The south of market neighborhood i am deeply appreciative and know how high quality the services are that you provide to kids and families. I want to thank the families who are here and the kids who are here who are already enjoying what is just a wonderful, beautiful, colorful home for children and families. I cant wait to come in here and see 60 plus kids running around, having fun, learning, being supported and valued and loved. This is what it is all about. This is what every child in our city deserves and i want to put a myth to rest right now, which is when you look around this neighborhood, a lot of what people see are lots of highrises and New Buildings and law firms and Tech Companies and when you see that, sometimes you dont recognize that this is also a neighborhood of families. This is also a neighborhood of children. This is a residential neighborhood. And in order to have a neighborhood of families and children and residents, you need Early Childhood education. And so we believe that we dont only need this center, we need the next building that goes out also have Early Childhood education and its building, and we need to plan in a way that plans for families and for kids. So that means not only Early Childhood education, we need a an Elementary School in this neighborhood as well. We need to start to plan for the future where families are truly valued and that starts with Early Education and what were doing here. Soma, transbay, east cut, the hill, whatever you call it is a family neighborhood. It is a neighborhood that values and welcomes children and this is the best possible sign of our collective commitment to doing that. I also want to shout out to the stabilization fund. I also know we are a big part of funding the center and prioritizing Early Childhood education. I see my friends from the Community Benefit district here as well. As your supervisor, there is nothing more that we can do together with the mayor, with all the Community Partners here then think about our youngest, our littlest, and our future. That is what were doing here today. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you for opening this center. Thank you. And now i would like to bring up mimi haas who is the president of the mimi and peter hoss fund for a few remarks. Their generous support made it possible to get this place sooner rather than later. Come on up, mimi. [applause] i am definitely not a public speaker and it wasnt clear that i really was going to make some remarks, but i am honored. We have been involved in Early Childhood quality childhood education in San Francisco since 1994 and i admit that we keep pushing ahead. We know where we still what we still have to attain in San Francisco, but we should take all of you all of you should take credit that it still is one of the best cities in the country for Early Childhood education, quality Early Childhood education. We always have to add that to it congratulations to all of you. [applause] congratulations to you and your staff. You worked on this for five years. Sometimes it is worth waiting for. This place certainly is and at the same time, keeping the quality at your other two sites which are always some of my favourites to visit. One of the things that we really cant say enough is the commitment that the teachers and the parents make. We cant think the mayor mayor and the supervisors enough to pay our teachers what they deserve. We are a long way from it, but it is just crucial. We cant thank them enough for their commitment and the passion that they gave in this area. So we want to move ahead. Everybody wants to look around, but i think all of you and i think all of you and the mayor for leading us to a better place for quality Early Childhood education in San Francisco. And thank you for having me here today. I think we are getting more credit than we deserve really. Thank you. [applause] thank you. We really appreciate your support and our familys legacy for giving back so much to San Francisco. It really does mean a lot. Not only to have you here, but to have you at the forefront of the fight for Early Childhood education. Thank you so much for being here and now i would like to introduce the executive director come on up. [applause] thank you so much. It is really a privilege to be here today with the mayor, matt haney, supervisor norming he, all of you. We are excited, we are thankful. It took us i made this speech five pages but i decided not to say it. It took us five years to build this beautiful school. We applied for and r. S. P. They were reviewing our r. S. P. We are very fortunate that they selected us. This is our dream. It does take a village to build a Child Development center. But it does take massive amounts of funding. For the past five years, many of our staff have been writing grants and collecting funds from everywhere that we could to build these beautiful schools. And then our architects. They were experts in building the rooms and regulations of the city. We had several fire inspections. Every inspection was different than the other one. So either delaying the opening of the site. But we are fortunate that we are in San Francisco. Norman, mayor, mrs. Hoss, this is a very unique place. One of i have been in here for 40 years. It is our teachers and their wages. We are planning to open the site much earlier but we were not able to find the teachers. We are still not going to be at full capacity. This site has license for 60 children. We were not able to hire the staff that we needed. They are so lucky that they have been with the agency for many years and she came and paid for it. Otherwise we were not here to do this. It was our dream to build a facility like this. And our architect really listened to us, listen to our dreams and hopes for children and they came up with this design and planned it. We are so proud. Sixty children. The majority of them will be here. We will provide quality Early Education services. Our staff have already been engaging several weeks with professional Development Even before starting. We really care about the quality of our services. We will provide comprehensive Family Resources programs so families will have access to various services that our staff provide. I still have to think several people that we are engaging in this process and help us to build this. First off, i already said ingrid and graham. Thank you for trusting us. Thank you for the office of community of investment and infrastructure. This was supposed to be a parking space and the commissioners decided that, well , they will try a development. We are very thankful. Mayors office of housing and community development, john harris, stephen, and brian true. Thank you for all the paperwork that you had to do and you helped us with all of them. Stabilization fund, they were so supportive throughout the process and specially with claudine. The low Income Investment fund, they helped us with licensing. That was the last nightmare that we had to deal with to get the license. They helped us a lot. I have to think i know mimi says that they are not much involved, but they are they are very, very involved. To mimi and peter, the charity foundation, the Fremont Group foundation for their support and encouragement. Thank you. And thank you to our architects. We couldnt have done this. Thank you for making our dreams possible. Thank you to our staff you have been our support throughout this year to build this facility. Thank you to that board of directors for being there for us as a strong presence and thank you. Thank you. I think i covered everything. It does take a village to build a Child Development center. It does take tonnes of money to build a quality Child Development center. Thank you tenormin, thank you to match. I want to say one last thing. We are here in the tech capital of San Francisco. Salesforce is here, facebook, i dont know, they are opening up a campaign a campus. I hope that there will be a day that our staff will have equal wages and whatever their name is thank you. [applause] thank you. And now for a few words about her experience with her child, clearly who will be a student here at this place. Come on up. She is one of the parents here. Hi, everybody. I am a mom of two and i am thrilled to be here. This is the dream, like everybody else. It is a dream come true. I have been dreaming of this place since i moved here. Since weve become a resident over there, they told me that preschool will going to be here. We have been waiting for this for a long time. It feels like i have been waiting all my life. I have been calling melinda, she is somewhere here. I have been bugging her almost every day. I was calling her and saying, what is happening with the civic opening . I want to know because i want to go back to work, i want to know everything is safe. The next day they said october, and today it is december. I have been calling her so many times and this is so nice. I cant believe i have a second one now. Our older son, after we enrolled him in the same school and different location. You will be transferring here as well. My two boys will be here and i live next door. It could not be any better than this. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you for everybody who worked so hard to open. I am really glad, i hope i am not the only one who is living in this wonderful life. I hope everybody can live in our building and enrolled their child and go back to their work, their regular life as everybody else. As a parent, this is the best thing we can wish for. Thank you to everybody. [applause] thank you. And last before we cut this ribbon and get this place open so we can get out of the way of these kids who need more room to play, i just wanted to do a special presentation to you for your work for the past 15 years, your dedication. [applause] your dedication to being an advocate for Early Childhood education, working to support kids and be on the front lines for this. This is often times thankless work. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of hard work to hire people, to review contracts, to apply for dollars, to turn in the paperwork on time. You name it and she does it. She has been doing it with them for the past 15 years and we are so grateful for your service and the work that you have done in the south of market community, but the work we know you will continue to do to be such a blessing to so many people who need childcare that is going to help make a difference in the childs life. So thank you on behalf of the city and county of San Francisco [applause] all right. Supervisor haney, president yee, mrs. Haas, and all the others, i think we will cut the ribbon. Will we cut the ribbon . We will cut the ribbon and then we are going to let our kids get back to playing and having a good time. Okay, kids . Yes. Do you want us to get out of your hair . Okay. [laughter] thank you, everyone, for coming. Five, four, three, two, one. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] lets give it up for the tree all right. Good evening, everyone. Around of applause for the Young People Theatre Company and its director. They were amazing. They will be performing the Little Mermaid next month at the museum. Bring your family, come out and support. All right. Lets get everybody up. Are we ready to light this tree . [cheers and applause] [ ] my name is phil ginsberg. I am the general manager of your San Francisco recreation and parks department. We want to welcome you to the 90 th, think about that. The 90th annual Tree Lighting. This started december 20th, 90 years ago on John Mclarens birthday and his spirit is here tonight because it is not raining. [laughter] this is truly one of our signature events of the year. Certainly one of my personal favourites. And if you see all the incredible stuff happening here down j. F. K. , if you havent walked down the street, there are rides and food and games and you get a goat of conservatory of flowers from night bloom or the outside of the building and the inside of the building are all lit up. It is super cool. The start of our show tonight is right next to me. Our mayor, london breed. Mayor, thank you for joining. We will have you wait just a second. The mayor is a magician and she will make the magic happen tonight with this tree. Before we make that happen, we need to acknowledge some other special guests who are here that make this happen tonight. They have joined me on stage. Present tonight we have state Assembly Member phil taking who is right there. [applause] i think our assessor recorder carmen to is here or on her way, and then we have our recreation and park commission, our president , mar buell mar you will and all of the commissioners. We have a number of other folks from the parks and Recreation Advisory Committee who are here who helped guide park policy. We are grateful for their support. And i see a few special Department Heads starting with our police chief bill scott who is here. I saw deputy chief david lazar, the head of the department of the environment is here. And many other special guests. If i have missed anybody on this stage, i apologize. I saw a project level in the house. Thank you very much. We do events like this four times a year. Our Family Friendly free events would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors or partners including kaiser permanente, Byward Market , the San Francisco parks allianz, i saw the president of the Parks Alliance in the house, and recology. And of course, none of this would be possible without the hard work of the best staff. The best and hardest working staff in city government. The recreation and Park Department staff. Lets give them a big round of applause. [cheers and applause] so let me talk for a quick second about the tree itself. This is San Franciscos official holiday tree. This tree was planted by john mclaren. It is a Monterey Cypress that is over 130 years old. It has aged a little bit. It might have lost a limb or two over the years, but it is Still Standing tall. Tonight it is sporting over 550 lights. And what makes this Tree Lighting special is that this is the last Tree Lighting, this is 100 the 149th year of golden gate park. So next year we will celebrate the hundred and 50th birthday of our entire park system in San Francisco. Lets give that around of applause. [ ] i mentioned our partners and i want to bring up one special partner. We have many, that help us provide programs and provide services for kids and help us to special events tonight. One of those partners is kaiser permanente. Tonight, the chief operating officer of kaiser his here to join us in celebrating the start of the holiday season. Help me welcome miss miller who will come up and say a few words [applause] good evening, everybody. Happy holidays. Welcome to tonights festival on behalf of kaiser permanente. We are a proud sponsor of recreation and parks annual Tree Lighting ceremony. Can you believe it is 130 years old . What we would like to do is celebrate tonight and also welcome you to the theme for this next year which is making friends one data time. The 150th anniversary or celebration of golden gate park. 150 years. Give that a hand. [applause] in honor of that, we come together across this beautiful city to this world renowned park to meet with friends and family and to make new friends as well. Reminds me of the campfire song, make new friends, but keep the old. That is how this city grow stronger and strengthens through his relationships. We will continue to support these beautiful events and we hope that you, too, will take advantage of tonights festivities. Thank you again on behalf of kaiser permanente. Thank you. All right. So she is truly our park champion and chief. Lets get it lit, she says. She really likes to party and she is not particularly patient, but let me bring her up. Ladies and gentlemen, our mayor, london breed. [cheers and applause] thank you. All right. I love the theme music. First of all, thank you all so much for coming out today and braving the rain to be here with us tonight to celebrate 90 years of a time honored tradition here in San Francisco right in front of mclaren lodge. This is an amazing, fun event. Fun for the whole family. I love the idea that we have so many incredible officials here, but i will need some kids to help me light this tree. [applause] so i see these patient young people raising their hand right down in the front row. Have your parent bring you on up to the side of the stage so you can help me like this tree. [ ] i need some help here with this switch. [ ] all right. Come on up. I think we might be almost at capacity. Hold on. Come on over. Come on, you guys. Are you going to help . Do you want to help . Yes, i love it. You are brave. Okay. This is what we are going to do. Gather around the podium. Gather around the podium, kids. Stop trying to crash, parents. All right. Because we know how to count, we will do the count down starting from 10, and then we will hit the switch. I will ask you, what is your name . Jr. I will ask you and what is your name . Sia. I will ask you to put your hands here because when i say to move it and to liked it, then you have to switch it real fast. Okay . Everybody in this place is going to help us count, but not until we say we will start with 10. Are you already . Are you ready . Okay. Lets start. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. [cheers and applause] good job. Thank you so much for helping us here today. Have a wonderful december celebrating joy with your Family Friends and community. Happy holidays, everybody. Test test test government audits and oversight. Government audits and oversight committee. Good afternoon. The meeting will come to order. Welcome to the thursday, december 11th special meeting of government audit and oversight committee. I am the chair. I am joined by Committee Members supervisor peskin. Thank you to the committees clerk. I would also like to thank jim smith and matt at sfgovtv for staffing this meeting. Do you have any announcements . Thank you. Please ensure you have silenced your cell phones. Your speaker cards should be submitted to the clerk. Items today will appear on the december 17th agenda unless otherwise stated. Do i have a motion to excuse supervisor brown. So moved. Thank you. Mr. Clerk please call item two. Resolution authorizing the Planning Department to confirm existing and create new and resized designtions of Priority Production areas by the association of bay area governments and the metropolitan Transportation Commission as part of the planned bay area 50 update. Thank you. I am proud to expand this citywide alongside supervisor fewer. It is important for San Francisco to plan for our own future to pro actively say where we want more housing and to plan for increased housing density alongside improvements to Public Transit and important in. Structure. We must do this with the input and support of the community. We continued from last week for further clarifications about the implications for pdas. Since the last Committee Meeting i met with the principal planner at the association of bay area governments leading the pda program. One issue the public brought up was how pda boundaries would be misused as a target for private development. He relayed to me pdas only make cities eligible for Additional Resources and funding and are not tied to production goals. If a pda receives planning funds, the Community Gets to decide the specific boundaries of the plan area and not bound by the pda maimed. Cities can remove pdas. The reason the public raised was how they could inflate goals for housing development. He described how there are statutory requirements for the method and pdas are not among the requirements. That said, there are underlying factors such as proximity to transit that are related to both pda and the goals. They are not directly linked nor are influenced by each other. As the sitting member of the executive board i help oversee the committee and nominated the council of Committee Housing organizations to serve on the committee. By another meeting with the staff reaffirmed my believe pdas will play a positive rolls to expand Affordable Housing throughout our city. This past year we laid the groundwork for this work in my district by securing new funding for the west side planner and Needs Assessment and plan to build a Nonprofit Organization focused on developing Affordable Housing on the west side. I am meeting with Planning Department staff biweekly, and i am excited to launch the Planning Initiative next year. We are proactive and arecious about planning and development. We need resources. As i advocate for city funds, regional and state funding will be able to access through the expanded pda designation to expedite the planning goals. Pdas unlocked tens of millions of dollars in planning, capital and transportation funds for the city. I look forward to making this available citywide to all districts. I hoped to pass this out of Committee Last week. We continued it to today to allow for additional input and feedback from the public. Given the very limited outreach by the Planning Department and plaque of Community Process there continues to be misinformation and rumors about Priority Development areas. With sb50 on the horizon my constituents are rightfully concerned. I want to address those. I will make a motion to pass this resolution out of committee today to be scheduled at the full board for january 14th rather than next week. In the period between now and january 14th, i would urge the Planning Department to work with the offices of the supervisors whose districts include the new proposed pdas, that is districts, 1, 2, 4, 7 to provide clear information to the public about pdas and solicit feedback before a vote at the full board. Joshua is here today to answer questions. Mr. Switsky. Is this something the Planning Department can commit to to engage in more Community Outreach before the january 14th board vote . Good afternoon, yes, supervisor, mar, i would be happy to engage with the supervisors you mentioned and those interested and attends meetings and engage with any constituents that have questions to discuss this further. Great. Thank you. Supervisor peskin, do you have anything . I have no comments i did not make last week. Why dont we go to Public Comment on this item. I do have speaker cards. Are these the only cards or were there others . I have cards for agenda item one and two. These are for agenda item two. You can just come up. Speakers have two minutes please state your first and last name clearly. I will read the names of the cards i have. If you you could line up on your right side of the room. Anyone who hasnt turned in a card is welcome to speak. Please get in line. Eileen boken and californiarin e howard. Eileen boken here on my own behalf. On the overhead is the distribution of modified and proposed pdas for the bay area. It shows a high concentration in San Francisco. From the same meeting, there is a slide showing 44 of the land area within existing pdas is at risk of gentrification or displace meant by the uc berkeley displacement project. This is consistent with what is happening in the mission. According to the documents the pda process began with letters of interest for designation which were submitted in september. The time to begin Community Process should have been before the letter of interest was submitted. Who submitted the letter of interest and what was the content . A letter of confirmation may have been submitted in september. If so, this would be a commitment to complete the pda plans by 2025. There would no locker be the option for longer be the option for the symbolic pda. Was the letter submitted . What was the content. When it was under taken by the gang of four, did anything of these four agencies have the Community Process during this phase . Not that im aware of. Presentations were made by planning after the facto a few community organizations. Planning was out of the loop through most of the process. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Thank you for postponing any vote until we have had the opportunity to learn about and give input during the robust public process. After all of this is for planned bay area 2050. What is the rush . How can weeks or months matter. We are deciding the future of the city. At the meetings i hope the public can ask questions directly to the Planning Department. Why should San Francisco establish more pdas . How are they arrived at . What are the im li the implications e state legislation that is supporting market rate development. Although these areas for for planning purposes, the outcome has been very different. According to m. T. C. , the planning documents the Program Provides Financial Support for planning processes seeking to intensify land uses and supports plans for the greatest potential for land use zoning and policy changes leading to new development. In na San Francisco there is moe intensification of development. I have watched neighborhoods riverich in diversity and charar crushed. I am very concerned that pdas are furthering this process and finishing off the neighborhoods left. Planning can be done without signing to the process. Lets find out what is in the pill before swallowing it. Next speaker. I am erica. I am a long term resident of the sun set. I have two worries about the pdas. One is that they were designated with no Community Input and by the Planning Department. I dont know. That worries me. More importantly, i also engaged a number of years ago now supervisor peskin in the waterfront campaign. I think it is dangerous. I wonder if there is a way with the short comings or the unknowns about the pdas if they could step back from the ocean on both the richmond and the have their say on the waterfront. As the chair said the voters continue to rule. Next speaker. Georgia. I live in d8. I look at at the map to try to understand. The thing that disturbed me was the example from my neighborhood. The pdas expanding up from church to noe. A lot of those blocks are up on the hill, a lot of those blocks have seen very expensive Single Family homes put in, no demolition control because people are alltering homes to make monster roams. It looked like sb50. It was expanding from Church Street past sanchez, then up to noe. I think that is a concerning thing. I hope that d8 supervisor mandelman will look at that and d8 people will be on top of it. It is one piece of it. I think it is indicative of the issues that make people very concerned about the new pda expansion. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you, chairman mar. I am caroline kennedy, chair of the improvement club. Like other speakers, i worry about the impact of sb350 and 50 on the proposed pdas. I was delighted to hear you are delaying the vote to january 14th. What we need to know is what will seentor wieners next senator wieners next version impose and how might that impact communitybased planning . How will the pdas work . Will they enable them as you outlined . That is my hope, too, or will they be hamstrung by requirements that bar the most effective elements of communitybased planning. San francisco planning Impact Analysis will be out soon. I am hoping we can see that as well when you make these decisions. My read of the law it blows up the current planning processes and mandates some steps that specifically sb330 limits local Agency Approvals to objective standards which appears to eliminate discretionary processes Like Community planning or input or discretionary review. It imposes limit of five public hearings on any housing development. This could curtail planning. It allows demolition with replacement units at market rate rents. Please wait to finalize both the pdas and the San Francisco proposed amendments to sb50 until we get more information on these elements. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. I guess i agree with most of the speakers so far. I just want to add the element of money that you actually mentioned. Money. Where is it coming from . Pdas getting more money from taxpayers. Taxpayers already have problems dealing with living in a very expensive city. You have bonds you want people to pass and where is this money coming from . It seems like we are raising public debt, public expectations of more, more, more and asking a lot of the public that basically has less and less money to spend on what they need. Right now we have an affordability crisis, affordability gap. How is raising more taxes and raising more expectations of spending more money that we dont have a good idea in todays economic climate . And todays Political Climate . Thank you. Next speaker. I am lower rain petty from district 5. I am a member of senior and disability action, also a member of the San Francisco te tenants union. I am concerned about the public process, about i have been to many town halls and Public Forums run by the Planning Department. A lot of other people, and i find there is only a limited circle of residents that actually end up knowing the meeting is even going on. I would suggest as a public process for the pdas that the town hall be run in each of the districts jointly organized and run by the District Supervisor in conjunction with neighborhood organizations. That will spread the word a lot faster and get more people there. This is a big concern of mine that we do these planning and zoning things with very little public input and very little understanding on the part of the public. I ask you to give serious consideration to how these Public Meetings might be held and who is going to help. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else that would like to speak on this item . Public comment is closed. Thanks to everyone that has shared your perspectives on this resolution to expand pdas in San Francisco. I want to ask the Planning Department to respond to a few of the points that were raised in Public Comment. First of all, i think the concerns around the inadequate sort of Public Notice and public process around this proposal to ban the pdas, i am proposing the board take the vote on this instead of at the december 17th meeting, at the january 14th board of supervisors meeting to allow time for more notice and public input. Mr. Switz ski has committed to working to ensure that you know there is opportunity for the constituents to be able to understand the implications and to weigh in. There were questions raised about the expanded pdas and how they might interface with the housing bills that are pending in the state, particularly sb50 and sb330. Could you respond to that . Sure. I would be happy to. Like we discussed at the last committee hearing, there is no correlation or connection between sb50 as it was previously drafted, and i would expect as it is drafted in the future and the pdas. That is a voluntary framework for funding purposes. It doesnt relate to zoning or development specifically. I would be very surprised or i would say shocked if there was any connection in the future of the bill considering there is a rather uneven voluntary offering of pdas in jurisdictions around the bay area. Given the purpose of sb50, i would be surprised if they used that for any purpose whatsoever in the bill. As it relates to sb330 again. Because the pdas dont implement any zoning changes whatsoever and dont change any underlying zoning, it would have no direct correlation between did implications of sb330 and what actually happens. Pda is an abstract framework used for funding. There was a question about the source of the funding or resources the city would be able to access through the pda and expanded pda designa
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