

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Writing middleware in Go seems pretty easy at first, but there are several easy ways to trip up. Let's walk through some examples.

Reading the Request

All of the middlewares in our examples will accept an http.Handler as an argument, and return an http.Handler. This makes it easy to chain middlewares. The basic pattern for all of our middlewares will be something like this:

func X(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
    return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        // Something here...
        h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    })
}

Let's say we want to redirect all requests with a trailing slash - say, /messages/, to their non-trailing-slash equivalent, say /messages. We could write something like this:

func TrailingSlashRedirect(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		if r.URL.Path != "/" && r.URL.Path[len(r.URL.Path)-1] == '/' {
			http.Redirect(w, r, r.URL.Path[:len(r.URL.Path)-1], http.StatusMovedPermanently)
			return
		}
		h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
	})
}

Easy enough.

Modifying the Request

Let's say we want to add a header to the request, or otherwise modify it. The docs for a http.Handler say:

Except for reading the body, handlers should not modify the provided Request.

The Go standard library copies http.Request objects before passing them down the response chain, and we should as well. Let's say we want to set a Request-Id header on every request, for internal tracing. Create a shallow copy of the *Request and modify the header before proxying.

func RequestID(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		r2 := new(http.Request)
		*r2 = *r
		r2.Header.Set("X-Request-Id", uuid.NewV4().String())
		h.ServeHTTP(w, r2)
	})
}

Writing Response Headers

If you want to set response headers, you can just write them and then proxy the request.

func Server(h http.Handler, servername string) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		w.Header().Set("Server", servername)
		h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
	})
}

Last Write Wins

The problem with the above is if the inner Handler also sets the Server header, your header will get overwritten. This can be problematic if you do not want to expose the Server header for internal software, or if you want to strip headers before sending a response to the client.

To do this, we have to implement the ResponseWriter interface ourselves. Most of the time we'll just proxy through to the underlying ResponseWriter, but if the user tries to write a response we'll sneak in and add our header.

type serverWriter struct {
	w            http.ResponseWriter
	name         string
	wroteHeaders bool
}

func (s *serverWriter) Header() http.Header {
	return s.w.Header()
}

func (s *serverWriter) WriteHeader(code int) http.Header {
	if s.wroteHeader == false {
		s.w.Header().Set("Server", s.name)
		s.wroteHeader = true
	}
	s.w.WriteHeader(code)
}

func (s *serverWriter) Write(b []byte) (int, error) {
	if s.wroteHeader == false {
		// We hit this case if user never calls WriteHeader (default 200)
		s.w.Header().Set("Server", s.name)
		s.wroteHeader = true
	}
	return s.w.Write(b)
}

To use this in our middleware, we'd write:

func Server(h http.Handler, servername string) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		sw := &serverWriter{
			w:    w,
			name: servername,
		}
		h.ServeHTTP(sw, r)
	})
}

What if user never calls Write or WriteHeader?

If the user doesn't call Write or WriteHeader - for example, a 200 with an empty body, or a response to an OPTIONS request - neither of our intercept functions will run. So we should add one more check after the ServeHTTP call for that case.

func Server(h http.Handler, servername string) http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		sw := &serverWriter{
			w:    w,
			name: servername,
		}
		h.ServeHTTP(sw, r)
		if sw.wroteHeaders == false {
			s.w.Header().Set("Server", s.name)
			s.wroteHeader = true
		}
	})
}

Other ResponseWriter interfaces

The ResponseWriter interface is only required to have three methods. But in practice, it can respond to other interfaces as well, for example http.Pusher. Your middleware might accidentally disable HTTP/2 support, which would not be good.

// Push implements the http.Pusher interface.
func (s *serverWriter) Push(target string, opts *http.PushOptions) error {
	if pusher, ok := s.w.(http.Pusher); ok {
		return pusher.Push(target, opts)
	}
	return http.ErrNotSupported
}

// Flush implements the http.Flusher interface.
func (s *serverWriter) Flush() {
	f, ok := s.w.(http.Flusher)
	if ok {
		f.Flush()
	}
}

That's it

Best of luck! What middlewares have you written, and how did it go?

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The next president of the United States showed a willingness to violate historical norms while campaigning, and there's little evidence that he has any moral compass - the examples of this are legion, one of the worst is him cutting off medical treatment to his sick nephew over a legal dispute. His kids are going to run his businesses (with his name on them) while he is in office. He has also asked for security clearances for them. This is at best an unusual arrangement and at worst opens the door to massive corruption.

During the election the Russian government hacked and leaked the DCC's emails, then hacked and leaked the email of Hillary Clinton's campaign chief. Trump denied Russia's involvement publicly at a debate even though he'd been briefed on it. Trump has taken many sides on many issues but praise for Putin and Russia has been consistent. Trump just promoted a paid Russia Today commentator to his National Security Adviser. It is likely that Russian (and Chinese, Iranian, etc) hacking of US government offices and US companies will be tolerated over the next four years, especially if it benefits Trump and hurts his political allies.

It's important to note these attacks won't come out of the blue. It's not sunny one day and the next there are men in suits asking for data center access. There will probably be some pretext - a foreign war, a terror attack, something else, that'll be used to justify the unethical request. It's easy to imagine "Of course I will identify the racist thing!" and much harder in the moment, or in a context that's surrounded by fear.

Note also that if you are an engineer, these requests may come outside of normal channels. Last year, Yahoo fielded a request to search all emails for a given term. Yahoo's C-level executives went around the security team and asked engineers to implement this directly, at an extremely low level. Alex Stamos, Yahoo's CSO, resigned when he found out. You should be prepared to do the same. Don't expect unethical requests to show up on the backlog - it'll be a meeting you're pulled into with the CTO, or a man showing up at your apartment and threatening your immigration status unless you insert a backdoor.

Employees (and especially engineers) will be the key people to push back. Customers aren't always aware of shenanigans, and management can be under more pressure to make their company succeed. Especially in Silicon Valley, most employees have multiple job options, which gives us unique leverage. Every employee at a Silicon Valley company should be prepared for unethical or illegal requests, and (where appropriate) be prepared for state sponsored attacks, from the US government or another one. Every employee should be prepared to put pressure on management, and the legal team, to deny requests.

Here are some examples of ethical problems you might run into. I'd encourage you to have these discussions internally before you get put in the situation discussed below, and lay out bright lines for everyone in the company to follow, to make it clear where you stand and what's not acceptable. I would also encourage you to ask about these when you interview.

All

The pledge at neveragain.tech has covered this in more detail but here are some good questions to ask in an interview:

• Do you encrypt messages that go from datacenter to datacenter? The NSA has spied on this data in the past.

• Do you offer end-to-end encryption of messages sent between users?

• Do you destroy sensitive data if it's not needed anymore? Do you destroy user data if they delete their accounts?

• What is your policy to responding to requests from the US government and other governments?

• Do you have data that would be valuable to foreign governments, or embarrassing to customers if it was made public? What's your strategy for protecting that data against sophisticated nation states?

• Would you take money from the Trump Organization or its affiliates in exchange for an explicit or implicit guarantee of "protection"?

Venture Capitalists / CEO's

• Donald Trump's children or their representatives may ask for a share in your fund, in exchange for favorable treatment from the federal government. Would you accept such a request? Note they may ask after they have successfully applied this approach to other companies.

• You may be approached for an investment by a company or entity that has ties to the Russian government, or ties to the Trump Organization. This may be accompanied by a threat of harassment from the federal government, hacking, DDOS, or other. Would you accept the investment?

Slack

• By default you store a company's entire conversation history, including DM's. Private information like this is easy to distort and take out of context. Russians hacked from the DCC and trickled emails to the press, with devastating effects. Should the default behavior for a Slack installation be to store a company's entire history?

• What efforts are you making to educate users about the risks of storing their entire conversation history on Slack? What are the highest-value targets for hackers who'd like to compromise the Slack network?

• What progress have you made on end-to-end encryption for Slack messages?

• Is there a way to store the data where a compromise would not allow a hacker to access every message for every company in your system? Say you had three different datastore designs.

Uber/Lyft

• Your companies store a massive amount of data on where users have been and where they are going. If exposed, this data could be used to embarrass people - why is this married Congressman requesting a ride from outside a gay bar, or a hotel in the middle of the day?

• What options do users have for removing their trip history from your site?

• What employees can access user data, and under what circumstances? What tools do you have for anonymizing data that's not viewed in aggregate?

• Many Trump voters cited a feeling of being left behind as a reason to vote for him. Uber drivers are 1099 contractors, which means you are prohibited from providing them with training. What responsibility do corporations have to put their workers on an upwards career path?

• Many of your 1099 contractors get health care from the government, or on government-mandated exchanges. These exchanges are being threatened by Republican governors in many states, and Republicans in Congress. What responsibility does Uber have to work for healthcare for its drivers?

• Your legal page says "We generally require a valid request issued in accordance with applicable law before we can process private requests for information." What does "generally" mean in this context? If China passes a law that says "we can ask for everything," would Uber comply?

• You've taken money from Saudi Arabia's public investment arm. Would you be say no to that money if the Saudi Arabian government asked for data on customers as a condition of the deal?

Stripe/Braintree

• You collected millions of dollars in revenue from the Trump campaign in 2016. If Trump acts like an authoritarian in office, or severely restricts the rights of minorities or immigrants, will you support his campaign again in 2020?

• Does Stripe receive requests from law enforcement? What is your policy for responding to subpoenas?

• If Stripe processes a credit card payment, who can see the record of that transaction? Who should be able to see it, and/or remove it?

Twilio

• Do you encrypt messages passing from datacenter to datacenter?

Facebook

• Historically newspapers and other media organizations have had a strong understanding of their role in promoting democracy and enforcing accountability from the government and our business leaders. Facebook has become a very important part of how people figure out what's going on in the world around them. What responsibility does Facebook have to ensure people have a mostly-correct view of the world? Should Facebook have a role in promoting democracy and in rejecting authoritarianism?

• Facebook tells advertisers that their ads can change users' minds. But Facebook also insists that the algorithms it uses to show information didn't sway the US election (or overseas elections). Which is it?

• Has Facebook responded to queries from governments on the lines of "Muslims/blacks/immigrants living in state/city/county X"?

• Facebook's current policy is to censor/restrict content according to local laws. If a law was passed to restrict speech in the United States, would Facebook comply?

• Does Facebook encrypt data being sent from datacenter to datacenter?

Twitter

• What line would Donald Trump have to cross for you to suspend or ban his account?

In sum

You are the most likely agent of change at your company. A lot of stuff may happen in the next four years and it's good to think and declare now, when things are relatively sane, what you'll agree to do or not do, because in the aftermath of another 9/11, or similar event, you may be asked to do a lot.

I've laid out my own consulting ethics guide here.

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This is Part 2 of my voter guide. Part 1 covers the 24 San Francisco ballot propositions and city supervisor races.

The deadline to register to vote in California is October 24. I highly recommend you sign up. Click here to register to vote.

A few notes I cover in more detail in Part 1: More housing is the most important issue for me on this year's ballot, and by default I vote "no" on ballot propositions, since I think we shouldn't be deciding policy by statewide or citywide ballot.

California State Initiatives

Prop 51 (School Bonds): Yes

The real story here is that Proposition 13, passed decades ago, limits the state's ability to collect property taxes, enriching a generation of homeowners at everyone else's expense. This is why our schools constantly need more money.

I also wish the Legislature should be able to figure out its budget and prioritize and we didn't have to vote on things like this. I don't feel too strongly in either direction.

Prop 52 (Medi-cal): No

Hospitals pay a required fee to the CA State government (about $5 billion a year). When the State allocates this money for Medi-cal, the federal government provides about $4 billion in matching funds.

In the past the State has diverted some of the hospital fee money to the general fund which hurts 2x - not only does Medical miss out on the fee money, it misses out on the federal matching funds.

This measure would require the hospital fee money to be spent on Medical, which seems reasonable.

I'm upset that we have to vote on this; I would rather the legislature do the right thing. I'm also upset that this amends the state Constitution; I don't think the Constitution should get into the specifics of how things should be funded. I also think we should be trying to loosen the hands of our legislators, not restrict them further, and that they're as aware of the cost of giving up matching funds as voters are.

Prop 53 (Voter Approval for Megaprojects): No

I'm really torn on this. On the one hand, you are putting voters in charge of deciding even more things about what the government does. On the other, megaprojects frequently fail and the majority come in at least 50% over budget (high speed rail is only the most prominent example of this). Politicians also like to build big things so they can have a "legacy" and the history of big things lately has been really mixed - see high speed rail and also the Bay Bridge which has required frequent fixes and may be cracking.

Our politicians might not make great decisions with our money but I think voters would make worse decisions. Note voters approved the first $9 billion of a high speed rail project whose final cost may be upwards of $60 billion, when no real funding source for the other $51 billion was in sight. This would also increase uncertainty and delay the start of any project until the next statewide vote.

Prop 54 (72 Hr Bill Freeze): Yes

I am unhappy that this bill amends the Constitution. But apparently there are numerous instances of state legislators shoehorning special-interest-friendly language at the last second.

There was that budget measure that limited the amount of reserves local school districts could maintain as a cushion against lean times (a gift to the teachers union, which wanted to make those dollars available for immediate spending); the 2009 waiver of environmental rules for a downtown Los Angeles football stadium (on the argument that time was of the essence to secure an NFL team ... the project never broke ground); or the 2011 bill that Democrats rushed through to force all voter initiatives on the November ballot, thus breaking a deal with Republicans to put spending reform on the June 2012 ballot.

Prop 55 (Extending Income Taxes on High Earners): No

The share of tax each resident pays is something that the Legislature should resolve. I also agree with the Chronicle that this measure will increase the variability of revenue in the state budget, which isn't great.

Prop 56 ($2 Cigarette Tax): Yes

In general taxes are a good way to discourage behavior you don't want. Cigarettes are unhealthy and incur significant spillover costs due to secondhand smoke, and the additional burden on the healthcare system from insuring/treating patients with cancer and emphysema.

I would have preferred for the Legislature to vote for this tax as well.

Prop 57 (Parole): No

Many people are serving sentences that are too long and the prisons are overcrowded. But the language is confusing and I don't see why the Legislature can't pass legislation to deal with this issue.

Prop 58 (Local Language Education Flexibility): Yes

Apparently this is on the ballot because it repeals a previous voter-passed initiative from 1998. The worry is that voting Yes will allow students to graduate without mastering English at all, which isn't good. But it seems like all of parents, students and schools want students to learn English, they just don't agree that "all English classes, all the time" is the best way to do it.

Prop 59 (Citizens United): No

I'm voting No because this is a waste of energy and we shouldn't be voting on things like this, not based on any opinion about Citizens United.

Prop 60 (Porn Stars Wear Condoms): No

The practical effect of this bill would be to shift the porn industry in California to Nevada or another nearby state. The porn industry also requires performers to get tested every two weeks. There are problems that probably deserve more scrutiny - the exploitation of performers in some scenarios - but it's not clear that this initiative is the vehicle or the method to fix them.

Prop 61 (Drug Prices): No

I agree with the Chronicle that the right solution here is to make drug prices (and the rates each agency pays) public, instead of ensuring that the prices Medi-cal and the VA pay are the same. I also think there are legitimate concerns about reduced access to necessary drugs and the ability of the Legislature to override this initiative if there are unforeseen problems.

Prop 62 (Repeal Death Penalty): Yes

Prop 66 (Quicken Death Penalty): No

Leaving aside whether it is ethical to put someone to death for crimes they have committed, I am against the death penalty for the following, more practical reasons:

• It's entirely possible we have put an innocent person to death, an monstrous miscarriage of justice that should never be allowed to happen.

• It's argued that the death penalty deters people from violent crimes. But there's a lot of evidence that deterrence depends much more on the severity and the certainty of punishment. Death, if it comes at all for death row inmates, is applied years or decades after the fact.

• There are legitimate concerns about whether execution can be done "humanely" and a number of states have had problems sourcing the drugs used to put people to death.

• It's expensive to execute someone, both in pure cost and in the cost of the appeals process - a death sentence must be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Repeal would also save California a significant amount of money.

Prop 63 (Ammunition): No

The biggest effect of a Yes vote would add additional charges for people who would like to buy ammunition. I don't think we need to vote on this.

Prop 64 (Marijuana Legalization): No Position

In general I'd prefer for drugs to be legalized and heavily regulated + taxed, instead of illegal, especially when you consider the potential revenue. I also think criminal sentences for possessing or distributing marijuana should be smaller than they are (the initiative provides for this). However, I'm concerned that marijuana is only as expensive as it is because it is illegal. Marijuana is not an expensive crop, and if it becomes legal to grow the price per ounce could go really low. I'm worried the flat taxes per ounce are too low, and the 15% sales tax should be a flat tax or a guaranteed minimum price per ounce.

The results on public health so far are mixed; one study reports a 7% increase in traffic fatalities for every 1% increase in marijuana consumption. The penalties for drunk drivers are not currently high enough and I'm worried we don't know how to measure whether a driver is high.

On top of this I am worried that the Legislature won't have the flexibility to override a state initiative; any amendments require a 2/3 vote.

Prop 65 (Money from Paper Bags to Environment): No

This directs revenue from grocery bag fees to specific environmental causes. I don't think we should put additional constraints on where the Legislature should direct money, and I don't think we should pass things by state initiative.

Prop 66: No (see #62 above)

Prop 67 (Affirm Plastic Bag Ban): Yes

Proposition 67 is a referendum on the existing bag law (10 cents a bag); a "Yes" vote says "Yes, please keep the law the way it is." I prefer the Legislature to write laws, not California voters, so I am voting Yes.

Superior Court

Victor Hwang, who has experience working as a public defender.

Board of Education

Stevon Cook, Matt Haney, Rachel Norton, Jill Wynns.

Community College Board

Rafael Mandelman, Amy Bacharach, Alex Randolph, Shanell Williams.

Bart Director

Gwyneth Borden, who has been endorsed by the Chronicle and is open to a ban on BART strikes.

California State Senate: Scott Wiener

This is one of the most important races on the ballot due to the difference in quality between the candidates. Wiener is running against Jane Kim, who has opposed numerous housing projects, and is sponsoring some of the poorer propositions on the city ballot. Scott Wiener understands how to build more housing in San Francisco.

Kim also recently sponsored "legacy status" for Luxor Cab Company, which gives them a permanent subsidy from the City of San Francisco. This is a terrific waste of money compounded by the fact the benefit won't do anything for the company's cab drivers, only its 20 or so full time employees. Vote for Scott Wiener.

California State Representative: David Chiu

Chiu is running against Matthew Del Carlo, who does not appear to have policy positions listed anywhere publicly; it's not clear what he would run for, or do in office.

Chiu slammed Governor Brown for including $0 in affordable housing in this year's budget. The housing measures were tied to the Governor's "by right" housing legislation, which would have done more to lower rent/housing prices in San Francisco than any other legislative measure in a decade. It's not clear whether Chiu supported or opposed this measure.

Chiu is running against Matthew Del Carlo, who doesn't have any information about his policy positions listed publicly. I reached out to him multiple times asking him to post these publicly and he's refused to do so.

United States Senate: Kamala Harris

Harris is running for Barbara Boxer's old seat. We really need a California Senator who understands the technology industry and is willing to fight for it; who understands you can't just make a "golden key" to read messages that only the US government can access, as in Dianne Feinstein's horrible encryption bill.

President

Hillary Clinton.

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I think this is useful and the ballot's complicated so I wanted to share how I'm voting this year. I used several sources to compile this guide:

• The SF Chronicle's endorsements - they follow these issues every day.

• The ballot book mailed to every voter, especially the text of the law and the main pro/con arguments.

I highly recommend voting by mail. You can feel too rushed or disorganized in the ballot booth, especially in this election, when there are so many things to vote on.

San Francisco Ballot Initiatives

The #1 issue for me in this election is housing. People make a fundamental mistake when analyzing the SF housing market; they see lots of increased demand (maybe 10%) and little increased supply (maybe 1%), and conclude "We're building housing but prices are still rising; the new housing must be causing the price increases." In reality if demand is outpacing supply you'd expect to see prices rise and supply rise, and the new housing stock is preventing the price from rising even faster than it currently is!

I also see a lot of hypocrisy. SF is full of liberals, and social mobility is a traditional liberal plank. In one of the hottest economies in the country, high rents are preventing poor people from moving here and establishing a foothold. Lowering the price of housing in our fastest growing economies is a moral imperative.

San Francisco added 5000 new units this year, and SF condos are 8% cheaper this year than last year. The market rate of rent also slowed from its normal double-digit increase. We need to build on this progress.

I want there to be more housing in San Francisco, of all shapes and sizes. In this election, anything that makes housing more complicated to build is a No; anything that makes housing easier is a Yes. Affordable housing is admirable but isn't a full answer, and gets more expensive as market rent rises. The easiest path to more affordable housing is to lower market rent.

I'll say two other things; in general I am opposed to deciding things by ballot initiative that could be resolved by the Board of Supervisors or the State Senate, since election votes tend to tie the hands of our elected officials, and can require supermajorities to unwind. So all other things being equal I am more likely to vote No on any given ballot measure.

I am also generally opposed to measures that set aside percentages of the budget, or specific dollar amounts, for any cause, no matter how noble. They reduce the flexibility of our elected officials to balance a budget, which is why we elect them in the first place. The percentage of the city budget each interest group would like to reserve for itself would well exceed 100%.

Measure A (School Bond): Yes

Measure B ($99 Parcel Tax for City College): Yes

Measure C (Repurpose Earthquake Bonds for Housing): Yes

The City is sitting on $261 million in unspent earthquake safety bonds and would like to redirect it to housing. This will increase the supply of housing.

Measure D (Short Term Appointment Rules): No

Some replacement public officials are named by the mayor to replace someone else who left their term. This measure would prevent them from running for a full term. I see no reason why appointees should not be allowed to run for a full term. The SF Chronicle opposes this measure.

Measure E (Trees Fund): No

$19 million per year for trees. In the words of the SF Chronicle, "San Francisco is running a near $10 billion budget. The civic bill for tree care is pegged at $20 million. There should be room for this expense without carving out a program that can't be changed."

Measure F (Youth Vote): No

This would let 16 and 17 year olds vote in local elections.

Measure G (Police Oversight): Yes

This would grant additional powers to a citizen review board. I think police organizations have trouble regulating themselves and this is a good step in the right direction.

Measure H (Public Advocate): No

This creates a new elected position with no power to do anything. "It's posturing minus responsibility, a dream job in the political world," according to the Chronicle.

Measure I (Senior Citizen Fund): No

This measure would set aside $38 million a year for programs for senior citizens and adults with disabilities. I support programs for senior citizens, but would rather our elected officials make decisions about the budget, instead of voters.

Measure J (Homeless Housing and Services): No Position

Measure K (Sales Tax Increase): Yes

In general I'd like to see more parcel tax increases and fewer sales tax increases, since the former hit property owners, who have been granted great gifts by Prop 13. They are also politically unpalatable.

Measure L (Muni Board): No

This would let the Board of Supervisors appoint three of the seven members of the Muni Agency. I don't see why the mayor shouldn't appoint members of the Muni Agency.

Measure M (New Housing Committee): No

This would add another layer of approval in the housing approval process, which would make it more difficult to add housing. I am against measures that would make it more difficult to add housing.

Measure N (Noncitizen Resident Voting): No

I'm sympathetic but this would likely be subject to a legal challenge.

Measure O (Office Exemptions): Yes

The city limits new office construction to 950,000 square feet. This is a silly rule, which makes it hard for startups, among others, to rent in San Francisco. This would exempt Candlestick Point development from that square footage rule.

I would like to see similar rules applied to speed housing growth, but there you go.

Measure P (Competitive Bidding for Affordable Housing): No

This makes it more difficult to build housing by discouraging projects that can't get at least three bids. From the Chronicle:

Prop. P obliges the city to seek three bids when offering city land to affordable housing builders. But City Hall already beats the bushes for multiple contenders. By one count, the last 10 projects had at least two bidders. Locking in a three-bid minimum could kill projects which don’t attract that threshold number of entrants. The measure has the potential to stop promising deals, the last thing San Francisco needs.

Measure Q (Prohibit Tent Placement): No

This wouldn't have much practical effect, and won't really help much to address the shortage of beds.

Measure R (Neighborhood Crime Unit): No

This would allocate 3% of the police force for neighborhood crime. Even if this is an issue that could be addressed by this allocation, I don't think the right answer is for the voters to make allocation decisions for the police department.

Measure S (Hotel Money Allocation): No

This would allocate the 8% hotel tax for the arts and for the homeless. In general I'm against allocating revenue for specific purposes; this isn't an exception. I doubt this will matter; the Chronicle has no position and there are no arguments against the measure in the ballot book.

Measure T (Lobbying Rules): Yes

This would add tighter restrictions on what lobbyists are allowed to do and spend to influence votes.

Measure U (Median Income): No

This would help middle income families qualify for affordable housing at the expense of lower income families. Per [the Chronicle][measure-u], "The guidelines for competitive bidding and income qualifications are better left to a process of legislative hearings, study and political compromise that balances the competing goals and concerns. These are not issues to be settled at the ballot box."

The solution here is more housing of all stripes, and hopefully market rate housing that is affordable to middle income families. This wouldn't help.

Measure V (Soda Tax): Yes

Charging a higher price for something is a good way to discourage people from getting it. This strategy has been used very successfully with cigarettes, which cause cancer in others via secondhand smoke; raising the price of cigarettes makes it an expensive habit. The fact that this raises money for the City is an ancillary benefit. The goal of this bill is to make sugary drinks more expensive and non-sugary drinks cheaper by comparison.

I'm also dismayed by the efforts of bill opponents, who have sent volumes of mail and mislead when they call this a "grocery tax." It's a 1 cent per ounce tax on sugary drinks.

Measure W (Higher City Transfer Taxes): No Opinion

The arguments for this measure all seem to say "this will help make City College free", which is very odd since it seems the tax money will go into the General Fund.

The arguments against point out that this also applies to rent controlled buildings and large buildings.

Measure X (Arts Use in New Buildings): No

This would add restrictions if you want to build housing in an area that was formerly used for the arts or certain types of small businesses. We shouldn't be voting on this, and it makes it more difficult to build housing, maybe more so than any other measure on the ballot.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors

District 1: Marjan Philhour

Marjan wants to build more housing of all shapes and sizes to address the area's housing crisis. She's also been endorsed by the Chronicle.

District 3: No Recommendation

Aaron Peskin is the incumbent who is going to win going away. Peskin has held up new housing on several occasions. He's also supported symbolic efforts to oppose Governor Brown's by right legislation, which would have done more for housing growth than any other proposal in a long time. Peskin also believes that you should only be allowed to exceed existing density limits if you build 100% affordable housing, which is a great way to grandstand for affordable housing while ensuring no new housing gets built.

He is being opposed by Tim Donnelly, who supports "respecting building limits", increasing parking, expanding rent control, and "giving residents a voice" because changes have been made "despite overwhelming opposition from the local community." It does not sound like Mr Donnelly is in favor of more housing.

District 5: No Recommendation

London Breed voted against Governor Brown's by right legislation, which would have helped increase the market-rate and affordable housing stock in San Francisco by letting developers build any project that followed local zoning rules and had 20% affordable housing. She also supports affordability requirements that make it difficult to build more housing.

She is being opposed by Dean Preston, who is running against "rent gouging", and supports an "anti-demolition" ordinance for "historic" buildings. Mr. Preston would not make it easier to build more housing in San Francisco.

District 7: Joel Engardio

Engardio is running against Norman Yee, who supports CEQA, a law that is frequently abused to oppose housing. Engardio supports building more housing. "I also know that building more housing will help middle income residents become homeowners -- and we want to keep families from leaving San Francisco. Restricting supply only drives prices higher," he writes.

District 9: No Endorsement

Hillary Ronen pledges to "fight for an affordable San Francisco" and wants to build 5000 units of affordable housing in 10 years. There was a very easy way to have accomplished 5000 units of affordable housing - support Governor Brown's by right housing legislation, which would have guaranteed that 20% of every new building in San Francisco would have been affordable. Her boss, David Campos, voted against it. She also wants to leverage state and federal funds to build affordable housing. Her boss's vote against by right legislation helped remove $400 million for affordable housing from the state budget.

District 11: No Endorsement

None of the candidates in either of these districts seem to agree that building more housing of any shape and size is the best way to alleviate our affordability crisis for everyone. Notably bad is District 11's Kim Alvarenga, running on a platform of "more parking" and "100% affordable housing", which is very difficult to build.

Coming Soon!

California State Propositions, BART director, judicial elections, State Senate and US Senate.

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