Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Public Safety Neighborhood Services Committee 20240713

Good morning, everyone. The meeting will come to order. Welcome to the february 27, 2020 meeting of the neighborhood and services committee. Im chair of the committee and to my right and supervisor stephani and supervisor walton and were joined by supervisor hainey and i want to thank corwin coolee for staffing this meeting. Mr. Clerk, any announcements . Please make your you have silenced your stones and cell p. Items acted upon will appear on the march 10, 2020 agenda unless otherwise stated. Thank you, are clerk. Please all our first item. An ordinance to require the medical examiner to report information to the mayor, the board of supervisors and the director of health each month regarding deaths from Drug Overdoses. Thank you, supervisor hainey, this item is yours. Yes, thank you, chair. Im here, again, with you, committee to again discuss what we can t do to take action on te most deadly epidemic facing our city which is the Drug Overdose epidemic. Drug use and drug overuse deaths in San Francisco and across california, as we all know have been increasing at a terrifying rate and today, people in our cities are dying from methamphetamine and there were 222 fatal Drug Overdoses in 2017, 289 in 2018 and 330 in 2019 according to thelat the laf data health. Drug overdoses have reached at least 122 in 2018 and theres a 147 increase. The numbers released by the office of the chief medical examiner for the 2019 reveal revealed there were 234 deaths to have involved fentanyl compared to 90 in 2018. These numbers are shocking and they should, as weve discussed here, lead to urgent and immediate and swift action to prevent further loss of life and impact on our city. In San Francisco, Drug Overdose has accounted for five times as many deaths than traffic deaths and homicide. Outreach workers do everyday, such as the Drug Overdose prevention and education project, experts estimate the number of Drug Overdose deaths continue to rise significantly if drastic action is not immediately taken. Theres a lot that we need to do and we were here discussing the declaration of a Public Health crisis and had some plans presented to us from the department of Public Health. Were going to making an announcement today with the mayor about legislation to move forward with Overdose Prevention sites, but what is also clear from all of this is that we need to have the most uptodate information and numbers so that we can respond in realtime to the crisis that were facing, to prevent loss of life. And this data right now for Overdose Deaths is not required to be collected or presented to the public and its not regularly reported. The department of Public Health and the chief medical examiner have been reporting it and in some cases on a sixmonth or yearly basis and this is not some codified into law and what has been clear is that it is far too uncommon for us to know as a possible what were facing and for us to know, also, as policy makers so that we can respond appropriately. Of course, we know and should know in realtime the number of homicides and fatalities but for some reason, were not taking a similar approach to understanding and responding as a public and as city hall around Overdose Deaths. Mortality data can help support Public Health strategies in many ways, finding tools and methods to better collect that information and exchange it more easily as a priority, especially when it comes to the most urgent Public Health emergency. This drug crisis has farreaching impacts affecting families, our workforce, Small Businesses and visitors and i know that it is impacting all of our neighborhoods and were feeling it especially, acutely in district 6. Increasing the timelessness of the data will impact what were supposed to do from Public Health programmes to enforcement to make policy decisions and delivering the Vital Statistics in a more statistic way. I want to say one more thing about what this legislation will do. The current version of it, and well be putting forward some amendments, would require monthly reporting by the medical Examiners Office. After conversations with the medical Examiners Office, the medical examiner says it takes about 90 days to close out about 90 of their cases. So in light of that, well be amending our legislation to reflect reporting to occur every four months instead of monthly to give the medical Examiners Office an appropriate amount of time and we recognise that even after four months, there may be some adjusting thats needed after that. But it is critical that the public knows whats going on and we as policy makers can respond accordingly. I want to quote the chief forensic toxologist for the Examiners Office stating the reason for this legislation better than anyone could. He told the chronicle, we had a feeling throughout the year we were seeing more and more deaths and this is quite staggering and this was the reason why the numbers were released. He said, its important to be accurate and timely, but that the medical Examiners Office didnt want to wait six months. Thats good for reports. Thats not good for public awareness. So with that, we are going to be asking for much more regular reporting. I think this is the right way to do it. It gives enough time, but it does also recognise that there may be some small adjustments to the numbers, but this will give us Vital Statistics that we need. I lastly want to thank the medical Examiners Office, dr. Phil coffin here from the department of Public Health and the Safer Coalition driving this movement and leading this movement around, responding effectively to drug overdeuce anoverdose. Alexi want to thank l and we have amendments today i have highlighted and passed around and the amendments reflect the monthly reporting to every four months and also that reporting be done as an aggregate and we specify the drugs of interest when thele medical examiner provides the report and i believe we have a presentation from dr. Coffin who is here with us today. And i want to thank my cosponsors, as well, supervisor walton, ronen, brown and fewer. Well have a presentation from dr. Coffin. I sent it and it was uploaded. John carroll solving problems. So ill speak a little bit to what i can say is the department of Public Health and i cant say too much in terms of the medical examiner, but ill explain a little bit as to wha how we gatr the data and what were able to see in the mortality data. So when theres a death, it goes to the medical Examiners Office and the medical examiner has a lot of things that they do. One is toxicology and thats one of the key elements to determining an josep overdose dh but not the only element. If somebody a patient in methodone patients, they may have high levels of methodone but that may not be the cause of death. If somebody has prescribed patients, they may have levels of that that are not determined to be causal in their death. They look for signs it might be an overdose death or another cause. They have an autopsy and imaging they look for alternative causes of death and they look the the medical history they contact, for example, a methodone program or other clinics. So its not as simple as a Motor Vehicle fatality. Its a far more complex procedure that takes months to complete. Once they determine multiple things and one is the manner of death, which is suicide, homicide, unintentional or the major categories and we really limit our focus to the unintentional, acute poisoning deaths, because those warrant ae ones we consider, quote, unquote, Overdose Deaths. And they have to attribute the causal drugs. So attributing which drugs are causal in a death is really complicated and not as simple as looking at what drugs are positive for. A toxicology run may have 50 drugs that are positive and the medical examiner may determine one or two of them are actual causal drugs in the death. Over to this one here. And so once that happens, its sent to the Vital Records Office of the department of Public Health and the Vital Records Office, their job is to make sure everything is complete and theyre looking through and helping the medical examiner to help any errors in the report. And then they submit that to california electronic drug reporting system, edrs. And they take two weeks of processing to make it available and thats when we look at data ill show you. Once its in there in the electronic california drug reporting system, its comprehensive. Its comprehensive. And were able to look at things, demographics, able to geocode data and determine where deaths are occurring and things like that. So in terms of whats available at what time when were looking at the data and edrs, if we were to look at mortality in january, if we pulled the data today and looked at mortality in january, we would capture 4 of the Overdose Deaths that occurred in january. If we go back four months, were capturing 65 of Overdose Deaths that occurred at that point in time. Five months, we get 90 , so in general, we look at six months because then were getting somewheresomewhere close to 100t were getting complete data at the sixmonth time point. Thats the delay in reporting. It takes awhile to close the cases and confirm everything. The other issue in terms of reporting is, of course, frequency of reporting and, as you can see here, if we look at data by month, we have from seven to 31 deaths in any given month. If we looked by month, we see things doing terrible, great, terrible great and its hard to make sense of what the data means. Its useful as an electrocardio gram but for mortality tracking, its challenging. Quarterly data is challenging. We have reductions in the 20 , 30 range or increases. Whereas the overall numbers are fairly flat. So since ive been doing this, weve been doing annual reporting and we started doing sixmonth reporting as of this month and this is in part because the numbers are increasing and we dont have a small number now. As numbers get larger, its justified, i think, to do more frequent reporting. New york city, for example, they do quarterrerly reporting and they have about 1600 deaths per year and so they do quarterly reporting with 400 deaths because they feel thats stable enough numbers and they tried doing monthly reporting and because the numbers were too unstable. And so in terms of the sixmonth reporting, this is a report we released a couple of weeks ago. As you can see here, the black line is the total number of deaths and i specify, we near reirerow itnarrowit to opioids. And as you can see here, the numbers are essential, i would argue, flat, until you hit the second half of 2018, and there they jump to 144 deaths and in the first half of 2019, 182 deaths. Now we pulled these data in january of this year and so the second half of 2019 shows 148 deaths and that number will be much higher. I dont know exactly how much higher. Based on Prior Experience been , substantially higher. But what portion are complete, i cant say for sure because things vary based on the case closure time and processing time for cases at the medical Examiners Office, based on various things that may be going on in the given year. The next slide just drills down into opioid deaths. One of the important things when youre looking at Overdose Deaths is not just to look at one drug because theres often multiple drugs involved and, for example, if you just look at here, were looking at fentanyl, the bars you can see on top and that went up to 69 deaths in the first half of 2019. And then at least 93 in the second half of 2019. Heroin deaths are at about 27, which is somewhat of an increase over a couple of years prior but not a substantial increase. This is where fentanyl is not involved and thats the way with generally look at this, so if fentanyl is involved, thats going to kind of take priority, because if thats the one thats determined causal, thats more likely to actually be the cause of death than heroin or prescription opioids which would be the blue bars. So, for example, i exclude heroin and fentanyl and then, if theres only prescription opioids, thats the blue bar and heroin is the orange bar and any presence of fentanyl is the grey bar on top. Supervisor hainey . The first is that this legislation has instructed to provide the data so that i know on your first slide, theres a number of steps you take and go to the database. The chief medical examiner office, the chief toxicologist released this data on january 28th for the prior year and was confident about that data. That was 30 days after the fact, less than 30 days after the fact. So i understand the department of Public Health has a number of steps and what were asking for is the aggregated data which the chief medical Examiners Office seems very capable of being able to do. The other thing, if you go to the slide that shows the trend line, this one here, i think the reason why were doing this is because were in the midst of an epidemic. Over the last year and a half to two years, the numbers have beee completely changed and what we saw from 2014 to 2018 may have shown some sort of up and downs and some consistency and that completely changed in particular in the second half of 2018. And from there, weve seen it go up continuously since then. And the fact that we werent monitoring this and publically aware of this absolutely staggering increase in the number of people dying in our city, particularly in 2019, and the trend line in 2018, going up for the second half of 2018 was not just something that was a normal up and down but was the beginning of a very Straight Line up and this represents hundreds of people who are dying. I think this is what makes this so important, particularly during the time that we have a much deeper, immediate monitoring of the number of people who are being impacted, who are dying and that we have the information that is available to us and i do think the department of Public Health candies aggregate it and do analysis and really make sure its fully exact and then do it on a longer timeline. But i dont think we can afford to wait an entire year to have that information particularly when we are in the midst of such an epidemic. Vice chair stephani. Thank you. Im supportive of this legislation, but im hoping that we can take it one step further in the future and really, if were going to be reporting on Overdose Deaths in the city and county of San Francisco, and barring, of course, any privacy concerns around those that, unfortunately, succumb to their addiction, what actions were taken to help prevent that person from overdosing in the first place . I think we need to look at in a much broader way. We shouldnt just be requiring a report on how many deaths there are in San Francisco. But we should be looking at what did we do as a city and county to prevent that overdosing from occurring in the first place . Were there interventions that could have been done . Was there a criminal justice interintervention thajusticeintd have been done by the department of Public Health . When we offered needles to them, was recovery offered at that same time . Tom wolf who is on the Drug Overdose Task Force Says never once was he offered treatment when he was offered needles. You know, i think ive shared, i have a brother who is a heroin addict and this is very personal to me. And i think that we need to have a focus on recovery, as well. And when i read things like departmentfunded Drug Overdose project, which is taxpayer dollars provides drug users with warnings about fentanyl, thats great and fine. But when i find out says further, so adjust your dose accordingly or you can still od by smoking or snorting, so start slow, i am actually dumbfounded that we are encouraging the use of fentanyl with taxpayer money, that we are actually not recognising that there really is no Harm Reduction when it comes to fentanyl. People die easily with just a little bit of fentanyl and theres no way to know with the drugs on the streets right now whether or not you could die. It is so prolific and so profound, what the drug cartels are doing with the drugs in our city that we would even say start slow. Im absolutely baffled by this. So for me, i think we need to be looking much deeper than requiring reports from the medical examiner every four months on how many Overdose Deaths we have in the city and county of San Francisco. We need to look at why, why are they overdoses . So i appreciate your legislation, supervisor hainey, but i dont think it goes far enough and i think we need to look at what are we doing about actually promoting recovery, actually people get clean and sober without the use of fentanyl and without the use of heroin . So those are my comments and i think that we need to do a lot more around this. Thank you. Supervisor walton . Thank you, chair. I guess my question really was the point of the presentation, to say you couldnt comply with the mandates of the ordinance or you wanted to let us know the difficulties of reporting as an fyi . I was asked to do this presentation. So i cant necessarily speak to the role it should have in your decisionmaking process. I guess a couple of points that come from this, from my perspective. So one is the stability of the data, so as more frequent reporting comes and it gets hard to interpret what one data point means to the last one, as numbers go down in one period and what does that mean if numbers d go up and things fluctuate. But you cant collect that data by month . So we can break it down by month, which you can see up here. This is the data broken down by month. In terms of obtaining data by month. So the medical examiner, within a couple of months in a death, they have toxicologist data. Again, i cant speak to them, but i believe what the medical examiner released last month was estimates based on toxicology data. As a Health Department we cant release estimates when it comes to mortality numbers and we cant provide Realtime Data like that, because its an estimate. So you wont be able to comply. As i Health Department. I believe the legislation is directed at the medical Examiners Office and i defer to their judgment as to whether or not that type of estimate is correct. Although, i would encourage that it be made very clearly defined very clearly because it is difficult for example, when i released this data that had the second half of 2019 data points, i got a number of inquiries and i expected this. We were reluctant to release the second half of 2019 data because theyre incomplete and we got a number of improve inquiries as to, you know, oh, the numbers went down. Well, we dont think they went down. Those are just the confirmed cases that we have. We think they went up, in fact. And so, its challenging for people who arent steeped in these numbers to understand what partial numbers actually mean. Or, for example, if they were releasing estimates, it will be hard for people to grasp what the estimate means when its not a real number. When we release real numbers, theyll be different. Theres always consequences to numbers changing over time. But again, i would defer to supervisors and to the medical Examiners Office as to the best course of action. Supervisor hainey . So that the numbers released, i think, a week ago, that show there were about 330 total in 2019, did the department of Public Health sign off or were those chief medical examiner numbers . Thats these numbers and these are released from the Health Department. So the Health Department was able to feel confident to release numbers for 2019 about six weeks into the year . As you can see on the chart here, the first half of 2019 numbers, were confident about, because we have enough time that we believe all cases are closed or almost all cases are closed. So in the first half of 2019, there were 182 deaths. In the second half of 2019, we have 148 deaths and now thats almost certainly a substantial underestimate. I do not know what the actual numbers are. We released these, in part, because of a desire to release everything that we have and this is everything that we have in terms of confirmed cases. However, that second half of 2019 is almost certainly a significant undercount and it creates a lot of confusion for i knee feel fielded a nuf calls from people who dont understand this data or what it means and it creates a lot of confusion about, you know, did the numbers go down . Did they go up . Its hard to understand because it looks like they went down for the second half of 2019, but, in fact, those are partial data. I know that, if youre steeped in these numbers, you know that. But if youre looking at it quickly, like most people would, its very confusing. Youre talking about the next page, right . Yeah, im talking about this page. Oh, this page . So if you look at the dots on the far right, thats the second half of 2019 data. And those are issue complete. Significantly higher than that, yes. So there were 259 in 2018 and at least 330 in 2019, probably significantly more than that. Yes fil. I just wanted to quickly respond to what supervisor stephani said, i completely agree that this is a very small part of what needs to be done and having the data, having the information, the only purpose of that is for us to be able to respond and to take action and prevent i believe we should be looking at everyone who loses their life from an overdose, what happened and how to prevent that in the future and how we could have helped that person better and use that knowledge to be able to save lives and, as you know, and i said this, this is probably my fifth time in front of this committee talking about this issue and what we need to do. We were here declaring a Public Health crisis and hearing a whole plan of action and i want to be clear that this is not just to get this data and say, wow, this is awful. This is to use it to respond and use it to be in realtime, preventing and saving lives and also recognising the trend lines and what type of drugs are out there and if theres a more deadly drug to be responding to and where these are happening and all of that and having that made available to policy makers, to the department of Public Health, to the mayor and to the district attorney, the police and everyone, nonprofit organizations. So i agree with you that just having the data doesnt do much for us if were just watching hundreds of people in our city die. We need to take action and i believe this puts news a better place to be able to take action. I hear the concerns about making sure its completely accurate and thats you totally doing your job. I also appreciate that here you did release numbers youre certain of and some that youre clear are still being determined. I think its important that we understand as quickly as we can the extent of it, the trend lines and what to do, particularly, was were in the middle of a different situation. In the middle of 2018, something happened thats been consistent over the last number of quarters and its been straight up in terms of the number of people who were tragically and unnecessarily dying. Thank you for your work on this. Not just on this, but everything that you do to address this crisis. Thank you, supervisor hainey. For myself, i guess, we dont have anybody from the office of the medical examiner here, right . And just to build or add on to the observation supervisor walton was making, i actually i think the medical examiner is traveling and not able to be here, but it as we impose a new obligation on an office, i think this is good legislation that it would be great to hear and i guess im sending out a call to the world, if there are any concerns about this, we should hear about the Practical Implications of gathering the data. The fact i have not heard that leads me to believe that this is not a hard thing for the office of medical examiner to do and so i will happily support it. To vice chair stephanis points about sort of the limi potential limits of Harm Reduction to the challenges we face around Substance Use, i in the task force we concentrated on strategies to keep people alive so that if they fet to a point where they are willing to participate in treatment and go somewhere else, they havent died before that happens. And i think that is what the department of Public Health is trying to do and i think that the work, the meth task force, we came up with very good Harm Reduction recommendations around sober centers and a bunch of priorities i hope the city will move forward with the next budget to fund and implement. I did, through that process, though, have my own kind of questions and concerns about sort of some of the tensions within Harm Reduction, because as we try, you know, the messagf start slow. We dont want you to die. There are people who will use fentanyl and there are probably things that they can do that will make it less likely they die from using fentanyl. The same is true of meth and every substance. How do we communicate the information we need to communicate to people if a way they will receive that will have them not engage in the most dangerous and deadly behaviours without out also while at the same time communicating the message that we dont want you using these substances in the first place. That if you start using fentanyl or if youre using meth, this is not a good thing and for a lot of people, results in real hardship and tragedy. And i saw that tension. I saw it in the conversations we had at the meth task force, the desire not to stigmatize Substance Use and i do wonder i mean, we are very harmreduction focused city and i dont think our numbers are out of whack whats happening around Substance Use with fentanyl and meth. I dont think we should be quick to blame these numbers on the fact were pursuing harmreduction strategies. But i do wonder whether we shouldnt be doing more to communicate the and also. It really would be great for you not to be using fentanyl in the first place and not to start using meth. Those are things you can avoid doing, you should avoid doing them. The other piece, you know, i kind of wonder about and hear a lot from my constituents is, you know again, on the meth task force, we decided not to focuser on enforcement and enforcement issues. But i do hear from people the feeling in San Francisco enforcement has sunk to a low level, its an anythinggoes zone and that may not be great for people with substance issues and the communities which theyre living. I dont have answers but i hear the concerns that vice chair stephani is raising. Dr. Coffin, do you have answer. No, of course, not. [ laughter ] i can say a couple of words, i think. And so, as youve noted, we focus on Harm Reduction and i wont speak to enforcement. The construct of Harm Reduction has treatment and recovery programming, as well. I dont see a conflict in that domain. There is a lot of effort put into that in the city and that is obviously a priority and goal and an amazing success for many individuals. I think San Francisco, in terms of mortality was a startling Success Story through the prescription opioid and heroin epidemics of the early teens. Fentanyl, no locality has survived the introduction of fentanyl unscathed and we saw some in 2015 and we went through it unscathed. 2016, no increase in numbers. 2017, no real in numbers and we made it through the introduction of fentanyl but when it tuke tok over the market, because its a preferred drug for many people who use illicit opioids, im not surprised that we didnt manage to survive that unscathed. Even vancouver couldnt make it through and theyre not as hamstrung by federal restrictions as we are. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Are there members who would like to speak on this item. One card. Alex crawl. Good to see you. My name is alex crawl and im a resident in your district, and im an epidemiologist at the Nonprofit Research triangle institute. Ive been doing research in San Francisco for 21 years. It was our research in 2000, 2001, that was the first anywhere in the world that showed you could put naloxone in the hands of people to save them from overdoses. Something we presented to the then director of help, mitch katz, who then made the dope project, the education project able to start dispensing this great medication. This is being sold separately and being a buying fentanyl and were seeing a lot of that in the strategies at this point, which is what is leading to the huge uptake in overdoses. In 2002, they lead to Overdose Deaths and at that point was 180 deaths. They almost managed to get it down to the teens. They got it down quite a bit. Its the fentanyl thats changed right now. With respect to supervisors stephani points, we need treatment and people to get into drug treatment. The most effective way to make sure people struggling with addictions is using these drugs to get into this is to have someone who trusts that they can trust who can help them get into that. What weve seen and the research evacuee seen around the world, the overdose reduction sites have been excellent for people getting into medically assisted treatment. As the doctor said, Harm Reduction, methodone, these drug treatments are part of Harm Reduction and theyre part and parcel the same thing and so i think the hearing is good tor us to have surveillance and we need to know its going up and thats a concern, but as she pointed out, we need to focus on what the solutions are and thats what we need to do going forward. Thank you. In fact, i think supervisor hainey had to go to an Overdose Prevention site press conference or conversation with the mayor. Any member public want to speak . No, Public Comment is closed. So i would be curious to hear because theres a spike in meth overdoses, as well. Are they related . Opioid overdoses seem to be attributable to fentanyl. Whats going on with meth and how are they related or are they happening at the same time . Im doing surveys in the streets with people who inject drugs regularly and the thing thats new for the last couple of years is that were fentanyl essentially is such a deep i dont want to call it high, but a deep low, if you will, much more so than heroin, that people use methamphetamine to be able to stay awake during it. So what were seeing is that the majority of people injecting drugs right now in San Francisco are doing a combination of fentanyl and methamphetamine. So the two are quite linked in terms of people using this upper, a stimulant, a methamphetamine so they are linked. I dont know if you have something to add to that. Thats the take ive taken. I will know there was a spike in methamphetamine deaths without fentanyl in the early half of 2019 and i dont entirely understand the nature of those fatalities. So we need to look more deeply into that. All right. Thank you. I will move amendments and we can take that without objection and are the amendments substantive . They are not, so i will move that we forward to the full board for a positive recommendation and we can take that without objection. Great mr. Clerk, please call the next item. Number 2, a hearing on the state of San Franciscos foster youth continuum and strategy for increasing homebased placements. We have been joined by president yee. This is your hearing, so take it away. Thank you, chair mamdelman. Colleagues, as you know, i always talk about childfriendly city for San Francisco and i highlight groups that are rarely talked about and the families that help these young people and so, every so often, theres these topics that i would like to bring to the forefront and today is one of them. And the foster children are some of the most vulnerable residents and as a city, it is our responsibility to ensure that when youth are removed from their home, that they are placed in a nurturing environment with the appropriate support and resources and most of us understand that removing a child from their parents causing trauma, but placing them in homes outside of San Francisco, away from their friends, schools and communities adds to that devastation. So today is about looking at the situation with a foster home, children, and where theyre placed and are they being placed in the city . Are they being placed outside of the city . If theyre placed outside of the city, why . And do we have enough Foster Parents or Family Resources, i guess, resource families in San Francisco to accommodate the numbers of children entering the fostercare system. If we dont, why dont we . And what can we do about it . And, also, are these resource families that are entering or beginning but also drop out and why . Is there something we can do as a policy decision half making body to support that effort . Because we know that link between the family and the foster or the Family Resource individual is important to have some stability in the childs life. And so today, were going to hear from the Human Services agency, trent roher, to try to highlight what the needs are, if any. And the issue sometimes you think this shouldnt be a problem because when you look at the number of children and youth entering the fostercare system today versus a decade ago, the numbers have really declined. I mean, probably to the credit of our services in San Francisco and maybe having some of the prevention. But the fact that is we seem to still have inadequate number of individuals in San Francisco who want to be Family Resource or resource family, im sorry. The reason im struggle wiing wh this, were shifting the language from foster families to resource families. And so, theyre calling it Something Else now. Nevertheless, they play a crucial role in San Francisco. I want to thank supervisor mandelman for cosponsoring this hearing. Even before i bring up mr. Roher, i want to thank him for maybe taking a deeper dive and deeper look at his own data and not waiting for this hearing to actually react to what he has seen election seen. Hes taking a proactive stance on this issue. Mr. Roher, would you like to come up . I would like to give you a bigger overview of the fostercare system so you can understand the need for resource families and the population that were serving, as well as the context of changes in state law that are really making the need for more resource families in San Francisco even more imperative. Im 4. 4 in the children in sanfrancisco, we received a hotline call of abuse or neglect. When we get these calls, we screen them initially on the phone and decide whether or not the allegation warrants a visit or response from us. This includes more children than 13 because of sibbings. 2 of all children in sanfrancisco in 2018 were investigated to see if they were at significant risk or victims of abuse or neglect and then, if the threshold of abuse or neglect rises to a level that warrants removal to ensure the safety of the children, we do that and we place them into foster care. You can see we placed 290 children into care in 2018, which represents one quarter of 1 of all children in the city. So the number of kids were talking about is small relative to the overall child population, but, of course, the needs of these particular children, specifically when he or she or they are removed are significant. The trauma they suffer not only being a victim of abuse or neglect but the trauma theyre experiencing and experienced when we remove them from the birth parents are significant. It warrants a safe placement that is healthy and reports that wrap around the child, as well as birth parents. So you can see that president yee noted and this is good news, a significant decline in the number of children in foster care in the city since 2000, which happens to be, well, when i took on my role. So thats where we started the data. [ laughter ] we were at a high of around 3,000 prior to 2,000. So weve declined by 80 and often, you say why is this the case . And there are a number of factors. One of the them or many are to do with changes in practise, focus on keeping children safe at home with their birth parents, certainly prevention and different paths of response, whereas prior, our response as an agency is to remove the child. Prior to 2000, we had the highest removal rate in the state, meaning terms of number of kids in San Francisco, we moved the most per capita. We have alternative responses, Response Centers to get support from them to keep children safe and at home because thats the best outlook. Weve had a big emphasis on permanency, which means quicker move towards reunification, supporting reunification towards birth parents, as well as adoptions. Theres de demographic factors t play, as well. Although, there may not be fewer children compared to 2,000 and, in fact, there arent. The demographics of children in the city may be different with abuse or neglect. So thats a goodnews slide. So just demographics. Who are we talking about . Who are currently in care since the beginning of this calendar year. Its split 50 50, male, female, and you can see on the ethnicity and this something i wanted to include because there are a couple of significant, what we call disproportionalty in the field among blacks, as well as hispanic, latin x population. Africanamerican children represent 4. 5 of the population and in 2000, there was 8 or 9 . In 2000, close to 70 of our kids in foster care were africanamerican and now were down to half. The number is still too high but the trending down is impressive. There are children under 18 in the city and yet 25 of our kids in care. And then you can see the agencye breakdown and then along the way to the largest population which is our teenagers. And this is just another slide. This is something that we track and its entries into care, which, of course, indicates it shows the potential for our caseload to grow and while the state as a whole is level over the last decade, we have cut it in half and this really is data that is supporting our prevention work with Resource Centers to say, hey, this is best for a child to remain with his or her birth parents in his or her home and if we can ensure the child is safe and thriving, we want to do that. So continue of care reforms. This i mentioned in the opening remarks, the changes in state law that are really driving the need to increase the number of to foster families in San Francisco, overall but certainly in San Francisco. This is probably the biggest change in Child Welfare and foster care in california, certainly in the last two decades. Ab403 signed into law in 2015, pieces of it have gone into effect beginning in 2016 and beyond, and there are several changes that require changes in our policies locally as well as practise, but i want to highlight just a couple that are germane to this hearing. And basically, with the fundamental policy position or belief around ccr was simple, kids do better in family. Kids do better when theyre with their birth parents and in a family setting versus group homes. And i dont know where i heard this, but i repeat it a lot and so i cant i tribute it to someone, but the notion that congregate care or group care, if someone grows up in that, it really only prepares that person when they enter adulthood is surviving in other congregate environments and pipeline to things not so good for the children. So we want to shift to loving homes, familybased environments and thats what ccr is all about. To that end, it did a couple of things. One is changed the way that we assess and approve potential caregivers. We used to have paths for potential Foster Parents, a different path if you want to be an adoptive parent and a different path for relative providers. What ccr did was merge them into one. This benefits folks in a couple of ways. One is that relatives, caregivers now get the same training and supports as Foster Parents do. The second is for resource families who also might be interested in adoption, its a single process rather than a dual process and it could prepare a Foster Parent or resource family to adopt should that be the path of the child, as well as the choice of the resource parent or Foster Parent. And then i mentioned Research Showing a family or homebased structure enables children to transition through the stages of development better and improves the outcomes of kids who have to grow up in foster care. And so a little more about ccr and ive talked about most of this already. The fourth booklet is the bullen of homes. They said no longer can you place a child into a group home. The only congregate care setting now, so six or more children, that you can place a child in, county Child Welfare agency is the acronym is strtp but a therapeutic residential treatment provider, no longer than six months and thats the shift that we see. So what that means is for the children with very acute needs, they might go into a six month intensive Mental Health wraparound environment and transition to a family. That child might go immediately to a family with the Mental Health supports going along with that child both for the child, as well as for the parents. And then, upon exit from the strtp, it transitions to a family. So i went ahead of maze fo myser the slide. It was group homes and what we saw in the late 90s is kids being placed in the group homes and really being parked there for many years. And the belief in the field being that was an ok place for children to be. There are councillors, support and theyre ok and really, the research was bearing out that they really either they werent ok in the placement or certainly their outcomes were not ok. And so this changed. Although its a difficult one in counties because it requires Placement Options is the place to go. So what have we achieved since ccr . But this is really just looking back since the middle of 2018. Weve seen a significant decline in the number of kids in condegrecongregate care. Theres Mental Health support treatment and 20 kids currently and then only six kids in group homes and those are outof statement placements. The chart doesnt depict this but back in early 20 now 2000, e was 150 kids in care so this is a positive shift for us. And then, here are the numbers and these are important. Because there are we are as a county when you look at outof county placement, we have the highest rate in the state. You take that and say, thats bad. Whats going on in San Francisco . There are drivers that some of this data speaks so. One is the small geographic San Francisco is small geographically and we may be placing children in san m matteo county so they could be five or ten miles from their birth home. You could remove a child from long beach and place that child in pick a place east los angelos thats 20 miles and tangs two hours with traffic. So its a bit of a you want to give context when they say its too high. We are attempting to place very close to home. Yet, it is still removeing from their school, from their Home Community and neighborhood and something we want to address. So you see here and this is point in time, 464 foster care placements and 144 in San Francisco, so a little less than a third. 69 , 329 out of county. Now, the second driver of our higher than average rate is the fact that we have a lot of relative relatives who live outside of San Francisco. For various reasons. The first thing we want to do is to find a relative to place that child with. The bonding that happens with the relatives, the familiarity and its better for children. We first look irrespective what county that relative may live in. When you see the data further broken down, 40 replacements are with relatives and thats a good thing. And then you go through the next bullet and 60 of our out of county are with relatives or family friends. It could be an extended family member, which would be a better placement, of course, than strangers. And so then you see further and i dont want to innon inno e you, we want the 194 kids to be home in sanfrancisco. We dont want any out of county that are with relatives over time. The last booklet, some are placed out of state and 80 with relatives and the remaining five are probably represented in that congregate group care. Theres ten to be east Contracosta County and thats where a lot of many of the relatives have moved from the city, if they have moved or located and about 10 in alameda and then another 9 in the other bay area counties and so this could be nappa, se is a ia and. You can see were not placing a large number of our kids in counties that are in l. A. County or Riverside County or where its difficult to do the reunification efforts and work with the families. They are generally in the greater bay area. And then you just see, theres a map showing the concentration of our resource family homes in the bay area and this would be both relative providers, as well as resource families who are licensed. A little over half africanamerican, 20 white and clarification of the map. Uhhuh. These are the dots are the ones where the children are placed right now, currently. Correct. And then again location, which i depicted earlier on the pin map. You can see where San Francisco ala meda make up the bulk. So i mentioned the change in our practise and procedures around how we license, assess, certify resource families and as i said from, there were separate paths depending on your relation to the child and now everyone and this is a difficult shift because most people know what a Foster Parent is. When you say we need more resource families, they look at you and say, well, whats that . That is what the state, how theyve changed the name. I still say Foster Parents. Foster parents resource family, which is a mouth full but they are referred to as resource families, which include both Foster Parents who are not known to the children, as well as relatives. Theyre all lurched int lumped d they go through unifor placement assessments. So recruitment strategy, we have a special Recruitment Team at the Human Services agency and weve had a website that weve operated for many years and we do our presentations at various community events, different business organizations, the chamber, Interfaith Council and things like that and we distribute the materials throughout San Francisco. Its a strategy that weve used for many years, given the imperatives of ccr and the data that i shared with you about kids out of county, we needed to do more and as president yee said, we started this look after ccr passed in around 2017. Resource family retention is important. I think supervisor yee mentioned that often, they might fall out and have one experience with fostering a child, maybe its not a good experience or maybe they dont feel supported and drop out never to come back, which is something we dont want to happen. One of the fundamentals about ccr and one that we really believe in and were trying to exemplify this, Foster Parents are partners with us, partners with the Human Services agency. Theyre not contractors and theyre not simply placements. Were want to work with them, provide them as much support as possible to take care of very, very vulnerable children. And i have some of our partners here that will speak to you and i think we do they might highlight we do well in some areas and other areas to shore up and so i welcome their suggestions about how we can improve the partnership that has gotten better over time. So retention efforts, monthly convenings of resource families or sharing peer to peer that have staff to listen to suggestions and concerns. We provide childcare so that resource parents be working. Respite emergency case and something comes up, they need support immediately and we provide that, as well. Certainly, training opportunities, both before and during the assessment and approval process. Of course, financial support. Theres a monthly stipend based on another change in cpr. It was based on the age of the child and now on the needs of the child. Every child goes through a uniform or standardized assessment, showing what he or she needs. Theres a base rate and then whatever additional supports that child may need provided by the parents or elsewhere would add to that rate. Im asked what the rate is for a Foster Parent or resource family . Theres no uniform answer. It fends o depends on the need e child and its generally 750. They get a clothing allowance. Should they need furniture like a crib or bed, Something Like that, we help to support that, as well. We have a Mentor Program which is important. Some of the resource families have been with us for quite a long time and have a lot of expertise and a lot of ways to support some of our newer pare parents. So here is our initiative that we began, post ccr and 2017, and its been a long effort but an important one and we wanted to make sure that given the money that the state provided us to do this work, as well as the county money that we did it in a way that we think to be most effective. We did an environmental scan that shows there is a lack of awareness about the need of Foster Parents. We have 200 kids placed out of county and their outlook isnt as good. We launched a campaign which is reareintroducing the public to e need but to compel people to take action and to raise awareness say, hey, if we do 100 homes, 100 new families in San Francisco, we think well have enough resources so we dont have to place children outside of the city. So the communication strategies, advertisers for billboards, social media, pandora radio, other efforts and we have a new website, foster sf, fostersf. Org and much easier to remember than the last one and is sfcaresforkids. Org. The themes are many ive just touched on and we want kids to stay in their communities. The problem is solvable. When we had 3,000 children in San Francisco, the problem may not have felt solvele. With 480 so children in foster care, 194 of whom placed out county, its solvable. The other piece which is important, someone may have an interest in compassion towards this issue, but may not yet be ready to be a Foster Parent or resource family. However, they can donate, they can mentor and theres a lot of mentorship opportunities for things we do in the city. And they can choose to adopt, as well. Thats always an option and its about raising awareness about the issue and raising awareness how at various stages one can plug in to support us. The messaging journey from transit ads, social media, radio, digital, web and recruitment, the theme of i know we sort of went and we contracted with Advertising Firm to help develop or campaign and we did go with one thats a bit sort of humorous and meant to kind of get someone to look twice and maybe chuckle but not to make light of the issue. Certainly this is a very serious issue and one that is one of the most important things that we do as an agency in the city, i believe. But you can see you might drive 50 Miles Per Hour in the left lane, but getting someone to look twice and saying, hey, i want to look more into this. Youll see that throughout social media plugs, instagram, et cetera. One of the worst things is to have nothing on the back end with nothing to support them. The first touch with the agency has to be a positive one. And so we have prepared our staff, which we hope will be an increase in calls, an increase in hits on our website to response as quickly as possible. We dont want an email to go into our, im interested can i learn more and wait for three weeks to respond. We want to respond as quickly as possible. Well be monitoring the touch points on our website and well be upomanbe monitoring where the to see if this is working and then, of course,monitoring our response. President yee, you said, how can you, as a board of supervisors help us . We need to see if were staffed adequately to handle the load. The good news, its such a great response, we we cant response as quickly as we would like, but its too early to know. So that concludes my presentation around p this. This. I could go into depth about ccr and others that are positive, but others that are challenging for us and our staff because its a monumental shift in what we do. We believe its the right path for california and for sanfrancisco but certainly in the context of this presentation, it requires us to significantly increase the number of resource families, foster homes in sanfrancisco. Thank you for your initial push of recruiting additional Foster Parents. So the bad news, percentagewise, is that we have a high number of outoftown placements. Theres some explanation for that in which you gave, but still, we could do better. The good news is that the numbers, as you mention, are not aastronomical. So a couple of questions and im glad we have this campaign to try to get people interested in becoming a Foster Parent. But even with that, i guess the question i have is, even prior to this campaign, people would apply, maybe, to start the process, showing some interest and thats something that you havent touchdown upon, but lets say 100 people show interest in the previous few years. How many of them complete the process . The attrition rate . Yes. I didnt pull the data for this presentation, but i could provide you with the information. Its certainly not 100 , right . I think we do know some of the reasons for dropout and some of it has to do with our process and it could be rather lengthy. And i think one of the resource families that are here today, it took an and i hope he speaks about this nine to 12 months to become a licensed Foster Parent. Thats a long time and requires attending a fair number of training and all requirements that the state lays upon us, not our own. So its a long process and its difficult, sometimes to keep someone interested. Theres a lot of stuff i need to do. So part of the process in change is to help simplify that a bit. And we essentially do see dropoff because of that. I mentioned, i think, in one of my slides about mentorship and thats where mentorship can come in for resource families that have made it through, dismystifying the process. But sou supervisor, well look t that data and see what that dropoff is. I think thats important. If you could address the reasons and if you dont, you have to keep doing the same thing. One of the issues that im aware of is when someone is interested in becoming a Foster Parent, they might be they might be living in an environment or housing thats appropriate for whoever lives there. Housing authority has the Voucher Program and they had to retract those 30 and basically didnt have resources to support the portion of rent they would have to pay and so that initiative stopped before we could get it started. This was unfortunate. , of course. , of course. Multiply the Housing Market by 12 or five is its an annual you know, it cant be a onetime thing would have to be an annual appropriation and we could do five for 5,000 and we can do the math. Not difficult to do. Please get some details to my office and ill see if we can convince some of my colleagues. I presented this idea to some of whom are sitting behind me to a quarterly resource and there are a lot of heads in the room saying that would be great. If they dont have the support, thats a piece where i feel as a city, maybe we could look at that piece and see how we could support people so we make sure that the foster system that we have reflects sort of the social Economic Diversity that we have in the city. I think that the folks who do the assessment could answer better than i can. In supports as theyre going through the process i dont know if someone is here to speak to what we do. But if our trainings are in the evening and someone might have a child that we provide childcare on site and i believe we do. But what other resources might we provide to ensure that someone completes that process. I mentioned the rate that we the amount of money we give to resource families every month is set by the state. Its a uniform amount across california. So folks who might be in medara county and the same rate in sanfrancisco county, the cost of living in these two counties are different. One of the other things to think about in terms of supports is there an argument. A good Foster Parent doesnt say i want a child removed in seven days. Theres a mobile response now, one of the counties are engaged and this is a mobile response if a Foster Parent is having an issue they call us and we can send someone out to deescalate. And theres parents for helping them be the loving and committed parents we want them to be, so its not rocket science. And so if its 500 more to allow family to support that child better, then maybe thats not a big investment when youre talking only a couple hundred kids. I could go on and on. Have you done an analysis on cost . I have and it wouldnt be difficult to do. We would love to see it. Going back to strtp, when you talked about the new laws that are in place, i think you said were only holding youth in foster care like facilities up to six months, if they have acute needs. Do we have the capacity now in county and out of county to make sure that we abide by that . Thats a great question, supervisor. Given the number of kids in San Francisco, generally, were able to do it. There are, however, there are some children who are dealing with such significant emotional behavioral needs, Mental Health needs, that we cant. And its not a lot and, in fact, i know them by name, literally, where were trying to find a placement anywhere in california. These are kids that can cost 20, 30, 40,000 a month for a placement. These are the five or six that are out of state, theyve literally blown out of every placement weve put them in. It could be assaultive behaviour, fire starting and districttive behaviour and damaging the homes. And thats a big struggle. The other piece, more specific to your question, around the transition after six months from an strtp, to be candid, thats, i think, an area where the state law might have assume ed this we could do things in counties that we cant do and what the vision around ccr was for those kids was called therapeutic fostercare, which is a Foster Parent agreeing to take kids with very, very acute needs and providing themselves the Mental Health supports, as well as coupling it with other professionals. We have not had parents step up to do that. Throughout california, very, very few step up to serve that role. And so maybe the assumption of the lawmakers, when they pass this law, that parents would step forward to take these kids who otherwise would have been in congregate care, maybe that was a faulty assumption and were working in sac sacramento to see what we might need to be able, to, across the state, to be able to achieve the sixmonth limit. Were talking about 2 20 kids in sanfrancisco in which three or four are the really, really high end. And so, were able to manage those numbers, but counties like san diego, lean los angelos are struggling. Would you call that an Unfunded Mandate . I dont know if i can make a prop 30 comment. I dont think its achievable. Thats an Unfunded Mandate. [ laughter ] thank you. You can file the prop 30 suit. And, then, just more specific, some questions about around the Justice System, juvenile Justice System. I know you know of the concerns with edgewood. Can you tell me how many sf placements we have at edgewood right now . Zero. How recent is that . That is since middle of the summer of 2019. And where are foster care youth in the system typically going . Well, i i laid it out somewhere on the slide. We have 20 in strtps, six out of state and then the rest are in familybased settings. So edgewood would be considered an strtp placement, formally considered a group home placement and so they have made that conversion. Even prior to the succession of us placing at edgewood, given what was going on there, we didnt place a great number of children there, three or four. In working with edgewood, since you brought them up, they tended not to be equipped and wouldnt want to take a very, very highend, acuteneed child. And its a discussion that weve been having with edgewood leadership for nearly a decade. Before ccr, we placed six, seven, 8yearolds who may not have needed a highlevel group, but we want to place that child directly with a family. And so the fact that were not placing currently with edgewood currently has very, very little, if any impact, on the outofcounty placement rate or the other data i showed you. I mean, i would love to see hsa Work Together reenvisioning what were doing with the youth in the Justice System to create a placement, grouphope time setting with the right supports needed and weve lost some of those facilities in the city. But that would be great, to happen in the future. Sure. In fact a lot of the strtps were group homes and they had to convert and meet the standards that the state laid out. And as you know, i think, the juvenile Justice System is to abr03. They had a couple years more to get ready but they can no longer place in groo group homes. So it wont be a licensed home or strtptype facility. My last question, when youth are being detained that are in the foster care system and detained in Juvenile Hall because they dont have a place to go, a stable environment, is that because of hsa or because of jpd . Well, that shouldnt be happening. Supervisor, no child should be held in Juvenile Hall because we dont have a place for them. But its happening. If a child is both adjudicated as a ward, a juvenile Justice System, as well as dependent with ours, we have a process and its called a 241. 1 procedure. This is where the probation officer and the social worker are working together to develop a jointcase plan. If a child is placed at Juvenile Hall because theres no placement for that individual, if its a foster care placement, thats certainly on us. But my guess is that its a juvenile probation placement that theyre waiting for and those two populations dont mix. And so thats probably where youre seeing kids staying in the hall because theres not a place. It wouldnt be because we dont have a foster home for them. That would not happen with dependents. Now, with wards, it might, and i cant speak to that because thats not my system. Thats severely traumatizing, very disconcerning and its not like they get treated any different, right . Its not like were detaining you because theres not a safe place you can go. But were still locking you in your room and you still have to do the things that we do in the juvenile Justice System in the city. So were punishing young people simply because we don they dona place to go. I wont suggest you call a hearing but it would be interesting to hear about the challenges theyre facing, which i know, supervisor walton is well aware of. Just to take your example, if we have a child who for whatever reason loses his or her foster care placement or go awall, which is common for older kids, our obligation is to find another placement for that child as quickly as possible. What we would do is to put them through place them in we have a set of emergency foster homes which is ten homes, so a child could go into another home rather than the Child Protection center which is a grou group ho. Along the lines of ccr, if a child leaves, we want to put them back in a family environment. I have one more question, what can we do to push the state to provide more resources and support . My colleague behind me, joan miller, who oversees the system has these discussions more than twice a month. Let me give you an example. In the governors budget in january this year, his administration zeroed out the money for Foster Parent recruitment and retention and it was 50 or 60 million before and they zeroed out the money to do the rfa process, to get families in through the process. The argument was, well, ccr is three years old, you dont need that money and youre done. Thats completely wrong. So were pushing back on that and well likely get that back into the legislature. But that knuckle and diming in child will far welfare is gone. Its part of the 2010 realignment. So we just get tax revenue directed to the Controllers Office to support the welfare system and ccr was subsequent to the 2010 realignment and so any new requirements that ccr lays on us, we have to receive funding for because of proposition 30. But the biggest piece so i think well get that money back for the specific initiatives. But its the rates, is the issue that weve long had a problem with. And i think its literally about priority, supervisor. When youre talking increasing rates across the state for the tens of thousands of kids in fostercare, youre talking a big number. To follow up with that trend of thinking in terms of reimbursement, when you mentioned that this has abandon attempbeen anattempt to reimbura higher rate because of the cost of living, as you know, the education folks after many years are fighting for and finally got what they wanted. And so, its not like were doing something new and i wouldnt give up on that potential source of funding. Supervisor fewer . Yes, thank you, is my apologies, colleagues, that im answering this hearing at this late time. And also to director roher, i feel like i might ask this question. While i was serving on the board of education in San Francisco, i attended a hearing at the state building about foster care youth, their essay, the high incidents of them being h administered strong psychotropic drugs. I know there are testimonies of many youth that said they were on these drugs for a long, extended period of time, that it affected their ability to concentrate and their ability to attend school. But they were given them at a high rate and apparently, at this hearing, what i heard from experts at the state is that this is a common practise to do what foster care do. Can you give me an update . That began from a series of articles about the overuse of psychotropic medicine in group homes. That was really one of the issues that lead to rcr, because this overhead katein overmedicao control their behaviour, to make them vegetables and group care, to better manage them, as you said is unbelievably destructive to them. Thank you to the mercury news for uncovering that and that lead to other things going on in congregate care while this care and the outcomes. The state passed several pieces of legislation, as well as regulations on us, counties, to report on psychotropic medication. We never used to track it but now we do but that was occurring in the group home environments and less so in foster home environments. Even in San Francisco, it wasnt nearly as big of an issue as it was in Santa Clara County and los angelos county. But i think due to good testimony from foster youth, and raising awareness around that issue, its become less of a problem. We submit reports on the use of psychotropic meds. Now that were keeping track of it, what does the data tell us . That is something i would have to look at. I would appreciate that. Absolutely. So no more people on the roster, so why dont we take Public Comments at this point. Thank you, supervisor. Anyone want to make a Public Comment, line up to your right, my left. Two minutes. Speakers have two minutes, and we ask you state first and last name. If you prepared a written statement, leave a copy of our clerk for inclusion in the file. No applause or booing is permitted at th. Thank you for calling this committee and having questions about what the city can do. Im the executive director of Legal Services for children where i have been representing foster youth since 1996. And at the beginning of my time there, most clients were placed in San Francisco and homes in San Francisco. As weve seen the data, we have, obviously, a huge percentage of children out of county and that has Immediate Impact on the children themselves in terms of the connection with their family, their ability to reunify and their connection with the School District and the Amazing Services that the city pays a lot to have available for children here. So theres a ton of negative impact on the children and i want to think about the negative impact on our city. We read how we have more dogs than children and, yet, we are sending our own children outside of the city and when i say our own children, i dont mean that symbolically at all. These are literally the children in the custody and care of the city and county of San Francisco. So thats the bad news. And the good news is that, as i think has been stated, this is a completely solvable problem. 100 families could solve this and that is incredible and so, i just urge the city, the board of supervisors to really work across the city departments and really to make this a priority because all of the of the work sha is doing is not enough without the help of housing and education. With people working together, we can bring all of those children home. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker. Good morning, im jennifer daily and im from Legal Services for children. I actually wanted to note that we started the first presentation it really touched me and one way to prevent the epidemic is to actually take care of our foster kids. Because a lot of our foster youth become homeless and eventually become addicted to drugs. So this issue is really related. As an attorney, its my job to make sure young people have a voice in what happens in their voice. If they were here today, they would tell you that the San Francisco community is failing them and they would tell you how scarry and isolating it feels to move miles away from their community. They would tell you how they have to trade sex for a safe place to stay. And they would tell you its impossible for them to focus on school or engaging in Mental Health treatment when theyre moving from placement to placement. At this point, i dont have much time, so i want to address some of the things said. Im very excited about the work that the hsa is doing to recruit Foster Parents and ive been invited to sit on their Recruitment Team and i appreciated that work. There have been things weve missed talking about and that is nonminor dependents. Theres no placements in San Francisco for nonminor dependents. They have an entitlement to housing and they are often homeless and that is when they get involved with the commercial, sexual exploitation. I also wanted to quickly respond that we talked about issue tensive Group Home Care and there should be one in San Francisco because if were serious about keeping youth in their communities, we should have an strtp in San Francisco, too. Thank you. Next speaker. Good morning. Im the manager at the Bar Association of San Francisco. Our program manages the courtappointed attorneys for parents and children in San Francisco. Last week, some of you had the benefit of hearing from yoland jackson, our executive director, speaking as to the edgewood issue. In that presentation, she actually raised the issue of all of of our outofcounty children and thats an issue were concerned about. I will tell you i was courtappointed attorney in San Francisco here for 15 years. And this is not a new problem that were having all of a sudden because of ccr. Weve been having this problem of fewer and fewer foster placements in San Francisco for about the last ten years. And im really glad that were finally here and talking about this issue. To really highlight and make sure that its clear, when kid are placed so far out of county and were talking about fresno county, that reduces the childrens the ability of those families to reunify. The kids dont get a chance to see their parents as often is visitation between parents and children is one of the most important factors in their ability to reunify. Were talking about kids not being able to stay in their school origin. I would really encourage this committee to think about the extra foster care rates weve just started talking about. We have had a lot of success in sacramento, having individualized county rates for courtappointed counsel and im happy to work to make that happy but i know sacramento moves slowly and the city is responsible at the end of the day. Good morning. Im a Foster Parent and im part of that family that took nine months to a year to get through the process and actually took one month excuse me one year, one week and five days to get through the process but i want to put the caveat out there that we started the process while everyone was transitioning from foster family to the new resource family, so the beginning of the ccs movement, which i have to say is fantastic. Kids deserve to grow up and be away from their family of origin in a home. And not in a group home or therapeutic home, if its not needed, but a home with parents and all of the trappings that homes come with. And San Francisco provides so many resources that i do want to say are available to resource families. Of course, there could be more, more funding for the programs they have to make them more plentiful and im glad this campaign hopefully brings some awareness to the concepts that people have about what a foster family is or a resource family and i hope that people in the community throw those misconceptions out the window because its so much more than what people think it is. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. And thank you for opening yourself up to the media. Im a resource parent with San Francisco going on six years now and im also a part of the association, the mentor team and the respite care providers. Sorry, my nerves. What i have to say is in coming into foster care six years ago, its not the same as it is today. I feel were building more of a support team around foster care. And i know we still have a lot to get through and to work on and build up relationships and things like that, but sorry, my nerves are really bad. I just really feel that today foster care is looking up and i know that theres a lot of people working hard within our team to build better homes for the children in care. So i just want to thank you for this opportunity. And im sorry my nerves are so bad. But thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. I would like to see a program for kids with respite. I have two, an 11yearold and 12yearold. Its hard because they cant go to a regular childcare facility and im hoping at some point our Association Im also a member of the association that we could partner up with our agency and have some type of Respite Program designed for special needs children. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker. You cant hear me . I im mary jones and im a resource family. I would like to see put in place a program to replace furniture and things that are damaged by children that we have that have behaviour issues. We have a lot of damage to furniture and other personal items, ipads, extra, that were bought by us and theres no we had a program before, i think, years ago, where they did replace it, but now we dont. So thank you. Thank you, next speaker. My name a dana chapman and ive been a Foster Parent going on 32 years. I have two biological two, one adopted and one foster. I had two one and one moved. So i have a list here, but a big thing for us is the Mental Health piece. I take younger children and it does not matter if theyre one or five, they have the Mental Health issues and with the ccr, its set up for them to be assessed, but i could have a child for six to eight months before they get a therapist. So the fundings need to be, you know, in that area, to help, even with child crisis, things dont happen and these are the socalled regular foster children, but they have a lot of issues and they can do a lot of damage, as youve heard others saying. Ive got a paint chipper right now and the whole side of the wall is the paint chipped off. Shes four years old. And so, those kinds of things so she needs the Mental Health. She needs the therapists and like she said, funds to help to replace. Yes, we do things on our own but kids with extra traumas and extra issues, that keeps other people coming to be Foster Parents. On top of the long wait period to get into to be a resource family, so thank you. Ive been a resource parent for eight months and i came to this because im a kinship Foster Parent so my sister came from madero county and it opened me to be a resource parents to other kids because cpc is closed and we have shelter homes. In eight months, ive helped 30 kids in my home, outside of my sister. So when my sister came and i wanted to bring this up for the public school, when you place kids for school be, i think fosr kids need to be a priority. When she came to the city, she has to take a 45minute bus ride across the city. After experiencing the trauma, everything we went through, moving her from madero to San Francisco county, now we have to also, you know, 45 minutes. So shes in the furthest school she could possibly be from my home. When i asked, could we bees be d in the next naked neighborhood, theres no exception for foster kids, none. That came as a surprise. Ive been a resident in San Francisco for ten years. Ive grown up here and i love this city. I would like to say when youre talking about sanfrancisco making up for because obviously, we know, it costs a lot of money to live here. Its 1,000 in madero county is different from 1,000 in San Francisco county. Were middleclass, minority majority. When i go to the resource meetings, so just to take into account when you think about that kind of thing. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Please share some of the that with the board of education, as well. Im a resource parent and recently ive joined the shelter network. Since october, ive had 14 children come through and i have experienced three of my last teenagers, two went to l. A. And one went to fresno. In two of the cases, i got 45 minutes notice from family service. My point is, ive been at the front end of seeing this children being ripped apart from everything they know. Ive had kids clinging to cars. A child going into permanent placement in one thing, but telling them theyre going to a place where they have no idea in the middle of the desert. He was born and raised in San Francisco. And so ive been on the front edge and something needs to be done. I agree with the money issue and agree with lots of things that have been said and i live a very affluent area and im the only Foster Parent. Public perception needs to change, what it means to be a Foster Parent. In this day and age, people do not want to put back into the community as much as we used to. We need to find a way of changing the publics perception and i agree with everything thats been said here today and just thank you for listening to us. Thank you, next speaker. Any other members who would like to speak before i close Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. President yee . Thank you. I want to thank the public for coming out and giving their comments. I took a bunch of notes and im hoping to act on some of these. And director, the last person that made a comment about the 45minute warning, whats going on . I dont know. I made a note of exit s it and i understood the testimony, i think shes one of the ten emergency Foster Parents we have that replaced our shelter. Is that correct . Yes. That works under alternative Family Services which is a foster family agency. And i dont know if you saw my body language but i shook my head because that sounds unusual, for that to happen three times, theres something going on. I want to hear more details. L. A. And fresno, theres something going on and i need to follow up. And certainly, i think and im hoping the exception and not the rule. Can you look into that . Absolutely. I would appreciate a report back to my office on the situation she was describing. Again, i want to thank you and thank the public and thank everybody elses concern about the foster care system and how we can improve it. Im hoping that my colleagues that are in the room today, and maybe others, heard some of the suggestions and we could actually act on that, we have our budget chair here. Of. [ laughter ] ill be discussing with the budget chairs to see if we can actually support some of these things, if not everything that ive heard. So once again, thank you and lets get the 100 new Foster Parents recruited. President yee, thank you for calling this hearing and supervisors, thank you for your attention. Its an important issue that doesnt get talked about enough. So appreciate it. President yee, would you like to have this hearing continued or have it filed . Have it filed. Ill move that we file it didnt take that without objection. Mr. Clerk, please call the next item. Agenda item number 3 is a hearing on the restrictions and challenges facing Small Businesses as a result of administrative code chapter 26, the deemed approved offsale alcohol use knew sa nuisance ren ordinance. Supervisor fewer, this is your hearing. Yes, thank you. This is an ordinance established in 2006 to ensure alcohol sales occur in a manner that protects health, safety and welfare residents. Todays hearing will look at the function, impact and effectiveness of this ordinance. I would like to thank everyone who attended this hearing. Pthiswe must recognize small bus owners are struggling to pay exorbitant rents trying to meet guidelines and permits set fort bforthby state requirements. We are exploring this from the working group didnt it will ann on how to strengthen the relationship between Small Businesses and the city. With that said, i would like first to invite patricia hewen to present on the department of Public Health. Supervisor fewer gave a background and this was passed by the board of supervisors in 2006 and the purpose is to ensure that offsale alcohol establishments in the city do their business with the goal of protecting the health and welfare of San Francisco residents. Offsale alcohol outlets include all establishments that sell beer, wine and or distilled liquors for consumption off the premises they were purchased. This included online retailers. The ordinance is actually within administrative code 26 and the city agencies that are a part of the partnership are listed on the slide. All offsale establishments have a type 2 20 or 21 license from e California Department of alcohol and Beverage Control. According to their data, this is a map outlining the density of the establishments in San Francisco and according to their data, San Francisco has the highest per capita based on number of residents in San Francisco of outlet establishments. In the city. As a part of the dao, establishments are expected to pay an annual fee. Currently, its 272 for fiscal year 1920 and the city revenue generated is an average of 192,202 annually and the packet that i districted is a table outlining each fiscal year revenue. And again, this includes online establishments, as well as formula retail. The Revenues Fund services across the city including department of Public Health, who coordinates the implementation and conducts education primarily and the San Francisco Police Department and the City Attorneys Office who provides Legal Consultation as needed. So specifically within the department of Public Health, the funds provide for 1. 7 fte of Core Staffing and those staff provide the following services. Again, coordinate the implementation across the city with the other city agencies, implement Educational Services both to retailers, as well as in the community, develop educational materials, including translation and maintain a website and the link is on the slides. Also prepare an annual report that gets submitted to the board in the fall of each year. So i was asked to speak a little bit on the retailer education specifically and theres two activities that the staff do. One of those is onsite education at the Retail Establishment and the other is an annual mailing. So the Retail Establishment visits average about 544 establishments a year. And our goal is to visit a store at least once every two years. The table on the slide and also, theres a table in your packet, that outlines the number of visits conducted each year at the Retail Establishments. In addition, the staff coordinate a mailing that goes out every spring with a type 21 license from abc providing education and information on dao, including the fee waiver and how to contact us for any questions and the performance standards that they are asked to post in their establishment. When were doing the inperson education, the staff asked to speak with the owner. If theyre not available, they speak with the manager or clock, whoever is available. We realize the stores are busy and we often wait and talk to them whenever theyre available. We include dao including how to comply and overview of the performance standards and the importance of posting that which is one of the standards in the ordinance. And we also provide information on the fee waiver and then, we distribute documents, frequently asked questions of wavers and huh to comply. The staff speak english and spanish and materials are available in the languages here. And so, in terms of of the fee waiver opportunity, what we educate the retailers is that there are three criteria they need to meet according to the ordinance. The establishment nee needs to n the same ownership for three years and had to pay their fee in a timely manner for the last three years and theres no record of a citydepartment referred complaint or administrative condition as outlined in the code. Once the fee waiver is approved and ill talk about the approval process in a minute. But once its approved, the fee waivers are in place indefinitely, as long as the business mai maintains those the criteria. We will distribute or mail them. The businesses basically apply through a one page form and its on the slide and in your packet. They selfcertify they meet the three criteria and once we get that form, we coordinate and to verify the information with the treasure and Tax Collector and the Police Department. In february, 27 retailers have applied for fee waivers and 26 were approved. Theres no formula retailers who have been approved for fee waivers. Dph did an analysis to determine which fees would be eligible according to data we current have and we identified that 106 retailers out of the total of 727 currently are eligible. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you. Colleagues, any question or comments . I have a few questions, if you dont mind. One is, ca can you tell me whats the reason mind calculating outlet density based on a number of residents when a large share is generated by tourists, chuters and othecommuters and oo dont live here . I understand your question and this is the way that the California Department of alcohol Beverage Control does the analysis. So thats where the ratio comes from compared to other counties and cities. I mean, we have a sense. I know theres data on the tourists and workers who come into San Francisco and we could probably do our own analysis, but it would be not be in comparison to other county or cities in the state. So there isnt a reasoning but just how the state does it. Correct. According to data provided it looks as though you conducted over 7,000 outreach visits since the deal was implemented. Yes. If those visits include educating Business Owners to apply for the sea waiver and dph has data incoming that at least 106 retailers are eligible, why have only 27 applied for it . We have bolstered our efforts and developed the guidelines and posted them online and translated them in the languages. We ensure that were educating and we have it on the saqs of how to apply and what to do and we answer questions. So youre bringing up a good point that i think in the past we did not focus on that enough. We have increased that. The application process is fairly simple. Its that onepage form. Very simple. So that still could be a barrier. Our staff speak english and spanish. If they need interpretation, we can loop in an interpreter through a phone call but on site, english and spanish. How long is the outreach and what is used . Business owners must pay the fee because of a negative externalities of their alcohol sales, why is this not pro morguesatproportionate to the af alcohol sold by the retailer . Is it fair that the retailers who cellaring quantities of alcohol, they pay the same fee as the small store othe owner . Excellent question. My understanding its the athat it was established in the ordinance and so were open to any changes but we follow the ordinance as it was written. Thank you and i believe supervisor walton. Thank you so much. Just a quick question and ill make sure i am understanding this correctly. After the slide deck, we have the revenue thats generated each year. And i just want to make sure that these are the total amounts that were generating every year from the fee. Yes. In your packet, you have the table that has it by fiscal year and thats what youre referring to. Yes. Thats, thats the amount generated each year. So 1819, it was 100,000 . Yes. Why is this activity important . The performance standards of the deemed approved uses ordinance are essentially reminding the businesses to conduct their business in a way that protects the health and welfare of San Francisco residents. So some of the items, for example, are no loitering, graffiti, sales to minors and so, essentially, i think the real goal is protecting the health and the wellbeing of San Francisco residents based on those criteria. So the argument for this program is that this particular kind of outreach, not necessarily connected to enforcement is reminding these operators of the rules and that they need to be reminded of those rules in this way to not to reduce the fouling of those rules that some of the other speakers here might have to deal with at some point. Thank you for restating that. I think im understanding your question is really about what is the benefit of the education provided . Were collecting a fee. Were using that fee to fund a program and the fee, im sure, is not, you know, crushing for anybody, but is another of the long list of annoying fe fees ty have to pay and it would seem like and so the question is, i think we have to ask ourselves the question looking at all of the fees that we require, is this an essentially important activity to engage in and if it is, is it write to have that coascost borne by the businesses themselves . Im not sure about the answers to either of those questions. If i may, chair, i also say that i understand that in this was instituted as people began to be more aware and in hearing more from the public that a lot of the retails that were selling alcohol offsale, whatever its called, that they tended to have more people congregate around their places, but doesnt abc, the alcohol beverage and control require many of these things, the same thing were requiring in the dao mirrors what the abc is requiring who have these licenses . Thats correct. So were duplicating in a way as an extra reminder. As does abc does any sort of enforcement or educational outreach, also . I think my colleagues with the Police Department can speak to that. I understand that they may get funding to do those services. To my knowledge, i dont know how much education they do, the way that we do the education, i think abc funds some unenforcement, but im not the expert. Are they regulated on all of the education they must do. To my knowledge, they dont have an educational component but i can get back tow. Back to you. I would like to f commander teresa hewens to present. I will try to put this in context a little bit. First, i want to add to what was stated about the request to waive the fees. Its posted above the figure, for one. 2006, we saw a lot of violence in and around some of the hardesthit communities, bayview, mission, and tenderloin, northern and so can you hear me ok . So i think thats where a lot of this came from, is because some of the businesses were involved in some of the activity. What we found is really some of the Business Owners were afraid for their safety and went along with it, but then what we did was worked with the businesses to try to work with them to bring more patrols, more foot patrols and visibility of Law Enforcement so they werent as afraid. The ordinance actually helped us to clean up many neighborhoods and majority of your districts were, you know, definitely benefited from that. If i point to tenderloin, i would say that you can look at turke and taylor and eight people shot in front of the growsery store and there was a long list of violations and so, every district has a City Attorney, as you know, and we work with them to try to bring a lot of the businesses in line. So the importance of having this ordinance and working with our partners, like dph, abc, is essential in trying to make sure that these businesses are really in line. The other thing that i noticed when i got to tenderloin, they went to Small Businesses and illegal workereally worked withe community. Because affordability is an issue. There were no fresh fruit, no vegetables and the healthier items that most Grocery Stores have, these small stores didnt. So they gave them refridge ration and ationand programs toe situation. One of the successes was dhalias and turk and jones. No, no, taylor. And so, theres some really big successions that weve seen and i dont know if the money i know it came through dph. Im not sure if it came from the dao of funding but it is a successful thing that happened and they cleaned up that location, as well as up on ellis street. So a lot of this is about the partnerships that weve created to bring a lot of these businesses in min mind due to te violence. Weve had stores on elly streets selling from the store and through their own video, we saw it clearly, a bag of crack cocaine sold hand to hand by the store clerk. So a lot of the stores, because theyre open late, you have people hanging out in front. It creates a Public Safety issue. We have an increase in shooting right now. We have to examine whether or not some stores or businesses are perpetuating this problem in keeping the violence going because people say they are hanging out by the store. Theyre just going into the store and all theyre doing but staying there for hours. So its really about us working with the businesses to bring them in line and to be a productive partner in the communities. As far as the questions that were provided to us, supervisor fewer, did you want me to go through the questions . Yes, because i believe that my colleagues have not you do have a handout, im assuming. I have the answers to the questions. So you dont have a power point to us. Theres a decoy operations as well as enforcement and on big events like new years eve and halloween, we send out the alu unit to make sure the stores are not selling and then going righg up their alcohol. There are times when the stores have had openers right there at the door in which people pop the bottle and walk out. So we want to make sure and theres a lot of violence, unfortunately, and ambulance calls in and around the locations and we try to during the big events, we try to have presence out there and we partner with abc with us during those big events. How do you define nuisance and criminal activities . Its defined in the ordinance . How do you quantify, verify, and and or document . The state department of alcohol Beverage Control, offsafe premises, sheets done by each stricdistrict station, they cree the relationships between the owners and Police Department. Crime stats related to the location at sfp may assess sending a decoy and educating the owner and thats important because when we send out the permit officer to check a location, whether its based on the usual checks or because there is some kind of violence or complaint from the public, board of supervisors, anything, you know, that comes into us, we send a permit office out to see whats happening. And then they create that relationship, give education, ask them to bring down signs if the window is covered and we dont necessarily write it up as a violation. We try to do is work with the storstore owners to get them in compliance and we give them opportunities to correct that. What data do you have to support the findings that nuisance and criminal activities such as drug dealing and public drunkenness didnt other behaviours occur with disproportionate frequency at and around the premises of offsale alcohol uses . Any data would come from the abc offsale premises inspection sheet and results from decoy operations and results from investigations and sfpd responds to nuisances and criminal activity, obviously 24 7. Each district station receives the same number of locations, abc, offsale premises and this helps to maintain proportionality. Did you want to ask questions at each. Well, i do have one comment to make, is that. Ithis is an investigation in enforcement powers. We work with them, yes. So the abc has the ability to issue or revoke alcohol licenses, correct . Yes, they do. To. So the abc provides funding for 250 offsale premises inspections, 14 decoy ops and the dao provides funding for two decoy ops and premises inspections and when you say the dao gives you 100,000, isnt it a correct ab c. Abc gives you 100,000 and you get about 20,000. Is that correct. About 1,000. What i heard in the presentation and i could be wrong, that i believe that the commander said 100,000 from dao but i didnt think that was correct knowing that dao supplies just a minut just a j. To show me a piece of paper, i dont actually think it is adequate and i think this is why we actually have dph going out and supposedly really having an indepth conversation with, think, the store owners, because many time, as you know, this kind of bureaucracy is well above sort of what they have time to even decipher or understand. So i just wanted to put that out there, that maybe this form, the second to the last paragraph sentence is, perhaps, assuming something through a very, you know, privileged perspective of being in english and english being your first language and that many of our Small Business openers, especially our Grocery Store owners do not fit into that demographic. And i just wanted us to be aware of that and point that out. I think that. Is that adequat i think if yu like, i can ask the question because i know youre asking and answering, so forgive me. I should have been asking the questions. We came up with the permit officer having the conversations and thats a correction well be making because of this hearing. And i didnt mean to insinuate that you did. My apologies. So how do you quantify or define a threshold for the term disproportionate frequency . Well, we went by the ordinance, 26. 1. 2 nuisance in criminal activities such as drug dealing, loitering and another behaviours that negative impact behaviours with disproportionate neighborhoods. Didnt theare nuisance behavs correlated to the behaviour of alcohol sold at any location . We dont track that. Ok, and then, to what extent do they enforce the dao. Im with the liaison unit and so for the dao, its a joint effort for what we do for abc and for abc, we are given monies, as well with the dao to do outreach and so we do our impact inspection forms required to to do 50 for dao and 250 for abc. But it is somewhat overlapping in that the same form is used for the same purpose. So we go out and we conduct our inspections and we educate, speak with the store owners to find out what theyre in compliance with and direct them to where some of the inspection forms requires signage regarding cancer, pregnancy, tobacco signs, performance standards. The dao form has to be posted and some dont have that information. So we direct them where to get it and that will come back and do a reinspection. We conduct the decoy operations and we make every effort to direct the store owners to abc Available Online training. We bring in training five times a year to the district stations to learn more about the abc requirements, new laws, regulations, how to conduct your business, and so i go out to the district stations and i tell them well be hosting a meeting and we send out fliers to bring this into the district versus just maybe going online. So we bring inperson training and direct them to Online Training and we make that effort to ensure they get the information. Did i anticipation either answe. Yes. How many dao citations do they issue year after year. Ive only been in this office for the last year and a half and we have not. The district stations work wit businesses instead of the citation created. It doesnt help anyone if we just cite them over and over again. We really need all of those stores being a partner and we try to correct the violations and try to go that route instead. Thanks. So i think another question i have, are the guidelines set for us by the department of alcohol, beverage and control more or less comprehensive then those set fort b forth by the dao . They are probably more comprehensive. Well send out letters and theyll determine if they impose fines or suspend or revoke based on what we give them. So theyre making a determination rather than the dao, we can go that route and say, we have multiple violations and we would then like to advise the violations, go the route of working with the City Attorney and taking those steps which is a different partnership and a different route. How often have we done that . Let me speak to abc, we have not worked with our own cases to revoke a license. Again, we work with the community suspec and we want top the businesses in the city, as much to the benefit of not risking the safety and Community Around them. However, there have been instances where the City Attorney has been brought in for problem locations. The process goes into, if an incident occurs, we review the location and then, well consult with the district City Attorney and see where we are, see if theres been any action in the past with the owner or the business itself. And so we try to go that route. The City Attorney will advice the owner of the building, as well as the business of any violations and that they need to get it in line to correct so theyre no longer unsafe. In the 14 years since the dao was passed, has this been reevaluated in the light of changing crime trends . We have not done an analysis, no. Quick question. I dont know what the threshold will be for abc, nor do i know for the dao process. Theyll go out and do their own operations outside of us. Or theyll go with us. And so if they see violations and its an ongoing issue, then theyll take action and this is not just the stores but bars, as well. And so, like the lieutenant said, the threshold is higher. But they also work with the Business Owners and try to get them in line. They advise when they see violations to get them in line so theyre no longer in violation. Thank you, honourable supervisors, stephai and walton and the opportunity to speak. While at 272, the deemed approved use fee may seemed negligible. Our Small Business have been pleading with the city for quite some time to evaluate the crippling fees. Waiving the fee had. Included back in 2006 and there were certain conditions if certain conditions were met and only 19 stores out of a total of 800 had ever applied for the waiver. And it is our understanding that the vast majority of the offsale alcohol permit holders would be eligible for the waiver and should apply for it. The dao has been in place for 14 years and i do think at times, also, with our abc license use to also add a condition that actively monitor the premises outside. Upon reflection, the working groups inclusive representatives, the Small Business Development Center had concerns about the fees utility, especially in the majority of the businesses have been paying the fee would otherwise be eligible for a waiver. There were also concerns regarding the equity, whether outreach to our immigrant and minorityowned businesses which you have brought up, supervisor fewer, to hold an offsale who hold offsale alcohol permits regarding the waiver as sufficient. In the opinion of the working group, that the fee its in the opinion of the working group that the fee should likely be eliminated. From the observation, funds generated are not sustainable. The funds generated are dispersed and so much so that should the fee be eliminated, it seems from our perspective, that it would hav not have a material effect. And i think, you know, in listening both to dph and to the Police Department, i think there are two elements. Theres the behavioral and business conduct that the deemed approve ordinance is attempting to address and theres the fee and the question is, does the fee really affect that or is it that is still in place thats in place and through the inspections and it is really, you know, through the inspections and the obligations that these businesses have to maintain their alcohol licenses. And so, i think its from that perspective that making a recommendation of removing the fee is not necessarily a recommendation of removing the behaviour the desired behaviours that these business operators need to conduct their business by. , if that makes sense. So im happy to answer any questions and i also do want to say in 2006, when this ordinance was put in place, the office of Small Business didnt exist. We didnt have the invest in Neighborhood Program and we didnt have our Sf Shines Program or the healt healthy rel programs and we have other supportive programs to help our departments if businesses need to have improved behaviour, i think we have more tools in the toolbox, that are proactive to help them and more so than the fee. I understand the ordinance was passed in 2005 and then the fee was passed in 2006 with supervisor daily and tom aniomo. In looking at the ordinance and this is why im bringing this up, because i think supervisor fewer is wise to bring this up in terms of eliminating fees that arent making sense for Small Businesses. In that ordinance, it says that we should have yearly reports from the City Attorneys Office, from the department of Public Health and from the Police Department. The links are broken currently on the page, so i dont know whether or not we have those reports. It also states the board of supervisors are supposed to be having a problem on this very subject, on this very ordinance. I dont know if that has been occurring since 2005, when the original ordinance passed. So when legislation like this passes, and it creates burdens on different departments and also on the board supervisors, i think its very important that we hold those departments and the board sutur supervisors accountable so we dont get 15 years down the line and what has this fee done, its burdennensome and cumbersome and is it doubling up on what the abc is doing anyway. Hindsight is 20. W2020. We need to look at how tot the yearly reports and the board says what it will do when it passes legislation. Thanks. The annual fee, again, per Small Businesses, is how much . The annual fee for the deemed approved use is 272. Ok, supervisor walton. Just a couple of things and one, if this was about pure revenue, definitely inequitable were charging every business the same amount. But the intent of the legislation is not clearly just about revenue. I really think that we should be doing these inspections without this fee and we can figure out ways and strategies to do that and issues around stores still exist. So this definitely did got solve that problem. And again, there are other means to address those and i wanted to make sure i want on record stating that. But it does seem that the fee is not actually accomplishing what it was intended to do to a large degree and it does seem like its not necessary. Thank you. Thank you. So i just want to say thank you colleagues because before open up this up to Public Comment and after digging into this and having a hearing and actually working with small Business Owners and the department of Small Business, i think that we can have a discussion on whether or not the dao is a valuable ordinance to keep in place, should it be tweaked, but clearly, i think it needs some work. But i think another aspect we should be looking at is whether or not this fee is something that this city and county can actually afford to waive for Small Businesses that are hurting anyway. This is a small amount of money. But for Small Businesses struggling on an everyday basis and lets remind ourselves, with the small Grocery Store, their anchor business was tobacco and alcohol and through our own ordinances, through a Public Health perspective, quite frankly, for the general, basic better health, we have put ordinances in place that actually curtail some of the businesses they have had. And so i am looking at this fee of less than 200,000 a year. Im thinking we have a city budget of over 12 billion dollars and w 12 billion. We havt of over 2 billion and i actually think that this might be something that we could whether or not we agree that the dao is a duplicating what abc does or is it needed. I think when i hear from the Police Department that theyve allocated 100,000 from abc, it is this amount of money is already going to be allocated to the pd. I think that the work they do is valuable and i just dont think that this is a fee we need to continue to burden Small Businesses on and that actually i do think it is disproportionate. That places like safeway and quite frankly, the calls i get in my district are from save way and that sell the volume of alcohol compared to the small mom and pop stores that the same fee is placed on the large retailers, where sometimes alcohol is their only business and, yet, these small mom and pop stores on the corner are paying the exact same fee as the big businesses. I think it is inequitable and i think, quite frankly, that needs to be fixed and we charge the large retail people a ton more money and dont charge the Small Businesses, but actually, i think that i think the question before us today, and i would probably introduce some ordinance that would address this, is that i just wanted to let you know that i am working toward, this is only one of the things im looking toward a mitigation measure for Small Businesses, but this is a very lowhanging fruit and i dont see how this can be done. I wanted to let my colleagues done that this is something ill be introducing and im so glad and appreciative that this committee has heard this hearing today. And so i want to thank you and thank all of the spearinger sped the department to answer the questions. Thank you, supervisor fewer. Are there members of the public who would like to speak . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Would you like to have this hearing continued or filed . Chair, could we please continue this to the call of the chair. I will move we continue this to the call of the chair and take that without objection. Thank you supervisor fewer. Do we have any further items today . There is no further business. Great, then we are adjourned. [ ]