Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 71315 20240622

Is being televised thanks to sf gov tv staff. Member of the public please take this opportunity to silence your phone squz other electroning devices. The ringing and use of cell phones pagers and similar sound producing electroning devices are prohibited at this meeting. Public comnlt is limited it 3 minutes per speaker unless otherwise established. Speakers are requested but not required to state their names. Submission of a speaker card [inaudible] please deliver speaker cards to me prior to approaching the lectern. There is a sign in sheet at the front table for those that would like to be assigned to the waiting list. Commissioners stephen adams, here. Commissioner kathleen dooley. Commissioner mark dwight, here. Commissioner william ortiz, here. Commissioner3 4 f1 soft story buildings cannot be built anymore. We found since then about 15 percent of our total pop ulation live in these buildsings subject to the had ordinance so this is a huge safety concern for the city of San Francisco and the update im about to give shows good numbers so excited where that is going. Again, after 1989 the Building Inspection Commission put together the plan for seismic safety. It involved 100 member thofz community and several Small Businesses and looked at earthquakes in a holistic sense so what does it mean for the community in San Francisco . 17 general policy San Francisco should be doing to look at earthquake safety. From then city administrator ed lee put together a safety Implementation Plan which i oversee today. One of the biggest issues is deal wg the soft story buildingsm. The ordinance looks at type 5 or wood frame. [inaudible] buildsings built before 1978 and 2 or more stories over a soft story. This was a data crunch and didvent a existing list of the buildings so had to look at permit records and [inaudible] to get a list of 6700 properties. Septof 2013 we sent properties a notice and the notice said they are subject to screening so it means they have 12 months to fill out a document to figure come f the building should be in our out of the policeman. Program. The completion was the following year and had 95 percent complinets rate and within the 3 months following we bumped it up to 99 percent compliance rate. Huge numbers, very exvited about that. That is 5 thousand buildings that will be retrofitted by 2020. There are about 20 thousand san franciscans who live in these buildsings. When we look at how that effects Small Business it is concern. The majority fall in the 4th tier so they are given the maximum amount of time so fl is a different level of care and work ethic involved so want to give the maximum time to comply with the law. There are about 786 buildings in the process. In addition there are 20s 2 that received final completion and sign off. The first deadline are a few years from now. It is great to see people getting the ball rolling. One of the other charges we had is alonging at financing options. We know one size fits aul wont work for ret row fit so we talked to private banks. The cities developed their own Financing Mechanism too. We went live with the financing in december and have [inaudible] which is impressive considering this is several years out. I also handed out a map. This reflects the work we did with office of economic and Work Force Development and looking at the neighborhoods and overlaying where the buildings appear. There is a important caveat i should point out, the buildings reflected here are the noticed buildings so the information isilateal old so they are not the buildings that have to ret row fit, they received screening forms. So far we see average numbers come through, the average Construction Cost is reported 71 thousand dollars and that is based on about the 600 or so permits issued so far looking at the Construction Cost. The other nice thing is we see creative ways to keep stores in operation during construction. We do this with hospitals. Making sure things like ground floor retail are operating is not as difficult as you may think so we have seen a rate of these being very successful throughout the course of construction and if the construction is happening at a steady schedule we are in and out of there. A contractor starts 30 to 60 days and in and out. Happy to answer questions the commission may have. Commissioner adams i want to say you are doing a great job. I do know a couple landlords that are proactive and starting their construction and know they have a couple buildings done already and they are retail space squz in every instance the retail store was able to stay in place while they were doing the construction. The sit a being more proactive i thought was great and you see more and more as you go into the neighborhoods construction being done especially on the east side. The outreach was fantastic. You really got in front of the land lrds, the banks everybody to put put everybody together so good job. Thank you commissioner. Submissioner i have a question about the propertiesthat is sth total numberhow many of these buildings involve smauz Small Business . It is hard to say because Small Business can fit into several tiers. The vast majority of Small Business are in the 4th tier. Roughly, i dont have the numbers but assume around 1 thousand buildsings are in tier 4 what type of financing are the methods of financing for Small Businesses in the context of ret rofitting . All the financing we look at help the landlord as the Business Owner because they are required to comply working withria in the Small Business there are options for microgrants and thingathizeophorous is doing, but it isnt the businesses responsibility to be complying with the retrofit so the financing is geared towards the construction work the 4th tier has to comply bine 2020 . Correct the business is shut down during the retrofit somebody has to compensate them or they are out of business for a while . Correct and that is base ond the stipulation in the commercial lease and the agreement for the landlord to come in and do work the landlords have been very good work wg the tenants on these, the ones i know of and work with. I do know and cant say the names recollect , but they are in the marina and the landlord gave the tenants break but they are still in business so they are paying rent but not full rent. There are a few landslords that are doing that because they have to do it and dont want to luce the tenant where the business has to shut down can have a ripple evect on the employees, i was thinking what we can do to protect [inaudible] i think we can do more to help the Small Business so dont think we should be done thinging about that solution. When we talk about correction we talk 3060 days. The Small Businesses will fail after a disaster so trying to get them to think in those term squz look at the big picture is where we should focus our efforts and the Small Business community through the president , mr. Dwight, so i know i live in the upper hate rr so there is a fair number of properties in the upper hate so a good number have gone dark and my guess it is happening between leases because several new businesses moved in after the work is done, so especially in those instances, it is a great opportunity to insure the Property Owner is making their entry way accessible especially if they are have to lower the floor to make a level entry, so is the city at all tracking what accessibility improvements are being done and made through the seismic retrofit . Are they tracking it and how much of the work is being done and maybe for those businesses that are not moving out, is the Property Owner taking advantage of making the entry way accessible 1234 a couple things, there is a easy data run that can be done if xhrmsh buildsings are doing the soft story work and they would be required to do accessibility as a rule of that. You have to review the plans to figure what the particular interventions were so that level of detail hasnt been looked at yet, but it could. The initial numbers is 71 thousand for the average ret row fit so they are required by chapter 11 b and the Building Code so they are only required to spent 20 percent. There are several over the threshold so they would be required to bring the building into full compliance. Commissioners comments or questions . No. Thank you very much commissioners. Thank you. Brian lets move on. We need to open for Public Comment. Anyone have Public Comment from this item . Seeing none well close item 5 is discussion and possible action on bos 5150732, Building Code mandatory Disability Access improvement administrative fee. This is a ordinance amending the Building Code to require a building with a place of public accommodation to have primary entries or path of travel into the building accessible for persons with disability or to receive from the city equivalent facilitation technical infeasibility or technical hardship establishing a Disability Access compliance unit within the department of building inspection and a fee to offset the cost of disubltd access improvement program. Today we have a presentation by supervisor katy tang good afternoon thank you for hearing this item today. I know this is has been a long time effort we spent many years working on and there are several people here who helped work on it. I would like to thank rugina [inaudible] and kathleen dooley, carla here from the Mayors Office on disability. Knroe there are member thofz mayors counsel here as well as richard halren, i want to give him a lot of credit for thinking about how to approach this from Department Building inspection. Spent many years trying to work on the issue of ada and how we do this work and try to encourage accessibility around the Small Business community. On the one hand trying to make sure we provide access to squaerfbd also trying to make sure it is something that is feasible for the Small Business community and doesnt put them out of business undur ada. We thought oaf various solutions. We started out by giving a free inspection and offering that to businesses and they would post something in the window saying they completed this. We offered one pagers in different languages telling people about the different Resources Available for financing and finally we realized we needed a larger more comprehensive effort from the city to say that look, this is a very important issue and want to make sure our Business Community is trying to provide adequate access for everyone who wants to utilize a service and also provide a way for our businesses and Property Owners to document they made this effort so if there was a lawsuit filed against a Property Owner or business they can show and have proof they made a effort to achuv accessibility improvements. I think the summary that was stated, what the ordinance is doing is we put in the Building Code to require existing building with a place of public accommodation either have all primary entries and path of travel accessible or receive a determination from our Access Appeals Commission for equivalent facilitation, technical infeasibility or unreezable hardship so this is something that is new. We also establish a Disability Access complinets unit within dbi that we hope to congregate more people from different departments so businesses and Property Owners are not running to different departments at different times trying to figure what they need to do. We are alsoi just want to go over quickly the different tiers we are setting up. It is very good convince you had a presentation about the soft kory retrofit program because what we did is model our legislation off that program and hope to conduct that same level of successful outreach on that. We divide the city buildsings into 4 categories. The first are those that probable have main entrances accessible and met the standards based on the california Building Code 1998. Category 2 and 3, you start getting into those buildings where the primary entrance may have a step or 2 or more. Category 4 are the ones where we are callingthere are all sorts of issues there so you vaprimary entry or entries with more than one step or more than wut element that do not comply with the minimum code requirement so it is the catch all category. Based on the 4 categories the first thing we are asking our Property Owners to do is submit a compliance check list. It ranges from 1230 monthathize Property Owners have to submit the check list t. Is what the seismic soft story was trying to do and survey because we dont have accurate numbers at the moment. Then the next step would be 3 months from when you submitted the compliance check list. That ranges from 1533 months. The last step is 3 months later you obtain the permit. For the third step we do build in an exception for extensionoffs time if the Planning Department or dbi or any other department held up the permit for whatever reason. Most significantly is that we are trying to empower the Access Appeals Commission to issue those determinations so whether there was a technical infeasibility and so forth because right now if a business or Property Owner were trying to make accessibility improvements what do they have to show that they tried . Especially as we talk about potential properties in district 3 where there are historic buildsings and it is difficult to achieve the work, we want a formal something from the city to show someone made a effort. We are not guaranteeing this will be upheld in court but at least it shows we are trying and the city is aware and trying to work what other solutions there may be. That is in a nut shell the parameters of the program that we are hoping for and we really do think it is very Ground Breaking because i thichck it is the first time a city has taken it upon them sevl to have a comprehensive program to make sure building owners are aware of the requirements and allowing the flexibility and the cases especially giver en San Franciscos tow pography and many hig touric buildings to allow for the flexibility. I want to thank everyone who wrapped their heads around the issue how we have a program that we hope will be a benefit to the people who want to access all our brzs and the businesses who want to provide service to everyone in San Francisco. The way that the legislation is written, the responsibility falls on the Property Owner but we are very well aware in the private contraxual relationship between Property Owners and tenants they can discuss on their own the arrangement they have but we wrote it in a way that it falls on the Property Owner. Im happy to answer questions or can bring up Carla Johnson from the Mayors Office of disability for questions commissioner dooley i want to thank you catty katy for all the hard work and time you put into this. It was grailt to work with the different minds and it is really much needed and thank you so much. Thank you and i do want to give a builated thanksgivings to [inaudible] thaums who was part of the initial discussion as well and felt this was a important issue we as a city should be tackling. Any other comments, questions . No. Thank you very much, supervisor. With that ill bring up Carla Johnson from Mayors Office on disability. Good afternoon, it is so good to see you today. I also want to start my comments by thanking supervisor tang and her aid and commissioner dooley and director regina [inaudible] because what was special and unusual about this work group is it was trying to solve a problem from many different perspective chblt the people that par tit paced in the work group included work groups and your commissioner and director and department of building inspectioning, the Planning Department, department of public works, the Mayors Office on disability, bomu and others that came together. I think it is apparent today with the Seismic Safety Program is a good program because the comments you may regina were very good about looking at any work we do is a opportunity to improve accessibility. July we celebrated the 25 anniversary of signing of americans with disability act and in 1990 there was the expectation the work would be done now and yet as we go through the city there are many places that for a variety of reasons have not been able to retrofit their entrances and make their businesses fully accessible to all as a civil right and think the legislation tackles the project in a way to insure we improve the accessibility of the business squz protect our Small Businesses from lawsuits through this very thoughtful program to improve buildings over time and use this new Disability Access compliance unit at the department of building inspection to Work Together in a way we havent had the opportunity to do in the past. I do want to thank supervisor tang and look forward work wg you and here to answer any questions you may have on this as well. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner questions comments . No. Okay. Any memberoffs the public wish to comment on this item . I is 2 speaker cards, first up denise [inaudible] and chip [inaudible] welcome. Welcome. Good afternoon commissioners. I thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak with you today. My name is denise [inaudible] cochair on the Mayors Disability Council and would like to read in record a letter of support for this Building Code amendment for the legislation of supervisor tang to include chapter 11 d to the Building Code. Dear commissioners the Mayors Disability Council is writing this letter in support of supervisor katy tangs proposed legislation introduced at the board of supervisors meeting on tuesday july 7, 2015. This proposal would expand Access Requirements for Small Businesses and other entities that serve the public requiring that commercial buildings with primary entries and path of travel into any existing buildings be made accessible for people with disabilities. Supervisor tangs important legislation would serve to reduce the number of physical barriers people with disabilities face when accessing Small Businesses. People with disabilities will be able to benefit by receiving the same privileges and services as people without disabilities, which will promote full and equal inclusion. Just as a importantly, this legislation provides much needed support to the Small Business community. The mdc empathized with Business Owners who are concerned about whether they are in compliance with the state or federal Disability Access law. The [inaudible] Disability Access compliance unit will provide multidepartmental guide squns outline requirements for each business Property Owner. Personalized through the use of a check list to assess where the property stands with regards to the ordinance. We understand that there will be cost associate would the implementation of this ordinance, however the ordinance has a mechanism to grant exceptions where they are extreme cases of physical constraint or financial burden on the Property Owner. The Access Appeals Commission will be empowered to review the conditions on a case by case basis and render decisions that document technical infeasibility, unreezable hardship and [inaudible] the Mayors Disability Council studied this ordinance and found it to be a fair and balanced approach to solving accessibility issues for Small Business owners and the disability community. As we continue to celebrate the 25 anniversary of ada, let this legislation set a dpmp for the city and county of San Francisco by making business [inaudible] for all. Perfect timing, thank you. The value of reading your presentation, thank you. Next up. Good afternoon, my name is chip [inaudible] the other cochair of San Francisco Mayors Disability Council. Most of my points are contained in a letter read by my colleague. The situation for people with disabilities is there are many barrier tooz the goal of inclusion in american society. We face barriers in employment and education as well as physical access. The legislation is important because it brings our brothers and sisters with disability closer to fuller inclusion in society so i want to urge you to support this legislation and help it move forward. Thank you any other Public Comment . Seeing none Public Comment is closed. Commissioners. Director i just want to make a comment thmpt to extends my appreciation to supervisor tang for developing the legislation and this is Ground Breaking and it is historic and to have the city come together to look at what more we could do to help our Property Owners and Small Businesses and mostly help individuals with disabilities be able to access our goods and services. So, i think the timinghaving patrick [inaudible] and give the presentation to talk about what we are doing with the seismic safety but also to highlight the issuewise the california Building Code that under the seismic safety even though a business may be required to do some accessibility, but as he said, most of the average accessibility cost is 71 thousand dollars which is well under the evaluation thresh hold so additional 20 percent is over 14 dollars and dealing with a entry way especially if you have some sort of step, is going to be much more than 14 thousand dollars if you have to try to deal with lowering it, getting additional structural drawings, possibly going through Historic Preservation so that business may choose to spend that 14 thousand dollars in another area doing accessibility. We still havent accomplished our goal which is one of the first things that you need to dothe levels of priority of accessibility are pact of travel and entry way and most of the businesses dont have to deal with path of travel because that is in the public realm so the entry way is the first place. So, the timing of supervisor tangs legislation is very critical because there is still a good number of Property Owners who havent gone through the seismic retrofitting. While i know athere are businesses who have been able to stay inand conduct business but frafr the majority of the properties on hate rr street they had to go dark so it is really critical that we are engaging with the Property Owners now especially if the business isif that property will go dark to make their entry ways accessible. The only way to get around as i see it and correct me if im wrong richard, but to deal with that 20 percent is to do what we are requiring with the mandate. The timing of these 2 things are really important and while i know there will probably be hick ups, but think it is Ground Breaking and for us to demonstrate not only throughout california but nationally what we are trying to attempt to do is i think extraordinary and important and quite historic. So, just want to extend my appreciation to supervisor tang and to director johnson and richard halren and commissioner dooley and everybody involved to come up with the very smart way of approaching this and also to document situations and cases where it may be technically infeasible or there is a real hardship and that is information we can send to the state or to the federal level as examples of issues or concerns or things to help deal with trying to achieve accessibility. Thank you. Any other comments, questions commissioners . I move that we support katys legislation. Ill second. Roll call . Commissioner adams, yes. Commissioner dooley, yes. Commissioner dwight, yes. Commissioner ortiz, yes. Commissioner yee, riley, yes. Commissioner tour, sarcson, yes. Commissioner white, yes. Unanimously approve. Thank you supervisor. Thank you. All right. Thank you all for coming out for that. Next up is item number 6 item 6 is prezen taiz and discussion on administrative code chapter 14, San Francisco Health Care Security ordinance 14. 2 j, the department of Public Health plan to maximize enrollment in Health Insurance and include option frz incenting employers to provide quality. Presenting today is Colleen Chawla druckter of policy and planning. I have a presentation also for you if i could get that on the screen would be great. Colleen i think we can switch the mic if it is easier for you. It is on. Sorry, now it is. Is that better . Thank you. So, good afternoon commissioners im Colleen Chawla and Deputy Director of heth dedepartment and here to present the proposal for modernizing the Health Care Security ordinance and certain components chblt the item went to the hement commission for the first of the 2 hearings last tuesday and the heths commission wim hear it next tuesday and are interested in the feedback from the Small Business commission so thank you for had opportunity to be here. San francisco has seen Great Success enrolling people into Health Insurance since the implementation of the affordable heth cair act [inaudible] high cost of living in San Francisco [inaudible] Health Insurance remain for some san franciscans. Our proposal to modernize the city squaupgz create a Employee Wellness fund seems to compp lment the affordal care act. Just a little overview of what i plan to present today. I was told to give a thorough presentation and know you deal with this issue not an regular basis so it includes Health Care Security ordinance. Ill give a overview and why we are proposing it. Talk about the Health Care Security ordinance a little one on one on Health Care Security ordinance. Talk about proposal in more detail and then discuss what benefits we expect to accrue to san franciscans, to employees and employers and the city. I think you have all received or brought a copy of the memo to the helts commission. From a Employer Perspective this provides employers with new options to obtain Health Insurance for low income and part time employees. In addition it provides a opportunities to support Employee Wellness activities. The proposal insures all low and moderate income san franciscan have access to Affordable Health care. The proseal levelerages the City Option Program and in this graphic the gray indicates what exists already under the City Option Program and blue and orange indicate what is new. Existing City Option Program there are medical reimbursement accounts where individuals employers contribute on their behalf. They can use that accounts to reemburse for medical expenses. It also includes healthy San Francisco so employers who contribute on behalf of their employees to eligible individualerize enrolled in healthy San Francisco. The new components are in blue. We are proposing a new account that continues San Franciscos commitment to aca and prioritizes em enrollment for 3 thousand san franciscans. Those that are not eligible for this extension we continue to allow them to maintain their enrollment in healthy San Francisco so nobody goes without Affordable Health care service. In orange is a new Budget Initiative the department of Public Health will implement in 201617 called the Employee Wellness fund and the idea hire is this reemburse employers for eligibility expenditures and ill talk in more detail about that in a moment. Why are we here today with this proposal . San francisco as i said has seen success in the implementation of the Affordable Care acktd. Since 2014 more than 97 thousand san franciscans sl gained helts insurance through med ical or covered california. Our state exceeded federal enrollment rates. It is largely due to seck suss with healthy San Francisco we are so far ahead. Helthsy San Francisco is a coordinateed Health Care Program for uninsured san franciscans and approximately 80 percent of uninsured residence were enrolled in healthy San Francisco and that meant we know who the uninsured were. As a result our rate of uninsured has gone down by 54 percent in the city. And yet affordability challenges remain for some. Wesome remain unable ta to take advantage of affordsability and [inaudible] some others are exempt for hardship or religious reason squz still others are unabling to afford it. The affordsability concerns were highlighted in recent City Health Care initiatives, the 2013 universal helths care counsel which xhrgzer adams and [inaudible] as well as the amendment tooz the Health Care Security ordinance introduced by supervisor campos and passed in 2014. Both of those highlighted the issues of affordability for part time employees, plow wage earners and the Health Care Security ordinance required a plan to come back and address affordsability for helths insurance and that is what is before you today. In that time we did a lot of work. We hired through a grant from the California Health Care Foundation 2 consult ants to review the issue of affordability and address a program. We have 2 focus groups of employees and employers. 40 percent of covered california enrollies already struggled to pay premiums so add the cost of living in San Francisco and it is exas baited. We convened focused groups and among employees the chief concern is cost regardsless of whether they are insured or uninsured is the primary factor. For employers we found employers said they wanted to offer Health Insurance but had a hard time do it. Sometimes Health Insurance plans dont allow you to offer insurance to part time employees and other times it was just cost prohibitive. As i said, we engaged 2 consultant to work on this proposal that is before you. The first one was the Uc Berkeley Labor Center and the reason we chose them is because they created a simulation model that is relied on across california to look at Health Insurance uptake rates and various elements of the aca implementation so they had soft weir we could use. What does affordsability mean, howmany people do we talk about, what does it take to make Health Insurance affordable for them . Health managementish associates worked with the operationalization of the program. They did financial regulatory and operational Feasibility Analysis to help determine once we determine the benefit amount is to give to a person, how do we get that benefit to had person . What is the best way to get it to them so they qu owe can use it . Collectively their research founds there is a high costf living in San Francisco chblt they estimated it at 59 percent higher than the National Cost of average living. Also we found post Affordable Care act insurance trends that relyoon increased cost sharing leave people between 250 to 500 percent are the most vulnerable. [inaudible] paying the highest proportion of income to their Health Insurance. As a result this population is at the highest risk of being uninsured or under insured. The proposal that relies on the city option is the one considered most viable to address this issue. I will deal with a brief Health Care Security ordinance so you understand what it means when i say modernize the city option. The helths care security ordinance as you knerequires employers to make Health Care Expenditures own behalf of employers. Make quarterly expendstures for employees working more than [inaudible] on this chart are the 3 most prevalent ways employers comply. By far most employers provide Health Insurance. About 85 percent comply by providing helths insurance. About 20 percent comply by providing health reinbursement account and another 20 percent using the city option. What we are talking about here is the people who comply by contributing to the sate option so about 44 employers comply with Health Care Security ordinance overall. We are talking about the 20 percent who comply with the sit a option. What does the sit a do . If the person is anif the employee is a uninsured residence of San Francisco we direct them to healthy San Francisco program and they are allowed to get discounted enrollment. If they live outside the city or insured some other way they get a reinbursement account. [inaudible] so it is these 2 elements wree prosing to change in this proposal. Again, here is just a modern ization component of the proposal. The bridge to coverage feature under medical reinbursement is new as is the affordability extension for healthy San Francisco. I should say and didnt say this early on, this proposal makes no changes to the way employers contribute on behalf of employees, they occur on the back ends after a contsbution is made and what we do with the [inaudible] more accessible. So, first the bij to coverage, this is a attempt to do what we heard both employers and employees wanted us to do is make Health Insurance more affordable. So, for San Francisco residence whos employers contribute to the city option and purchase insurance on covered california and income below 500 percent of positivety they have access to bridge to coverage medical reinbursement account. The currents medical reinbursement account is the value of the employers cont bougzism pr part time it can be small and full time it can be large. What we proposal is calculate the value in the reinbursement account based on what the employee needs to make Health Insurance affordable. Assistance for paying premiums and assistference out of pocket cost. The first one is premium assistance and individuals will be able to get help paying 60 percent of the cost with the monthy premium and that correlates with the higher cost of livling in San Francisco so paying 60 percent of cost evens it out for contribution for health care. The cost sharing assist sns component. This is when you go to the doctor you have a percentage of a hospitalization you have to pay for, you have a flat dollar amount every time you use Prescription Drug coverage so the cost sharing assist sns designed to make sure the deduckable in the Health Insurance is never more than 5 percent. If you needed Health Care Services you couldnt afford to get them and for go [inaudible] this avoids the issue of underinsurance and provides that bftd. The other thing it does is leverage the federal benefits that employees are aurmd elg nl for on covered california. You see in the chart the bars from left to right, those are federal Poverty Levels starting at 150 percent all the way to 500 percent. The bars themselves, they represent the total the average cost that a 40 year old san franciscan would have access in Health Insurance on covered california. If they had to pay their full dedectable it would be 7 thousand a year for a 40 year old san franciscan. The blue bar representathize amount the federal government will pay toward Health Care Cost. You can see very low income the federal government subsidizes a lot. In the orange is how much this program will subsidize the cost of Health Insurance so at the low level this Program Subsidizes somewhat but by far the federal government is making most of the subsidize and as the income goes occupy the federal subsidize and the local subsudegoes up and leveled out. This is intented to address the 250500 percent of poverty for now insurance or under insurance. Who are the people that will be helped with the program . There are about 3 thousand. Uc berkeley did the analysis of the numbers expected to benefit from the program. 2016, about 3 thousand. Most are younger than 40 and Health Insurance the cost goes up with age so that 40 year old example is really the average cost that we are looking at. 73 percent are part time and work fewer than 30 hour as week and their employers are not subject to the aca mandates. 85 earn less than 47 thousand a year, that is about 400 percent of federal Poverty Level and 6 aket percent are eligible for subsidize on cover california. The overall cost is support pd by employer contribution tooz the city option on behalf ofome ployees benefiting. All employers contributing on behalf of the 3 thousand people will cover the costf the program both Program Expenses that benefits to the individual. In the first year we anticipate 7 million inb. S will go out. It will cost about a million to administer the program and 8. 8 contributions come in and have [inaudible] that was a medical reimbursement account. The affordsability extension for helthsy San Francisco is the safety net. This makes sure if people are not eligible for reinbursement accounts and people say they cannot afford helths insurance and the employer doesnt contributes to city option they are not without services. We are making 2 change tooz this program. Ill run through this because it has very little to do with whether the employer contributes or not. We increase the upper income limit to 500 percent of the federal Poverty Level to align with affordsability analysis we did and we are saying that even if you are eeligible for covered california that may not be enough to make it affordable for you and if that is true well make sure we can stay in healthy San Francisco. These are the eligibility requirements urm that i just described. What we are doing differently with this change is we are ramping up the enrollment and Education Assistance we provide already. Right now if you enroll in healthy San Francisco well say you can be eligible for helths insurance on covered california and can help you enroll but we want to do more education and say this is how much the federal government will penalize you on your tax return if you dont enroll and this is how much it cost to participate in healthy San Francisco and here is how much it cost for helths insurance. Even after all that calculation and discussion if a person says that is great but i caebt afford it well allow them to enroll so beefing up the education and enrollment assistance. The people eligible for this option are those not eligible for Affordable Care act insurance. Largely the undocumented. We have about 15 thousand enrollees now and this can 12 thousand are undocumented. Also people that are exempt from the federal mandate that dont have to pay the penty well allow them to pay. You dont have to pay a penalty if you are homeless or have a hardship or religious reasons. If the cost is too high you are eligible for mandate exemption and if the employer doesnt offer insurance and still unaffordable we allow you to stay. I should point out here just in the first column it is hard see, the total expenses for helthsy San Francisco Program Providing care to about 15 thousand san franciscans is about 112 million a year. [inaudible] of about 28 million a year. The city general Fund Supplements the cofs the program to the tune of about 83 Million Dollars a year. And then finally the Employee Wellness fund. This is a idea in progress so we would love your feedback on this. What we are proposing is create a separate wellinous fund that works like a reinbursement account that reinburses employers for approved expenditures. It is separate from the Health Care Security ordinance. We presented this idea to the helt commission and had thoughts too so ill share their thoughts with you as well. The goal here is really to look at intervening earlier in a persons helths. The Affordable Care act has a focus on prevention and wellness and Health Promotion and that is what we want to do here. Target the diseases of highest prevalence, Heart Disease is the highest in San Francisco. It might make a impact on Health Status as a city overall so we are looking at that. Research the Rand Corporation had done for the federal department of health and Human Services found that Employee Wellness programs reduce Health Care Cost for employers and increase productivity and reduce absenteeism and address Employee Health issues, specifically related to exercise frequency, smoking behavior and weight control. So, one of the other suggestions that the Health Department had was maybe looking at not reinbursing employers for what they expend for these programs because it may be complicated for employers trying to run a business to also think about wellness expenditures but having the Health Department provide something of value to Employee Wellness. Flutuate clinics or smoking sussation services. Maybe we make those more accessible to business and employees. So, that is the summary and just to recap what we expect the benefits of the proposal would be. Generally Affordable Health care for all low and middle income. This means no one is left without health care and that is good for people and business and the city and everyone. Specifically for san franciscan we make Health Insurance more affordable for about 3 thousand san franciscans and keep healthy San Francisco available for those who caebt afford it and promote Employee Wellness through the wellness fund. For employers we increase access to affordable helt insurance for low wage and part time employees, something the focus Group Participants said they wanted. We also are offering to invest in Employee Wellness for employers in San Francisco. And then for the city overall, the bridge to coverage option is entirely funded through existing mechanisms. The affordability extension we budget frd that to make sure nobody is left behind t. Avoids costly charity care reliance on Free Services at the hospital when we take care out of the emergency room. The Employee Wellness funds provides opportunity to have new partnerships with the business communities to look at the Overall Health of san franciscans. That concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions . Thank you. Commissioner tour i have to thank you for your presentation. It is a complicated field and you made it quite clear and thank you for the 101 presentation. Thank you this discussion was for the city option only . That is correct, it doesnt increase the contributionit is readjusting the budge squt redirecting your efforts in managing. That is right the Employee Wellness fund is also limit ed to the city option what i didnt say is that we are planning to convene a group to look at what the Employee Wellness fund would look like. We wanted to address the a ffordability of helt insurance and know Employee Wellness is another component we want today address so we plan to convene a group in 2016 that will determine the parameters of the program. Now we think it is probably employers who contribute to the city option, what they reinburse for and the elg lt requirements and how much they are eligible for reinbursement for, those are to be discussed in the work group. Commissioners any other comments or question . Thank you for this. It helped me wrap my head around it a lot better and i think you did a very good job in your presentation today. Commissioner yee, riley, employers still have the option to contribute to the other options . Yes, there was a change in federal law that made one of the optionschange one of the options. Helths reinbursement accounts is a option available under prior to the emp limitation of Affordable Care act and after implementation it didnt meet Affordable Care act standards so the way to contribute to reinbursement account is for things like dental and vision and not heth care. That is Still Available and employers can comply that way but we see increase of compliance through city option. Employers find it easier to contribute to city option given the new rules under the helt care silty ordinance any other comments. Thank you very much. Well open to Public Comment. Seeing none Public Comment is closed. Thank you very much thank you. Thank you colleen. Item 7 is discussion of update on state paid sick leave regulations, commissioner wanted to let you know, so the letter that you approved to be submitted to [inaudible] is submitted and we are waiting for a response, but in the inrim the state passed changes to the law so thought we should take the opportunity to make sure that is highlighted. So, the eligibility requirement slightly change. I think the individual was somewhat eligible from day one, but now has tothere is a 30 day or more to be entitled to be paid their sick leave. Other highlights, i wont read through everything but other highlights that are important to note is that there was a requirement where if the employee wasthe employee left work and came back within 12 months especially for seasonal works that may be a case and it required the employer to reinstate the paid sick leave owe adthe time the employee left and this is removing that requirement. It also has more clarity on exempt employees and change tooz the pay stub notification in that the employer no longer has to write out the amount the individual used but what is in their accrued or their bank as per the state law. And then the other element is there is something about dealing with the accrual method. The second item allows employers option for accrual and so we will take a look at thiswe havent had the opportunity to take a look at this closely as it relates to the interpretation we had done previous. How that effects the 48 hour accrual if business goes by the straight accrual methwud the state. We will get back to you on that. So, i know the commission wanted a more charted out and so we are irk wg on that but wanted to wait and see whatwe knew there were changes happening at the state level and didnt anticipate for them to take place so quickly so well have that for you no later than the next meeting but hopefully sooner. I just wanted to bring that to your attention and we are waiting on [inaudible] for their response. It is interesting with that is San Francisco we have our paid sick ordinance and everyone in the city knows how that works and everything. I hear outside of San Francisco, a lot of Small Businesses have no idea this law is in effect. I was amazed talking to people in san mateo and sant aclara county, they had no idea and go on line and check and are like, oh my god. In a company like mine where i have employees in San Francisco and outside San Francisco and la and other states, we have 4 different paid leave policies dependent on which city you work in. I think it does highlight the fact that the California Employers Association who helps decipher this and there are non profit entity, one thing they said is generally not until a employer gets to have 50 or more employees do they start to seekthey may bring in in house to help sort of manage all the employer rules and regulations, but generally seeking 3rd party assistance, businesses between 25and 50 may start seeking 3rd party assistance. There are a number of businesses so for a non profit entity like California Employers Association which you can become a member, a lot of Small Businesses are not away a entity like them is there for as a resource for hr service s and help interpret the law. I think this speaks to the difficulty and speaks to why we need specific direction from [inaudible] for our smaller businesses. All right. Thank you for that. Any Public Comment on this item . No. Stephen . Okay. Seeing none, well move to the next item item 8, discussion and action on legacy business action and project plan commissioners im requesting that we continue this to the next Commission Meeting. There were items around non profits that i needed to get clarity on and so do not get that in time, so well continue this to the next meeting. Ill make the motion to continue to the next meeting second. Second that all in favor. Aye. It is continued. We need to call for Public Comment before we motion that . Any Public Comment . Seeing none Public Comment is closed. I motion we continue to the next meeting i second that. All in favor. Item 8 issorry 9, directors report so commissioners, 2 things i would like to highlight is on 716, the last Commission Meeting i said is coming up is the quarterly meeting the mayor has with Small Business leaders and want to thank commissioners and dwight and yee riley for attending and please add anything at this moment or during the commissioner reports. So a couple things i pulled out from the mayors budget, the 6. 7 million that have been in histhat were highlighted in the press release as part of the budget that came from topics discussed at this meeting. One is construction mitigation fund, so in that will be primarily targeted i think to polk street, but to work to provide some mitigation efforts. It isnt necessarily direct reimbursement to businesses but to do marketing promotion and better coordination of city Agency Working with the businesses to help mitigate the impacts for the work that is being done. There is continued investment with the business portal, so that we are going to work to bring more permitting on line, working towards the e signatures, working towards credit cards being taken for all permits. Those are some focuses being worked on but continued toon line businessnew business registration. And then there is the Small Business Accelerator Team and in that is actually going tois funded a full time position to be a case manager for restaurants to help restaurants as that is the most complicated kind of permitting, licensing business entity for Small Businesses to get through the city so there will be a case manager probably will not start until the beginning of 2016 who will be there to work with all restaurants and help navigate them through the getting their business open, navigating with the different city agencies. I think this is a very critical and important position and from that the Acceleration Team does consist of liaisons from department of building inspection rks planning, dpi [inaudible] Work Force Development, our office so that we get together and take a look at issues, needs, what is transpired and have it as a learning process that we can Carry Forward and apply to all businesses that have to get their permits or get their business open. Another is the bilocal initiative and commissioner dwight is also attending these meetings. So we will be working with other business organizations, the Hotel Council the golden gate rest jaunt Business Association, the couns oldistrict merchants, sf travel, sf chamber, to take a look at developing a partnership by local initiative. Well still retain the mayors shop z dine in sf loma is a organization but to develop a comprehensive bilocal b to c or b to e, which is business to employer. The biz connect will stay in tact as it is and continue to be worked on in partnership with the chamber to develop and expand on, but this is expanding on the traditional bilocal initiative and concept. Commissioner dwight, is there anything you would like to add to that . No i think it is just we are really trying to keep sf biz connect on point as a business to business arrangement because there are a lot of other stuff that goes on for the other modes of local punching, some of the idea is develop tool kits and messages businesses can take and adopt with customers or employees. Are there sort of marketing tag lines so we all are utilizing if we are really talking a bilocal message to employees or consumers that if we work to have a consistent messaging tag line way to communicate it which each entity or organization doing it then it has a larger Ripple Effect and a larger voice and soso, there are 2 meetings and there is another meeting next week and so well keep you posted to what is being developed. As to what is being developed in relationship to that. Also, we did ask the Business Group to think about you know, the upcoming years and what are key topics of things for this group to work with the mayor on. So, some of the topics that came up again were just dealing with congestion, multiagency communication still is somewhat a issue and also for the sit a to work with the private entities to be more responsive around their congestion and work and notification. Homelessness has been brought up a couple times and think may be a ongoing topic for especially for the city to report back on. Departments improving their response and turn around time for Small Businesses. So, those are some of thethis the Business Community exspessed wanting to focus on for the future. And then last week supervisor tang in response to the controllers report on restaurant permitting process helds a hearing to highlight what was in the report. There is a series of recommendations that the Controllers Office has made, so the supervisor tang asked departments to respond to that and asked them to do an inturnt assessment what they could do to improve their response turn around times and what resources they may need to be able to do that. She asked them to come back in 6 months to report on that. Also, i think where mentioned to the commission in that report it will be important this body to weigh in on the recommendations the Controllers Office had so i forwarded copies of the report. If you prefer a printed out copy sent to you please let brian know. Well start drafting initial responses to the recommendations but by the first meeting in septi thipg it is good for the commission to submit forward to both the mayor, board of supervisor and Controllers Office an official response to those recommendations. And then some legislation that is going to come before you, again these are the first 3 of them are issuessorry, the firstthe second and third were ones that had been discussed with the mayor, with the Small Business leaders but again working on improvement around neighborhood notification when work is transpiring. And a contractors parking plan, i think that we heard from many business areas especially i heard quite a bit from merchants in hayes valley where there is private and public work happening and it is going on for over a year with all the new Development Projects and they are taking up all the parking. These will be coming before you so please read through it. There may be additional recommendations the commission may want to provide and then the second one, the public right of way occupancy fee, the Mission Creek merchants are in a flood zone so there are mitigations businesses would like to do to help prevent the flooding of their businesses. Supervisor campos has very quickly it is a mitigation fee for doing work in the public right of way. Wouldnt that be covered under federal law because if youre a commercial building in a flood zone you have mandatory Flood Insurance you have to take out, if you have a lean on that building which is supposed to cover the business and i think there are somei think whatsome of the businesses have been impacted year after year with the flooding and so i think this is trying to help them deal with a little more of a proactive step especially if you have to go to the public right of way to prevent the flooding into the business, so i think supervisor campos is trying to this is where . Commission street, folsom [inaudible] i think this is dually important with the discussion of el nino and high amounts of rain coming up. You will also bewe are working to schedule the dates before the offices gothe board of supervisors go dark due it legislative recess which starts next week for a month. And to get these scheduled at least either in late august early sep. Commissioner dooley you talked about the formula retail and subsidiaries so that is now officially introduced and will be before you. Just wanted to provide a update, so i heard from some of the massage establishments that had already gone through the permitting process, they got their dbi permit and planning permit sign off and the only thing they didnt have was the department of Public Health because at that time it was not required of them. So, reengaging i heard from a couple of them last week that the department are making themdbi is making them regolow the process so i will dee exploration but there may be a opportunity for the commission to ask the departments to come back before them lets be sure we understand both sides of the story before we hear it. For those that have gone through the permitting process where they have done their dbi work, these are the ones that i feel confident i know they have done that. Once we get both sides if it is the case, we have to do something and talk about it. Iright. I thing there be a opportunity to work with the departments to saythey still may have to go to dbi to get conformation to make sure they have done everything appropriately and get it checked off, to me that makes sense. Lets understand the circumstances. Im just making you aware of that. Update future meetings, well have sfmta, they are updateing and revising the Transit Development impablth fee so they want to make surethere has been several reiterations and how Small Businesses havehow it effected Small Businesses who have had to pay the transit impact fee, so they want to make sure that you are aprized of what they are planning and then commissioner dooley, you had wanted to get an update on the vaeckancy for xhrjs properties. We are trying to target for august 24 and then i just really want to express my appreciation to brian pool for really getting our Meeting Minutes done quickly, getting them out to you and getting the commission back into an orderly and timely manner of getting information to you and the work done. In deed, it is great. You have been engaging proactively and i appreciate that you do a great job that conclude my report all right. We need Public Comment on your report . No. My report, i have nothing to report other than the fact i did attend both of the meetings that the dreblther talked about. The meet wg the mayor and the meeting regarding bilocal at the chamber of commerce with oewd tod rr [inaudible] was there. Im troying to keep focus on the partnership between the chamber of comrbs and oewd to promote b to b purchasing. The first thing we are trying to get is a meet and greet to bring business together to talk about the buyer squz seller squz have a Cocktail Party if you will. I think finding way tooz celebrate any successs because there a number of great examples we could be promoting of local businesses buying from local businesses. Anyway, working on that actively. Nothing else to report. On to the next n. Item 11, vise president report nothing to report, however i do want to bring to your attention, i noticed the director put in your binder a mixer, the ba mixer at 1300 august 11. Just wanted to bring that to your attention and that is it. Item twechbl, commissioner reports. Commissioners. Commissioner ortiz it will be short president. Times up last week i have been helping on the Renaissance Center Entrepreneur Center help with the [inaudible] program so i help several Small Business on the [inaudible] see how we get Small Business to the next step. Tackle projects that prevent them to get to the next step. Pretty cool fantastic. Anyone else . I just want to reiterate the jbba may contact you at 1300 fillmore sponsored by goog squl hope everyone can make it. Im excited for that. Commissioner yee, riley i attended the mayors quarterly meeting as well, so it was productive and organized and great. I also want approached by the Hong Kong Economic office and they are very interest d to foofind out more about the food truck business so i answered questions [inaudible] food trucks in hong kong . Anyone else . I met with oewd [inaudible] and he is interested in being involved in the commercial vacancy discussion, thenoter business Business Association went liferb on our site with the updateed vaeckancy and he reviewed that and we would like to figure out a way to have other associations, other neighborhoods put their vacancies on line with oewd to reach out more and fill the vaeckancy squz put our Heads Together once again to talk about folks who choose not to rent at all. Speaking of which, did [inaudible] get their permit . Yes that is one less vaeckancy, i have a queshz in regards to that, did you guys go around to get the information yourself on the buildings . Yes. Block by block there are 15 vacancies and only 8 are for rent. 7 are just not for rent and a number maybe 5 or 6 look vacant but are being used as storage for adjacent businesses so they still are covered with paper and that. Okay. Commissioner adams we had ain conjunction with economic and Work Force Development we did a retail strategy for upper castro and market and one thing we did is a vacancy thing and we counted 21 and out of 21 there are 8 that are habitually vacant and we are doing the same thing you are doing, we want to put them on our new website we are currently working on now. I dont to shame them. We have the pateio cafy and ill put it out there live. That is sitting empty for 15 years. We had conditional use purblts for businessatize to go in that say yes but you have a owner for whatever reason and get that conditional usewe just had the burger place that got approved and all of a sudden it is not happening. It is one landlord who controls like 5 of the vacant spaces in the neighborhood and purposely keeps that vacant. Why is that . What is the motivation . [inaudible] i talked to this landlord and said you know, what is in your head . He says it is my space, i own it and can do whatever i want with it. It is likeafter a while you had a restaurant there, ham burga mary. They come kwr present to castro murch squnts go to the Neighborhood Group jz everybody says yets, goes in front of planning and planning says yes, not happening. That is a big frustration. I applaud commissioner dooley when she sticks on that and i see it in your neighborhood and my neighborhood t is everywhere. You go to west portal and oceanarve new, it is the same buildsings sitting dark and vacfront a long time and after dealing with what i had to deal with, it doesnt help the neighborhood and attracts crime. I read about the homelessness, the homeless sit in front of these place jz this is what is attracting it. What are you seeking if i may ask . That is the things under california state law if it is commercial building you cant make them do anything and local ordinance is tough because we talked about this in the past because state law and commercial supersedes xhrjs. There has to be something, shame them. I dont know. Im glad you brought this up and something that is actually in a city right now where there are other businesses that do want to come in and it is hard to find them and the rent rate is high, there has to be something you can motivate these people we talked in the past about even having the city require just to put a notice in the window saying who owns the the[inaudible] in oewd did that vacancy so you can go on line and look at it and we had the brokers all Work Together but that worked great for the vacancy where the landlords wanted to get rid of their stuff but it doesnt help you when you have a landlord who just lets rust raunts sit vacant we have one that is empty since 1986. Is the person still alive . If you go in the cast row the first thing everyone asks is what is up with the patio . You put your hands up and say, i dont know. Okay. There is nothing we can do other than shame these people. I think when the last legislation passed obviously in terms of taxing means you is to go to the ballot and so then the likelihood of Something Like that passing is probably it is interesting proposition. Get a neighborhood voters to say we wontdont want this, this is blight when we did a survey a number of years ago every neighborhood had at least 5. 24th street you had the empty Grocery Store there that used to be real foods. I just wanttaxing is one method. The second is to attract nuisance that is the City Attorneys Office has done taken action for Certain Properties that attract nuisance, that is another way but these are extreme cases. Some jurisdictions not necessarily in our state but in other states and nations do charge for and tax for Vacant Properties that of course you need [inaudible] vacancy tax i think it is worth taking another look again and try again and see if we come up with something different. Interesting. First the flip side of that if you go into a economic down turn you tax people who cant rent their places so how do you write that law so it is effective when there is demand and unwillingness to lease versing a time where there is more supply than demand i think in the last one there was considerations and a lot has to do with length of time, so there is clearly space out there that we have nob nab landlords who dont want to rent. Do we have any other reports . Okay. Item 13, new business any new business . We are done. Okay, final item motion to adjourn. I move. All in favor . Aye. Good morning welcome to the finance county Transportation Authority im commissioner avalos the president of the committee and supervisor kim and supervisor cowen and joined