Aaron Peskin

Infobox Officeholder
name = Aaron Peskin


imagesize = 150px
small

caption =
office = President of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
term_start = 2005
term_end =
predecessor = Matt Gonzalez
successor =
office2 = Member of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
from District 3
term_start2 = 2001
term_end2 =
predecessor2 = "district created"
successor2 =
birth_date = birth year and age|1964
birth_place = Berkeley, California
death_date =
death_place =
nationality = United States
party = Democratic
spouse = Nancy Shanahan
children =
residence = San Francisco, California
alma_mater = University of California, Santa Cruz
occupation = Politician
profession = Environmental activist
religion =


website = [http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=4637 Supervisor Aaron Peskin]
footnotes =

Aaron Peskin (born 1964) is the current president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was first elected to the Board in 2000, and was re-elected in 2004. In January 2005, his colleagues elected him President of the Board.

Personal life

Peskin was born and raised in Berkeley. His mother, Tsipora, an immigrant from Israel, taught at UC Berkeley; his father, Harvey, was a professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. Peskin is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz. He is married to land use attorney Nancy Shanahan. [Wall, Alexandra J. (December 22, 2000) [http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/15182/edition_id/295/format/html/displaystory.html "'Doing mitzvahs' propels supe Peskin."] "j."]

Before entering politics, Peskin was an environmental activist and water rights negotiator for a non-profit organization which brokered passage and use rights for tribal lands. He first came to public notice as president of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, where he led the effort to save the Colombo building (it was going to be made a Chinatown branch of City College) and prevent a Rite-Aid drug store from moving into the Pagoda Theater. [Shaw, Randy (January 10‚ 2005 )( [http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=1062 "What Drives Aaron Peskin?"] "BeyondChron".] He is a member of the South End Rowing Club and an avid outdoorsman, having hiked the John Muir Trail in 2006 and 2007. [Sabatini, Joshua (Jan 9, 2007 ) [http://www.examiner.com/a-498228~Re_elected_board_chief__Peskin_sets_ambitious_agenda.html "Re-elected board chief, Peskin sets ambitious agenda."] "San Francisco Examiner".] Peskin can be seen most mornings in his Speedo swimming in the San Francisco Bay [ [http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=1536 "Peskin 'bears' all"] .] . He reassured San Franciscans after the Cosco Buscan oil spill that the water was safe by stripping down to his Speedo and going for a dip in front of a KTVU TV crew [ [http://www.ktvu.com/video/14660390/index.html "San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin Dives Into The Bay To Show It's Safe"] .]

Political career

Peskin was first elected in December 2000, along with other progressive neighborhood activists who had cut their teeth on Tom Ammiano's mayoral campaign. When he was sworn into office, Peskin described District 3 (it comprises Chinatown, North Beach, Nob Hill, and most of Russian Hill) [ [http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=45817 District 3 Information] ] as the "living room" of San Francisco. Peskin received less than 10 percent of the vote in Chinatown in the election. [Banerjee, Neela (Oct. 26 - Oct. 31, 2001) [http://www.asianweek.com/2001_10_26/feature_cavec.html "CAVEC Poll Shows Strains of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment."] "AsianWeek".]

As Supervisor, Peskin is known mostly for siding with a self-described progressive majority on development issues, often being at odds with the policies of mayors Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown. He authored an amnesty on unwarranted "in-law" apartment construction as a strategy to counter rising housing costs and to promote fiscal conservatism in city spending.

In 2004, Peskin was unanimously elected President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Peskin was re-elected by his colleagues for a second two-year term as President in 2005. Peskin also serves as a member of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, an agency responsible for regulating development in, on and immediately surrounding the San Francisco Bay.

Peskin has sponsored legislation to curb the Ellis Act, a state law that allows property owners to evict tenants by going out of the rental business. This law has led to many tenancy-in-common conversions of apartment buildings in San Francisco by tenants who desire to own property, and real estate promoters seeking to make ownership opportunties available (and thereby earning fees and profits), especially in Peskin's neighborhood of North Beach. [ cite web
url = http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/05/BAGAAI3MV81.DTL
title = Supervisor wants limit on Ellis Act evictions
work = San Francisco Chronicle
author = Vega, Cecilia M.
date = April 5 2006
accessdate = 2006-03-19 ]

Peskin angered his progressive allies by supporting legislation to bring Home Depot to San Francisco.

Peskin has also come under criticism for his actions involving North Beach nightclubs and festivals. Due in part to actions by Peskin, the 52-year-old North Beach Jazz Festival was canceled in 2006. In that year, the Board of Supervisors voted to prohibit alcohol sales at the fair because of political pressure from Aaron Peskin, who has close ties to the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association, which wanted a ban on alcohol sales. Festival organizers said that without the sales the festival couldn't turn a profit, so they canceled it. "He's using these people (the Telegraph Hill Dwellers) as his foot soldiers to get even with me for not supporting him," said Marsha Garland, executive director of the North Beach Chamber of Commerce, an organizer of the festival who endorsed an opponent of Peskin's during his 2004 re-election bid. [Bowman, Becky (May 31, 2006) [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/31/BAG3GJ50B01.DTL&type=travelbayarea "Alcohol banned at North Beach festivals."] "San Francisco Chronicle".]

Peskin, working with the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, temporarily shut down the Savoy Tivoli, a North Beach landmark, when he had city officials rescind the Planning Commission order that had allowed the bar to operate without a restaurant. [Matier, Phil and Andres Ross (February 6, 2002) [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/06/MN164766.DTL "Stompin' at the Savoy no longer."] "San Francisco Chronicle."] Along with Supervisor Chris Daly, Peskin was instrumental in canceling the San Francisco Grand Prix, a world-class bicycle race held in the years 2001 to 2005, because the race's backers owed the city money. Critics of Peskin alleged that the race was cancelled because it inconvenienced his North Beach constituents. [Smith, Matt (November 23, 2005) [http://search.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-11-23/news/smith.html "Pedal Power: Two politicians put their interests before a world-class event and a world of possibilities."] "SF Weekly".]

Legislative Record

In 2007, Peskin authored a charter amendment to increase MUNI funding and implement agency reforms. The measure, Prop A, received over 55 percent of the vote Prop. A was a response to a pro-parking measure, Prop H, funded by GAP, Inc. founder and republican billionaire Don Fisher. Fisher spent lavishly in support of Prop. H, a measure that would have undone numerous transit-first measures in downtown San Francisco.

Controversies

In 2004, Peskin and his wife Nancy Shanahan may have been the benefit of a "sweetheart deal" in which they received a valuable property on Telegraph Hill at a discount price. In 2002, at a loss of $700,000 from the previous $1.5 million purchase price, the property in question was sold for $800,000 to a trust controlled by Harvey and Tsipora Peskin, Peskin's parents, who then, in 2004, conveyed nearly 70 percent of the ownership of the property to Peskin and his wife. The Peskins then converted the two-unit building to a single unit without first obtaining city approval. [Left, Eileen (January 2007) [http://sfbulldog.com/wordpress/other/?p=26 "Serious allegations against Peskin allegedly alleged."] "SF Bulldog."] [Brown, H. (January 20, 2007) [http://sfbulldog.com/hBrown/2006/01/20/bulldog-week-in-review/ "Bulldog Week in Review."] "SF Bulldog".]

In 2008, the San Francisco City Attorney and the Department of Human Resources launched an investigation into allegations that Peskin threatened the jobs of city employees. According to a letter obtained by the "San Francisco Chronicle", Peskin made a series of harassing drunken telephone calls to officials at the Port of San Francisco and said he would eliminate their jobs and cut funding to the agency because staff members disagreed with him. San Francisco city law prohibits members of the board of supervisors from interfering in the business of city departments and qualifies such activity as official misconduct. Numerous complaints have been lodged against Peskin with the City Attorney. The investigation is ongoing. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/31/MN8OUP00K.DTL&type=politics President of S.F. supes accused of harassing calls, threat] San Francisco Chronicle] On February 1, 2008 Mayor Newsom told The San Francisco Chronicle that people around city hall had been complaining about Peskin's behavior for years. [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/01/BAITUQMEN.DTL Newsom: Abusive calls from Peskin are nothing new] ]

In 2003, Peskin instigated an eminent domain seizure of private property at 701 Lombard Street, a triangle of land across a street from Washington Square Park. He did so at the behest of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Club, of which his wife was an officer. Some saw this an abuse of government power. [ Amanda Witherell (Tuesday May 2, 2006) [http://cgi.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=475 "Last Call"] " SF Bay Guardian" ]

The leading journalist political commentators in San Francisco have acknowledged Peskin's reputation as the "Napoleon of North Beach." [ Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross (Sunday, November 4, 2007) [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/04/BA90T4NOF.DTL&feed=rss.news "S.F. election slap-down: Peskin vs. Fisherover parking" saying: "Peskin - a.k.a. the 'Napoleon of North Beach'" ]

References