We wont have a meeting in december so we can have a Holiday Party and its going to be on december 15th from 4 00 to 6 00 and at 11 1155 market, d its the Mayors Disability Council and rsvp by december 8 at mod ssfgov. Rog or 4155546789 but our next regularly scheduled meeting is next year on friday january 19th, 2018, from room 1 to 4 in room 400 in city hall so call the Mayors Office on disability for future information or to request accommodations at 14155546789, voice or by email at mod sfgov. Org and our guests need to speak slowly into the microphone for our captions and the interpreters and we thank you for joining us. Clerk and lets read out the agenda by the staff. Item one, welcome introduction and roll call. Item 2, action item. Reading of an approval of the agenda. Item 3, Public Comment. Items not on todays agenda but within the jurisdiction of the m. D. C. And each speaker is limited to three minutes. Please approach the microphone or give your comment card to the m. O. D. Staff. And item 4, information item. Cochair report. Item 5, action item, voting on m. C. D. Amended bylaws and the amending sections of the byla bylaws. And item 7, information item. And an update on the current statewide discussion around disabled placard reform and potential state legislation in 2018. Presentation by kate breen, director of the governor of affairs and john knoxwhite, the directing manager. And the Public Comment is welcome. Item 8, information item. Assessability and safety and biking in San Francisco. Various aspects of safety and accessibility in bicycle lane design and planning will be discussed with opportunities for questions. Presentation by janice lee, advocacy director. San francisco coalition. Public comment is welcome. Break, the council will take a 15minute break. Item 9, information item. Potential measures to improve accessible ondemand Transportation Options and the advent of Transportation Network companies such as lyft and uber have added on but has not improved ondemand access for wheelchair users and those who need an accessible vehicle. How can we approve the taxi service that does provide ondemand transportation. And presentation by kate torren, with the transportation director, and with Taxis Division and crist an masar, accessible planner, for the San Francisco municipal transportation agency. Public comment is welcome. And item 10, vision zero assess and people with disabilities and miss werre will present on the citys initiative to eliminate the traffic deaths, its progress, and the date and activities to address the concerns of people with disabilities. Present by megan alwere, the program on health, equity and sustainability cochair. San francisco Vision Zero Task force. Public comment is welcome. Item 11, Public Comment. Items not on todays agenda but within the jurisdiction of the m. D. C. , and each speaker is limited to three minutes. Please approach the microphone or give your comment card to the staff. Item 12, information item correspondence. Item 13, discussion item. Council member comments and announcements. Item 14, adjourned. Thank you for that reading of the agenda. I would like to make a motion for to pass the agenda. Is there a second . Second. All right, moved and seconded to pass the agenda, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any no . Abstained . Very good. Okay, so what i would like to do right now is to say that we have a new member of the council, i want to recognize him at this time and actually he was with us early on and couldnt remain but he is back. Alex, can you say a word about yourself . Thank you. I am back, i am alex, hall. That i just encountered today and im asking you to consider either communicating with the mayor or possibly building manager about this. The past couple years city hall is a site for weddings which means photographers and photographs of the whole Wedding Party in scenarios. And today when coming in and trying to use the center door i found out that the bride was in the area between the two doors and she was staging herself to come out for some sort of picture scenario. Didnt occur to her what those symbols meant. So she was standing there and i pushed the button to open up the outer door and she didnt step aside to realize the inner door was going to open behind her. If i hadnt said anything it would have come across our bridal train, possibly scratching or tearing it, but beyond that its not just me on the outside, if somebody on the inside had pushed a button, because theyre heading out and theyre looking into a sunny area and looking into the glare, and might not have seen her so the door might have opened and hit her, lets say, in the back. But it could also have run across her provida bridal train. Im suggesting that maybe photographers who if they get a permit or if theres some photographer association, city hall manager and the mayor to tell photographers dont use the Center Access door. Because otherwise somebodys gone igown is going to get tornr stepped on and possibly somebody will get tripped if they use that accessible door. So theres got to be some communication to the photographers or some means whether staff does it or whether you authorize something to the mayor, im just suggesting, please, stay safe and people able to get into city hall. Thank you for your comment. That was excellent. All right, we need the next person who has a speaker card to step up. Thank you very much, my name is arnold berlinger and im on the commission for disability in alameda. Im the vice chair there. And i just wanted to tell you a story. A year and about nine months a year and nine months ago i was going through alameda and i saw this new housing development, and i thought, whoa, im going to go in there and check out the models and even though they are three storeys tall, im going to go to see what the modern house has, and at least on the first floor. And when i went into the office, i was able to get in and talk to them about it and they would have been happy to take my money. But when i said, okay, can i see at least what it looks like on the first floor, they said, sir, you cant get in because they had the entry for every house, there was a step of four to six inches and there was a barrier keeping me from going in. And i went and found a word online called visibility and it means the ability to visit a place. For example, if you have if you bought one of these homes for, oh, a couple Million Dollars and decided to throw a party and said, arnie, come on over and well see the new well see the game on my new big screen and id have to say, well, youre going to have to rip that tv down off the living room or the den, wherever youve got it, and bring it out to the garage because thats the only place that i can visit. And now this itself entails three things, one is theres an entry way into the home where there is no barrier and two, a wide enough door. And three, a bathroom. And its not only for people on wheelchairs. And if you buy a home for that large amount of money youre going to want to buy all new appliances and maybe even a new refrigerator and when you buy that big shiny refrigerator, the double doors and all of that, is that telling me yeah, yeah, if you could quickly so visibility needs three items. And no barrier. And two, a wide enough door. And, number three, a bathroom that a person in a regular cheel wheelchair could turn around inside and close the door. And the city of alameda at the city Council Passed a universal design ordinance for alameda and 100 of all new residences will be visibile. Thank you very much for your input. So i need to check in with the control room. Where do we stand . Its fine. Okay, its going and i want to thank you, i cant see it, so i need people to let me know. All right. So i think that were moving on to item number 4. Cochairs report. And i just want to say that we have an Excellent Program today on transportation. I know that we have some excellent speakers and were also going to be dealing with safety and security for pedestrians and bikers and so were going to cover quite a wide spectrum. I think that youll be in for an interesting and informative time from our different presenters. So here we go. And item number 5 is the we wanted to make some changes, and make comaimpleg changes to the d its just a few changes and weve gone over it in executive council and we think id just like to move approval of the changes to the bylaws, is there a second . I second. Any discussion . All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed . My dog didnt oppose it so i think that were all right. Thank you very much. Item number 6, is the executive directors report, nicole bohn, welcome. Thank you, council member, and thank you everyone for being here today. My report has various items. So i look forward to todays conversation on the many state and local transportation and Street Safety initiatives that are impacting people with disabilities that were mentioned in my october report to the Mayors Disability Council. Please do not hesitate to recommend action items related to any part of this presentation today or related to other items discussed in this report. As followup to todays public hearing. Some of the activities that the Mayors Office on disability has been engaged with since the october Mayors Disability Council meeting are these first item, access to functional Needs Work Group. The department of Emergency Management or d. E. M. , held its first merged meeting of the m. D. C. Disability Disaster Preparedness subcommittee and the access and functional Needs Work Group on november 3, 2017. The group received an update on the city and county of San FranciscoParatransit Services and is exploring the possibility of how in the event of an emergency in the city paratransit may be more broadly deployed to all people with disabilities, including those who are currently not eligible or only intermittently eligible for Paratransit Services. The next item is an update on accessible voting. And the Voting AccessibilityAdvisory Committee or v. A. C. , met on november 7, 2017. And received updates from sloan consulting regarding their progress on the feasibility much the city developing a Voting System that incorporates opensource software. The v. A. C. Encouraged the consultants to consider both the accessibility and the usability as part of their report and it will continue to encourage the consultants to address accessibility concerns that stretch beyond the a. D. A. Compliance minimums. The v. A. C. Also received a presentation from democracy live which is a Software Platform that is being explored as part of the citys responsibility to implement a state mandated accessible remote voting solution for people with disabilities and military personnel by june 2018. And the v. A. C. Members expressed concern that the intent of the state legislation as well as the accessibility of the platform solution, especially pertaining to blind or low vision individuals, needs more discussion. The v. A. C. Will address these concerns in detail at the next meeting which is january 9, 2018 from 2 00 to 4 00 p. M. In city hall. Participation from the m. D. C. Or interested members of the public continues to be encouraged. And the next item for today is the Dignity Fund Needs Assessment survey and focus groups. The department of aging and Adult Services also known as doss released its Needs Assessment survey which can be found at www. Sfdas. Org survey. The survey is open now through december 8, 2017 only, and the results will help to plan the future City Services in supports for adults with disabilities as well as older adults. Participation in the survey by adults across the Disability Community including working professionals with disabilities, is much needed and is highly encouraged. To support this effort, the possibility of several inperson focus groups for people with disabilities is also being explored. M. O. D. Will send the focus Group Information with its distribution when it becomes available. The next item for update today is the Golden Gate Park j. F. K. Drive proposal. The recreational and Parks Department along with several partner and Community Organizations is currently exploring the possibility of extended weekend closures of j. F. K. Drive to vehicle traffic. M. O. D. Has received feedback about this proposal from active accord fators recognizing the fine arts museums and the academy of science and the member of the public with disabilities and as such is in conversation with the recreation and parks about accessibility and impacts with this effort. Its recommended that the Mayors Disability Council assist in monitoring the progress of this proposal and consider this for future m. C. D. Public hearing agenda item. The next item is an update from the Sheriffs Department. In response to Public Comment provided at the Mayors Disability Council at the july 21, 2017 meeting, m. O. D. Partnered with deaf counselling and Referral Agency to have training specific to Law Enforcement and the Sheriffs Department on cultural competencies related to deafness and committing with deaf individuals in emergencies and in other situations. This training was very well received and m. O. D. Will be working with the Sheriffs Department on any followup and implementation related to this discussion. And the final item for today in my report is an update on the supported home voucher program. The institute on aging with promotional support from supervisor yees office, dos, m. O. D. And others, continues to roll out its supported home voucher program. This program is designed to support people with disabilities who require home or personal care assistance, who do not qualify for Inhome Supportive Services because of income requirements. Support at home is now specifically aiming to support adults with disabilities, including working professionals and students, who are between the ages of 1859. Please spread the word about this valuable benefit program and more information can be found on the m. O. D. Home page, under supportive home pilot program. For questions or comments or to get involved or to provide feed back on any of the items in this report contact m. O. D. 4155546789. Or mod sfgov. Org and this concludes my report for today. Soirk thank you very much, nicole. All right, now were moving to information item number 7. Which is update on accessible parking and disabled placard reform efforts. We have two presenters, one is kate breen, director of Government Affairs,sfmta and john knoxwhite, planning programs manager, sfmta. Welcome. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Im kate breen, the director of Government Affairs for the San Francisco municipal transportation agency. And i have today here my colleague john knoxwhite, and john is not planning on making a presentation and hes here as a resource for any questions that your council may have. So the issue today is an issue that has a long history in california and the issue of accessible parking. Related to that, accessible parking isnt just about disabled placards but what you read about in the news typically and some of the Background Information that we share with you is really about the disabled Placard Program and how effective it isnt working as it was intended to, and that is to provide access for those who need it. So about four years ago, San Francisco launched its own effort, stakeholderbased effort, with a wide range of interested parties on this issue, including chaired, cochaired by the Mayors Office of disability then headed by carla johnson, and the m. T. A. , with ed risken as the cochair and that committee met for over six months and it was facilitated to look at deaf practices across country as it relates to accessible placards and accessible parking policy. Everybody started in a very different place in that work, but they ended up with a set of recommendations that they all agreed upon after recognizing that some of the initial thoughts, there should just be more enforcement or some other, you know, that your automatic first thought about what is wrong and how to fix it, that those had been tried in other places and that they hadnt worked. And so that work was advanced at the time, one of the recommendations included more information about when you can legally use placards. It also included a recommendation to increase the number of blue zones to at least 4 of the metered spaces and it recommended additional enforcement for placard abuse, which has continued. And it also recommended for the first time meter payment and time limits, potentially extended time limits. Under current California Law placard holders can park free and unlimited for as long as they want. Im not going to dive deeply into the work of the accessible parking policy Advisory Committee. That was really to let you know and we provided you with some background that there is a foundation and a position that was recommended four years ago and fast forward to today, and los angeles over the last year has undertaken a very similar effort and, again, in a material that we provided to you will see the recommendations are similar to those recommendations from San Francisco, i would say that there really is very little variation and this past week the Los Angeles City council fully approved those recommendations. The reason that we wanted to come to you today is that we havent really talked about this issue for a while and we have been working with nicole to first get to know her and the Mayors Office of disability, and begin working on policy issues that are of mutual interest and accessible parking policy is one of those. So earlier in the fall we were contacted by los angeles who said that were interested in possibly advancing legislation in this current coming year of the state legislato legislaturet begins in january and were reaching out to cities who have been looking at this issue. So we thought that it would be timely to come to you today, one, to let you know that that is happening. There isnt a proposal that has been drafted yet, but it will be reflect, i would say, the recommendations in the los angeles report that needs state law changes and that includes time limits as well as meter payment. In order to have those become effective there needs to be a change in the state law. So they are beginning to work on that effort and, certainly, San Francisco, the m. T. A. Is on record as having supported that, and i would note that looking back four years it was one particular element that was added by our board and that was to include provisions for lowincome placard holders and that would still be something that this body and others who when there is legislation may want to consider advocating for. So there was in the past legislative session an attempt to advance a similar proposal that would have involved meter payment. At that time, the bill did not move and so what happened instead was that the legislature recommended that the state Auditors Office do an audit on how the d. M. V. Runs its program. One of the buckets in which we look to for reform is how is the program administered now and how can that work better and so that analyst audit or that state audit came out with a set of recommendations. Those recommendations were, included in sfb611, signed into law by the governor and really seeks to reform some of the aspects of how the d. M. V. Runs its program. Having said that, there are many folks who have been working on this issue who have found that is just one piece of the puzzle and, really, the ultimate key to success is removing the incentive to cheat. The current penalty for abuse for misusing or counterfeit placard is up to 1,000 and that was a law that was changed by the then Assembly Woman at the request in 2006. And here we are 11 years later and we have a bigger problem now than we had then. And so that is essentially the overview that i wanted to provide and i will last say that the California Commission on Disability Access has also engaged on this issue, most recently holding a meeting here in San Francisco, very robust debate and i would say that they are looking to educate themselves on this and they are a statewide body and were very engaged in discussing the work around the state on this issue. And i think that for us we want to make sure that San Francisco is part of the conversation and not reacting so much as engaging early enough to reflect our citys perspective on this. So, thank you. Those are really my comments for, you know, introducing this topic and im happy to answer questions and have my colleague, john knoxwhite who was at the time of our work essentially the lead staff for doing the lead research on the best practices around the country. All right, thank you for your comments. Especially on the research that youve done. So im going to ask for comments from my colleagues here on the couplcouncil and ill start on e left with alex, do you have anything that you want to ask . I do. Thank you for coming. Youre welcome. A couple questions that brings to mind, and one is how do you how doe is it enforcep to now and how do people implement the advisement for now and what is it from the past . As i understand your question, how does enforcement for placards work now and how does it work in the past . Its under the auspices of our park and control officers. In order to conduct the enforcement, we do the enforcement in pairs and i think that theres currently 14, theres currently 14 parking control officers who are assigned to this. When we have had our park and control officers talk about what that duty is like its incredibly timeconsuming and you have to wait at the car and it can be many, many hours before somebody returns to the car. And ask if they have the proper identification to be using that placard. Thats how it works. If it is proven that they are currently holding a counterfeiter or misusing that placard its immediately confiscated. And the numbers, i dont have the actual numbers currently on our placard confiscation but its an ongoing work for our organization. I have to say that, you know, given the number of placards that are out there and how time consuming and labor intensive that is, we have determined that we literally cannot enforce away the misuse problem. And so thats currently how its done and its been done that way for some time and we have added a number i think that at one time we had seven, eight people on that duty and now we have 14. And so thats currently how it works. Thank you. Helen, do you have any questions . I dont, thank you though. Okay. Denise . Thank you, cochair. I want to get a better idea in identifying some of the misuse of the placards in the system. Is it because, for example, because i have a placard and i pass away and then somehow it gets into the wrong hands and they just keep reusing it . Is there a check and balances for these placards. Is there a period of how many years they can have it and is there a followup, especially if deceased, how does that work and what are the areas of abuse . So can you help me on this one . Okay. I will say this ill ask john to provide insight on that but the placards are issued automatically every two years by the d. M. V. So its pretty amazing. Go ahead. Just i think that one of the struggles and the tradeoffs of the program and my name is john knoxwhite im the planning programs manager at sfmta. And the d. M. V. Has tried to walk the line of not creating hurdles for people, and the argument and we heard this when we convened the committee that instead of requiring reapplication every two years or every four years that we have people say if my spine is broken and i wont walk why should i have to prove that i still need this access . And so kate is correct that reauthorization happens automatically. The audit of the the audit that was just done of the system did find that there were more people who were theoretically over the age of 100 years old than people over the age of 100 years old and were talking about millions of placards, however, and i would say that the numbers there were in the number of 10,000, 15,000 possible fraudulent or just misdirected placards. It does suggest that theres placards that are sent to people that passed away that were not caught in the system and one of the changes that they put in place is more thorough crosschecking of databases, including the Social Security database on a more regular basis. And they were removed before that happened. And the real answer to your question is that its unknown because of the very difficult its a very difficult very difficult issue to tease that out because the only way that you can find out is somebody misusing a placard is to catch them doing so. So we do you know, nobody denies that there are people who are receiving them, i believe that superior yee has talked supervisor yee has talked about how for many years hes received his deceased fathers placard in the mail and hes sent it back and said no longer with us and they continue to send it to him. And so we know that does happen. However, the state audit did point out that in their conversations with cities, and this is mostly the issue that were trying to address is mostly a city problem and its not people there are many issues around misuse of placards and one of which is, say, offstreet parking where people are misusing placards to park in a disabled parking zone or in an inaccessible parking zone. And the issue that many cities have is because of the notimelimit and no payment, we have blocks in downtown San Francisco where every single car has a disabled parking placard hanging in it. And so to figure out how you know, who is using it legally and who is not, we are not really empowered to go and ask people to prove that they can were not asking everybody to prove that you have a disability that says that you should have this placard and we can check to see if the placard the name on the placard is the same as the name on the car and our enforcement officers assume that is an okay placard at that time if theres a match and it doesnt mean that the people who have that placard should necessarily have that placard but we cant just stand by each car. And its very complicated and they looked into the cities that they talked to and five out of six cities said that the number one type of misuse is people using other peoples placards. All right, thank you very much. And sally,. No, i dont have any questions but i do agree that this is a multifaceted issue and ive been getting the deceased my deceased fatherinlaw and deceased relatives placards over and over again. That is a problem. So one more okay. Yes, i have a comment and its an interesting thing because i have a friend who uses a placard and tends to experience i personally dont have this experience but they have told me about their experience and theres a few problems they have encountered and people often take the Parking Zones that are accessible and they may have a limited physical disability, like, for example, they cant walk very far, and i think that theres a big issue with people who have you know, maybe a very slight physical disability or mobility issue using these Parking Spaces to be able to get closer and you cant argue with someone if they have the placard there. So i think that its interesting, if we look at the Golden Gate Bridge, for example, its extremely strict policy there about giving special access to the placard. Have you seen this particularly in particular reference to Golden Gate Bridge . They give you this is in reference to the bridge and you have to fill out an application that is extremely strict that is reviewed by a doctor regarding the disability that you have and if theres any fraud lens evidence on the card fraudulent evidence on the card they will back off and the person its basically discussing how far the person is able to move, and so theres very fine lines in their application process that you that they use to filter should f the applicants and the goals to avoid people who just have temporary disabilities, maybe a pained knee or some other issue, because its a serious problem right now in the disabled community. I just think that its been you know, we actually, we as members of the disabled community, there are individuals who do take advantage of this and its unfortunate and it gives our whole community a bad name. All right. I confer with that. All right, i need to go back to alex for a minute and i understand that you have one more question. Thank you. Going back to i remember you mentioned about parking lots and is it true that if you have a placard you dont need to pay for certain parking lots . In parking lots you do have to pay. In private or public . If they have a parking meter. So if its a disabled parking spot and its not metered you do have to pay. If its metered you do not. But to your question, when you drive into a parking garage and you do have to pay you will notice those spots are usually available. I see. All right. So i think that weve covered the Council Members very well. And i need to go to staff. Do we have any comments or comments from our staff . I do, this is nicole and thank you for being here today and we really appreciate it. It would be helpful i think if we could spend a minute to talk about what you think that the next steps are in this effort and in maybe how my notes for the council and what aspects should the efforts move forward and go in front of the board of supervisors and what kind of engagement youd hope for from this group . Thats a really great question. And so we have some all of the departments take their legislative programs to the states legislative committee in the fall and many of us have done that and we have a place holder in that program for this issue pending the introduction of legislation and so i dont know what the particular structure or protocol for this group is but once a bill is introduced, we would analyze it and typically go to the state legislation committee. One thing that we could do is when we do that analysis, depending on the timing of your meetings, is engage this group in that effort as well. I mean, i think that it would be really important to do that so that if and when the city does choose to take a position that we have your voice as part of that. And so i would say one other thing, that the timing, just to be clear, is that we just finished the first year of the current twoyear legislative session and thats the session that is sb611 enacted and now year two of the current session, so there will be a few bills carrying over but this is where the members will have the opportunity in january to introduce their bills for this current session. And that cycle will run january, february, the kind of everybody throws their ideas in the hopper, late february, march, is where you get into the first policy Committee Hearings which is by when you anticipate to have a position on record. Thank you very much. All right, any other staff comments or questions . All right, lets go to the audience. Does anyone have any inputs or questions that they want to say, step up to the microphone and let me know who you are. We have a couple. Whats that . Oh, okay, great. Were running just a tad behind so if that would be good. Theres a lower mike right there. Hello Council Members i am Jonathan Lyons and i wanted to say first of all, thank you for having everybody come together on this important issue. For the record im the president of the f. D. R. Democratic club of San Francisco and were the only Democratic Club in San Francisco dedicated to seniors and people with disabilities. And for Historical Context we were the loudest vocal opponent for all intents and purposes on this issue but i wanted to make it clear that it wasnt for a lack of respect and a lack of value of the work of the m. T. A. And the work of kate and the work of john and i really appreciate genuinely the work theyve done on this important issue and our members never, ever said that this wasnt a critical issue that needed to be addressed and we just had a fundamental disagreement on strategy and how we go about getting this done and most notably our members were concerned about the issue around payment, specifically, and forcing people with disabilities to pay and we had concerns but were definitely open to conversations around time limits as well. We actually went to the state Democratic Party and got the party to pass a resolution in opposition to this plan which was passed unanimously. And, actually, the executive board of the state party starts meeting, actually, this evening in anaheim or in burlingham and ill have conversations with folks there. But we really want to we want to figure out a way to carve, you know, carve this issue out and figure out how do we move this ball forward. Theres definitely fraud. You know, the d. M. V. Audit that kate and john referenced, it was pretty damning. I dont think that anybody here who ever dealt with the d. M. V. Had a good experience and i have never met anybody that has. So we definitely need to figure out, you know, in my opinion, that we need to allow the recommendations of that audit to be implemented and the implementation of those recommendations to actually take effect and have, you know, have real positive impact. We definitely are open to some of the other conversations around, you know, reissuing placards, why in the world do they reissue placards every two years when i never even told them where i am or what im doing or whether or not i still have a disability. Two years, it doesnt make any sense, why bother reissuing them at all . So wed definitely like to explore these options and id like to work with the m. T. A. And i really appreciate the fact that the m. T. A. Has been open to having these conversations all the way up to the director level. And we would like to continue to engage on this issue. And we dont disagree if this is an issue, and we agree with the recommendations and we have a disagreement on strategy and i think that honest brokers can come to the table and figure out a way to get this done. bell ringing . Thank you, jonathan, thank you, thank you. You want to respond . One more question. Just to clarify, this is Public Comment period so we should go to the next Public Comment. Okay. Im bob planthold. I was a member of the group that worked on this years ago so i have more experience than i say than kate or other staff. Part of the difficulties in this issue that we found from earlier discussions is not everybody read the report and its important to read and then when you see something that you do not understand or you do not like, ask a question. We found people saying, no, no, to something that we didnt suggest. Something that we did not recommend. But to give help to you folks to understand some of the problems, d. M. V. Is bound to honor any legitimate requests signed by any of the 16 different types of health care professionals. An amazing variety of people, you can certify somebody with a red placard or a blue placard. So, for example, the mayor or the supervisors or the City Attorney all had blue placards and produced a document from their doctor, gotta accept it. It may seem fraudulent, illogical. So d. M. V. Is bound by those difficulties which goes into why doctors, various staff do it. Realize that it cost them nothing to do it. But if they say no to me, they may risk losing me as a patient. And ill go somewhere else. So theres an economic problem potentially that the doc would have. And im using doc generically. That theyll lose patients. It cost them nothing. Theres also the problem that theres no good clear specific guidelines for what constitutes the type of limitation problem, disability, that truly makes one eligible permanently. Okay . Theres another issue that we have gone up against and that is people who felt that the discussion about possibly paying for parking was taking away an economic benefit. Not so. Carla johnson researched it and found that figuratively ions ago that when this first started that there was not accessible Parking Technology as there is now. So it was made free because there was no way that some people with disabilities could pay but now you can have it on your smartphone and have a debit card and do any number of ways to pay for it without having to put championships icoins in a sn mind that it was not an economic benefit but an accommodation to physical inability. As we talk and we Work Together on this, its also helpful if we all im going to say it play fair. You heard the state Democratic Party said no and many people are democrats. What you didnt hear, what you dont know is that nobody told our side and no one told us who worked on it for months and months and months and out of the blue this is put forward and it went through over a weekend and we found out afterwards. So the ability to make a case bell ringing . It was not there, keep that in mind. Okay, thank you very much. Any other speakers from the audience . All right. Now we need to go to the bridge line and i havent addressed you folks, is there anyone on the bridge line that has any questions . No, no one is on the bridge line. No one from the bridge line. Okay. Well, i want to thank i want to thank the presenters and everyone who gave input and asked questions, this is a very interesting and a subject to address. That is for sure. So im going to close this information item out. Number 7. All right, i think that we are at the break. And so lets see, according to my watch its 2 07 and lets come back at 2 25. Well so thank you for your patience and well now move on to information item number 8 which is accessibility, safety and biking in San Francisco. And id like to welcome our presenter, janice vy, the advocacy director of the San FranciscoBicycle Coalition. Thank you for being here today. Thank you all, Council Members. I am janice lee and im as noted the advocacy director at the San FranciscoBicycle Coalition. And i really want to give a huge thank you to the Mayors Office on disability, particularly nicole and joanna for inviting us to be here and ill get to it a little bit further down my presentation, but i will just first acknowledge and recognize that the San FranciscoBicycle Coalition has not always and very often has not been a great partner to our Disability Advocates and our Accessibility Community and that is something that i want to improve upon because i find that pretty unacceptable, especially when we are talking about safety in our streets. So i have a brief presentation that gives a little bit more background to who we are as an organization, the kind of work that we do, and then hopefully ill get through that presentation in a few minutes and leave a bit of time at the end and im really here more than anything to listen and to really answer this question that i have at the end about how we can be better partners and allies when it comes to Street Safety. So ill go forward with the presentation. Great. So who are we . We are a Nonprofit Organization that was founded in 1971 and we a member based organization and a member elected board and our members are very key to who we are and we have over 10,000 current members today. And our Overall Mission is to promote the bicycle for everyday transportation within San Francisco. To that end we have a lot of different programs and as advocacy director i lead a lot of our Campaign Work so im going to just have some slides showing the kind of work that we do and ill have photos but ill describe what is in the photos as well. So more than anything we are known as the number one resource for Street Safety education. I say Street Safety and not only bike education because we really try to do very encompassing education for all road users and not just bicyclists. So this photo is actually a photo oh, that doesnt come out great a photo of a class that we held with Chinese Newcomer Service Center in chinatown at sacramento and stockton and they do a lot of direct service and Referral Service for new chinese immigrants. Many of whom would bike from the country or the city where they came from. But find it very difficult or daunting to navigate San Francisco streets by bike. So this class that we teach is for people who are more, you know, comfortable on bikes and may know how to ride a bike already but dont really know the rules of the road or dont know how to navigate very dense San Francisco street and so thats our urban cycling workshop 101. And we also teach new riders, in our traffic skills both on road and in the classroom. And we also teach youth, so were at sunday street events, all of them, and im doing, oh, my gosh, freedom from training wheels is the name of that and we teach little kids how to stride and to balance on a bike, but beyond that we also do education for professional drivers. So we have a curriculum and we have contracts with Companies Like google to train their tech shuttle drivers with recology and to train their large vehicle drivers as well and so its very allencompassing. And we do the sfmda taxi training. And the main team that my team does is to mobilize and turn out for safe streets. So this is a photo in front of city hall on biketowork day, one of our biggest rallies of the year, but were really known for getting our members engaged in what we call street campaigns. When we really are looking for ways to improve an individual street and make it better and more welcoming for everyone who is biking there, everyone using those streets. Were often partnering with local neighborhood associations, were working with city agencies, with elected officials, with merchant groups, whoever it is and even if they love the project or hate the project. But that is really the bread and the butter of our advocacy