Way to run a business. Thank you. John par, scott ellis and Herbert Winer who was the last person to turn in his speaker card. Im john par and the new suit is by george yo giorgio armani. This is called justice unsafe at any speed. This book revolutionized the Auto Industry safety and through various acts of congress, seat belts were installed in cars throughout the united states. Then the endline, unsafe at any speed. In this new book, he will highlight how men, women and children and specifically disabled people are sent into the open street to face death while emparking on disembarking into an open street in front of ten new trains every single day for nearly 100 years. There is no safe modern elevated platforms or station on that street corner. The safety of my community has been ignored and seen as normal. We are, as i have said before this board, at the back of the bus. And we are out of mind and out of sight along the end corridor. I am asking this board to allocate 16 million to build a proper elevated train station just like you did for the warriors for 40 million for the first time in my community, the outer sunset. This will be a wonder, probably, to see in the outer sunset and practically beyond imagination to do that. Im also requesting that a lowlevel Improvement Project promised and approved through any sole efforts thank you. To be approved by shawn kennedys team. Sir, your time is up. Thank you. So please have this work done as soon as possible. Scott ellis and herbert winier. Im the new operator of Business Development on the west coast and wanted to take this moment to introduce myself to you and director brinkman, im sorry i missed you at revolution. I just wanted to introduce myself if you would like to see my face around. Nice to meet you. Next speaker. The last person to turn in a speaker card, Herbert Winer. Herbert winer, please spell it weinr on the board, thank you. I had a real problem with the 27 bus last week. I arrive at the bus stop, ok, the bus is going to come in five minutes and then its going to come no one minute and then in less than one minute. And it kept changing back and forth, back and forth and one minute, and it took such a long time to get that bus. Now, you say the 27 is the success. I dont believe so. There arent enough buses on that run. What youve done is youve eliminated the bus stops, kept the same amount of buses for that run and it still runs in a lousy way. So youre not to be commended. Youre to be censored for what youve done and this should be ruthlessly examined because a lot of people are inconvenienced as a rule, but a lot of other people do and a lot peach have e been rudely inconvenienced on that line. So no thank you to the 27 bus line project. Next speaker. Thats the last person to turn in a speaker card under general public comment. Moving on to our regular calendar. Madam chair, moving on to your consent calendar, theyre considered routine. I have not received a request from any member of the public, nor a board to sever the item. Directors, do i have a motion to move our consent calendar . Motion to approve . All in favour. We have now approved or concept calendar and moving on to our regular calendar. Item 11, approving contract modification 122 to contract 1300, phase two, subway station, surface track systems with extended term by 730 calendar day and substantial completion date of june 20, 2020 and pay 31,240,000 for competencable, unavoidable delays in 8,520,000 and making environmental review. And director, the new Programme Manager will be giving this presentation. Good afternoon. Im the Programme Director for the center subway. I will go over this mod and the first light i have is a summary of the proposed modification. It extends the contract by 730 days and it commits the contractor to finish its construction by june 29th of next year. It settles the delayed claims of the contractor, completely as of september 3rd. And it settles the delay claims by awarding the contractor 31. 2 million for the delay. It also directs the contractor to follow on contractors to come in and allow them to do their work while hes finishing his work. And it also says they agree to review the remaining claims of the contractor and subcontractors. So those are the two additional things that we have to examine. It allows the radio and control guys to come in ahead of time. And sets realistic dates for construction. Completion dates as i have mentioned, the substantial completion which means the contractor essentially finishes its construction. The original date was february 10th and then it went on to become june 30th, but now the proposed substantial completion which is a contractual agreement is jun june 29, 2020 and with that completion and the systems testing, dynamic testing, vehicle testing, that takes 12 to 14 month. We should start running train and carrying passengers. We estimate summer of 2021. So that kind of a schedule. The next is project completion dates. Contract value, and this a summary. The original contract amount was 839 million. We have so far throughout the dur augustduration of this contd 8 million in increased scope and changes. And so the current value is 847 million. This contract modification for 31. 2 million added to that mix contract amount of 878 million. So that is the full amount. The next slide shows us what the cost summaries are. The original as i mentioned was 846. The work that has been completed up to now is valued at 730 million, so we have paid the contractor that amount for the work that he has done and just by looking at these numbers, you can see somewhere between 80 , plus or minus of the work, is finished. And the remaining work and the remaining budget the contractor has in the original contract is 108 million. To finish the job, they have to finish the job with the amount of money they have for finishing the job. With the change order which is 31. 2 and when we pay this from the contingency, which is 46 million, we have 50 left in contingency after we make in modification. The next slide shows, obviously, as i mentioned, we have to look at the additional claims of the contractor and the additional claims of the subcontractors. So when we look at those claims and see how much we actually owe, that money has to be found. We have 50 million in contingency and that will not be enough. So the Funding Forces is what is shown on this slide. We work with our staff, a cfo and these three areas are the areas of potential funding to either in combination of one or two or all three see what money we need. Now we dont need that money right now because we are still evaluating the claims. Once we evaluate the claims and we form our own prenegotiating position, we will at least know from our point of view what we think these changes are worth. Then we can sit down with the contractor. Obviously hell be asking for more and once we negotiate, if we can settle, and we know what the amounts are, we come back to you and say this is the additional amount of money that we need. And i would say that the time span i think it would be nice to do it within two or three months. That would be nice. So the next few slides that i have deal with th this and the assignment that i was asked to see, when this can project be finished. So what i did is i did an ec extensive review with my team of the work finished and the work thats left and for each station i examined what are the key elements of work that still need to be done and how much time will it take for these elements to be completed . Based on that, i have prepared a few slides which kind of show in summary the work thats left to be done and the amount of time it would take and the longest one is the chinatown station. As you can see, i have listed some of the seven key elements that need to be completed. And with these things getting done, this station can be finished by june. And that is the commitment of the contractor and we, of course, have had discussions with the contractor and he has committed to finishing the job by this date, as well. The next station, these stations are further advanced than chinatown and ums should be finished by april and those are the key tasks for that station that are left to be done. The ydm station also will be finished by april. We expect these things to be done. And then, the key activities that will take the longest and static integration with train control and all of those elements. And so once the contractor is finished with his job, then we get into the startup trade testing, vehicle testing and get thgetting the cpu certification and safety certification. These are all activities that we are programming to take somewhere between 12 to 14 months. And we believe that this is a good schedule. I have looked at the time and i have experienced that myself on other projects and i would say that yes, there are projects that take even longer. We have a project in our area that is taking, maybe, two years, but i do not expect that to happen on our project and i feel that we have a good schedule and by summer of 2021, we should be able to run trains. So thats my presentation. A fina final slide is a completf june of 2020, revenue service, summer of 2021. Thank you and if you have any questions, i would be happy to answer. Just to be clear with everyone, when we settled this today voting on this, even though there are outstanding further claims, those claims cannot delay the project any further because of this modification, correct. That is correct. And then related to that, you just presented a slide about testing. I know a lot of people a a question if were getting a system in june of next year, one question is, can you open stations sooner and then, two is, you know, is there any way that testing window could be smaller . Ill answer the first one. So on the issue of opening stations sooner, i have heard suggestions that, perhaps, you could open the central subway and have it not stop at chinatown first and thats not something we think makes sense from a rider point of view. Weve been talking about this subway as a connection to chinatown fochinatown for over d i think it would be confusing opening it one station first. But secondarily, i think talking about testing systems, this is a system and though the construction work is due to be work in chinatown, i would be very wary of trying to open it piecemeal. Out. I can add that i have had discussions with the contractor, with our own staff and we are also working closely with the Operation Staff and youve had discussions with julie and based on the experience they have had with some of the other projects that they have worked on, it seems like it would not be to our benefit to try to do it sooner because its a safety issue. We also have to get cpu certification. These things take time and they have to be convinced and the other thing is, theyre not committed to a schedule. Their focus is on safety and if its not safe, they will not give us one day of slack. So thats why we have to make sure that we have the time that it takes to get this done. And the other thing i would say on the stations is that the stations are not that far apart. Theres only a threemonth gap between the two stations and chinatown. So were not really gaining a lot about even thinking about opening a certain station before the other one. They should all be coming online about the same time. So its good to open all of them. So ill turn it to the rest of the directors . I do have several questions on this one. And maybe starting with the biggest one. We have a twoyear delay here and thats very substantial. What caused it . Well, i can give it a shot of what i have looked at. Number one, these are complicated projects and a lot of these projects get delayed. Two years is not an abnormal delay for these projects, first of all. I know projects delayed even longer than that. And of this magnitude and complexity. The other thing is this was very complex and different and we had to be careful about doing the project safely. One of the critical safety areas was tumbling under market street, under the bart tunnel and muni tunnels. I dont know how much was factored in or not, but thats one thing. The second thing that was a very complex operation was chinatown is in a very difficult and very congested urban environment, so the decision was made were not going to cut this station, which is typically done. You open up the street and thats how you do construction. So this is the most difficult construction method which was mining from below. One of the things that happened was that there were unexpected conditions. The soil was much tougher to excavate than even the planning and the soil reports showed. So that took a lot longer. So that was one more thing. Then the other thing is this was a design bid built project, not design build. What that means is if you make changes, you have to resign the changes and then the resign has to be given to the contractor and then that has to be constructed. So that takes extra time. So while the advantage of design bid build is that you actually get the project the way you want it, but at the same time, you are giving up on delays if you make change. So those are some of the tradeoffs and reasons it happened this way. Yeah, im having a hard time squaring that. Its a complicated project. Mining is not a new technology. Its done all over the world. My understanding was, there was a Design Change in the plaza at the chinatown station that had some kind of let me ask the question. How much of that twoarea delay did that Design Change have do and did that Design Change have any cascading effect in other elements of the project . Give us a slaye slide on the chinatown station because it shows it graphically. The path depends on activities. One is concrete work and goes through the electrical and atcs and the line at the bottom which actually shows the delivery for the chinatown elevator. Theres dus different factors at play here. Number one, its very difficult to get labor, so i know the contractor struggled to keep electricians on the property working. I know that was an issue with the chase center and other buildings being built in the city. We knew there was a large amount of lead time with the elevator. It takes a year to get components on hand and thats a different function of the large amount of high rise on the west coast. The Design Change itself, just for transparency, it was the decision to make sure that the communitys desire to have not just a station head house but a programmable plaza above the station that was a decision we did make after the project had begun. But its hard to pull out and say the elevator was 40 and the supply chain was 30 . All of the things together are what pushed the completion date of chinatown to june 2020. Did the resign have the effect of putting the elevator on the critical path. It did. It did . It did. So thats a culprit, it seems to be and as you say, its 40 , 70 . That at least is something that makes sense to me as the cause of such a significant delay. Second question is, what is the estimated cost to complete the project today . We are working on it. We have some ideas. We dont have a solid number because we while we do have the climbs from thclaims from the ce have backup, but were looking at the escrow documents that the contractor has so we know the cost items. So once we examine all of that, we will have a solid idea on what the numbers are. So if we have an estimate now, its an estimate, its a ballpark. Thats what my question was, whats the estimated cost of completion . Let me just lay it out for everybody. Theres the 32 million that were asking for your approval on today. And then theres the two other buckets of cost that was referred to. The additional cost claims that tutor and most importantly, the sub contractors might come in with and then there are other costs outside of the tutor contract costs, the agencys borne costs won, so those are e other two large buckets here. In addition to the 32, weve seen initial numbers from tutor and i dont think theyre credible or worth discussing in public. We think that do you have a credible number in the alternative, though . I mean, just so the public and the audience understands, and just so i understand, the action before us today is to resolve delay claims up to a certain date. Its not to resolve all claims that tutor and his contractor might have, correct. Thats correct. As you said tom, thats bucket one. Bucket two is wer when you takeo more years to build a project, you have to take mtas to do it, including you. So we should have an e estimatef that cost. The first one was the estimate of nontutor costs which are mta plus our Programme Manager consultants and those are, again, order of magnitude, 20 million. To completion . To completion. Ok. The second part and if you could put the slide up, the one i was keeping track of the numbers, slide number six. So that remaining contingency is insufficient even to cover the staff cost, correct. Thats correct. Which is why and then whatever we negotiate with tutor and the subs is gobbing just how deep in the hole will we go . Do you have a number on the order of magnitude of 50 million. 50 . 50. Is that inclusive . It is not. So we had tha add that to thd weve got 70 and we have 15 to apply to the 70. So now we have 55 . Right. Order of magnitude. Thats the math. The estimate you have on delay, its good to see that it has a contingency of three months . Do you know the estimate behind that contingency . Its actually on us because if the contractor delays, hes l irklibel for liquidates damag. So that three months is built in as a contingency. Are the lds trigge triggerede end of the three months. June 29th. Your contingency is after that . So if we get passed that delay point, there will be an argument about whose fault it was, this all likelihood. Yes. Two more questions, chair. You mense mentioned the other py in the region but i dont think it hurts to say it bart and bart has opened and extension to the warm springs station in Alameda County and santa clara is trying to open one and bart built the warm springs extension and santa clara built the santa clara extension but both had trouble with testing. You indicated you didnt think we would have that kind of trouble and i just would like to know the source of your confidence. Let me jump in on this, but i dont want to hold nadime fully accountable. So our approach is to make sure were ready with an internal task force of folks who have deep understanding of all of the disciplines needed for testing, and all of the rail operations that are entitled. So were forming that team now and clearing peoples workloads and premeeting internally and trying to get folks absces and s to the tunnel. One of the things is we negotiated access to the parts of the station as part of the modification. So were basically doing everything we can to prepare for that team to be ready to hit the testing hard on day one. Thats what we can control right now. Let me ask one, i think, obvious question. Have you talked to bart or vta about their experience and maybe learned a couple of lessons about lets not do it that way. This is the right time to start those conversations. Ok, great. Last question, and this is on your laundry list of potential suspects to get the money from. How large is the fund balance that youre referencing in the third bullet . Well learn more that well be talking about in the fall. What is the courier budget. Ill acts our cfo to tell us the size of our fund balance. Hes going to say its zero, you watch. [ laughter ] no, im not, actually. Im the cfo for the sfmta. The boar has a Research Policy that weve maintained which is 10 of ou our operating budget d we committed to maintaining 1. 2 billion, the operating budget, so weve had 120 million as a minimum target. Actually, in the last couple of years, because we get a percentage of the citys general revenues and comes in higher than expected at the end of the last few fiscal years, that has grown. So i think we were reporting before it around 160 million and it may be a little higher than that. But we actually are still we have not yet closed the books on fiscal year 1819 and its in that magnitude. And were making sure were doing a lot of things with the new Financial System to nail down the components because part is defining im talking about Available Fund balance. We have a lot more fund balance committed to different reimbursements that weve committed to. You would be ok with that decision . It is taking funds from realoreallocating operators. I feel like ill provide you with options that will be a decision on which of the options to take. Im not sure which recommendation ill be taking. Because any fund balance in excess of out reserve policy, theres a reserve and everything requires tradeoffs. So i see that as a board decision in the end. Can i ask before you leave the podium, could you give us a quick refresher on the fund balance and how long weve had that policy because i dont think weve tapped into that in a number of years and most members were not on this board when we did that . Well, i wasnt with the mta when the policy was established so this is what ive learned from joining in last year. Were planning to come before the board soon, probably in november, with a full discussion, not only the yearend close, but our reserve policy because we may be recommending an increase in that reserve policy. We can wait for that. I wanted to take a moment to remind everybody that this was a hard comeby decision to have that Rainy Day Fund and how important it is. I should say, the fund balance was used during the last serious recession in order to maintain operations and came close to zero at that time. And so, then, with good work from previous boards, my predecessor and lots of staff, that policy was established and we have managed to build backup reserves. Those reserves are for the use of when theres an urgent need and this is a need that the board wants to use it on, thats one of the possibilities. Director bunkerman brinkman,t late yocongratulate you. Theres always an emergency out there, but it is important to know where we are and if were in excess, then weve at least got to talk about, not that we have to do it. Ill conclude with just the following comments. I do believe the recommendation before us today is a responsible course of action. No one likes overruns. No one likes delays. But what they like even less are overruns when you dont tell them theyre there and delays when you dont disclose them. I view the action today as the act of coming clean on what the finish line for this project is going to look like and how much it will cost and what the delays are going to be. So as this discussion disclosed within we have several stem steo take but we finally, for the project, after some hemming and hawing this area, we have a date and a cost estimate that passes the smell test and thats the First Step Towards restoring credibility for the project. So i would be willing to sort the iteming when it cup when ito making motions. Dr. Brinkman. Thank you for the presentation. I know it took a lot of work for you to dig into this and give us answers to these questions. I appreciate it. And on the same light as director hemming ers quest for transparency, we should remind the public when these bid processes come up, we are required to accept the lowest bid, arent we. Yes. Even if there is experience wit contractor and things to consider, we dont have the opportunity to consider those. So i just wanted to remind the public of that and thank you for your hard work on this and i agree with director hemminger that this is something we need to move forward on. please stand by . The delay, but making design decisions like that, i dont think that that number was, that that was expected when the decision was made. So i think the other dimension we should remember here, this project has been extremely impactful on the transat community and one of the things they have been doing, when not negotiating this and getting a handle on the costs of it and construction, to get the construction off the streets of chinatown and there is an important dimension here, too, that is, and perhaps this connects to director brinkmans low bid as well, less impactful on communities is really important because it will it will it will take a lot of risk at the project and thats something thats a little hard to predict at the time we make, whether its a design decision or decision about whose bids we accept, thats an important dimension. Its one to remember. And we should at some point in the future do a really thorough postmortem on this project and understand the continuo continuous improvements, what mistakes could we not make next time, but a couple Lessons Learned you want to share with us right now in terms of tough, tough, hardfought Lessons Learned in terms of cost overruns and delays. I think the thing i would say in terms of good project management, you always have to have your focus on cost and schedule, cost and schedule, cost and schedule. And what happens, a lot of times, wellintentioned Program Managers have a lot of other pressures and a lot of other needs, and i have faced that myself. I have faced situations where you are in the middle of construction and there is a pressure to add a station. So can you imagine if somebody said add another station to this, this line was not long enough for that. But, those kind of things even happen. But the thing i would say is at the end of the project there is a requirement from the f. D. A. There is a Lessons Learned exercise and we will have to go through that, and we can look at what happened in this project and have some key Lessons Learned that we can share with the board. Thank you. And thanks for your transparency and its down the charts of the individual stations as well as the system timeline, really, really helpful. Thanks for all your work on this. Thanks very much. Great. Any other final questions among directors before we turn it over to the public to provide input . All right. Rowen, followed by cat, and herbert, the only people to turn in speaker cards on this topic. Good afternoon, directors. Roman katao. Comments were hilarious, its what should have happened, wont get into it now. Northeast should have had a station. But i would like to first commend you all for bringing this amount of oversight and scrutiny that is long overdue to this project. One way that you know that this was overdue is that the unrevised completion date was in the past. The project is not complete and it was supposed to have been completed, very good sign that these things were not being revised in a timely and direct manner. I would also like to thank director brinkman for saying what i was thinking, very Serious Problems with state requirements around contractor selection and i hope that this city will help push for legislation to address some of those problems because that ultimately is how these things are going to be fixed in the longterm. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Cat carter. And then last herbert wiener. Hello again, directors, cat carter, acting executive director for San Francisco transit riders. We are let down by the delays and the cost overrun, our office is across the street from the station, and i want to go inside. San francisco cannot continue to be this bad in Major Projects. We are so far building all the infrastructure we need so desperately and the public is losing faith that San Francisco can ever build a subway. It is really great to see that with changes at the leadership at the top that we are getting more honesty and transparency, and i commend you for that, but baffling to me how it got this bad. We ask for a full assessment, a public dialogue how contracting public management, oversight happened. Know what happened and why and how we can make sure it never happens again. Sfmta has a lot of work to do to build back up Public Confidence so we can support future projects and the funding for them. Thank you very much. Thank you, next speaker, please. Herbert wiener, jason, tony, and then chris. Herbert wiener, weiner, instead of wiener. Oh, see, you got it wrong. Thats sfgovtv. Any way, i appreciate it, commissioner hemingers attempts to get some clarification. Now, this whole business about accepting the lowest bid contractor, that is a trap because i believe there are all sorts of contingency with the lowest contractor. You know, theres going to be cost overruns, all sorts of expenses involved, and if im correct, 122 contract modifications, thats a lot. And the greatest peril is to the m. T. A. Budget, because if you are going to have to pay extra amounts, are you is it going to detract from transportation . What is going to be the cost of thshgs you know, this is really disastrous, one boondoggle. Now, people may state that you shouldnt name it after rose pack and the rest of it, im comfortable with it because its the essence of rose pack, with contract overruns and shenanigans. So, i i really think that this has really been a real disaster and boondoggle and the best thing you can say about this project is it never should have happened. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Jason shomar, tony lao and chris mann. Not sure if im supposed to speak on item 11 or 12, but here today representing chinatown trip, a volunteer organization focussed on improving transportation in chinatown and doing so since 1976. Im here today to speak about the twoyear delay for the central subway project and how this body needs to implement strategies to mitigate that impact. The past few years of construction has been brutal for the people of chinatown, and particularly those who depend on chinatown for inlanguage services and culturally relevant products. To compensate for the additional two years, the residents, merchants and visitors have to endure. One of the strategies we want to see implemented is the creation of a Shuttle Bus Program connecting neighborhoods with high asian populations such as the richmond, sunset, bay view and visitation valley to chinatown, especially on the weekends and not just during the morning and evening rush hours. Lets make it easier for people to get to their medical appointments to visit their grandparents and to go back home with groceries, thank you. Thank you. Next speakers, please. Tony lao, chris mann and rosa chan. Hi, good afternoon, tony lao, board member from the China Chamber of commerce and run a Small Business. I understand the safety concern we have, regarding to being the substation, and focus how the subway has been affecting chinatowns businesses and residential. So, definitely for sure both residential and Small Businesses will slowly move out from chinatown because of this Long Construction duration, the noise level and air quality level around, and especially with the traffic. And then also this construction has been keeping a lot of residential and tourist visit from, to chinatown, and what i mean by local resident is meaning People Living in San Francisco, for example, myself, just because of the traffic and also the noise level. By doing that, so, the chinatown businesses definitely has decrease in revenue and definitely they have job, the Employment Opportunity for the local chinatown residents as well. So thats the reason why there will be more, i guess, residential and all businesses to move from chinatown and there will be more vacancy in chinatown, i mean property value, everything will definitely go down. So, i definitely would like to see no more delay on this project and move on from it. Thank you. Chris mann and rosa chen, the last people who have turned in speaker cards. Hi, good afternoon, directors. My name is chris mann, im a senior planner with Chinatown Community development center. Echoing some other comments already. It is encouraging to see a definitive deadline for project completion, but this still does represent a much longer delay than anticipated, so we just hope that the agency can look at more mitigation options and resources to help the Chinese Community to see the project through and thrive while we wait for project completion. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Rosa chen. Hello, director, rosa chen, i just wanted to talk about on top of what everyone else has said about, you know, how we choose our contractor with the lowest bid and how we need to fix that, on top of that, i think its very important that we also talk about when we start a project we should really think about how its going to affect the communities and how we have to add these mitigation funds into the project already so that its already there instead of us scrambling to look for money constantly to figure out how can we help the merchants survive in the community, how do we help, not only chinatown but the effect of the union square businesses, affected every neighborhood along the line. And that, its very important for us to really realize that, you know, chinatown is being very affected, with another twoyear delay, going to be more vacancies, more businesses are having to pay higher rent and its getting harder and harder for them, so we need to come out and think of concrete ways to really make sure that it helps these businesses, maybe through advertisement, not just on sfmta but like local newspaper, on television, so that we can get more people to come back into the community and i think thats very important and will help many communities as well thats being affected by central subway. So, thank you. Thank you. Jake shumano, the last person to turn in a speaker card. Good afternoon, directors. We own and operate the shell station at the corner of bryant and 4th street. I would like to say just through speaking to Business Owners down there as well, that there have been a lot of impacts to Small Business in that location aside from the Chinatown Community thats been so impacted by that subway construction up there. Ours is on grade, spoken to the owners of hotel utah, coinop, as well as the grand club. All of them have expressed concerns about the duration of construction there as well. And then just speaking, oh, one more thing. The tunnel pops up under the freeway there, there is a rerouting of traffic, in order for cars headed southbound on 4th street to access the station they need to be in the lefthand lane. Being out there at the station and operating it as asset manager, ive seen people in the righthand lanes making a left hand turn to bryant street in front of our station. I think there needs to be better way finding signs out there. When the trains start running i think there will be more impacts and creates a huge amount of collision hazard. Aside from that, as a citizen, to just be in the audience and hear that a portion of the subway could open three months earlier and serve a huge amount of people commuting to and from caltrans, etc. , to the chase center, but we are not going to do it because the chinatown station may not be opening is grossly inadequate, especially with the carry costs for the project and i would encourage we open as soon as possible. Thank you. Any other additional speakers who would like to speak for Public Comments . Seeing none, closed. Directors. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you to the public for coming down and sharing all the comments. That has really interested me. If we cant open the subway earlier but all the surface construction is going to be done, and i know we have an operator shortage, and its difficult, i wonder if we could run a bus service along the line to kind of get people used to the idea theyll have a one seat ride, not all the way through chinatown, thats horribly crowded but to scoop up the caltrain riders who would be taking the bus, and the mass would not work out but the point of the previous speaker of getting people ready to go back into chinatown and especially on transit, it might be worth considering, how do we get people ready for the one seat ride from caltrain to chinatown. And i dont know the answer to this question, but the idea of how do we make sure that we keep businesses healthy and whole during these Long Construction projects. Do Value Capture models take that into consideration when we are looking about what, at what this underground is going to bring to its route, do we have a way to almost shift that, ok, its going to help them in the future, how do we, how do we capture some of that and apply it during the construction phase, and i dont know enough about the Value Capture models to know if its even something thats included in there. But definitely worth looking into. Because the point was made instead of scrambling to figure out how we help the businesses when they are already impacted, it would be great on the front to help them. Thank you, director brinkman, talking on the next item. Happy to make a motion to approve that and thank everybody for their work on it. Great, a second . Anything else . If not, in favor of the contract modifications, motion passes. Item 12, presentation construction regarding the San Francisco construction mitigation program, proposed options for implementing the citywide direct business support component of the program and use of the 5 million Small Business impact mitigation fund. Appropriate item after what you just heard. Update on the construction mitigation program, knowing whats going on with the construction in the city and the development, the city is working to support Small Businesses through the long infrastructure projects. Its not a secret, unprecedented amount of both private and Public Development going on here in San Francisco and as director brinkman brought up, a value and ultimate value to the Infrastructure Improvements that all departments are making throughout San Francisco and we are trying to make this street safer, trying to improve transit for our riders across the system but there is an impact throughout the city. So, here is an example of just a couple of the major bond programs that have happened, so a major street bond in the city, transportation and road improvement bond, major sewer and water work throughout the city and most recently, the bond for work along the embarcadero and the waterfront. Again, a significant Public Investment and lots of overlapping construction going on throughout the city. That doesnt even include all the private development thats going on concurrently. So in 2017, the mayor directed the departments to come together to develop a construction mitigation plan and deal with the issues that Small Businesses have during the course of these projects. With the intent that during construction we do our best to mitigate the impacts that you just heard about to Small Businesses on major corridors. No one is going to deny there is impact to these projects, when they occur, reduced sidewalk access, disruption to parking and fewer customers in front of their businesses. We run sales tax models with the controller office, shows during a period of time loss of sales tax along these corridors, but as you know and many different transportation studies have shown on the back end there is recovery, but a period of time in which that occurs. So, we are going to try to do our best to mitigate that particular situation. The hard part about designing this program is that project funds typically are not eligible for a lot of the things we would talk about. What we did, a best management practice study of major f. T. A. Projects in los angeles and in minnesota. Also looked at different Academic Studies with regard to major street projects and the program we implement across almost all the departments across the city and county of San Francisco. So the Public Utilities commission, we here at the m. T. A. And the department of public works. On all projects when we are working on a commercial corridor, there will always be a point of contact for businesses. What we learned was to have during a Major Construction project businesses trying to contact the resident engineer or the project manager, when they are trying to manage the complexities of the project was difficult. And response times were slow. So, we will always have a specific contact for a business during the course of construction of a project. At that medium impact period where we see something thats more than 12 months of disruption, when we can consider some of the things you talked about that just came up. Marketing campaigns, we will now deploy ambassadors so people will be on the streets during that period so a Business Owner instead of trying to talk to a contractor or a foreman on the site actually has somebody daytoday they can talk to where they see up and down the corridor to discuss issues and a specific Business Liaison at that point. Our partners at the department, or the office of economic and Workforce Development will go out and educate businesses with regard to the programs and the support the city can provide during this period and then largely the subject of today when we do have Major Projects such as van ness and the central subway, we will talk about other things, contractor incentives to include in contracts so we have written specifications for that, creating Community Advisory committees with which we have done for the van ness project and the last thing, directed business support which i will talk about in a few seconds. So since the implementation of the program, we have an m. O. U. So we are committed to move this forward and looked at different tools and methods with regard to advertising and Different Things that do or do not work. There is now a standard written specification the department of public works worked with us on. One of the biggest complaints prior to implementing the