comparemela.com

Thanks. Okay. Good morning, supervisors. We have the slides. I want to start by putting the Central Market into the areaing, payroll tax exclusion to contacts and provide some history that has brought us here today. In 2011, under the leadership of mayor, the city and county launched the Central Market Economic Strategy. In response to widespread consensus there was a strong need to private and public investment, with the end goal to strengthen the longneglected stretch of Market Street between 5th and van ness. The strategy at time was in the Partnership Led by our office. Under the strategy, the agencies engaged private stakeholders, including communityman based groups, Small Businesses to direct resources to Central Market corridor. It has been neglected for decades, up like the rest of the city, did not see substantial investment or improvements during the economic boom in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Despite the longestablished art venues and history. The Development Strategy included six principle objectives, wig you see on the slide. The objectives are holistic and created a framework and foundation for many improvements and positive changes we experience today within the district. The need for Economic Strategy a little bit in the objectives. I will share noted challenges and the stakeholders that they defined back in 2011. There was a deep concern for job loss after the great recession. There were concerns about the empty, underrealized large buildings that added to the blight and the undesirable experience in the neighborhood. There were buildings in poor conditions, meaning they were now leasable. There was a concern with the lack of Retail Services and Retail Services and other Nonprofit Services and the available of jobs in the neighborhood. There were concerns with the relatively high retail rates. And the need for more arts organizations. And lastly, a need for open spaces and sidewalks to be positively activated. With the robust planning process, in developing the strategy, prioritizing activities and programs and policies were transform the Central Market were identified. This resulted in the framework for Public Sector activities, private and investment and the role of nonprofit organizations in the neighborhood. This process also led to the identification of tools and incentives for revitalization. These tools and incentives include Technical Assistance of Small Businesses and groups, referral to other applicable tax incentives and ground making. One of the most notable tools listed in the slide, and the purpose of the hearing today, is the Central Market and tenderloin area payroll expense tack exclusion. That was offered to growing businesses located in the Central Market and tenderloin. The board of supervisors elective policy haventized the location and led the area to become one of the regions most important innovation hubs. And help generate considerable momentum in new resources to the neighborhood. The payroll expense Tax Exclusion Program was available to businesses located in qualifying properties in the Central Market and tenderloin, as shown in the map. Also mentioned by ted egan earlier. The original strategy was launched, help direct and coordinate new public and private investment, during the previous 30 years was not available along Central Market. Oewd, plattenning Planning Department updated the Central Market account strategy. In order to deepen and sustain the efforts of midmarket and expand the focus of the tenderloin and 6th street. A major takeaway from revisiting the Economic Strategy was that in order to privatize investment in the greater Central Market tenderloin neighborhood, there was a need to focus on action zones and direct attention to the neighborhood tenderloin neighborhood. To identify the action zones in an effort to prioritize resources and investments. The overall goal of the strategy remained the same as in 2011, achieve a diverse, healthy, mixedincome neighborhood that offers safety and well being to all who live, work and visit Central Market and the tenderloin. Until today, our office continues to focus investments and our activities on these action zones. Since 2011, the central focus of the economic Development Strategy has been on business attraction and Business Retention to fill storefront and aboveground floor commercial spaces. In 2010, we identified the most significant commercial vacancies in the Central Market. As seen in this image. Sorry, 2011. The vacancies in 2011, it is also noted that almost threefourths of the vacancies have active uses today. I would like to highlight a few notable vacancies and the incentives employed as part of it. These examples are important to talk about, how other incentives were drivers of bringing a range of investments to the neighborhood. These vacancies were filled after the strategy and were adopted. 2019 Market Street was purchased in 2012. The property was renovateed by zen desk. The site had been longvacant building and the location remains zen desk headquarters today. And then expanded to three other locations along Market Street. 12775 Market Street was purchased by dolby in 2012 and became the new headquartering moving from general avenue. It should be noted this address was not included in Tax Exemption, that was mentioned earlier. This is the headquarters are examples of the catalytic effect of this Economic Strategy had on the neighborhood. 172 golden gate was both a problematic corner store and Vacant Office space. As part of the Central Market strategy, this location identified as one of the action zones. Investments were made by the city and private partners to transform the space into an Educational Center for the neighbors 3,000 youth. 826 valencia. In addition to filling commercial office vacancies, another measure thats accepted to understand the Economic Health of a neighborhood is selftax collected. In the table you can see that selftax receipts are up nearly 30 in the Central Market zone reflected a cmtl. It has stayed on pace with citywide growth. Cmtl outperformed the city in food and it is tax base diversified. The other category in the table includes a combination of selftech categories such as office supplies, medical biotech, government and social services, auto and transportation, fuel and service stations. The information comes from the city controllers office. And this next slide you can see the Central Market and Office Availability rates dropped from 19. 5 in 2011 to under 6 in 2014. Over the same time, Central Market lease rates remained parallel to and under the citywide rates. This reflects office space on both ground and aboveground floors. Ground floor Retail Vacancy. And this slide you can see details for retail storefront vacancy rates since 2013. When noted we began to collect regular information on storefront inventories. Storefront vacancy rates are commonly used as a public indicator of the health of commercial corridor. Id like to point out two data sets in the slide. In red you can see the Central Market and tenderloin action zone vacancies. You will note that since 2013, we have experienced a reduction in storefront vacancy rate in the action zone areas within the tenderloin and 6th street. These action zones were highlighted in the previous slide. Market street corridor vacancies are not included in that data point. The second data point, the Market Street vacancies between van ness and 5th street. I would like to point out that when Central Market strategy was first developed in 2011, oewd and partners measured the areas Retail Vacancy rate at 30 . In the slide, we can see since 2013, the market vacancy rate has fluctuateed between 4. 5 percentage points. Between 2013 and 2018, we have seen 42 businesses stay open in the staple storefront, 27 businesses close and 40 new businesses open. Four new storefronts adds through new construction and eight closed or demolished ahead of development. Today we have 111 storefronts along Market Street between van ness and 5th street. With about 31 of those being vacant. At the end of 2018. In 2019, as of 2019, we have failed five of those vacancies. We know that six out of the 31 vacant sites are located within partial sites under development. [bell ringing] we know seven out of the 31 identified storefronts have tenants and applied for those and in the improvement process. 13 of those are actually challenging and real sites that we can work on. Quickly, i want to highlight some workforce numbers. We know that the census data, 10,000 jobs were created or added to Central Market in the tenderloin neighborhood since 2011. In the same period, 1,131 hires were made in the Central Market in the tenderloin area. [bell ringing] those hires were made across various sectors including health care, tech, construction and hospitality. We report these specific since 20112012, thats programs ran practicals that originated 11,410 job readiness and job search enrollments. 7,300 job placements for those participants. Your five minutes is up. Are you pretty close . Pretty close. Just really quickly, also want to highlight that the strategy has the outcomes of the strategy has taken various forms. Vacancies failed, we also developed a lot of strong partnerships with private sector private and Public Sector companies. Particularly to activate certain public space, civic Center Public space initiative, life to new public spaces, Innovative Service and opportunities to vulnerable populations, tenderloin downtown streets. And weve also attracted a lot perform Public Sector investment, that includes the better Market Street project thats going to lay ground later this year and vision zero projects along 6th street. We also invested a lot of efforts in our Community Capacity building through investing with grants and programs. Weve focused our efforts in safety programs, working very closely with c. B. D. S and the mayors team as well. And just to summarize really quickly, we also understand theres we also recognize theres a lot of challenges persist and our efforts will continue to address them. Well have continue to partner with companies in the area. Well continue to address the vacancies in the neighborhood and deepen our workforce programs to make sure that were hiring locally and using programs such as success. And we will continue work withing the partner questions to provide support to businesses impacted by future infrastructure projects. And lastly, we are deeply aware of the Mental Health challenges of the street, as well as the openair drug dealing and drug use. Our office will continue to work with impacted businesses, properties and residents and Community Service providers that serve individuals and need assistance. The Economic Strategy has brought muchneeded investment, and new partners to the area, that had not been prioritized before 2011. The Economic Strategy and the Tax Exemption is not just about the economic benefits, but the neighborhood benefits. We are paying attention to the neighborhood and we are invested. Thank you very much. Sorry for running over time. Thank you. Supervisor brown . Yes. Thank you, supervisor haney. Thank you for your presentation. And i know that oewd has been doing a lot of work in that neighborhood. And has been one of your invested neighborhoods, you put a lot of time and money into it. I have a few questions, though, about jobs. And i see that mr. Arsay is here also. Thank you. I just want to know what kind of jobs and industries are the people that youve been tracking gone into in this area . Im going to defer to my colleague. Thank you. Thank you, jorge. Thank you, supervisor brown. Josh that arsay, director of Workforce Development. I think in slide 11, that you saw from jorge in the presentation, supervisor, was the jobs component and the way that we presented information to the committee and thank you again supervisor, haney, and colleagues for calling this hearing. We looked at the investment that our office made in Service Provider, not just in the tenderloin area, but serving the Central Market area at large. We looked at zip codes 94102 and 103. So to the question of what kind of jobs and placements are happened, we looked at what is the work the Service Providers in those areas are doing to Serve Community members here, thats gropes like goodwill, mission, central City Hospitality and others. Over that time span. So some of the industries that you see, i think you were speaking to some of the types of positions. Exactly. Hospitality consistently was an industry that was bringing in workers in that area. Another industry was health care. A lot of that was kind of some realignment that was happening outside of the zone, but really close to it, connected to the work agency around cpmc in connection with our office, leveraging some work, particularly around Home Health Care providers. There was work that was happening with the really meaningful and impactful social enterprise, called solutions, that was operated by Community Housing partnership, that led to a lot of kind of administrative, we would call it hospitality, interaction, desk clerktype of work. There was some administrative assistant, professional services, lots of construction opportunities, some opportunities in the tech sector and just general employment across a range of different employers. So my question about the health care, since it is probably one of the Fastest Growing industries in the city, so did you have job fairs or Vocational Training fairs there in that community, in the tenderloin, in that community, to get people in training, so that the people from the community could actually, you know, be part of that and part of the economic engine . So im just kind of wondering what kind of trainings, when you went into that community, were you doing . I have to confess to being in this role with the department about eight, nine months, since mayor breed became mayor, working with the great team at hospitality. I can speak to what i know, since my time and working with the city program and also just generally speaking, knowing the patterns and practice of the department, which works hard to effect change with our partners. I think say thats definitely a strategy to provide boots on the ground, and i know thats been a strategy kind of going back. Its been very communityled, support from our office, some employers have really kind of stepped up to do that. But its definitely been a part of the strategy to date and its like a foundational i would say core strategy Going Forward for our agency. I think especially with the health care, the Vocational Training that they can get and the jobs that they can get, theyre actually living wages. And it can be, you know, a year or 18 months training, and then theres so many opportunities to work in health care. So i just wanted to make sure that you were actually in this community, too, you know, on the ground doing those kind of fairs, in that community. I i have a couple more questions. And what did you think were your challenges going in . Or oewds challenges going in for Workforce Development . I think looking back and one of the things that you mentioned i think health care being a grow ing industry, a lot of the work and the outcomes you see within health care, have been driven by a core partner of ours called home bridge, which provides opportunity to earn while you learn, almost similar to the apprenticeship model. Theres communication to build that out to apprenticeship. The challenges looking back, generally speaking if you look at this data, weve gone from a time where when the policy started, we were at 10, i want to say 10. 1 unemployment in early 2010, were now at 2. 1 unemployment. As of the month of april. That obviously doesnt tell the story of whats happening in the communities of need, where we have doubledigit unemployment and lowincome communities of color, disadvantaged neighbors and even tens of thousands more jobseekers, or individuals who are arent in the job market, because we need to work to break down barriers. Thats a challenge in the neighborhood. We are fortunate to have Great Service provider partners, as some of those i mentioned and others. Code tenderloin is another Great Program who really stepped up their game to break down the barriers, to get into jobs in the tech sector and others. Knowing the folks and individuals are at risk of being left behind. In some ways were addressing systemic barriers and the work becomes even more meaningful and more resourceintensive to help get folks into the moment of prosperity and advance our goals around addressing income inequality. Youre working with the nonprofits that know the community, that can actually reach out to the community, get them through maybe some hurdles, as you were saying, whether its like getting a drivers license or whatever they need to be able to move into training . Absolutely. We follow the communitys lead on these efforts. We work closely with our Service Provider partners to provide the path. But i think more than ever, were also as a city and county as our Office Putting skin in the game, boots on the ground to be there sidebyside to use the citys influence and the policies that we have at the table to try to move these outcomes. One last question. What is your oewds plan to be able to get in there, if more than just working with the nonprofits . What is your plan to get in there and really bring people that live in the tenderloin, the Central Market into . Do you have a plan that you can tell us a little bit about how youre really going in and getting people that live there to actually work there . Live there and work there in terms of recruitment . Recruitment. Trying to connect them with all kinds of different jobs. I mean, is there an actual plan of how youre going in, for the people who actually live there and training them and numbers and things like that. You have data on that. We piloted an approach, like an effort with hospitality house, for example. Theyve got amazing job developer that runs the program and tiffany jackson, with our office, we all went in actually to the coalition on homelessness, where there was folks who had been doing some work and were about to lose their job. And we offered services, opportunities to get even more jobready training or just keep working period, to keep earning and keep moving up. So theres some data from that effort. That was in the fall. Theres data that could come out of this effort we did in south of market, the other like i mentioned a couple of weeks ago, 300 folks came out, 200 connected up with us. Were also looking to the district supervisors and representatives, policymakers for direction there. Thank you. I think the data helps us a lot, when were looking at this. If youre seeing, you know, that theyre helping the Community Within the Central Market, tenderloin, that having that kind of data, who is doing what. And then the results is really helpful for us as were moving forward on policy. So, yeah, if you have data it would be really important to see that. Okay. Thank you. Absolutely, supervisor. Thank you. Actually i had a few additional questions around the workforce outcomes. Yeah, again thank you for the presentation. From oewd. And it was good particularly to see the good workforce outcomes overall by the Central Market area Service Providers. And i think that reflects a lot of good work by those organizations, working in close ownership with oewd. But i just had a question around the 10, 11 companies that got combined the over 70 million in tax breaks. And yeah, i dont really see any report on how many jobs, you know, they they created during this time period. And whether extinguish and who fill whether they filled those jobs. Or to what extent . Or from our overall source system from oewd . Yes, supervisor. And i think the answer to your question, a lot of in many ways, its known by those companies, the companies would have done their own hiring efforts and recruits. A lot of stuff done in the data run thats known to him and not us. The data thats available is in some ways wrapped up from the administrator we heard around which companies did apply, which got the tax break and the way thats reported out. [ please stand by ] they referred clients. Maybe that is already covered. That is something that i think would be good to know. Supervisor mar, i believe the information you are asking for is referrals or three steps being positions offered, referrals made and replacements that occurred we will gather it and report it back. Would you be able to say how many hires were made by these companies during this period from referrals directly from the First Program . That is something you guys are directly running, right . The application itself requires someone when they are applying to say how many jobs in the first year they applied and how many positions they hired for over that time period. Iif a position turned over three times that is three meyers. Meyer three hires. We could gather that data. There is one distinction. We can only do that for the people that applied and were deemed eligible. We cant tell you of those who actually claimed the exclusion. Public record is who has applied. Who we deem eligible is not public record. We can give you an aggregate number. It is protected by tax pa taxpar confidentiality. The Tax Collector says why we are given that tax credit. That number never matchings year to year. We dont know who claims it in the end. It will be a good estimation, not 100 accurate. Thank you. I realize it is challenging to get clear data on the hiring outcomes. Correct me if im wrong all of these 10 or 11 companies would have had a written agreement, is that correct . Supervisor, i think that is the case in most. One of the things that is interesting about the first source hiring program. The law goes back to 1998. Our office has only had limited capacity with that policy. There is stuff if you look at the policy itself there are places where we want clear guidance where to good with it. Our office is doing more than we have done in a long time with first source in an exciting way with respect to potential outcomes with the policy as it stands today. I cant say exactly yes or no. My hunch is there is error. We can go back and gather that information and present it and share it with you. I want to get clear what information you actually have. Would oewd be able to . It would be easy to do because there would be agreements with the companies and document the referrals were made to job openings at the 10 or 11 companies during this period and how many resulted in an actual hire. I will refer to laurel for clarity. To be business eligible they had to sign a first source agreement that was required per legislation. With that, the data you would have from every company with a first source is how many positions were offered, how many referrals made and how many hires made. Correct . Correct. You do have that data and you can present a report . We should be able to gather that, yes. You havent done that at all yet that kind of surprises me. The nuance of who claimed the exclusion versus who is eligible will still exist. Sometimes a business may have chosen not to claim the exclusion and there would be zero postings. We wouldnt know it is zero because of noel give positions he on o because of no positions el i didnt believe. It will eligible. I am asking about the 11 companies that were reported to have had a Community Benefit agreement. Only the cb a ones . Yes. That is the number. That is over 70 million in tax breaks . That includes those with payrolls under a million. That includes Small Businesses not required to execute a cb a. Those 11 Companies Got the majority of the tax breaks. That is my question. For those 11 companies, do you have data on how many referrals were made from the First Source Program and how many actual hires were made for those companies. We hear you loud and clear. We will go back with what we are doing now and the parameters we are hearing loud and clear to go back to applicants and resip House Majority leader eric cantor. That we can gather the information and navigate the dynamics and we hear the need to report back to you and the board the outcomes. Thank you, supervisor. I have a couple questions related to the jobs piece as well. It seems in terms of an actual real coordinated strategy related to jobs and these companies that were claiming the Central Market tax exclusion we didnt necessarily have a direct strategy around that that was in partnership with these companies to insure we were able to place people from the community into these companies. I know you are new to the job and doing a great job answering these questions in light of that. Do you have a sense of that . We have the Community Benefits. We also, i think, hoped there would be job benefits as well. Are there any sort of direct relationships either that you have seen maybe with some of these companies that seem like they may be come out of the tax exclusion . What job benefits can you see directly from these companies for people within the Community Within the programs you have direct oversight over or others . Yes, thank you, supervisor. There is definitely job benefits. I think one of the things that you can do when you are looking at it is twofold. You can look at data as we have tried to present here and discuss during the dialogue and there is the individual experience in every life that is changed. Every job matters. Someone who comes through, men and women, there are 40 out of city build to work on trinity plaza. Those are lives changed. It is a multiyear project. They were a a long journey person in the trades. That is a meaningful change. As we look at the numbers and the stuff that we will share with the committee some of the stuff when you look back, you heard a lot of positive outcomes from Community Benefit strategy. We heard critiques as well. When the policy was put in place, a one tell things happened at the same thing. Our office started our tech investment with the repositioning of apprentice ship. There is a lot of momentum there and reliance on first source policy that they chose at the time. Buys way of background. That is one of the different tools in the work force system that utilizes the network of our office and service provideders to refer disadvantage. We work to identify the candidates. Employers are to make a good faith effort to interview or hire the candidates. They are not required as the policy is written. Where there is success, the success is community negotiated enhancements. Some of the stuff on the ground around the cpmc led to the strongest outcomes. Some of the stuff with the additional capacity, new guidance around the policy and dialogue with partners and employers where the policy will lead to some exciting progress there. I think supervisor haney, to thinking through decisions made by policymakers at the time, i know there was a lot of conversations. I was wearing a different hat at that time. A lot of people had different ideas. We are where you are. You have taught us teachable lessons. There is a lot of positive job outcomes here. I have to really stress that. I do feel that way. There are more with the different policy decisions, sure, but i think this is a Good Opportunity to have the dialogue to think how to go forward led by policymakers such as yourself. I think we share the goal of having well articulated pipelines or jobs for communities often shut out of these opportunities, then we have challenges both in terms of making it happen and getting basic data about who is hired and through what sources and for us that data really informs policy decisions. Even in what is most concerning, i think about what we saw with the taxing exclusion. Even when we had leverage over the companies and giving then tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks we arent able to get basic data about who they hired, how the jobs they created benefit the community, and you know that is really where we are. I think it is broader beyond the companies. If we cant get it from the one bees we are giving away tens of millions of dollars, we have a long way to go. I have a question about vacancies then to the last presentation. Thank you for the presentation. Am i correct to say that retail lets see ground floor Retail Vacancy on this Central Market, tenderloin area has gone up since 2013 . Overall, yes. I want to add. It has gone up up to 25. 2 . I want distinction between the vacancies we have. I was alluding to normally retrack vacancy based on the number of commercial spaces available. That is is how our Office Coming up with a number. There might be 31 vacancies. Only 13 of those dont have a process. There is no tenant identified and they are hard to fill and we are working on those. We know the other ones have a tenant identified or going through permitting or there is something occurring. The vacancy rates in 2013, there were buildings that did not have any they were in poor conditions, not leasable. I am not blaming you. In the corridor vacancy is that city wide . That is just we include that in the data set. We collect data on 25 commercial districts in the city. Compare to those commercial districts where we have a presence. I want to be clear you know this and maybe there is some hopeful prospects coming forward but the vacancy rate on mid market is over double that of it sounds like city wide average in that it has gone up since 2013. Can you talk about your strategy around these vacancies . What do you do when you have a long term vacancy . There is a corner mid market where it is where mason hits or actually where mason hits and there are three or four vacancies there. The strategy for every vacancy has to be very tailored. We have to understand the conditions of the site, whether it is leasable. If it is in poor location what is happening struckly electronically. Then understanding what the zoning allows for that space to be used for. We have to be coordinated with the planning defendant. Then we have to work with the te Property Department and then what the Community Desires for that space. Then we work with a professional. We have an independent broker to identify the acciden business a. We can leverage lease negotiation, sf shine to make the facade and improvements to make that occur. Thank you. Is that helpful . Yes, that is helpful. I think we will move to the last presentation. Thank you for hearing all of this. We will insight sam dennison from the citizen Central Market tax exclusion citizen advisory committee. That is a mouth full. You have up to 10 minutes for the presentation. Thank you very much. I appreciate you paying attention to the time. I am reminded of the old saying that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that feels it the most. I have to admit as i have been listening to all of this talk at a high level. When i first got involved with this process which was at the town meeting in 2011 where the cb a companies were presenting the first round of cb as to the public and it was not a bless pleasant meeting. The technically we knew it was. The following year we hoped to have a better meeting. The city administrator set it up for no public questions. The Citizens Advisory Committee was intended to have a specific purpose. Somebody writing that knew there was a risk in that moment of time there would be displacement. The charter of the committee was to help mitigate, craft, give input on the cb as to mitigate this placement. I was asked buys supervisor haneys office and i appreciate the chance to talk about this today. Was that a success . No, it was not a success. It was a failure in a lot of ways. We have heard a lot today from the idea what levels of money came to the area, what kinds of development happened there. In fact, i remember hearing somebody in the first year say as residents in this neighborhood we feel like we are going to be angoing to be annih. They really laid out their intentions. The cac had the hope of building collaborations with the companies and the community to provide substantial barriers to displacement to support the people in the neighborhood. Some of the ideas were things like develop an Acquisition Fund to take Affordable Housing off the market so it would not escalate. We would like to see housing remaining affordable. Tech Companies Said that is outside our wheelhouse. We dont want to do it. We said, okay, lets give grants to the private sros to upgrade electrical so people are safe and can cook as restaurants were turns over . That is not in the wheelhouse, we cant do that. How about wifi to every family. Public wifi . That is more effort than we want to do. How about we support businesses in the area . From the very first cac meetings we asked 30 of cater catering to be done locally. What was to be brought in 30 of the budget would be spent locally. We asked eight years this year we got it from two companies. One Company Refused saying there are no resources for good vendors. That is not true. There are restaurants and vendors to do it. We saw resistance to collaboration. Even those we worked hard those relationships never really came to fruition. Did we succeed in mitigating displacement . What evidence do we have of displacement . I see it in the data today. On the data of the occupational change when we see our neighborhood had 130 increase in the number of engineers and computer and technical workers, we know those arent the People Living in our neighborhood. The people in our neighborhood have been forced out and they have been replaced. That is the first evidence of displacement i have. Second evidence is on the truck that says restaurant and Hotel Revenue went up 62 . I can tell you how that happened replacing affordable restaurants and hotels with those that are oriented towards a Higher Income Group of people. I will give you an anecdotal reference. At turk and eddy the adrian was residential. They were paying 600 to 800 per month. Half had no bathrooms. Two years into the process the master lease was taken over. Over a year period of time the 50 allocated to tourists was emptied it is now half tourist hotel. Those rooms are 165 to 200 per night. If you want to move in for a month it is 1,500 to 1,800 a month depending on the you have a bathroom. Those arent for the people in our neighborhood. During that same period of time we have seen the number of people sleeping on the street on hyde. I live on hides. I have seen the people on the street triple. They arent the same characters in the adrianne. They have to live someplace or they are displaced out of the city. Another displacement is Market Street for the masses, which was a coalition to engage these companies that were taking track of this exemption, was started by mik mike anders and of those three none are left in the city. Mike went to take a new job. Jackie was forced out and haddy was forced out. Those are displacements. It also affected Tech Companies. Zoos left. Spotify which had a Business Plan of increasing employee rate from 25 people when they first moved here to more than 100 revised that back to 30 because they couldnt pay the salaries for people moving into the city. Twitter testified at the meeting they cut back the number of people they were hiring because they couldnt pay family allowances. We saw all of the evidences of displacement. People on the street, people who want affordable meals. I cant tell you the number of affordable restaurants to be replaced by those that serve 15, 16, 18 hamburgers as opposed to 4 hamburgers these are not taken into account by the data today. When we say what lessons have we learned . First is empowerment and determining what the benefits are in advance and all of that. The other is to really recognize that displacement from Economic Development is guaranteed when we are seeking high paying jobs. If we are giving tax breaks to companies with high paying jobs above the area Median Income it is automatic displacement in ways detrimental to the culture. We lost pharmacy techs, people in home care. We lost all kinds of people. One of the greatest policy implications for me in this process has been when we seek to benefit through tax reheat we should seek to benefit the people who provide the grassroots life of the community. Large salaried people can take care of themselves. They have the income to compete. The people who cannot take care of themselves are those who are earning minimum wage or below medium income. We have to build in when we do this kind of work to look at the impact of salaries on the other amenities in a community. Housing, health care, access to food. If we cant build balance in the legislation to take into account those things. It is like when they build a new housing suburb they dont allow it without sewer access. If you dont care for basics, Everything Else is impacted. This was a careless piece of legislation, then it was negligentglected along the way. I would like to finish this thought. The City Administrators Office was not charged with being responsible for the quality of the cvas. They needed to get away with whatever they could to get them signed. Four years into the process, of the six cva companies five were recommended not to be signed. The City Administrators Office signed those and never had public account ability for having done that. That meant the Citizens Advisory Committee had no capacity for leverage. The last year when we asked for an honest and strong effort to support the Public Schools suffering in the neighborhood they were free to say we will look to raise 10,000 for one of the schools when we know the level of pay back and value of the exceptions they got were so much more than that. There is a level of accountability to be built in and the balance there. Thank you for the time. Sorry i went over. Thank you for the presentation. It is amazing all of the work that you have done. One of the questionsir had when you were bringing up the different suggestions this would be great Community Benefit that would really help the community. When they said it is not in our wheelhouse. What was in their wheelhouse . Did you ask them . Absolutely. This is where supervisor haneys question is good. Did we see anything different from ordinary Corporate Responsibility than anything equal to value. The answer is no. Ordinary Corporate Responsibility we will have employees fact 100 backpacks for beginning of school year that makes us feel good. We will do a twitter friday for good. It is not required. Those that want to go out and volunteer and come back to the evening for cocktails and free tshirts and have done a great thing. What is in the wheelhouse makes employees feel good about what they have done. In my mind what are small grants between 10 to 50,000 to pet organizations. That could run zoos giving money to an organization doing dog washing. At zandes if we are talking about open drug use and need for a lot more Drug Overdose prevention we will do in house training but really not interested in supporting to a high dollar amount. Those are the kinds of places where we are finding when the community says, when people on the street say this is what we are desperate for, but we would rather pack backpacks for school kids because we feel good about that. None of the amazing suggestions were taken or considered . Not considered. As we got into the process to get appointments to discuss these, it became even more impossible. What has been sad is over the years to be able to sit down and say to the Tech Companies this is what we would like to do. Frequently we start six months before the negotiation process started. We are open, available, we will send a member to it is and talk with you and look at it. Even in the last few years we get the draft 48 hours before we had to vote on it. The level of cooperation wasnt there. The City Administrators Office was not helpful in that process either. To this day we dont have all of the records on the website. They keep shifting so we cant go back to say what about this and that . Were you compensated for your time . None of the Community Residents were. Of the Committee Members many were representatives of nonprofits in other function areas. I wanted to shout out to steve tennis who worked for eight years on this Committee Without a nickel of compensation. I mean coming from myself being a Community Activist and knowing the time you have put in with other Community Residents, we start counting that time up, it is a lot of money. I want to say thank you to all of you. That really makes a difference. Unfortunately, it seems like you hit a brick wall. On this one we did. So sorry. This is why i am grateful for the chance to speak to the three of you on this and hope that we can at least hold this up, but i think also to stop talking in glowing terms about this. To put out to the media and presto say our corporate friends we appreciate you but your Corporate Responsibility is really failing our city. Thank you for your work and everybody that served on the committee against the orders where you were ignored around he were trying to make the framework to empower the community to function. Without the support of the City Government that set it up. The reason why, and you hit the nail on the head here, this isnt just about the mid market tax break. This is about the broader relationship this city has with cooperations, many are doing well in the city and the lack of any sort of enforceable expectations about how they in a structural way develop and share in a convey that doesnt lead to displacement. A lot of times we get the feel good things that, you know, are more for press release and dont actually affect in any sort of way anything that might within their company affect how they operate in a way that shares what they are building here with everybody else. What really pisss me off. We were giving away money, we had leverage, we set up the structure for a voice in the process. Even then we didnt get much at all. Imagine what is happening when we dont have this sort of lever age. It is even less. I did just with that where there any in terms of, you know, Community Benefit agreements. When corporations are growing here, what recommendations would you have about how to make not the tax break. Not how we would do this over again. How should we work with corporations as a city who are growing here and are not really doing anything out of the ordinary but nothing really to mitigate the impact . How would you set up these agreements or anything that you have learned over this process to get them to do the right thing . So another adage is if you have come here to help me dont waste your time. If your wellbeing is bound with mine, lets work together. We have to make the wellbeing of large corporations bound up with the city. Even to connect tax rates to an overall metric to how the city is functioning. Tax rates go up when homelessness goes up. That straightforward to really look at the different areas to say on some concrete level people need to understand when people are living and dying on the streets, it costs us all a huge amount of money. If we have wealth on one side, it should be connected to the other. That is the structural element what we need to make clear. You cant be in the city and take fruits of what is here and walk away. All of our wellbeing is bound up together. That is an important piece of all of the work to be done in Work Force Development or real estate development. All of those kinds of things. Somehow we have to review more policies with the common good that is together. We have to ask ourselves. When people benefit from this, how do they know their wellbeing is bound up with those who are going to lose . Thank you. I want to echo my appreciation for your presentation and the information to be presented in the discussion today and also appreciate all of the work that you and the other Community Advocates had done over the years in a good faith effort to really partner with these companies and despite the frustrating outcomes

© 2024 Vimarsana

comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.