Which brings us to the rather unusual Board of Supervisors meeting on October 19, 1959. On the docket was the final approval for an ordinance which had been twelve years in the making: updated zoning maps covering literally every parcel of land in San Francisco. During this session, the supervisors voted to add five last-minute amendments, stopping frequently to confer with various lobbyists in the antechambers… among them, Standard Building Co.’s attorney, Albert Skelly.

One of these amendments re-zoned Standard’s 21 acres on Twin Peaks from single-unit detached housing to apartment complexes. It passed in a 6–4 vote. Journalists in the room noted an odd turn of phrase during Supervisor Joseph Casey’s presentation in support of this re-classification: he referred to “the damage we would suffer if this amendment was not passed.”⁸

Two days later, the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin broke the story. In the weeks leading up to the vote, Standard had made large campaign donations to five of the six “Yes” voters — circumventing the normal procedure of anonymizing donations,⁹ and informing the supervisors directly by phone. Casey’s presentation was, apparently, a direct appeal penned by Standard.

The public and (more pertinently) the politically-influential neighborhood associations were outraged; some of the Planning Commission’s original zoning recommendations had been informed by years of public hearings and input.¹⁰ A Grand Jury investigation was launched, and the supervisors hastily called another session to re-vote the amendments.

Still, without a smoking gun quid pro quo, it wasn’t entirely clear that Standard’s money had influenced the votes. The mayor voiced his support for the supervisors, and during the re-vote, they reversed course on only one amendment, the others — including the multi-unit zoning on Twin Peaks — remained.

As Supervisor Charles A. Ertola commented during the fallout, the “maybe $200” he received from Standard “…didn’t influence my vote. I’d vote again for an R-3 designation on that land. It’s so hilly, it’d be stupid to build homes on it. Besides, the city will get more tax yield from multiple units.”¹¹

The Planning Commission and Public Works Department were unwilling to risk another contentious round of voting scuttling their twelve years of work on the zoning ordinance; they accepted the amendments and pressed on. After a few rounds of negotiation over building heights,¹² Standard’s plans for the first half of the new 700-plus-unit Vista Francisco subdivision were approved by the City Engineer and Director of Public Works in early 1962, leaving only a pro forma vote from the supervisors.¹³