Generally, theres not a concern over murals on secondary areas providing their reversible and certain requirements are met according to most preservation practice, we thought this made sense tsenseto include this as s well. So that concludesmy short comments. If you have any comments, happy to ands them an answer them. If youre readopting this, instead of coming back to you in 2020, now were coming back to you in the spring or early summer of 2021. Thank you. Any member of the public wish to comment . Anything further . I move to adopt or approve this delegation. Second. Thank you, commissioners. On that motion, then, to approve the delegation amendment . roll call . So moved and the motion passes unanimously 60. Best of luck, victim. Were adjourned. [gavel]. Chair fewer good afternoon. The meeting will come to order. This is may 17, 2019, regular meeting of the local Agency Formation commission. I am sandra lee fewer, chair of the local Agency Formation commission. I am joined by commissioners cynthia pollock, matt haney, and gordon mar. Our clerk is miss alisa somera. Madam clerk, do you have any announcements . [agenda item read]. Chair fewer thank you very much. Madam clerk, will you please read item number two. Clerk item 2 is the approval of the lafco meeting from the meeting of april 19, 2019. Chair fewer any comments or question prosecut questions from my colleagues . Lets open this up for Public Comment. Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. [gavel]. Chair fewer i make a motion to approve this item. Seconded. Okay. Can you please call item number three. Clerk item number three is a community agregation activities report. Chair fewer id like to make a motion to continue this item to the next meeting of the lafco. Clerk after Public Comment . Chair fewer after Public Comment. Is there any member of the public that would like to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. [gavel]. Chair fewer id like to move this item to the next meeting of the lafco. Can i have a second, please . [inaudible] chair fewer thank you very much. Now could i then, madam clerk, could you please read item five. Clerk item five is a survey of a on demand workers with jobs with justice. Weve already had a presentation, and we need need discussion and item, is that correct, director goebel . Commissioner goebel thats correct. I just want to let you know that the estimated costs for this survey is 300,000. Lafco has allocated 50,000. We are still seeking funding for the second and third parts of the survey, but i have reached out and several organizations are interested in covering some or all of the gap. We hope to have some or all of that funding in place by september. Chair fewer okay. First, lets take Public Comment. Is there any member of the public that would like to comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. [gavel]. Chair fewer okay. I believe commissioner mar needs to excuse himself. Ill make a motion for commissioner mar to excuse himself. Seconded by commissioner haney. Can i have a motion to approve the item . Chair fewer thank you, and seconded . And item six . Global global madam clerk, before you is the proposed budget for 202 final budget for 2020. Every year, the city and county of San Francisco is required to fund the lafco from the general fund, in addition we have an m. O. U. From the San FranciscoPublic Utilities commission which funds our work as the Oversight Authority for cleanpowersf. Im happy to report that the m. O. U. Which was scheduled to expire at the end of june, an extension was approved at this weeks p. U. C. Commission meeting. It now does require approval by the board of supervisors, so it will head there next. This first slide shows our history of our work order balance with the sfpuc. We spent about 5,000 this year. Most of it was my time with the cleanpowersf but also to pay a stipend. We set aside of a reserve of about 45,000 or about 15 of the annual budget. Youll see in the far right column at the bottom, that leaves us with about a 23,000 carryover into next years budget. These are our expenditures to date. Everything is right except for one item, which was legal services. Weve been asking our legal team to do more work, and we on boarded a legal team member. Finally, your final budget for 1920, ive lowered my salary estimate for the coming year. Travel and training mostly to attend cal lafco events and Community Choice energy conferences. The rest is pretty cut and dried, and i would recommend your approval. Thank you very much. Chair fewer thank you very much. Colleagues, any comments or questions on the budget . If not, lets open it up to Public Comment. Any member of the public wish to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Colleagues, do i have a motion . Commissioner pollock if i could just take a moment, thank you for your presentation on the budget. This is the first of your two presentations the second. Its pretty straightforward. Id like to make a motion to approve the budget of 20192020. Chair fewer i second that. We can take that without objection. Thank you very much. [gavel]. Chair fewer would someone like to make a motion to approve this item as presented . By commissioner haney, seconded by commissioner pollock . Thank you very much. [gavel]. Chair fewer okay. Lets move on to item four. [agenda item read]. Chair fewer thank you very much. Mr. Goebel . Commissioner goebel thank you, madam chair. At your suggestion earlier this year, the lafco partnered with the urban Affairs Program at the university of San Francisco to assist with our study in emerging items. Today, the professor and the students at least about half of the class is here today to present their findings, and i would like to thank all of them for their hard work on this report. I also want to let you know that i will continue to work with them and also do further Research Based on their findings. There work is already proving valuable and helpful to our survey team and to the overall study. With that, i would like to introduce professor diana nigrin. Thank you so much for having us . Im not going to say too much but introduce these lovely students. They worked in four teams to research a different series of aspects. The students are going to layout the methodology and some of their findings, but you will be able to see the detail in the report that we prepared, which you all have. Wed be happy to answer any questions and continue the partnerships, and thank you, sandy lee fewer for having us out. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is sergio martinez. And im ben peterson. We are proud to present to you the gig industry and its potential effects on labor in San Francisco. The research we will present was conducted by students at the university of San Francisco and over the past three months weve prepared our research focus, compiled or data and prepared a report. The research was separated into four smaller focus areas which were the labor political economy, lobbying, geography, and best practices. Although our research was limited in scope, the findings are indicative of the larger picture and the research lafco has to follow. We are going to begin by talking about the population of drivers and their positions in the complicated relationships as drivers in the laborpolitical economy ground. The findings around this revolve around the question what role does this group play in the gig in San Francisco. Demographic questions collect data on driver habits. The next section is 21 sliding scale questions that relate to the subcategory of Work Life Balance, expenses, career, health and safety, and externalities. We distributed this survey through the sfuberlyfts driver Facebook Page and participated in events at gas stations around San Francisco and received 36 total respondents. Our second tool was inperson interviews with drivers where we elaborated on the questions, and there were six interviews total. So the first subcategory we have is Work Life Balance which was used to determine how much the gig economy structure impedes on the life of drivers . We found that a majority of drivers drive for both uber and lyft. Almost all uber drivers are driving more than 41 hours of week, and most lyft drivers are driving more than 41 hours per week. In addition, they said their schedule is more flexible since theyve begun driving but simultaneously answered that they have less time for hobbies and families. One driver described driving as a trap. The driver began working for their uber began driving for uberlyft after they were injured, and they couldnt perform their former job. Two thirds of drivers indicated that driving was not their longterm goal. Not surprising, two thirds of drivers were either working another job or looking for another job. This could mean that drivers are using Transportation Network companies as supplemental income. Many families need to 41. 5 to four minimum wage jobs in order to afford a onebedroom apartment. This provides insight as to why people turn to gig work. Of those who answered favorably, the respondents did not rely on the income. The Income Expenses subcategory was used to determine if driving for t. N. C. S is economically profitable. Threequarters of respondents believe that the rate of pay for uberlyft met rick metrics are unfair. The quote on the screen shows one driver who initially answered positively about the income questions but when probed about the expenses didnt seem to know how much they were putting into driving. This was revealing as it shows some drivers do not keep track of their expenses so it could mean that the uber Driver Company split is actually more unfair than we think. So so in the health and safety subcategory we sought some insight into drivers physical and mental wellbeing. We received overwhelmingly negative responses when asking about drivers physical health. Lozar threequarters of drivers feel this has negatively impacted their physical health. When asked about safety on the job, we had 26 of respondents reported feeling safe while driving while 42 felt unsafe while driving. A majority of public concern in t. N. C. S own Safety Measures have been focused on the safety of passengers rather than those of drivers. And while we believe that passenger safety should be held to the utmost priority, we believe that drivers should feel safe, as well. The picture that you see on the slide depicts a severely unfortunate treatment at the hands of a passenger. This driver has largely avoided reporting abuses due to insufficient reporting measures and a lack of communication line between the driver and his t. N. C. Relationships between drivers, between drivers and their t. N. C. S, and their community at large in which they work. Surveyed respondents were overall displeased with the relationship of nature of their relationship with their t. N. C. , with the majority feeling like they were under values at work. We had many drivers claiming that they had a lot of issues expressing problems they were having with aspects of their work from their car to their driver app to issues with passengers to their rate of pay, any issues that can come up during the duration of ones shift. A particular fear is drivers fear of deactivation that typically comes due to passengers negative feedback or driving times fall below a particular threshold. This unsavory aspect is similar to the one given here as many drivers feel that t. N. C. s are not shouldering the burden that they should. In terms of income and expenses, wed like to learn a little bit more about the role of debt finances, as well as the ways in which drivers calculate their incomes and expenses and track them on their own. In terms of drivers careers, wed like to learn a little bit more about the average tenure of working with a t. N. C. , how long drivers typically stay with one company as we think it would reveal just how temporary and supplementary this income really is or whether drivers are depending more and more on this income as time goes on. Wed like to learn a little bit more how drivers Access Health care as their status with independent contractors with t. N. C. S denies them from accessing these types of benefits. Finally, wed like to delve into communications and ineffective drivers in corporate entities. Thank you, and thats all the time that we have, and were going to pass things over to the geography group. Hi. Good afternoon. I am justin pearson, and i am representing the geography group, and our work in the San Francisco bay area was to better understand how the unique layout of the bay area affects t. N. C. Workers. So the general inquiries that we have for this for our section was what are the reasons t. N. C. Workers come to San Francisco . Why are they not working in their own cities . How long are they driving, and we did this through inperson interviews as well as surveys and plotted some of our data using the application mapline. The interviews were conducted with t. N. C. Drivers while waiting for or actually on a ride with them. Drivers tended to be more amenable to speaking while in a ride while after having being paid for a ride whereas the surveys that would have been conducted by the labor group. Okay. So heres our first map. This is a little bit wider out, but besides externality that we see with los angeles, there are a few drivers who took part in this survey that lived outside of the bay area. We see sacramento, stockton, modesto, so you can get an idea that were this to be done in a wider scale, a similar result would come out. Then, we go to closer into the bay area, and we see that a lot of the interviewees came out of San Francisco. We spoke with one interviewee who came from antioch. Because she lived there because it was cheaper, and she had the caveat that even though she drives into the city to get better to get better wages, etc. , to get better rides, to get more rides, the problem was that she would have nothing going back. She would have to be using her own gas basically to be going back because usually, you dont end up getting riders the other way, so thats another thing that ends up being an issue for these People Living further out. Here through mapline, we were able to get some of the information of just the general the general demographics for the areas, and through that, we were able to get an idea of the income inequality that takes place in the bay area counties. Alameda, contra costa, had the largest amount of drivers driving into San Francisco. There was a large amount of miles driven per day for the sample as we mentioned, it was not a representative sample, but it gives you an idea. As a limit, we had drivers driving about 100 miles a day, but it went to 250plus miles, to give you an idea that the bay area is not just a collection of cities, but it does in a lot of ways act like a super city. Through this data, what are we finding . Its important to find out why San Francisco is an important destination for so many drivers. This may stem from the citys growth in jobs. It may be from the Greater Prospect of jobs in the tech district. This must also be compared to the high rent in San Francisco which allows it to exist as a super city. As a result, many people that work in San Francisco must commute from outside the city. Because of income disparity, many people are having to work multiple jobs in order to afford the cost of living in the bay area. In t. N. C. , they are accommodated by higher income levels in the city while lower in the out skirts. The economy fills the gap. Some of this information might have existed in other areas, not just in t. N. C. S, but its something thats indicative it needs to be looked at on a wider conceal. And with that, ill give it up to the next group. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is [inaudible] my name is lydia cho. And we are the group for politics and lobbying . I want to lead off with the questions that we came up with. How will city leaders factor in Transportation Companies when introducing policy and legislation. The second question is what are merchant groups and elected officials impressions on the t. N. C. S lobbying efforts, and the last is what can San Francisco do to mitigate the impacts of t. N. C. S on the city . So we were able to interview three legislative aides who gave us a lot of information on the side of the city and the city officials. So some of the key findings from the legislative aides talk a lot about the constraints on being able to regulate t. N. C. S especially because the california Public Utilities commission are the ones that help us statewide sort of say how they can be regulated . But some of the findings came from the constituents and most of their complaints in areas like labor, especially taxi drivers, the environment, just in general, the congestion and emission that has been increasing, and also the safety when it comes to being a pedestrian or a person that rides bikes or just a person inside the car, the passenger and the driver . And also something new that came up was vehicular housing, and something people outside of the city, you know, traveling into the city, a lot of neighbors start to notice more People Living in their cars, and so the second round of findings that the Politics Team would like to emphasize is the emerging information. We came across this chart . Its from Bloomberg Research on various issues that uber specifically lobbied for since 2013 . And as you can see, they started off with some of the more obvious issues like transportation and Tech Industry . And they further expended into larger social issues such as labor, health, and even crime as the companys grown . And by 2016, uber and lyft alone outnumbered a number of lobbyists compared to other Companies Like amazon, microsoft, and walmart combined . So among some of the more standard issues, we decided to dig a little deeper into how Small Businesses fit into the picture and how uber and lyft have advocated for their public support in San Francisco. And in the time and capacity we had, we were able to get ahold of two groups of merchants . One was volunteer quarter merchants and the other wished to stay anonymous even though they agreed to have the data reflected in the research. Both uber and lyft tried to make connections and have sponsored these organizations for various causes . And for example, in 2018, lyft partnered with valencia corridor merchants and they funded the production of this map that highlights unique storefronts on valencia street in exchange for having their logo printed on the map, as well. So and the feedback from the merchants was really great, and they were actually impressed with the level of communication that lyft had provided throughout the process . And merchants also believed that the map helped revitalizing the neighborhoods and the businesses and they had an opportunity to talk about pedestrians and riders in the neighborhood. And for the another merchants associations that the name we will not say today, we were informed that the organization has given they were given grants from both uber and lyft, and lyft and uber have donated money and sponsored activities such as local business mixers to promote and protect Small Businesses on their corridors . And we were also told that there was an agreement established between them as long as their interests were aligned. However this organization doesnt necessarily agree on the issues regarding these Ride Share Companies especially on the Broad Spectrum of the gig economy. Just to sum up, uber and lyft filled the gap that city officials werent able to do so in the past and by doing that, they have effectively leveraged the public into gaining support. To end this, we have some noteworthy stakeholder and recommendations for the research to continue on, and that includes going more into the Small Businesses and associations, organizations, and coalitions such as restaurants, associations, bike associations, and other merchant associations where there could be more different types of lobbying efforts than what we see in the city in city hall or in sacramento. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon commissioners. Im winston parsons. And im wes gilmore. And the policy team put together proposals for individuals such as yourselves based on the Political Climate and your ability to regulate locally. Were going to put forward six regulations for you to consider. So our first is congestion pricing which most of you are likely aware of, which is simply a charge to enter a designated zone of the city with the proceeds available to potentially Fund Transportation improvements. Now while ride hail can play a useful role in our transportation toolkit, it has many effects. Cities have seen significantly and positive impacts on reducing traffic, pollution, Greenhouse Gases all while raising funds for investment in other modes that alleviate traffic. Importantly, its rollout must be paired with major investment locally and in transsit. Likely increasing other modes as well will not be enough to combat uber and lyft. Theres concerns if rollout is not conducted thoughtfully, it can hurt. There are some measures to mitigate these issues and given our constrained time today, well refer to our report so you can see those further. We also think its worth noting that uber and lyft have come out as procongestion pricing in new york and seattle, and we feel if the sfcta reexplores congestion pricing for San Francisco it would be wise to consult with t. N. C. Drivers themselves to ensure that their concerns are taken into account. It will be met with public opposition with more of the public receiving better transit service, and ultimately, it could be one of the best tools we have in our toolkit today to respond to t. N. C. S and potentially Autonomous Vehicles, and we feel the city should consider freezing, reducing or eliminating muni fares. Our next policy recommendation is for the city to develop a comprehensive curb management street gee to help mitigate illegal parking and traffic 234r0e issues. Another impact is felt at the curb, and in addition to t. N. C. S, weve seen commercial impact growing, and that should encourage how we redirect curb space. At the moment, our system for allocated curb space is antiquated. It places the burden on businesses and organizations to apply for a loading zone. An individual has to potentially take on some pretty significant costs in order to get a loading zone in front of their business. And while yellow and blue zones have no charges, this inburden is typically on an individual to apply for them. Instead what the city ought to be doing is allocating curb space to meet a variety of needs. That way or streets can be more organized and safer, and this image illustrates some of the other curb uses and potential benefits. Other cities have developed or piloted other strategies for curb management, and this is something San Francisco could consider, too. The city has done this on a projectbyproject basis but thus theres been no comprehensive corridor by corridor needs. Whats more, there could be large benefits from t. N. C. S themselves, with loading zones sparing them from unnecessary tickets. Im going to turn it over to preston to talk about some other issues. Thank you, commissioners. So currently existing regulation by the cpuc focus on drivers and regulation. T. N. C. s offer very little public data . However we can find some data that sheds some light on the safety data on osha and the bureau of labor statistics . Taxi drivers are over 20 times more likely to be murdered on the job than other workers . And 32 of taxi drivers were murdered on the job in 2014. Another example of the safety risk that exists can be found here. So as you guys can see, can imagine, the data is very comparable from t. N. C. S and taxi drivers, and thats what were trying to highlight. Another example of the safety that exists is the image on the right. This poses a safety risk for drivers that are attempting to identify or report passenger rideshare incident. Next up, we have food delivery. Third Party Food Delivery companies are not regulated at the federal, state or local level. In San Francisco, the Citys Department of Public Health issues permits to a variety of retail food operations, including farmers markets, caterers and mobile food vendors but does not appear to regulate the mobile Food Delivery Companies . We found that the cpuc definition of Network Companies does not define these companies which means theres a unique opportunity for the department of Public Health to regulate them and require companies to take on the burden of regulations rather than simply passing it on to their operators. Clark county, las vegas, requires drivers who work as independent contractors requires drivers that transport goods to obtain a lejs license. In addition, a few states require restaurant affiliated drivers a few of these companies or a few of these states require that drivers have food safety certificates in their cars, and once again, we recommend that a lot of these companies a align with these wide ranging policies, that the companies bear the burden, not the operators . Ill turn it back to winston really quickly to finish up. All right. So the last indication is easiest to implement. One Assembly Woman has authored a resolution called ab5 that would codify the abc test into state labor law, thus enshrining a relatively simple way to determine whether a worker is an employee or contractor. Legislators should also be aware that there is some disagreement amongst t. N. C. Operators about whether they want to be employees. That he had is, the worker contractor status is currently being abused, and we think the city should support Worker Protections as soon as possible. No municipality in california has thus far filed support for ab5. Passing a resolution at the board of supervisors would show San Francisco supports it. This is an opportunity for officials like yourselves in the public eye to exercise your bully pulpit power and enhance recognition of these issues. Im going to skip this in the interest of time, and were going to wrap it up with some final thoughts . So that so many individuals are driving with t. N. C. S and on demand work poses some serious questions. How much has the economy improved since the 01 and 08 c crisis. How stable are uber and lyft when both are still operating at a loss and both appear to be significantly contributing to Greenhouse Gas emissions. We feel that the policies we presented could be a way forward for San Francisco leaders such as yourselves. Beyond responding to these issues today, we need to be thinking about the futures. We dont know when Autonomous Vehicles will be viable, but its definitely in our future, and we need to start preparing for it. Lastly, our literature review in the United States shows there seems to be a critique in labor whereas internationally theres a greater focus on the conditions that workers encounter. Local leader should focus on elevating Public Awareness of the labor concerns especially as we sit on the precipice of another economic crisis. And were happy to answer any questions. Chair fewer wow. That was a great presentation, and i want to thank all of you for the work that youve put into this. As you can imagine, i think this is the tip of the iceberg, quite frankly. As im hearing all your findings and recommendations, i have so many questions, other questions to dig a little deeper, but colleagues any questions for the students here . I wanted to just also thank you for all of your hard work on this. This is an extraordinary and comprehensive look at this industry that we know is having such a tremendous impact on our city, on our community, and on our economy and on those individuals who participate in it, and it also i think really, as chair fewer said, brings up so many more questions and shows that we really dont have enough information right now in a systemic way that we need to make these policy decisions. So one of the things i want just going to ask, and i would theres a lot of pieces that i would like to dig deeper into, but are there certain things, especially for the folks who talked directly to the drivers that were important for them in terms of their sort of daytoday wellbeing or, you know, some of the things that have come up, bathrooms or places to park, places where they can sort of take a rest, things from sort of a policy perspective that the city can provide to improve their wellbeing and working conditions . Im going to let sergio answer your question. So of the things that came up that were extra that the drivers brought up, there was an interviewee that said when they come to San Francisco, they go to Grocery Stores to use the rest room. They usually have lunch at safeways and stuff like that . And so it did come up that they are using the facilities of the city of San Francisco. They are choosing to go to certain places because the bathrooms are cleaner and whatnot, but that was something that came up. And then, another thing that was interesting was an interview that i had, we did the entire interview, and then afterwards, he called me up and told me the story about the sexual assault. And he said i really want this to be a focus of the research, as well. How many people is this happening to . How can we protect the drivers so that this doesnt happen in the future . And then, ben talked about it a little bit, about the fear of deactivation. If you go into an uber, and if you ask the driver, they probably have been scared about deactivation because any passenger can just report that the driver was intoxicated, and the driver app will shut them driving app will shut them off right away. This driving income is necessary for a lot of these drivers to make ends meet, so they drive for both apps because if they get deactivated for one, they can still drive for the other one. I would say yes to your question about there has been concern about what they do coming to the city, abobut moro its the health their mental health, physical health, and the fear of deactivation that came up. Thank you so much for this report. You know, we had limited time. I think we would love to hear at length what your impressions were when you spoke with drivers and as the data was presented to you, and i think thats something, you know, that maybe we could ask mr. Goebel to follow up with you and get just impressions on how it felt to get this data, and what the personal impacts were to you in performing this type of labor study . As chair fewer mentioned, this is the tip of the iceberg. This is a wealth of information. I wanted to bring up one thing that, and im bringing it up from my phone, so my apologies there. You know, when you look at other cities that are trying to deal with the labor aspect of the uber drivers, new york had a recently had an interesting way of approaching it, so they were doing minimum wage utilization charges . So when they were doing was basically implementing a minimum wage that also pays drivers more for companies that have low utilization rates. So if theyre driving around, waiting for a fare, then they get bumped up from just waiting to minimum wage, and the companies have to pay that. And so what it means is that the more cars are without passengers, the more they have to pay, like, their employees. This also led to uber and lyft hiring less drivers because the overhiring is where you see their wages really drop. And so thats something it takes two minutes to get a car, where it takes five to ten minutes to get a taxi, and you can see the taxi cabs being utilized in a different way. And thats where San Franciscos hands are tied with the cpuc and how much they can regulate t. N. C. S. Thats something that really needs to be overhauled at the state legislature, is to is to allow municipalities to really regulate this on their own because the cpuc has shown that theyre incapable of regulating t. N. C. S. And then, the last thing i would add is that one piece that i would loved to have seen in the income and expenses part are the predatory car loans, is that people are slaves to these indigenous apps. If they stop driving, theyre stuck. Theyre just simply stuck, so i would say that would be one piece that i would add into it. And i dont know if you plan on working further with lafco as the labor study moves forward with jobs with justice and so forth, if your class will stay engaged. I know you move on to other classes, but i would just say that i would that i would ask that you say engaged with us anden stay engaged with us and engaged in the process, and wed love to have you back. Yeah, that definitely is something we should look more into. Chair fewer supervisor i mean, commissioner singh . Commissioner singh first of all, i just wanted to say thank you to the entire team for this really impressive presentation. The breadth, the depth i feel like im drinking from the water hose trying to process all this information, but it was great. Thank you very much. I had a question on my mind, especially with ubers i. P. O. Being pretty recent, that one thing that folks were happening around the strike that happened in San Francisco and other cities recently was in advance of the i. P. O. , there were new inconsistencies, and i also heard this from uber passengers like theres been a lot of tinkering with Compensation Structures. Theyre doing theyre making a lot of changes to their interface that is affecting the drivers, as well. Someone told me that they signed up just for a Single Person ride, but then, you know, their driver took that ride, but then, at one point, it got switched to a pool so that driver would not have necessarily been warned. There was some cash back incentives, like, if you pay this driver, youll get uber cash back for food. Theres all sort of incentives, innovations that are popping up that i think theyre related to the i. P. O. . In general, i. P. O. Aside but taking it into account, did you talk about different fees and comparabilities in the Compensation Structure that was determining that so you could get compensated was changed . So the app itself tells you the split, so the amount you take home and the amount uber or lyft gets. And drivers were aware for the most part of their decreasing share of the fare. And like you were saying with the pool driver or pool section of the app, theres weird incentives in the app itself for drivers to take pool, but if they dont necessarily pick up people on that trip, theyre not making that money, so pool will result in less of an income or less share. It was something that came up with most drivers. Another thing we found another thing we found in our research is new york citys actually doing just started a report or an active investigation if lyft or uber or t. N. C. S in general are skimming off tips to pay drivers salaries which actually was a reason why they came up with the minimum wage . So yeah, there is its on peoples minds . In new york city, its on new yorks mind, so there are people looking into it right at this second, so it is an issue that exists. Commissioner pollock thanks. Chair fewer so i just want to say thanks for all the work that youve done on this. I feel like i have so, so many questions that maybe you can answer. But i think one of the questions, i think the fact that the the deactivation is such a huge threat and is such so ripe for exploitation around it seems as though its around the lack of any kind of labor rights at all, and i wanted to know, did you are there any labor rights that actually governor have authority over this sector . Did you find any labor rights in any labor law that these contractors are in any way protected at all . Just so far as we found, no. One idea that we had that we cut given our constraint time today was that the city either create or partner with another company to create a labor rights app, a know your rights app, and to pair into that potentially other features so that the city could collect transportation data because thats been an obstacle, as well. But thus far so long as theyre classified as independent contractors theyre in a totally different status. Chair fewer i just think with the lack of labor rights around this emerging labor force is it is so ripe for exploitation, and safety issues and pay issues, and how people are billed, and they dont have an organized say. I also wanted to ask if you were able at all to get from these drivers what they feel their average hourly salary is, that minus the toll, minus the gas, minus wear and tear on vehicles, all that kind of stuff, what is actually the net amount of money per hour that they think they make . Were you able to ascertain that at all . I dont think so. Ive seen just anecdotally what drivers have put online, but it can vary . I think thats one of the core issues for drivers is its really difficult to determine especially factoring in taxes however takehome pay someone will have. Theres a question that maybe somebody thinks theyre making a lot of money at first, and then when it comes to tax season, theyre making far less. So that structure in and of itself, as one driver said, can feel like a trap. Chair fewer yeah. I think whats sort of interesting is what i think i heard mentioned is a lot of drivers dont keep track of their expenses, and when youre an independent contractor, that is sort of one of the things as an independent contractors is you can write off these expenses. Yes, and there are a few different apps that drivers use . Ones called grid wise where you can punch in your expenses and calculate your taxes and theres other information that lets you know when large numbers of flights are coming at the airport and things like that. But its very different than being classified as an employee where you might have your taxes taken out in advance, and things like that. Chair fewer if you dont keep good beitrack of it and receipts, its really hard to write that off on your taxes. I think congestion pricing, weve discussed that at the board. Theres some caution on the board about congestion pricing. One is that how does it affect Small Businesses that are in the chinatown area of San Francisco, but also that we understand that this is an industry where the drivers are subject to exploitation quite frankly and low wage workers. I think that we are concerned that the price i mean, the congestion pricing would actually go on to the drivers. Chair fewer and were trying to get at a company, a multibillion company to pay its fair share. And so this is why weve been grappling with the congestion pricing in one of your recommendations. I think another thing that was interesting well, that i really want to dig deeper into is the fact that, you know, they arent able to actually explain about safety issues because theyre at the mercy of people rating them arbitrarily. This puts a crazy system that you would drive someone in your own vehicle while youre driving and so vulnerable we know that taxi drivers have put in a lot of protection such as cameras and evein