Former clients of us. I come today to show my appreciation to your support to save the beds at the arf and save our clients from being moved away from their homes for many years. Thank you, supervisor ronen and mandelman for coming to see what a Great Program we have at the arf and the buildings in general. Thank you for taking time to listen to their stories as well as how the program works. I look forward to work to improve the working environment. I am eager to cooperate with management and staff and residents to form a safe and healthy working place as provide the best care for our residents. Thank you for your support. I am amy wong. I am a Mental Health specialist and member of ifpte local 21. I have worked at the Health Center for 20 years. 18 of our clients were suddenly given eviction notices. Many would have been put on the path to the streets at a time when the city is in the Mental Health and homelessness crisis. Our union gave me hope for this change. After months of fighting, i am here to celebrate good news for San Francisco. We have stopped evictions. We have saved the arf, and when the eviction notices were given, management refused to negotiate. They tried to blame the workers, but we knew the truth. We fought, we got organized, nurses, meaningtal health workers, residents, Community Members came together. In a few weeks we collected over thousands of signatures for our petition. We shut down the Mental Health commission meeting. We won. Now there is a new law to give us, the staff, a voice. The agreement includes checks and balances and reaccountability over management from th the board of supervisor, yeah, hillary. This can be a model for the rest of the city. We can get the proper training, staffing to make sure we can give our residents the care they deserve. My workers and i are extremely grateful to Hillary Ronen and matt haney for standing side by side through us throughout the whole campaign. We have a voice and we are respected and we have value. Thank you. I am sarah larson, Mental Health treatment specialist. I have been working here since before it opened. We have accomplished a lot to keep it open, our work isnt done yet. The budget for is so closely guarded not even the Program Directors know what is in it or where it goes. I have seen how under funding the program under mines the services no funding for activities, clothing, shoes, basic things people need to get by every day. Where is the money going . Lack of resources and staffing put more and more on the staff to make sure the vulnerable residents are taken care of. We are expected to fundraise to pay for activities in a publicly funded program. I personally have to recycle trash. This is an outrage. It was able to happen because our facility has been flying under the radar for a very long time now. Clients and workers voices have been ignored by management and i look forward to discussing this in the works group which gives staff a voice. I want a recommitment to rehabilitation. As we step forward the dph sent the unions a notice to contract out 192 million of Behavioral Health services work. We have requested Background Information and we know San Francisco is not broke. We are surrounded by billionaires. We deserve better and the clients and citizens deserve better. We are only able to get it if we hold management accountable. Thank you for all of the support you have shown us so far. Good morning. I am deana chan and president of the rehab professionals of local 21. Amy and sarah are chapter members. I am here to support our members who stood up and fight the unacceptable practices. We are grateful that the director colfax showed the workers the respect they deserve by sitting down to negotiate a mutually acceptable solution. Local 21 is concerned by the lack of staffing and training and unfilled positions. We are concerned as the positions are unfilled the union received constant requests worth millions of dollars to contract out to people not trained to handle the diverse and challenging patient population. We hope the director can sit down and have a conversation with city workers to discuss why contracting out city jobs is a bad option for clients and workers. Thank you to supervisors ronen and haney for championing workers rights and thank you to our brothers and sisters at 1021 and the Labor Council and Union Workers for coming together to help stop evictions of mentally ill patients. Remember that Union Workers and Health Care Professionals are prepared to fight to make sure our patients come first. Thank you. Next speaker. Can i also thank supervisor mandelman. Your time is concluded. You have to go to the next speaker. Next speaker, please. I am with the Community Housing partnership as community organizer. We are leading the treatment on demand coalition. I want to mention that it is hard on people like myself with mental illness. It is important that we work together, not against each other. This whole process out in the public and our newspapers where the decisionmakers battling against each other, not working with each other can be difficult on people with a direct impact. The treatment on demand Coalition Supports this resolution as part of the whole towards achieving treatment on access. We understand Supportive Housing is crucial towards community stability. The root causes of most Mental Health is poverty and unequal access. Economic and Racial Justice must be part of all dialogue and broadbased solution. Thank you. Jennifer with the coalition on homelessness. We could only have Effective Solutions when they come not from the distant top but the true experts, those living and working this. I appreciate the victory and work that went into it. This is not done. Our system is truly in shambles. We have nowhere near enough want and those lucky enough to get a bed are released back to the streets and end up in worse shape. We have a need and empty beds in every part of the system there for political or bureaucratic holdups. We have overdoses on the streets and have the dangerous Counter Measure that not only has a poison pill but calling for return to the failed drug war. You know, to slam hard on possession, refill our jails, it is going to lead to fatal overdoses, not address the Mental Health issues. We reject the idea there is only two choices we tolerate on the streets or lock people up. There is a huge amount of area in between those two things. We can set out a blueprint to rebuild this system positively to pull away from the politter cam games, stop using folks for political fodder and make a difference. That is what we are calling on you all and the Mayors Office to do. Thank you so much. Before we go to the next speaker to the honored members of the public. Please respect board rule 1. 3 in prohibition against applause and other vocal support. Thank you. Bryan edwards with coalition oned homelessness. In the last month i learned a lot about a lot of things. I have an aunt who is very right wing. She lives in philadelphia. She said you are on fox news. I said what . And she said screaming at a hearing. I guess they were talking about james loyce. I want to thank you. That was fun but it showed me direct action does work some times. That is not my experience. That is not what i am comfortable with i dont like shutting down Public Meetings but if that is what it takes, that is what it was taking at this time. In the last month none of it is good. The people that work for the department of Public Health are fing am macing. What they are prohibited from doing. It doesnt make sense. It is very San Francisco and we have a ton of money and we do things really dumb and tend to over rely on law enforcement. I also found out this month if someone wants to get a shelter bed at 2 00 a. M. On a sunday and doesnt want cops to be involved, they have to be in psychosis. Ems doesnt have access to the h beds. I called 311 and said can you send anyone beside cops. They sent a fire engine that almost hit a gentleman in a crisis. They said are you going to hurt yourself . He said no. They went by. We need to get priorities straight and let the professionals when it comes to addressing homelessness it is needing professionals, not law enforcements. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am marcus heisman. I lived at the arf since 2010. I am glad that we had a victory to save the beds. However, i dont think that the hummingbird should have one blasted bed at all. Get another property and leave us residents alone. I am very comfortable at the arf. It is my home. Dont take it away from me please, as an openly gay man. Thanks, goodbye. Next speaker, please. Michael lions. As part of this program and this demand that homelessness and Mental Health and Substance Abuse treatment be treated by the experts and not the police, the biggest one of the biggest steps is to close 850 bryant but not open up some new jail. This can be done. We can see that with that the proposal to proposal to have some kind every placement jail either santa rita, god forbid, or sanbruno or electronic shackle bracelets, those are all following this Mayors Initiative of having the drug wars and having police and having aggressive district attorney. That is part of criminalizing homelessness and Mental Health, and we wont put up with it. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am daniel. I am a field representative for 10 to one representing the workers. I am here to support members at the bhc, and also our sisters and brothers from local 21. I just want to say that this whole fight over the past few months could have been prevented if dph just acted right. Dph tried to hide the plan to close the arf from the union. They did not want to put anything in writing. They told the members to lie to the residents. This should not happen. When we reached out to dph five different times, they refused to negotiate with us, refused to engage with workers. They went around and blamed workers for this. This is unacceptable. Until dph starts getting their act right and starts respecting their own workers, these issues will keep happening, the workers will keep fighting. The patients will keep suffering because of this. I thank you for helping us with this campaign. I am afraid it probably wont be the last time because dph if they are going to keep acting like that it is not the last time. Thank you to all of the workers. Next speaker. I appreciate the fact there are far fewer homeless visible on the streets these days. I appreciate that is city has taken so many into the new navigation centers. I applaud the Mayors Initiatives. I have volunteered at a homeless shelter a long time ago. It is a trying population as many individuals experience cpsd, it can make personalities difficult to be around. I would like to know that they are and will receive the psychological counseling they need and require not simply be medicated. I understand that many individuals in prisons are mentally ill. I dont know if they were mentally ill before they entered or became mentally ill in the system. I dont know who is making that diagnosis. If this system is corrupt people are being diagnosed as mentally ill to have a captive audience or market. Any other members of the public to testify on these items . Public comment is closed. Thanks again everyone for all of your work on this important issue and coming to this positive resolution to the arf situation and highlighting the many ongoing needs to address our gaps in our Mental Health and Behavioral Health system. I want to acknowledge we are joined by supervisor peskin. I am going to make some motions. First of all, can we file item one without objection . Can we table items 2 . And items 4 without objection . Can we accent amendments to item three without objection and recommend it to the full board without objection . Thank you. Mr. Clerk please call item five. Resolution eve receive receiving the annual report for tuism submitted by the property Improvement District law of 1994 and Management Agreement with the city. Thank you. I would like to welcome chris. Thank you. Oawd Senior Program manager. This is the fiscal year 20172018 report for the tourism Improvement District. As you know the Community Districts are governed by the 1994 act and local law. The resolution covers the annual report ensuring the bids are meeting the Management Plans and conducting the annual review and provides a board of supervisors memo in your possession. This is a business based district. It is assessment placed on businesses and in this case hotels, motels. There are two zones. Zone one in the red zone you see downtown in the core of San Francisco and zone two which is the outer neighborhoods of San Francisco. Both are business based districts. In official budget was 27 million. In fiscal year 20172018 it was 23,600,000. They are to expire on december 31. It was p. M. 19 mill i dont see and the fis Million Dollars. They are to expire on june of 2045. For the owd there are three benchmarks what is the variance between the management and fiscal year budget. Two. The variance between the amount and expenses. Three whether the tid and med indicate the funds carried to the next fiscal year and designating projects for future years. I would like to thank the Audits Department in determining these benchmarks. The tid are run by the executive director. Lynn is not here. Cassandra, the Senior Vice President at sf travel will present the operations. The tid Service Areas are marketing and promotions, service to the convention center, administration costs. The expansion of themu the markg fund and future capital as well as administration. For 20172018 they met the first fiscal year budget benchmark as did the mascone expanse district. For checking for actual the tourism district did meet the benchmark. Mosmoscone melt this as well. Then met the Carry Forward. They did meet this benchmark. The moscone met the Carry Forward and met the benchmark. In completing the annual reports and financials we set forth the following recommendations. First, the districts were successful in implements the Management Plan and met the benchmark requirements. They successfully remedied the violation of the brown act. The Management Organization implemented the recommendations from the Previous Year regarding website maintenance and ensured the links were working with uptodate information. It is to expire in 2023 abseeking early renew. They have received Technical Support regarding this. If there are no questions for the staff i would like to invite ms. Costello up to present on the accomplishments. Thank you. Thank you, chris. Good morning, supervisor, San Francisco travel. I am here to present a few highlights to comment chris presentation. On the convention side, we had over 1,400 meetings. Our sales team booked 1. 7 million room nights. We had missions to washington, d. C. And chicago reaching 240 meeting planners and attended over 50 trade shows. Our leisure visitors were 60 of visitors. Over 62 of the 10 billion spend is from our international market. Very important to continue to attract those international visitors. We have a number of Visitor Information Centers including the brand new one. If you havent been, check it out. It is gorgeous. They served 600,000 visitors to San Francisco including Convention Attendees. We have an incredible staff comprised of paid and volunteers speaking over 12 languages. That is a big asset to international visitors. We have my sf which trained 400 people to be tourism ambassadors. San francisco saw 25 million visitors. We hope that continues to climb. We will continue to try to make that number climb. We 4,375,000,000 3. 7 million visitors and that is over 1 21 Million Dollars in impact. Our twitter had 215,000 followers. Our facebook over 500,000. I want to note for context that our destination Management Organizations were in the top tier in terms of social impact. These are impressive when you look at other dmos around the country. Our moscone expansion had 500 million project. It was completed on time and on budget and opened earlier this year. We had a phasedin portion of the construction so we allowed the building to stay open to accommodate Convention Attendees to continue to come through the building. This was challenges with construction noise and impact. We were able to mitigate the impacts to continue the economic benefits having the center open during that time. Lastly, we utilize the incentive fund. We use to that attract new clients to the space and really was helpful during the expansion to mitigate impact from current clients. That is all i have to present. Happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any questions . Thank you for the presentation. We will move to Public Comment. Any members of the public to testify on this item . Public comment is closed. Colleagues can we recommend this item to the full board without objection . Great. Mr. Clerk please call item 6. Resolution receiving and approving the annual report for the yerba district submitted as required by the Management Agreement with the city. This is the 20172018 annual report for the benefit district. I will skip over some of the the repetitive slides. Unlike the two districts you heard about this is property based. The initial budget they were renewed recently was 2. 9 million. If fiscal year 201718 budget approximately 3 million. They were renewed in 2015 and set to expire on december 31, 2030. Executive director and Service Areas are safety and security, branding activation, marketing, management and operations. For property based they review if the budget was within 10 from the Management Plan. Benchmark two, 5. 08 of the actuals came from Stores Sources other than assessment. Three the budget was within 10 from the actuals and four whether it is in the amount of funds from the fiscal year and designating projects to be spent in the upcoming year. They did meet number one for the budget and Management Plan budget. 2. They did meet this benchmark as well with a 8. 46 non assessment Revenue Generation in 1 1718 ad has done well meeting this. 3. 1718 they did not meet this. They missed this by. 74 for the cleaning and streetscape improvements. Upon further review we reviewed this was done to delays in improvement projects we can discuss further. For benchmark 4 they had the Carry Forward how to spend it. They met this. In conclusion they met three out of four requirements. They have performed well in implementing the service plan and market and produce the events, increase the Community Stakeholders activities and maintain an active board of directors and subcommittees. I would like to invite her up to present accomplishments of the district. Thank you. Good morning i am the director of the yerba Community Benefit district. I have a few slides. First i want to highlight the district. It is basically between second and fifth streets on the south side of market down to perry, a half block south of harrison. The colors show you the different type of uses that we have in the neighborhood. We are fortunate to be a mixed use area and as a result of this we have a board of directors of 28 people who have to represent this diversity as well and very active board. We are thrilled and i know that cassandra has left we are thrilled this is done. It has had a significant economic benefit. We appreciate them adding public art to the neighborhood which has a lot of art components. What do we do . Our focus is to improve quality of life in the neighborhood. We define this in five ways. I am sorry the formatting the funky. We do cleaning, safety, marketing and Community Benefit fund grants to organizations also working to improve the neighborhood. To give you a sample we responded to 60,000 requests for cleaning in the fiscal year 2018. We moving 161tons of trash from the neighborhood. I know you can read so i am not reading this to you. This is supplemental to what public works actually does across the city and specifically in our neighborhood. For safety we have community guides, goodwill ambassadors a social Service Specialist working with the street population for services and partner for a bike patrol officer. He responded to 5,000 requests for services dealing with specific issues. We d do a count how many people are on the streets. We averaged 53 people each night in our neighborhood. Our approach is service first. We are trying to connect people to services. Our specialist will get to know the people, find out their issues and connect them to services, make appointments and escort them and walk them through the process to make it to give us the best chance of success. We do streetscape improvements. One of the things we under spent were projects delayed. We installed nine big belly waste reseptacles. We added 13 additional so we have 22 total. We added two new art installations. We added more bike racks and worked with the city on the Second Street improvement project. That is the picture on the right. The individual is sitting on a custom bench in the neighborhood. We market the neighborhood to bring people in to support the businesses there. Last year we launched walking tours. I want to show you the twist and i am not going to encourage you to participate. We have the annual event that was saturday night. Greatroud. And then we do regular mailings to our Property Owners and redesigned our website. The one thing that is different for our district is that we have a Community Benefit fund. The Property Owners decided they wanted us to support other organizations that were working to improve the neighborhood. In 2010 we created the Community Benefit fund. We gave away 165,000 in grants to organizations. These are samples of the things we supported. Since 2010 we have given 1. 4 million to organizations in the neighborhood. A map of the actuals. This is all in the report for fiscal year 20172018 we did come up shy on cleaning and streetscape it was not because of cleaning services or streetscape improvement. We learned that things take longer than we anticipate they are going to take. We try to fine tune the budget. I can tell you in advance we hit the mark for the fiscal year just completed. An example of the just completed fiscal year budget. Last but not least in the 20172018 we created the excellence awards to support and to award individuals in the neighborhood doing great things. This is a photo of the first recipients of this award. They have done things from people that keep the streets clean to public art, activations in the neighborhoods. Supervisor kim is here for championing the neighborhood. That is it for me. I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you for the presentation and all of your good work. Colleagues any questions . Thank you. I move we send this item to the full board with positive remember. Can we take that without objection . We do need Public Comment. Any members of the public that wish to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I move we send this to the full board with positive recommendations. Can we take that without objection . Great. Please call item 7. Again a the civic center comy district for the fiscal year 20172018. This is the civic center Community Benefit district annual report. It is a propertybased Community Benefit district. The initial budget was 691,000. It is a assessment budget was p. M. 828,000. It was established in 2011. This was going to expire on 2021. As you know it was renewed this summer. The executive director is tracey who is here today. The Service Areas are Safety Community be service ambassadors, activation of public placings. They review four benchmarks for the district. Checking the variance whether one percent actuals came from sources other than assessment revenue. If the variance between the fiscal year and actuals was within 10 variance Percentage Points and if they are indicating the funds carried over to the upcoming fiscal year. For benchmark one they did meet this benchmark requirement. For benchmark two, the civic center raised 46. 22 of the budget through non assessment revenue and met that benchmark as well. Benchmark three. It was well with in the 10 variance for fiscal years 20172018 and did meet this as well. They did indicate the Carry Forward as required by state law. Findings and conclusions they have performed well and the civic center has performed well in implements the service plan and met the requirements set forthwith the city and state code. They worked with oewd and the Tax Collector to collect several outstanding debts. This was distributed in fiscal year 2018 higher 2019. They partnered with city agencies on successful implementation of public space in Civic Center Plaza and the mall. They maintained an active board of directors on the operations. If there are no questions i would like to invite her up to present on their accomplishmen accomplishments. Good morning. Executive director of the cbd. A few slides to augustment the staff presentation. This was the district in fiscal year 20172018. Roughly 100acre on the north of Church Street near tenderloin school and Market Street to the south. A little over 700 parcels in the new district. As chris said. Our services focused on cleaning, maintenance and Public Safety. Key services for us are the garage greeter at the Civic Center Garage and playground safety monitors. Last year and the year before we held a safety summit inn vitting the entire community be to Market Street. A few stats here. We have many, many more on the website. We are pressure watching 46,000 linear feet per year removing 60,000tons of trash per year. Our needle numbers are back up to 1,000 each month. They dipped for a while. They are on the rise again. We had seven Free Community events in 2018. We begun construction of the cafe and Civic Center Plaza celebrating the oneyear anniversary this month. We held the Civic Center PlazaTree Lighting on december 5th. This year it will be wednesday, december 4th, same time, 5 00 to 7 00 p. M. And we are really busy with the launch of the Renewal Campaign for the district which we successfully completed in july of this year. Thank you. Thank you. Thankings for the presentation and the good work. We can go to Public Comment. They members of the public to testify opthis item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Colleagues, can we send this to the full board with positive recommendation without objection . Thank you. Mr. Clerk please call item 8. Agenda item 8 resolution receiving and approving the annual report for the Central MarketCommunity Benefit district for the calendar year 2017. Thithis is the report. This is a propertybased district. It was renewed in 2013 with an initial assessment budget 1. 2 million. The 2017 was 1. 4 million set to expire june 30, 2028. Executive director is tracey. Service Public Safety, cleaning, management and economic development. We reviewed four benchmarks for the district. The difference between it is related to benchmark two. The requirement is 3. 68 . The other four benchmarks are the same as the previous property based cbds. For the first benchmark they did meet this. It was within the 10 variance. For the assessment revenue and other income benchmark two they were above requirement at 21. 53 . They did meet this benchmark. Benchmark three the fiscal year budget they were below 10 variance on each Service Category and did meet the benchmark. For four they indicated the carryover and met it. The organization did a commend commendsable job to support the district. They hosted the seventh annual art event feature feature featue artists. They fulfill the Management Plan and maintain an active board of directors and subcommittees. If there are no questions for staff i would like to invite ms. Hello again. Executive director for the Central MarketCommunity Benefit district. Last year we changed the name we are mid market. We are talking about 2017 today so this is back to that year. This is a map of our district. 806 parcels with an annual budget 1. 4 million. You will see highlighted in yellow the significant number of sites under development in this district. Close to 2 million square feet. Core services cleaning maintenance Public Safety and maintenance 7 00 a. M. To 7 00 p. M. Each day. A few stats with human and animal waste. Graffiti takings and Pressure Washing 30,000 linear feet quarterly. Next to the tenderloin this is the most intense for a cbd to manage. Public Safety Services we are reaching out to pedestrians, merchants, local residents to do a significant amount of social Service Outreach and partnership with the District Social Service agencies. Also for Public Safety we continue to expand our Security Camera program. We have very successful safety teams we launch when we can afford to or get grants. We pair a Community Ambassador with a San Francisco 10b officer and that wonderful. It is well received in the community. Then we do the annual safety summit. In 2017 we got over 200 people to the strand theater. We did on stage active shooter training, presentation to stop the bleed campaign from sf general and the lobby is filled with the City Safety Service agencies and their information. In terms of economic developments a number of new businesses open for our highlighted here but to very large coworking facilities which have brought jobs and services and employees to our district. We appreciate that. Then because of the high number of under development in our district we work closely with developers to try to make sure Development Sites are as safe and goodlooking as possible. These are examples of two art projects we did in our district. Just a snapshot of the last art walk that we did. The art walk was created a decade ago to bring exposure to the businesses on the sixth street corridor that continues to this day. We fill almost every storefront on sixth with an artist for this event. We get 2000 people on the sixth street corridor. We look forward to that event in 2020. Thank you very much. Any members of the public to comment on this item. If i could get a word to express a few personal sentiments regarding the present state of energy as it impacts property taxed through cbd designation. It may be true by deferring maintenance they may appear rotten through the bone. It will be preferable if the state were to prevent predatory lenders from exploiting the crisis by blocking the consumption of the company. I would rather see the state declare Eminent Domain to the sudden loss of power and Consumer Confidence in carrying out the transactions. The broad impact on educational and athletic activities, the millions lost with corresponding decrease in revenue. Bond holders may be guided to undermine the company and to bleed it of the remaining strength. That may behalf of the reason the lenders propose 4 billion settlement, some for fire victims, less stock is worth on the books, the stronger the bonds for corporate assets. If lenders take over, the shareholders will lose equity andlerders will attempt to take over expenditures by racing utility rates on consumers. Public would be compelled to take it over. They can be made to serve a purpose. The moment should be viewed as a bellwether for the state. Governor can prevent it by declaring Eminent Domain. Thank you. Any other members of the public to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Thanks for all of the informative presentations. Can we send this item to the full board with positive recommendation without objection . Great. Mr. Clerk please call items 9 through 15 foreclosed session. Agenda items 9 through 15 are ordinances authorizing settlements of lawsuits and attorneys fee claims against the city and county of San Francisco. Any members of the public to testify on the items to be heard in closed session . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Do we have a motion to convene in closed session . So moved. So we are now in during the closed session deliberations, the Committee Recommended to put all of the agenda items to the board with the caveat that the item 15 would be sent to the board. Thank you, mr. Clerk, i would make a motion not to disclose. So moved. Any further business . There is no further business. We are adjourned. Thank you. [ ] he is a real leader that listens and knows how to bring people together. Brought this department together like never before. I am so excited to be swearing in the next chief of the San FranciscoFire Department, ladies and gentlemen, lets welcome, Jeanine Nicholson. applause . I grew up total tomboy, athlete. I loved a good crisis, a good challenge. I grew up across the street from the fire station. My dad used to take me there to vote. I never saw any female firefighters because there werent any in the 1970s. I didnt know i could be a fire fighter. When i moved to San Francisco in 1990, some things opened up. I saw women doing things they hadnt been doing when i was growing up. One thing was firefighting. A woman recruited me at the gaypride parade in 1991. It was a perfect fit. I liked using my brain, body, working as a team, figuring things out, troubleshooting and coming up with different ways to solve a problem. In terms of coming in after another female chief, i dont think anybody says that about men. You are coming in after another man, chief, what is that like. I understand why it is asked. It is unusual to have a woman in this position. I think San Francisco is a trailblazer in that way in terms of showing the world what can happen and what other people who may not look like what you think the fire chief should look like how they can be successful. Be asked me about being the first lbgq i have an understands because there are little queer kids that see me. I worked my way up. I came in january of 1994. I built relationships over the years, and i spent 24 years in the field, as we call it. Working out of firehouses. The Fire Department is a family. We live together, eat together, sleep in the same dorm together, go to crazy calls together, dangerous calls and we have to look out for one another. When i was burned in a fire years ago and i felt responsible, i felt awful. I didnt want to talk to any of my civilian friends. They couldnt understand what i was going through. The firefighters knew, they understood. They had been there. It is a different relationship. We have to rely on one another. In terms of me being the chief of the department, i am really trying to maintain an open relationship with all of our members in the field so myself and my deputy chiefs, one of the priorities i had was for each of us to go around to different fire stations to make sure we hit all within the first three or four months to start a conversation. That hasnt been there for a while. Part of the reason that i am getting along well with the field now is because i was there. I worked there. People know me and because i know what we need. I know what they need to be successful. I have known Jeanine Nicholson since we worked together at station 15. I have always held her in the highest regard. Since she is the chief she has infused the department with optimism. She is easy to approach and is concerned with the firefighters and paramedics. I appreciate that she is concerned with the issues relevant to the Fire Department today. There is a retired captain who started the Cancer Prevention foundation 10 years ago because he had cancer and he noticed fellow firefighters were getting cancer. He started looking into it. In 2012 i was diagnosed with breast canner, and some of my fellow firefighters noticed there are a lot of women in the San FranciscoFire Department, premenopausal in their 40s getting breast cancer. It was a higher rate than the general population. We were working with workers comp to make it flow more easily for our members so they didnt have to worry about the paper work when they go through chemo. The turnout gear was covered with suit. It was a badge to have that all over your coat and face and helmet. The dirtier you were the harder you worked. That is a cancer causeser. It casser. It is not cancer causer. There islassic everywhere. We had to reduce our exposure. We washed our gear more often, we didnt take gear where we were eating or sleeping. We started decontaminating ourselves at the fire scene after the fire was out. Going back to the fire station and then taking a shower. I have taught, worked on the decontamination policy to be sure that gets through. It is not if or when. It is who is the next person. It is like a cancer sniper out there. Who is going to get it next. One of the things i love about the Fire Department. It is always a team effort. You are my family. I love the city and department and i love being of service. I vow to work hard to work hard to carry out the vision of the San FranciscoFire Department and to move us forward in a positive way. If i were to give a little advice to women and queer kids, find people to support you. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep trying. You never know what door is going to open next. You really dont. [cheers and