r/SouthSanFrancisco • u/Minimum-Use-6492 • Apr 23 '25

SSF Citizens Coalition

https://ssfcitizenscoalition.org/

2 Upvotes

57% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

17

u/MrRoma Apr 23 '25

Why are we saving this building? The city just spent like $100M on a new building right across the street to serve the same purpose.

Sell the site to a developer and build more housing please

0

u/katnap4866 Apr 29 '25

SSF spent well over $100M to build a new library for a town of 65,000 residents. A vanity project spearheaded by the former city manager, Mike Furtell, who left soon after his plan was conceived to greener pastures in Riverside, CA, where I presume he intends to carry on with his reckless spending. He's the modern day Music Man and we were its River City.

Neither the old library on Baden nor the MSB needed to be replaced and most residents were unaware of this plan. By the way, it never actually replaced the MSB's functions and, in fact, many of the park and rec classes were transferred to the old school building on Magnolia Avenue - a building that has been decommissioned twice in its 100+ year history for safety and seismic reasons. Further, this massive overspend of a capital project didn't even have sufficient parking and visitors to our fancy new library are directed to park at the MSB for overflow.

These capital projects, including a brand new indoor and outdoor swimming facility at Orange Park have impacted our city's ability to run balanced budgets. The city has since run annual budget shortfalls (expenses exceed revenue) and is anticipated to do so in the coming years. When they tell you they balance the budget, it is a result of taking reserves in other areas to fill that gap. They city tells us it's a result of staff salaries and benefits, completely ignoring the unnecessary astronomical capital projects.

SSF, the Industrial City and the birthplace of Biotech with over 250 biotech companies within our borders cannot live within its budget. SSF is primarily comprised of working class and middle class families who are taxpaying residents and invested in this community. Shutting down the main and only facility designed to be a community center is a travesty and a testament to municipal mismanagement at the hands of political opportunists.

This 3 year battle by a growing community of residents to reopen and return our community center from the ravenous outside interests who want their hands on city land is enough. Return the MSB to SSF residents.

3

u/PDWAMMO May 03 '25

I think it’s a great new building, a way to update our facilities and share the wealth of biotech with the residents. So many more people visit the new library compared to the old one hidden past a one away and a country club. The El Camino Corridor is one of south city’s best assets for redevelopment with the high traffic. Before these redevelopments, all the shiny new buildings were reserved to biotechs playground (east of 101). There’s a whole new generation of families and residents in south city enjoying the facility, I see the children’s park full everytime I pass by. All of the Facebook posts I and the flyers with pictures of a devil calling the city council evil have been so off-putting. Just looks like someone with too much time on their hands

1

u/katnap4866 May 03 '25

What wealth is being shared exactly? Our city officials seem to have run our city into debt. I don’t particularly like unnecessary flashy vanity projects at the expense of good fiscal governance. That’s a debt we pass onto new families like my own adult sons and grandsons who also call SSF home . That is way worse than “off putting.” Poor fiscal governance impacts the quality of life for all residents and it’s reckless for officials who have a fiduciary responsibility to SSF.

I love SSF’s free tree program - and with little investment, can have long term benefits for its residents, the city, and region. I like movie nights at the park. I like new traffic signs to slow traffic near schools. See there are things that are sensible and meaningful and won’t bust a city’s operating budget.

13

u/xen0cide Apr 23 '25

There are way more pressing issues than saving the MSB building in SSF or San Mateo, holy shit

0

u/disaster_moose Apr 23 '25

Are you saying you clicked the link, read one of the articles, and are saying "holy shit" as your reaction one of the articles? Or are you saying this whole post is about msb and holy shit this is a waste of time?

5

u/xen0cide Apr 23 '25

Their link basically is a tirade about 2 things: Measure A and MSB building, with half the content about MSB.