A's give Oakland 2nd chance on offer to rehab field

Baseball stands at Oakland's Bushrod Park would have been repainted as part of the Oakland A's plan to renovate the Little League ballpark. Baseball stands at Oakland's Bushrod Park would have been repainted as part of the Oakland A's plan to renovate the Little League ballpark. Photo: Andrew Ross Photo: Andrew Ross Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close A's give Oakland 2nd chance on offer to rehab field 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

The Oakland A's are offering to give city officials a second chance after they dropped the ball on the team's offer to help refurbish a Little League field in North Oakland.

"Absolutely, if they can promise that we can do this without a lot of red tape," said A's Vice President Ken Pries.

The A's offer follows our Monday column that detailed how bureaucratic snafus led to Oakland missing out on the chance for up to $150,000 in money and in-kind support from the A's and the nonprofit Good Tidings Foundation to refurbish one of three fields at Bushrod Park, just off Shattuck Avenue.

Reaction to the baseball bungle was swift.

"Hearing community concern loud and clear," Mayor Jean Quan tweeted late Monday. "Update soon."

One of those fuming was San Francisco Human Services Director Trent Rhorer, an Oakland resident who has coached in the city's Little League for the past six years.

In a scathing letter to Quan and Oakland Parks and Recreation Director Audree Jones-Taylor, Rhorer wrote: "Two weeks ago, the grass in the outfield (at Bushrod) was so long that we were losing balls during the course of play, and the outfield was so cratered that balls were bad hopping into my players' faces."

Rhorer said he understands red tape. But he told the mayor and her parks director that their inability to cut through it for a worthy cause "shows me that you two, in fact, should not be in your positions."

"Had I bungled an opportunity such as this for Mayor (Willie) Brown, Mayor (Gavin) Newsom or Mayor (Ed) Lee, I am quite sure that I would justifiably no longer be in mine."

Meanwhile, City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan has set up a meeting with the A's and Jones-Taylor to try to restart the rehab.

All boats rise: While all eyes are on the rank and file, it's city executives who will get the biggest dollar boosts in the pay deals just worked out at San Francisco City Hall.

Under the city's "one size fits all" contracts, city workers - with the exception of police officers, firefighters and Muni workers - will be getting raises of 8.5 percent to 9.5 percent over the next three years. Cops, firefighters and Muni workers have separate pay deals.

For a $50,000-a-year clerk or janitor, the new city contract works out to a little less than $5,000 annually after three years.

But for the $313,313-a-year head of the city's Public Utilities Commission, or the $312,858-a-year airport director, the bump is more like $28,000.

In all, 21 of the city's top city execs can look forward to raises of $20,000 or more over the next three years.

911 hitch: A $3.7 million "upgrade" to San Francisco's 911 system has resulted in longer waits and glitches in communications with police and firefighters.

One big problem with the new system surfaced almost immediately when it was turned on last Wednesday, especially when 911 dispatchers were communicating with the computers in police cars.

"The information is in bits and pieces," said police spokesman Officer Albie Esparaza.

As a result, officers in the field are falling back to the days of getting the information via their radios - which, in turn, crowds the airwaves.

Firefighters are having to rely more on their stationhouse radios as well.

Emergency dispatchers are also having problems with the new coding.

"It takes three to five times longer to do the same function as the old system," said one 12-year veteran of the 911 call center, who didn't want her name used because she was not authorized to speak for the department.

The 911 system is run by the city's Department of Emergency Management. Francis Zamora, a spokesman for the agency, said the problems were being worked out,

"As with any complex IT project, there are always going to be glitches, there are always going to be issues that come about," Zamora said. "That's why we have a support team in place to deal with them.

"Sometimes it takes longer to get information, but it hasn't affected response time," Zamora said.

Peeved: A "Pee in the Cup" initiative to require random drug testing for doctors in California could qualify for the November ballot this week, setting up a battle royal between trial lawyers backing the measure and the medical industry.

In addition to the drug-testing provision, the measure would lift the state's long-standing $250,000 cap on pain-and-suffering awards in medical malpractice lawsuits.

The health care industry, state Chamber of Commerce, Planned Parenthood and major public employee unions have lined up to fight the measure.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, came in with a last-ditch compromise that would have kept the measure off the ballot, but the doctors nixed it.

"It was a political extortion attempt at the last minute," said Sam Singer, hired gun for the California Medical Association. "Doctors won't play that game."