Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Land Use Committee 20240713

Transport Committee Meeting for today, monday, march 30, 2020. And it is a special meeting. I am the chair of the committee, supervisor aaron peskin. Joined by vice chair supervisor safai and supervisor dean preston. And the clerk is miss erica major. Miss major, do you have announcements . Clerk yes, please due to the covid19 Health Emergency and to protect Board Members and the City Employees and the public, the board of supervisors legislative chamber and Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely. And precaution is taken pursuant to the statewide stay at home order and all preceding and proceeding local, state and federal orders, declarations and orders. Members will be by teleconference or telephone if the video fails and participate in the meetings to the extent as if they were physically present. Public comment is available on each item of this agenda. Channel 26 and sfgovtv. Org are streaming the number at the top of the screen. Each speaker will be allowed two minutes to speak. Comments or opportunities to use to speak during the Comment Period are available via phone call by calling 888204 8882045984. Again, that number is 8882045984. The access code is 3501008. Again, the access code is 3501008. When connected, wait until the Public Comment is opened and dial to speak. And they are to call from a quiet location and speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. Alternatively, you may submit Public Comment in either of the following ways email myself, the land use and transport Committee Clerk at my email and it will be forwarded to the board of supervisors. And it will be included as part of the official file. Finally, items acted upon today will appear on the board of supervisor agenda on april 7, 2020, unless otherwise stated. Supervisor peskin thank you, miss major and i thank the clerk of the board of supervisors and her incredible staff during this period. In addition to clerk calvillo and our Committee Clerk, miss major, id like to thank john see and john carroll and prent halipa, and john carroll, i think that i said john carroll. Thank you for your incredible behinbehindthescenes effort te this and other meetings possible as our participatoriy democracy survives during the coronavirus time. And with that, madam clerk, please call the first item. Clerk item 1 is an order to submit the planning code to create the intermediate occupancy residential use characteristic with the administrative code for enforceability and to prohibit rental units for temporary occupancies and the controller to analyze the impact and appropriate findings. Supervisor peskin thank you, miss major. Colleagues this was continued from the meeting which occurred a few weeks ago right before the shelter in place order was issued by the mayor. And it is my intention to continue this item to the call of the chair. But before we do that we need to take Public Comment. So, madam clerk, please work whatever magic you need to work to allow the members of the public to comment on this item. Clerk we are checking to see if theres any callers. Operator, let us know if theres any callers ready. indiscernible . Supervisor peskin seeing no Public Comment on item number one, Public Comment is closed. And colleagues, again, we have a roll call vote on continuing this item to the call of the chair. Clerk and continue on the call of the chair. Supervisor peskin. Aye. Clerk aye. Supervisor safai. Safai aye. And supervisor peskin. Peskin aye. Supervisor peskin this item is continued to the call of the chair. Next item please. Clerk two, the Building Code to extend the time for existing buildings with a place of public accommodations to comply with the requirement to have all primary entries and paths of travel into buildings accessible for persons with disabilities. Supervisor peskin this is brought to us by president yees office to provide flexibility to Small Businesses and other places of public accommodations, seeking to come into compliance with mandatory accessibility requirements. I spoke with president yee and his chief of staff jim lowe who are actually here at the Emergency Operations center. They do not have any comments and we are joined by the department of building inspection with mr. Bill strong and Thomas Kessler as well as the office of Small Business. I thought that wed start by having a presentation on this ordinance which was introduced before the coronavirus emergency and recommended by the building inspection commission. With that, mr. Strong, would you like to make a presentation to this committee and the public . Yes. Supervisors, thank you very much. Bill strong with the department of building inspection. Weve asked supervisor yee and members of the committee to consider this extension because as of todays report we have a weekly monitoring report of the accessible business entrance compliance and our compliance category is still running at about 60 . These numbers are actually getting a little better, but the reality is that i think that especially with the public Health Emergency, Property Owners are going to need a little more time to come into full compliance. So the Building Department having taken a look at this is saying that we should extend this at least until september 1 of this year and possibly consider tying it to the ending of the shelter in place order, with an additional, say, 90 or 120 days after that. But im happy to hear any specific questions that the committee has on this. And we just think that in this time this is a stress since most of these properties indiscernible it makes sense to give the owners a little bit more time to comply. Supervisor peskin thank you, mr. Strong. Mr. Kessler, anything that you would like to add . No, i think that he explained it pretty well. One of the things that were not doing right now because its these are commercial buildings, theyre not considered essential infrastructure under the mayors order. So we would not be issuing any permits if the permits were required under this ordinance. We would not be processing them at the present time because theyre not considered essential. Theyre nonessential construction. Supervisor peskin understood. So it sounds to me like well probably have to continue this or further continue this beyond september, but we will look forward to the advice of the department and your commission as we go forward. Are there any questions, colleagues, for the department of building inspection . All right. Why dont we move on to the office of Small Business. Thank you, supervisor peskin. And Committee Members. So in your packet you did see that the Small Business commission endorsed and is recommending approval for the extension. Our office is working very closely with the department of building inspection, working with the Small Businesses, that are being required by their Property Owner to meet this compliance. And we do have a Grant Program that is available for them. This grant money is not general funded so there will not be any issues or concerns about that funding still being there to assist businesses who need to access it to achieve compliance. And i think that the last thing that i just want to keep reiterating is that as a city that prides itself on civil rights that this is an Important Initiative that were undertaking to ensure the civil rights of individuals with disabilities are upheld. Supervisor peskin thank you. And if businesses want to get in touch with the office of Small Business about the grants that you just mentioned, how would they do that . They can do that by calling 4155546134. Or emailing sfose sfgov. Org. Supervisor peskin thank you. And maybe we should just further clarify things with d. B. I. Which is insofar as you indicated that no Building Permits for this type of activity are allowed under the emergency order issued by the mayor and concurred to by the board of supervisors during the coronavirus emergency, our permits that were previously issued, can those be acted upon if they were already issued . Or are those held in advance during this time as well . Yes, in general they would be they shouldnt be working on these because theyre they are considered nonessential or to the mayors order would extend to issue permits also. Unless, you know, of course if theyre partially in process, i think they should continue until theyre complete. But i would say if we havent issued a permit and they havent started the work, they should suspend the work until the emergency order is changed. Supervisor peskin thank you. And back to miss dickendreesy. Is the office doing any proactive outreach to businesses . I realize that is difficult now, but its still an important question. The office of Small Business is not doing proactive outreach. The way in which this is working is through the checklist that needs to be submitted. When d. B. I. Receives a checklist and its been identified that a Small Business is being required by their Property Owner to complete the Building Code requirement, d. B. I. Puts that business in touch with us. And, of course, weve been working closely with the merchants to make sure that theyre informed about the program. And just to reiterate that this is a requirement of the Property Owner and so if the Property Owner is not submitting the checklist then theres a particular form that they can state that has to be filled out and submitted with the checklist which is one of the ways in which were able to identify that a Small Business is now engaged in meeting this compliance requirement. Supervisor peskin understood. Thank you for that. Supervisor safai or preston, any questions or comments . Not at this time. Nope. Supervisor peskin why dont we open this up for Public Comment. Any members of the public that would like to comment on this item, number 2 . Clerk were checking to see if theres callers in the queue. Operator, please let us know. Mr. Chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Supervisor peskin okay, seeing no Public Comment on this item. Public comment is closed. And colleagues, why dont we send this to the full board with recommendation, if that is acceptable to you. And i did see, madam clerk, in one of the memoranda from the president and from the clerk of the board, can this item be sent as a Committee Reporter on just be sent in the normal course of business . Clerk in the normal course. Supervisor peskin okay. So on the motion to send this item to the full board of supervisors with recommendation, can we have a roll call please. Clerk on the motion as stated, supervisor preston. Preston, aye. And supervisor safai, safai, aye. Supervisor peskin. Peskin, aye. You have three ayes. Supervisor peskin okay. The motion is approved. Next item please. Clerk an ordinance amending the planning code to correct typographical errors, update outdated crossreferences and make nonsubstantive revisions to clarify or simplify code language, amending article 4 to move the language regarding timing of fee payment and amending the code to correct outdated planning code crossreferences and affirming the planning. Supervisor peskin thank you, miss major. Colleagues this is the next up in a long series of planning code cleanups which has been the life long persui pursuit ofe aaron star at the cit departmenf planning. And we have this as the title indicates these are almost all technical corrections and typographical corrections together with a couple of policy changes or clarifications to article 4 which miss juarez can talk about. Thank you, supervisor peskin. As miss major outlined, it amends the planning code to correct typos and to update crossreferences and make nonsubstantive revisions to clarify and simplify the code. It will amend article 4 to move the language regarding timing of payments to the beginning of the article and then crossreference this with new subsection into the individual impact fee sections. Lastly, proposed ordinance will also add an additional fee waiver based on the replacement of buildings damaged or destroyed by fire or other calamities. The reason behind this is that theres thought to be no new net impact when were replacing said building or said use. The Planning Commission heard this item on december 12th, 2019, and recommended that you approve the ordinance with modifications. indiscernible . The first modification is to update planning code references and the administrative, health and police codes. And the second modification is to revise planning codes, section 155 to clarify that commercial thruway streets to find a better streets plan to also be protected. And the proposed ordinance will improve the quality of the planning code and make it easier for the objective and the goals of the code to be carried out. This concludes staff presentation and im available to answer any questions. Supervisor peskin miss flores, i assume that the additional modifications suggested by the Planning Commission are in the second version of the legislation which is the version that is before us, is that correct . Yes, that is correct. Supervisor peskin right. So no amendments are necessary and those have already been amended in between version one and version two . Correct. Supervisor peskin thank you. Colleagues, do you have any questions or comments . No. No. Supervisor peskin seeing none, is there any Public Comment on item number 3 . Clerk operator, please to check to see if theres any callers. Chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Supervisor peskin with that Public Comment is closed and, again, i will make a motion to send this item to the full board of supervisors with recommendation. And on that motion, madam clerk, a roll call, please. Clerk supervisor preston. Preston, aye. Supervisor safai. Safai, aye. Supervisor peskin. Peskin, aye. We have three ayes. Supervisor peskin okay, the motion passes. Madam clerk, anymore business before this committee . Clerk there is no further business. Supervisor peskin seeing none, we are adjourned. 5, 4. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. The meeting w good afternoon, everyone. The meeting will come to order. Welcome to the monday, march 30 special meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. I am supervisor gordon mar, the chair of this committee, and im joined by supervisor aaron peskin and matt haney, who are members of this committee. Thanks to clerk john carroll, and id like to thank sfgovtv for broadcasting this remote meeting. Mr. Clerk, do you have announcements . Clerk thank you, mr. Chair. I have announcements. Due to covid19, the board of Supervisors Committee and legislative chambers are closed at this time. Members will be participating remotely. A Committee Members will attend the meeting through Video Conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if they were physically present. Public comment will be available on each item on this agenda. Both channel 26 and sfgovtv. Org are streaming the callin number up near the top of your screen. Each speaker will be allowed two minutes to speak. Comments or opportunities to speak during the public Comment Period are available via phone by call 8882045984. That phone number again is 8882045984. There is an access code. The access code is 3501008. Again, the access code for Public Comment is 3501008. Once youre connected, wait until Public Comment is opened on an agenda item and dial 1, then 0 to be added to the queue to speak. Call from a quiet location. Speak slowly and clearly and turn down your television, radio, or streaming devices. Alternatively, you may submit comments in the following ways comment to myself, john. Carroll sfgov. Org. If you submit Public Comment by email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and will be included as part of the official file. And finally, supervisors, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors agenda on april 7, 2020 unless otherwise stated. Thank you so much, mr. Clerk. I do want to say that items are considered by this committee during any meeting. For this reason, i do not see any reason to do so today. Mr. Clerk, please call agenda items 1 through 5. Clerk items 1 through five called together, these are various lawsuits and unlitigated claims against the city and county. Thank you, mr. Clerk. Before we go to Public Comment on these items, are there any Public Comment from any of my colleagues on these items . Supervisor peskin mr. Chairman, i just wanted to let you know that i read all the materials supplied by the City Attorneys Office and agree that there is no need for closed session, and subject to Public Comment, i am ready to make a motion to move these items to the full board of supervisors. Supervisor mar thank you, supervisor peskin. Why dont we go to Public Comment now. So are there any members of the public on the line who wish to testify on these items . Speakers will have two minutes. Please state your first and last name clearly and speak directly into the phone, and also, for those who have already called into the Public Comment line, please dial 10 on your phone to be added to the speakers queue. Mr. Clerk, or is somebody from the Clerks Office able to call the Public Comment. Clerk hello, mr. Chair. The Operations Division is checking to see if there are any callers on the queue at this time. Our operations consultant is mr. Coo. Mr. Coo, are there any callers ready . Mr. Chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Supervisor mar thank you, mr. Coo. If theres no one from the public wishing to testify on these items, public testimony is now closed. So i i would like to move that we send items 1 to 4 to the full board of supervisors with positive recommendation. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Clerk on agenda items 1 through 4, as moved by supervisor mar [roll call] clerk chair mar, there are three ayes. Supervisor mar thank you. And i would also now, i would like to move that we send item 4 as a Committee Report to the tuesday, march 31 meeting of the full board of supervisors. Clerk for clarity, chair mar, do you mean agenda item number 5 . Supervisor mar yes, im sorry. Let me restate that. I move that we send item 5 as a Committee Report to the tuesday, march 31 meeting of the full board of supervisors. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll. Clerk roll call. On the motion to send item number 5 as an agenda report to the full board of supervisors for tomorrows meeting [roll call] clerk there are three ayes. Supervisor mar thank you, mr. Clerk. Is there any further business . Clerk there is no further business. Supervisor mar well, great. So thank you so much, everyone. We are adjourned. Supervisor peskin thank you. Clerk thank you. [ roll call ]. Is there any further business . No. Thank you, mr. Clerk, we are adjourned. Good morning, everyone and thank you all for being here today. My name is london breed, the mayor of San Francisco and im joined by the president of board of supervisors, norman yee, as well as the department of Public Health, dr. Grant colfax and we are joined by police chief bill scott, the director of emergency management, Mary Ellen Carol and thank you to the press for accommodating this virtual rest conference in order to maintain social distancing during this very challenging time. I also want to take the opportunity to thank the people of San Francisco. This weekend, things looked like somewhat of a success in terms of social distancing for the most part and definitely an improvement from last weekend. The streets are pretty clear and there were some definite hot spot areas that well be focusing on, but the beaches and some of the parks and other places, people were practicing social distancing and we very much appreciate your cooperation. It will make a world of difference and, in fact, we already have made a difference in really saving lives. We may not realize the impacts this until this is all over, but eventually, we will learn, im sure, that because of what we have done and how we all have participated in complying with social distancing, it truly has saved lives. As of today, we have 374 confirmed cases with six deaths and that is six people who have passed away because of the coronavirus. And my heart goes out to the family members expect friends e have lost in San Francisco. One person is too much of a loss and as we have said before, this is a very deadly virus, as you are seeing, not just in San Francisco but throughout the country. And the reason we have taken significant steps has everything to do with saving lives and protecting Public Health. Because we know that there will be challenges on our Healthcare System and we know that people are anxious to know about the stayathome order and whether that will be extended. I know that our county Health Officers will be making an announcement tomorrow to talk about the specifics of extending the stayathome order until mar the sake of planning and everyone can begin to know this continue to have an impact, you should definitely plan to stay at home and this process and what were doing here will continue until at least may 1st. If anything changes, we will definitely notify the public. So i want to just talk a little bit about some of the challenges that we have having and will continue to have and what were doing to prepare for those challenges. Weve said from the very beginning we knew that our vulnerable populations, not only consisting of our ederly but those living in congregate settings and sadly those on our streets would be a part of that vulnerable population and so we would have to move quickly to make sure that in places where we have singleroom occupancy hotels, where our Shelter Systems are and places like ga laguna honda, we had a plan and would keep people safe. From the very beginning, we knew this would be a challenge. We have learn ed this nine employees at laguna honda hospital have tested positive, as well as two patients, and we are still testing people a at at laguna hospital and well have more information once that comes in. We knew the situation would be challenging and so immediately last week, i sent a letter to the federal department of Human Services asking for significant support so that we could not only focus on making sure we provide the resources and support to this hospital and we dont continue to drain other services, but we have the expertise and the testing on side and other things needed in order to prevent something from happening that we know has happened in other places throughout the country, including in washington, that house hav a significant populatn of ederly patients. Laguna ha honda is one of the largest hospitals of its kind in the country, housing over 750 very, very vulnerable residents who cannot take care of themselves. And this is basically their home and this is where they eat. This is where they live. This is where theyre cared for. And so we have been taken immediate steps in order to help support this hospital and support the people and the staff who are part of it. We were fortunate in that the cdc on friday, after sending that urgent request to the u. S. Department of health and Human Services, the cdc has sent two Infectious Disease doctors and two epidemiologists and the department of health has sent two prevention nurses to help assess the situation at laguna honda and make recommendations and we also have a dedicated staff member at the cdc in atlanta to help monitor and facilitate the situation specifically at l laguna honda because we know that, again, this is a very vulnerable population and more testing needs to be done and its going to be important that we have the resources and we have the support necessary to protect and save lives. Its just a start and im grateful for what weve received, but i want to be clear, its not nearly enough to get us to a better place specifically concentrating on la golaguna honda hospital. Well definitely be reaching out to federal and state partners to ask for Additional Support for the residents and the staff at laguna honda hospital. I also want to be clear that the situation will escalate at laguna honda and it will escalate here in San Francisco. The fact that we are taking such drastic steps to, in essence, pretty much shut down San Francisco has everything to do with how serious this is. I cant reiterate enough how important it is for all of us to continue to comply, for all of us to continue to be good citizens, to continue to cooperate. This weekend, i received a note from one of my neighbors. The note basically had the email address expect phone number of one of my neighbors on the block who said they were the block captain. So if i needed anything, whether its Grocery Shopping or pharmacy pickups or what have you, or even someone to take to, they were available. And i got really emotional when i received that note because it made me think about how amazing people are in this city and how ive heard so many stories about people reaching out to their neighbors, people identifying ederly people that they know need help and just dropping off groceries, folks just stepping up and being there for one another. Because we know that its not just about the physical health and what we need to do to combat the coronavirus. We also understand that as human beings, theres an emotional toll that this will take on so many of us. So its so important that we continue to uplift one another and be there for one another as much as we possibly can. My thoughts and prayers go out to the team at laguna honda. I want to thank them for all they continue to do to give dignity to so many elderly patients who may not have family visits or support and resources to do anything just to be there and to know the nurses and those doctors and those social workers continue to put a smile on the face of those patients. They show up everyday and they just really deserve our respect, our support and we will do everything we can to continue to do just that. So at this time, i would like to introduce dr. Grant colfax to provide us with more detail specifically whats happening at laguna honda, what were doing to prepare for the inevitable and how, together, we will do everything we can to save and change lives and get through this. So thank you all so much. And let me wipe this mic down. Good afternoon, im gra grant colfax, director of health. Thank you, mayor. Today im saddened to report to the San Francisco community that laguna honda hospital has a growing outbreak of coronavirus. Weve prepared for since the start of the pandemic and we will continue to do everything we can to protect laguna honda hospital and staff. I want the community and all of the families to know how much i care, we care about them and they are our top priority. We are intensely focused on doing everything we can to protect everyone at laguna honda from harm, but i also need to be realistic and forthright. As we look at the data and the patterns around the world and in our country, we know that longterm care facilities are at most risk for coronavirus outbreaks. Therefore, we expect the situation to, unfortunately, get worse. Across the united states, many longterm care facilities have been hit hard by the coronavirus, including in california, washington, colorado, minnesota, new york and many other states. No local community is equipped to manage this escalating crisis alone. And that is why we have asked for help from the state and federal government and, i am thankful that some of our requests are starting to be answered. As of today, Infection Control nurses from the California Department of health and Infectious Disease physicians and e epidemiologists from the c are on la go laguna honda exper. They will make decisions for management that is expected to escalate and will work with leaders at the department of Public Health to develop a prospective Response Plan for longterm care facilities in addition to l laguna honda. I am grateful for this help and we need more. From the beginning of the global outbreak, efforts by the city to prepare for the coronavirus have prepared the most vulnerable population. Residents who are over 60 years old and those with certain Underlying Health conditions and chronic diseases. The residents of laguna honda hospital are in the most vulnerable of these groups. Laguna honda has a total of 11 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Nine are amongst staff and two are among residents. All are in good condition. Since march 26th, 158 staff and 54 residents were tested for the virus. Among residents, two have tested positive and 51 negative and one result is still pending. Among staff, 156 have tested negative and 25 more tests are underway. And i expect more cases of coronavirus in the laguna Honda Community among both staff and residents because it is now spreading throughout the bay area. We are drawing on all of the resources we can muster at the local state and federal level to strengthen our response. Laguna honda has been and remains a top priority in the citys preparation and response to coronavirus. The first Health Officer order after declaring a local Health Emergency in early march was to restrict visitors from laguna honda to protect the institutions residents. Laguna honda leadership has worked actively and diligently to train staff on coronavirus including the use of personal protective equipment, ppe, for all cleaning of common spaces of resident rooms and other prevention technique. Here is what is happening on campus right now to respond to the outbreak. First, the hospital incident command system is activated to manage the crisis and the incident commander, troy williams, is here to answer further details about that process. The state Infection Control nurses are creating expanded protocols on environmental cleaning, ppe, and staff safety. The cdc is intensifying the information to look for sources of infection and the pathway of spread and this will prevent a plan that taking the coronavirus situation fully into account. The two units where the cases have been diagnosed, south 4 and south 5, are under an extensive quarantine order. Each of these units houses approximately 60 residents. Within these units, doors have been secured, sheriffs are at the doors preventing residents from leaving and only allowing appropriate staff to enter and residents are being assessed for symptoms on every shift and staff are being screened twice for symptoms at every shift. Testing of all staff on south 4 and south 5 where staff cases have been found is almost complete. To date, nine positive cases have been confirmed. And testing of all patients on south 5 where patient cases have been found is complete and results are pending. To date, two positive cases have been confirmed. All nonessential personnel are restricted from entering the facility. All essential visitors, staff and residents are medically screened and all laguna honda staff are screened at the start of each shift. In addition, laguna honda is setting up a field care clinic on its grounds as a precaution in case there is a need to separate groups of patients. We are continuing to assess the situation and adapt our response accordingly. Working with our state and federal partners. However, even best efforts are no guarantee against the spread of the virus. There are currently 374 cases and six deaths due to coronavirus in San Francisco. In addition to our focused, Rapid Response efforts at laguna honda hospital, they are preparing for the expected surge of hospital patients. I remind all of sanfrancisco to do your part in slowing down the virus. By decreasing community spread, you will help protect vulnerable groups like the very residents of laguna honda and other longterm care facility residents across the country, other ederly people and those with underlying he health conditions. This is the time to come together as a community while we stay home whenever possible. I cannot stress that enough. Unfortunately, we will be seeing more cases and deaths in the coming days and weeks. Please do your part to keep those numbers as low as possible. Thank you. And i would like to introduce mr. Yee, board of supervisors. Good morning. Im t norman yee, president of e board of supervisors and im in district 7 in which laguna honda is located. I want to thank dr. Colfax and mayor breed in taking a stand with these vulnerable populations were dealing with. We knew that at some point somebody was going to be infected. So as tough as its been to say no visitors coming to laguna honda, its something we had to do. Think about it. The people that are there in the hospital are now not with their families, not with their friends visiting. And the love that the family and the friends want to provide for them, they cant. So a tough decision, it was very difficult to make, but think it was the right decision. Problem, in fact, it delayed any infection there. It probably, in fact, reduced the numbers that were seeing today. What im saying is probably reiterating what dr. Colfax was saying, that we need to take an aggressive stance. We need to attack this aggressively and do everything we can to slow it down, to minimize how many people are going to be infected, whether its staff or the seniors themselves. One thing that we could do even more aggressively if we have the tools is to Start Testing everybody there, everybody. We cant be working in a vacuum. We cant be guessing oh, where is the next person that will be positive . We have to get ahead of that. So as dr. Colfax and mayor breed were saying, were reaching out to the state and federal government and please respond because we need your help. Thats all i have to say today and thank you very much to the residents who are behaving the right way, social distancing, stay at home as much as you can and enjoy whatever you can at home and if you have to go out, make sure you are staying away from people, at least six feet and to continue washing your hands. Thank you very much. Well open it up to some question. Madam mayor, this is a question from abc7. What is the city doing to help Small Businesses during this crisis. So one of the first things that we announced early on, because we knew there would be some real challenges with our Small Business community, is a fund to provide a Million Dollars in grants right away and that money has dried up and we provided a delay in business taxes until 2021 so that businesses here can hold off on paying taxes until next year. We put a delay on a number of fees that businesses get charged and we also provided a 10 million fund for employees where you have businesses who have sick leave and, for example, if an employee only has two weeks of sick leave, we could provide an additional week of sick leave through a fund that is available and weve tried to make sure that we provided all of these options to Small Businesses. They can check out the website oewd. Com for more information on how they can get additional assistance. The governor added additional there are others other actually before did not qualify for Unemployment Insurance that now qualify for Unemployment Insurance. And so state Unemployment Insurance is available to a lot more people than it hav ever has before. So its important that people apply because you may not think youre qualified, but you are. Im working to develop a nointerest loan fund where weve partnered with a number of nonprofit agencies excuse me, folks in the private sector to contribute money along with public dollars and were hoping to make that Fund Available to businesses sooner rather than later. We understand that businesses are suffering and theres some real challenges with paying bills, but i think our commercial moratoriums on convictions and a number of other things were doing to really slow down or hold off on extreme responses to the lack of our Business Community and their inability to pay bills because of the resources that theyre no longer able to regenerate, i think that some of the measures we put in place will be helpful. I know they wont be enough so well continue to add a number of resources to help support our Small Business community and i just want to be clear, theres a lot of folks who are hurting out there and wer were going to do everything we can but this is a problem that doesnt exist in San Francisco. Its all over the country, all over the world and it will be difficult to help every single person, but well do our very best. Question from sin singh tao. For affordable housing, but what about luxury Home Building . The fact is in San Francisco, costle building anything is so expensive, the fact we dont build is a problem. It doesnt matter what sort of housing gets built. The fact is, when this is all over, people are going to need places to live and so im not going to pit between one housing versus another. Housing is essential, period. And what we dont want to happen is what happened, especially when we started to focus on Job Opportunities between 2010 and 2015 during the time when we were attracting a number of Tech Companies and other businesses to sanfrancisco. For every eight jobs we created, we created only one unit of housing. You had people lining you in the western Housing Community where i grew up, where you would never see anything like this for one apartment, which i think drives up prices. So the fact is, all housing is essential. And we dont need to pick one over the other. The fact is, when this is all over, just think about it, we have thousandscs of people on streets. You think well able to afford thousands of units to house them . This will require every single unit that we can get on the market, no matter what kind of unit it is. Thank you, madam mayor. The next questions are for dr. Colfax. This is from reedasm lbergati from the washington washington . What date are you used to make your posts positive . Whats the view of using modeling to predict what will happen with the virus and are you relying on any models . Thank you. We have some of the best people in the help department helping us pull in data from all sources, both locally, nationally and internationally to make an informed response. Some of the key things were looking at, obviously, are the number of cases and very importantly, the number of people who are hospitalized, including people in the intensive care unit, following numbers carefully, and using other data from china, italy and now new york t of what to be prepared for in worse Case Scenarios and updating the numbers to see where we stand. So in terms of what were missing, you know that theres clear testing deficiencies across the country and were working to expand our Testing Capacity in San Francisco. We still do not have an accurate prevalence number and, in other words, we not know overall per thousand people in San Francisco what the rate of the virus infection is and we are working, again, with the uc berkley and ucsf colleagues to determine that number as quickly as possible to get the estimates and those will be very important in informing our models. With regard to whether models are helpful, yes, i think they are very helpful and they provide a number of plausible scenarios and they certainly do not provide certainty about where were headed but provide plausible scenarios to help us plan our response Going Forward. The next question is from jamie harr of the associated press. The department of Public Health is sending Health Inspectors to conduct inspections at sros. How many are checking and what are you looking for or not looking for . So we are focus on a number of things, but particularly with regard to hygiene, making sure that the procedures are being followed and making sure that were doing outreach and education to the community, around the social distancing order and making sure that people have the information they need and, also, making sure that people have the information they need in the event they need care. They know who to call, when to call and to get the help from the Public Health department, their community and other Healthcare Providers and systems across the city. And this is a followup, if there are unsafe conditions, what will you do . Will you move people out . Were looking at focusing on the conditions are as safe as possible and if peopl symptoms, they are protected and that theyre provided with resources and physical spaces that allows them to selfquarantine from their community and other people that they may come into close contact with. And the next question is from shannon lim of kqed. Theres a question and followup. What are San Franciscos plans to Start Testing hopeless people for the coronavirus . Do they have a protocol for who they will be testing and when this will begin. So i appreciate the question and im emphasized that we are expanding our testing and its a key priority of the departments. I just want to be transparent, though, what were doing. To give you an example, when we send our request up to state with regard to asking for more help and responding to the laguna honda situation, part of that request was the request for more swabs, testing swabs. Therthis is not just limited ton francisco but a National Shortage and we are struggling to get swabs in order to test and so along the supply chain for testing, there are severe limitations. While we are working to expand Testing Capacity, my Public Health lab is expected to triple its potential Capacity Starting today and we are still struggling along that supply chain to ramp up testing as long as possible. So anything from the specimen collection you need for swabs, from the processing reagents that are needed, our supply chains are episodic and hard to determine. So with regard to testing people who are tendernessin experiencig homelessness, we will focus on people who are symptomatic and people with highrisk exposures. Miss lins followup and similar to question from dan simon from cnn. The medical director of the er at ucsf believes theres a flattening of the curve and credits the stateathome order and not seeing a surge of expected of patients. Do you believe this is so . I havent spoken to the er directly. I think its still too early to tell. We are monitoring the numbers. The thing is when this disease takes off, if it takes off, it takes of rapidly in Communities Just like new york, the escalation, the curve is very upsloping very quickly. Its what we call a logrythmic increase. We need people to stay at home and we are expanding the stayathome order and more details will follow. We are watching the data very carefully and i do not know whether the aggressive actions early on have had the tentative effect but we need data to confirm that. From the l. A. Times, a similar question, asking to clarify how many people with the virus are hospitalized in San Francisco right now. And the sheltered place in terms of flatten the curve, if thats not happening now, when do you think we might see that happening . So to answer the first question with regard to hospitalizations from the latest data i have from the city systems, we have 58 people hospitalized with confirmed covid19 in the Hospital Systems across San Francisco. Again, that number could rapidly change. And its too early for me to speculate whether were succeeding in flattening the curve. The next question, may i ask if San Francisco or dr. Colfax are coordinating with any other bay area counties in the city excuse me counties, cities or the state of california on how long to extend the stayathome order . Yes. Certainly i am in regular contact with Health Directors across the region, as well as direct contact with state Health Leaders and the response to this pandemic and confrontatio yard e healthhealth order. This is far more effective from a regional approach. The order that will be released tomorrow will be another regional approach Going Forward and it is essential that we collaborate, share information and react to reduce the pandemic spread. And the final question is from dominick vercasa of the chronicle. Will any activities currently permitted, like Housing Construction be prohibited under the extended order . So the order will be released tomorrow and those details will follow. Thank you. That concludes our press conference. Thank you. [ ] my familys starts in mexico in a small town. My parents are from a very, very small town. So small, that my dads brother is married to one of my moms sisters. Its that small. A lot of folks from that town are here in the city. Like most immigrant families, my parents wanted a better life for us. My dad came out here first. I think i was almost twoyearsold when he sent for us. My mom and myself came out here. We moved to San Francisco early on. In the Mission District and moved out to daily city and bounced back to San Francisco. We lived across the street from the ups building. For me, when my earliest memories were the big brown trucks driving up and down the street keeping us awake at night. When i was sevenyearsold and im in charge of making sure we get on the bus on time to get to school. I have to make sure that we do our homework. Its a lot of responsibility for a kid. The weekends were always for family. We used to get together and whether we used to go watch a movie at the new Mission Theater and then afterwards going to Kentucky Fried Chicken. That was big for us. We get Kentucky Fried Chicken on sunday. Whoa go crazy so for me, home is having something where you are all together. Whether its just together for dinner or whether its together for breakfast or sharing a special moment at the holidays. Whether its thanksgiving or christmas or birthdays. That is home. Being so close to berkley and oakland and San Francisco, theres a line. Here you dont see a line. Even though you see someone thats different from you, theyre equal. Youve always seen that. A rainbow of colors, a ryan bow of personalities. When you think about it you are supposed to be protecting the kids. They have dreams. They have aspirations. They have goals. And you are take that away from them. Right now, the price is a hard fight. Theyre determined. I mean, these kids, you have to applaud them. Their heart is in the right place. Theres hope. I mean, out here with the things changing everyday, you just hope the next administration makes a change that makes things right. Right now theres a lot of changes on a lot of different levels. The only thing you hope for is for the future of these young kids and young folks that are getting into politics to make the right move and for the folks who cant speak. Dy mind motion. Even though we have a lot of fighters, theres a lot of voice less folks and their voiceless because theyre scared. Valencia has been a constantly evolving roadway. The first bike lanes were striped in 1999, and today is the major north and south bike route from the Mission Neighborhood extending from market to mission street. It is difficult to navigate lindsay on a daily basis, and more specifically, during the morning and evening commute hours. From 2012 to 2016, there were 260 collisions on valencia and 46 of those were between vehicles and bikes. The mayor shows great leadership and she knew of the long history of collisions and the real necessity for safety improvements on the streets, so she actually directed m. T. A. To put a pilot of protected bike lanes from market to 15th on valencia street within four months time. [ ] valencia is one of the most used north south bike routes in San Francisco. It has over 2100 cyclists on an average weekday. We promote bicycles for everyday transportation of the coalition. Valencia is our mission fits our mission perfectly. Our members fall 20 years ago to get the first bike lane stripes. Whether you are going there for restaurants, nightlife, you know , people are commuting up and down every single day. I have been biking down the valencia street corridor for about a decade. During that time, i have seen the emergence of ridesharing companies. We have people on bikes, we have people on bike share, scooters, we have people delivering food and we have uber taking folks to concerts at night. One of the main goals of the project was to improve the overall safety of the corridor, will also looking for opportunities to upgrade the bikeway. The most common collision that happens on valencia is actually due to double parking in the bike lane, specifically during, which is where a driver opens the door unexpectedly. We kept all the passengers the passenger levels out, which is the white crib that we see, we double the amount of commercial curbs that you see out here. Most people arent actually perking on valencia, they just need to get dropped off or pick something up. Half of the commercial loading zones are actually after 6 00 p. M. , so could be used for fiveminute loading later into the evening to provide more opportunities or passenger and commercial loading. The five minute loading zone may help in this situation, but they are not along the corridor where we need them to be. One of the most unique aspects of the valencia pilot is on the block between 14th street. We worked with a pretty big mix of people on valencia. On this lot, there are a few schools. All these different groups had concerns about the safety of students crossing the protected bikeway whether they are being dropped off or picked up in the morning or afternoon. To address those concerns, we installed concrete loading islands with railings railings that channel channeled a designated crossing plane. We had a lot of conversations around how do you load and unload kids in the mornings and the afternoons . I do like the visibility of some of the design, the safety aspects of the boarding pilot for the school. We have painted continental crosswalks, as well as a yield piece which indicates a cyclist to give the rightofway so they can cross the roadway. This is probably one of the most unique features. During the planning phase, the m. T. A. Came out with three alternatives for the long term project. One is parking protected, which we see with the pilot, they also imagined a valencia street where we have two bike lanes next to one another against one side of the street. A twoway bikeway. The third option is a Center Running twoway bikeway, c. Would have the two bike lanes running down the center with protection on either side. Earlier, there werent any enter lane designs in San Francisco, but i think it will be a great opportunity for San Francisco to take the lead on that do so the innovative and different, something that doesnt exist already. With all three concepts for valencias longterm improvement , theres a number of tradeoffs ranging from parking, or what needs to be done at the intersection for signal infrastructure. When he think about extending this pilot or this still this design, theres a lot of different design challenges, as well as challenges when it comes to doing outreach and making sure that you are reaching out to everyone in the community. The pilot is great. It is a nobrainer. It is also a teaser for us. Once a pilot ends, we have thrown back into the chaos of valencia street. What were trying to do is incremental improvement along the corridor door. The Pilot Project is one of our first major improvements. We will do an initial valuation in the spring just to get a glimpse of what is happening out here on the roadway, and to make any adjustments to the pilot as needed. This fall, we will do a more robust evaluation. By spring of 2020, we will have recommendations about longterm improvements. I appreciate the pilot and how quickly it went in and was built, especially with the Community Workshops associated with it, i really appreciated that opportunity to give input. We want to see valencia become a really welcoming and comfortable neighborhood street for everyone, all ages and abilities. Theres a lot of benefits to protected bike lanes on valencia , it is not just for cyclists. We will see way more people biking, more people walking, we are just going to create a really friendly neighborhood street. Good afternoon and welcome to the meeting of the land use and transport Committee Meeting for today, monday, march 30, 2020. And it is a special meeting. I am the chair of the committee, supervisor aaron peskin. Joined by vice chair supervisor safai and supervisor dean preston. And the clerk is miss erica major. Miss major, do you have announcements . Clerk yes, please due to the covid19 Health Emergency and to protect Board Members and the City Employees and the public, the board of supervisors legislative chamber and Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely. And precaution is taken pursuant to the statewide stay at home order and all preceding and proceeding local, state and federal orders, declarations and orders. Members will be by teleconference or telephone if the video fails and participate in the meetings to the extent as if they were physically present. Public comment is available on each item of this agenda. Channel 26 and sfgovtv. Org are streaming the number at the top of the screen. Each speaker will be allowed two minutes to speak. Comments or opportunities to use to speak during the Comment Period are available via phone call by calling 888204 8882045984. Again, that number is 8882045984. The access code is 3501008. Again, the access code is 3501008. When connected, wait until the Public Comment is opened and dial to speak. And they are to call from a quiet location and speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. Alternatively, you may submit Public Comment in either of the following ways email myself, the land use and transport Committee Clerk at my email and it will be forwarded to the board of supervisors. And it will be included as part of the official file. Finally, items acted upon today will appear on the board of supervisor agenda on april 7, 2020, unless otherwise stated. Supervisor peskin thank you, miss major and i thank the clerk of the board of supervisors and her incredible staff during this period. In addition to clerk calvillo and our Committee Clerk, miss major, id like to thank john see and john carroll and prent halipa, and john carroll, i think that i said john carroll. Thank you for your incredible behinbehindthescenes effort te this nd other meetings possible as our participatoriy democracy survives during the coronavirus time. And with that, madam clerk, please call the first item. Clerk item 1 is an order to submit the planning code to create the intermediate occupancy residential use characteristic with the administrative code for enforceability and to prohibit rental units for temporary occupancies and the controller to analyze the impact and appropriate findings. Supervisor peskin thank you, miss major. Colleagues this was continued from the meeting which occurred a few weeks ago right before the shelter in place order was issued by the mayor. And it is my intention to continue this item to the call of the chair. But before we do that we need to take Public Comment. So, madam clerk, please work whatever magic you need to work to allow the members of the public to comment on this item. Clerk we are checking to see if theres any callers. Operator, let us know if theres any callers ready. indiscernible . Supervisor peskin seeing no Public Comment on item number one, Public Comment is closed. And colleagues, again, we have a roll call vote on continuing this item to the call of the chair. Clerk and continue on the call of the chair. Supervisor peskin. Aye. Clerk aye. Supervisor safai. Safai aye. And supervisor peskin. Peskin aye. Supervisor peskin this item is continued to the call of the chair. Next item please. Clerk two, the Building Code to extend the time for existing buildings with a place of public accommodations to comply with the requirement to have all primary entries and paths of travel into buildings accessible for persons with disabilities. Supervisor peskin this is brought to us by president yees office to provide flexibility to Small Businesses and other places of public accommodations, seeking to come into compliance with mandatory accessibility requirements. I spoke with president yee and his chief of staff jim lowe who are actually here at the Emergency Operations center. They do not have any comments and we are joined by the department of building inspection with mr. Bill strong and Thomas Kessler as well as the office of Small Business. I thought that wed start by having a presentation on this ordinance which was introduced before the coronavirus emergency and recommended by the building inspection commission. With that, mr. Strong, would you like to make a presentation to this committee and the public . Yes. Supervisors, thank you very much. Bill strong with the department of building inspection. Weve asked supervisor yee and members of the committee to consider this extension because as of todays report we have a weekly monitoring report of the accessible business entrance compliance and our compliance category is still running at about 60 . These numbers are actually getting a little better, but the reality is that i think that especially with the public Health Emergency, Property Owners are going to need a little more time to come into full compliance. So the Building Department having taken a look at this is saying that we should extend this at least until september 1 of this year and possibly consider tying it to the ending of the shelter in place order, with an additional, say, 90 or 120 days after that. But im happy to hear any specific questions that the committee has on this. And we just think that in this time this is a stress since most of these properties indiscernible it makes sense to give the owners a little bit more time to comply. Supervisor peskin thank you, mr. Strong. Mr. Kessler, anything that you would like to add . No, i think that he explained it pretty well. One of the things that were not doing right now because its these are commercial buildings, theyre not considered essential infrastructure under the mayors order. So we would not be issuing any permits if the permits were required under this ordinance. We would not be processing them at the present time because theyre not considered essential. Theyre nonessential construction. Supervisor peskin understood. So it sounds to me like well probably have to continue this or further continue this beyond september, but we will look forward to the advice of the department and your commission as we go forward. Are there any questions, colleagues, for the department of building inspection . All right. Why dont we move on to the office of Small Business. Thank you, supervisor peskin. And Committee Members. So in your packet you did see that the Small Business commission endorsed and is recommending approval for the extension. Our office is working very closely with the department of building inspection, working with the Small Businesses, that are being required by their Property Owner to meet this compliance. And we do have a Grant Program that is available for them. This grant money is not general funded so there will not be any issues or concerns about that funding still being there to assist businesses who need to access it to achieve compliance. And i think that the last thing that i just want to keep reiterating is that as a city that prides itself on civil rights that this is an Important Initiative that were undertaking to ensure the civil rights of individuals with disabilities are upheld. Supervisor peskin thank you. And if businesses want to get in touch with the office of Small Business about the grants that you just mentioned, how would they do that . They can do that by calling 4155546134. Or emailing sfose sfgov. Org. Supervisor peskin thank you. And maybe we should just further clarify things with d. B. I. Which is insofar as you indicated that no Building Permits for this type of activity are allowed under the emergency order issued by the mayor and concurred to by the board of supervisors during the coronavirus emergency, our permits that were previously issued, can those be acted upon if they were already issued . Or are those held in advance during this time as well . Yes, in general they would be they shouldnt be working on these because theyre they are considered nonessential or to the mayors order would extend to issue permits also. Unless, you know, of course if theyre partially in process, i think they should continue until theyre complete. But i would say if we havent issued a permit and they havent started the work, they should suspend the work until the emergency order is changed. Supervisor peskin thank you. And back to miss dickendreesy. Is the office doing any proactive outreach to businesses . I realize that is difficult now, but its still an important question. The office of Small Business is not doing proactive outreach. The way in which this is working is through the checklist that needs to be submitted. When d. B. I. Receives a checklist and its been identified that a Small Business is being required by their Property Owner to complete the Building Code requirement, d. B. I. Puts that business in touch with us. And, of course, weve been working closely with the merchants to make sure that theyre informed about the program. And just to reiterate that this is a requirement of the Property Owner and so if the Property Owner is not submitting the checklist then theres a particular form that they can state that has to be filled out and submitted with the checklist which is one of the ways in which were able to identify that a Small Business is now engaged in meeting this compliance requirement. Supervisor peskin understood. Thank you for that. Supervisor safai or preston, any questions or comments . Not at this time. Nope. Supervisor peskin why dont we open this up for Public Comment. Any members of the public that would like to comment on this item, number 2 . Clerk were checking to see if theres callers in the queue. Operator, please let us know. Mr. Chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Supervisor peskin okay, seeing no Public Comment on this item. Public comment is closed. And colleagues, why dont we send this to the full board with recommendation, if that is acceptable to you. And i did see, madam clerk, in one of the memoranda from the president and from the clerk of the board, can this item be sent as a Committee Reporter on just be sent in the normal course of business . Clerk in the normal course. Supervisor peskin okay. So on the motion to send this item to the full board of supervisors with recommendation, can we have a roll call please. Clerk on the motion as stated, supervisor preston. Preston, aye. And supervisor safai, safai, aye. Supervisor peskin. Peskin, aye. You have three ayes. Supervisor peskin okay. The motion is approved. Next item please. Clerk an ordinance amending the planning code to correct typographical errors, update outdated crossreferences and make nonsubstantive revisions to clarify or simplify code language, amending article 4 to move the language regarding timing of fee payment and amending the code to correct outdated planning code crossreferences and affirming the planning. Supervisor peskin thank you, miss major. Colleagues this is the next up in a long series of planning code cleanups which has been the life long persui pursuit ofe aaron star at the cit departmenf planning. And we have this as the title indicates these are almost all technical corrections and typographical corrections together with a couple of policy changes or clarifications to article 4 which miss juarez can talk about. Thank you, supervisor peskin. As miss major outlined, it amends the planning code to correct typos and to update crossreferences and make nonsubstantive revisions to clarify and simplify the code. It will amend article 4 to move the language regarding timing of payments to the beginning of the article and then crossreference this with new subsection into the individual impact fee sections. Lastly, proposed ordinance will also add an additional fee waiver based on the replacement of buildings damaged or destroyed by fire or other calamities. The reason behind this is that theres thought to be no new net impact when were replacing said building or said use. The Planning Commission heard this item on december 12th, 2019, and recommended that you approve the ordinance with modifications. indiscernible . The first modification is to update planning code references and the administrative, health and police codes. And the second modification is to revise planning codes, section 155 to clarify that commercial thruway streets to find a better streets plan to also be protected. And the proposed ordinance will improve the quality of the planning code and make it easier for the objective and the goals of the code to be carried out. This concludes staff presentation and im available to answer any questions. Supervisor peskin miss flores, i assume that the additional modifications suggested by the Planning Commission are in the second version of the legislation which is the version that is before us, is that correct . Yes, that is correct. Supervisor peskin right. So no amendments are necessary and those have already been amended in between version one and version two . Correct. Supervisor peskin thank you. Colleagues, do you have any questions or comments . No. No. Supervisor peskin seeing none, is there any Public Comment on item number 3 . Clerk operator, please to check to see if theres any callers. Chair, there are no callers wishing to speak. Supervisor peskin with that Public Comment is closed and, again, i will make a motion to send this item to the full board of supervisors with recommendation. And on that motion, madam clerk, a roll call, please. Clerk supervisor preston. Preston, aye. Supervisor safai. Safai, aye. Supervisor peskin. Peskin, aye. We have three ayes. Supervisor peskin okay, the motion passes. Madam clerk, anymore business before this committee . Clerk there is no further business. Supervisor peskin seeing none, we are adjourned. Welcome to the sfmta online budget open house top to ask a question about the key transportation decisions to be made for fiscal years 2021, 2022. Call 415 6462222 [speaking foreign language] good evening im Jeffrey Tumlin San Francisco director of transportation. Welcome to the sfmta Budget Online open house. I know that this is very difficult time for all of us as the coronavirus situation unfolds. Were all thinking about how we keep ourselves and family safe, how we deal with our children at home and how to prepare for the financial consequences unfolding all around the world. Im grateful that you joined us at this time. We understand the challenge of having budget conversation given Everything Else that is going on. Yet, in order for Government Services to continue, Government Agencies need to have a budget. Were mandated by the San Francisco charter to submit a budget to the mayor of San Francisco and the board of supervisors by may 1st. A budget that is rooted in this agencys value. We understand that even if the mayor decides to use the Emergency Declaration to extend the deadline of our budget, we still need an adopted budget as a Reference Point for making the Necessary Service and financial cuts that will have to happen as the Global Financial disaster unfolds. We need a starting place for this conversation and that starting place needs to be rooted in our values. On the one hand, the details of our budget may seem unimportant. But at the same time, Public Transit is continuing to play an essential role and will so for months. It is on public transport that our essential workers get to work, that our residents get access to essential services. Its also our Parking Systems and bike way system and other programs that allow essential work to continue even as we deal with this significant Public Health and financial crises. Tonight, what were trying to do is to take our Public Engagement process online so that we can hear from you, understand your concern and your questions. Over the last three months, we completed hundreds of Community Engagements and we still know that we need additional engagement in order to finalize our budget even though Public Comments so far has resulted in significant changes to our original proposals. I like to continue that dialogue. First i want to introduce my colleague, victoria wise who will help me facilitate this meeting. You want to go over some of the details we established to help people engage online . Thank you. Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. This open house is being broadcast on our website. You can find it on our twitter page on our Facebook Page as well as our Youtube Channel and you can also watch it on channel 26 and sfgov tv as well. The links to all these social Media Channels can be found on sfmtas website, sfmta. Com budget. Also just to share with everybody, the recording of this hour and a half will be available on our website. If you werent able to join us, you will be able to view the video later and can continue to submit your comments. Just to show with you, the way were going to do this is for the next 13 minutes, were going to share with you a rerecorded video jeffrey recorded custom days ago, share with you the challenges the agency is facing and dive into couple of details that ewith heard a lot about as it relates to fares. Well play the video. Once you have an overview, well come back live and work through some of the comments and questions that well be getting from you on various social media channel. While youre watching the video, please share your thoughts with us. You can leave us a voice mail at 6462222. You can tweet us sfmta underscore muni. You can email us. Sfmtabucket . Com. You can leave a comment on our Facebook Page. Lots of different venues for us to engage. We appreciate you bearing with us as we try something totally different in terms of public participation. Other thing i want to share, please feel free to share your comments in chinese and or spanish. We have translators standing by. They translate your comments or questions. We unfortunately cant answer in chinese or spanish, staff will be getting back to you via email or voice and the language that you leave the question in with specific answers. Lets watch the video. [video] im jeff tumlin San Francisco director of transportation. Our agency is working on our next twoyear budget. Ultimate reflection of our agencys value. [inaudible]. Tric[technical difficulties] one question that i have for the crew, is it possible to show any of the slides that were embedded in the video . Theres huge amount of data. For those listening at home, the entire content of this Powerpoint Presentation in were going to show you, those details are all available at www. Sfmta. Com budget. If you go and look at the materials there, somebody can tell me where to look, all of the material that were referencing including the details around our different proposals for fares as well as detailed proposals for cuts as well as detailed proposals for new services. Can be found there. I will try to walk you through some of the highlights of this program. Please bear with me. This is live tv and we were not prepared to do this. One of the first things that i want to say, the most powerful statement of any agencys value is its budget. The budget is a reflection of how we spend our money. Its about making decisions about what gets funded and what does not get funded. The budget must contend with incredibly difficult tradeoffs. One of the things we tried to do in creating this budget is to be very clear about what our agencys values in order to help us address those inevitable tradeoffs. The most difficult tradeoff were facing given our serious financial constraints, is tradeoff between do we reduce or keep fares constant or do we improve service. Or phrased different way, do we cut fares or do we cut service . Do we keep the fares the same or cut Service Given the reality of our budget. I want to talk about our values. One of the things we value a great deal is system safety. Here in San Francisco, there are about 30 people who are killed result of traffic violence of ey year and 3000 are injured. We want to focus more on social equity. This means something very different than providing equal service to all sa san franciscas it means prioritizing better choices for people who have the fewest cloyses. Many ways for us this means prioritizing the delivery of Public Transit service particularly to the neighborhoods where people either face poor access to employment or inadequate access to schools or other critical services. This particularly means prioritizing access to neighborhoods that have been historically underserved. Like neighborhoods in districts 10 and 11. Particularly districts where we see high levels of residents of people of colour and also People Living in poverty. Another core value of ours is decarbonation of the transportation of the economy. Transportation is well over half of the citys carbon dioxide. Many you know as the economy has improved up until last month, the congestion and vehicle miles traveled as well as the rate of driving have increased. All of that has resulted in an increase in Greenhouse Gas emissions. Another core factor that were contending with in our budget, as congestion rises and as the rate of driving rises, as more people drive, our streets move fewer and fewer people in a given year. Its not that im necessarily a better person when i ride my bike or take the bus. I do take up one tenth of a space when i drive a car or ride in the back of lyft. In order to accommodate San Franciscos significantly growing population and job space, its very important that we manage our streets for the movement of people rather than the movement of vehicles. This means prioritizing the most Space Efficient forms of transportation which incidentally are forms of transportation that are most used by low income people and most environmentally friendly. Another key factor that we face, if you can go to the next slide, is the reality of our structural deficit. In San Francisco, like in almost all municipalities in california, our expense rise with the cost of living but our revenue rises basically with inflation. In an up economy, the sfmta faces a widening structural deficit. There are many complex reasons in the tax code about why this is true. Its the reality of our agency. We faced a 66 million structural deficit as of a month ago. A deficit that is significantly widening in the face of the current economic crises. In order to be able to deliver the existing service that we provide, we need more revenue in order to deal with our financial reality, we either need to find a means bringing in new revenue or we face service cuts. If you can go to the next slide, you can see how our revenues are tracking year over year for different sources of revenue. As a result, partly of uber and lyft are parking fee and fine revenues have been declining over the years, as parking demand declines. Similarly as weve expanded our free and discount fare programs for muni, our fare revenue is in slight decline. All of this is meant that San Francisco mta is dependent upon general fund revenue. Which is very susceptible to changes in the economy. The general fund is very susceptible to changes in the sales tax rate and for revenues like the hotel tax, all of which are rapidly declining in these economic times. All of this is covered. These core issues were covered by group of san franciscans and experts in transit from all over the country. That convened over the last six months, called the Muni Reliability Working Group. This group gave a rather brutal audit of the muni service. Gave us very specific recommendations about how to improve the efficiency of the system and put the agency on a stable financial footing in order to allow us to deliver on the Transit Service that San Francisco needs as it continues to grow in its economy and its population. These recommendations are more important than ever given the current economic and Public Health situation. However, our budget does not include any of the recommendations for expanding service. Instead, despite the financial catastrophe that is upon us, we do want to implement the recommendations thats the Muni Reliability Working Group, around stabilizing service and improving on the reliability, allowing us to become more efficient. The Muni Reliability Working Group recommendations were bold and specific and targeted improvements around the transit lines that needed it the most. Many of which in the outer neighborhoods of south africa, n francisco. Which serves over 17 schools and other educational institutions. It is a workhorse route of the southern and western neighborhoods. Our representation was to invest in rapid improvements on this line in order to meet the increasing demand for service and all those neighborhoods. We will not be able to move forward with any of the Service Improvement or equity recommendations even in our original state of a budget without a new source of revenue. Which we require of the public. We also know that where we have invested in Better Safety improvements, weve seen significant positive outcomes. Where weve invested in muni reliability improvements. Weve invested in safety improvements like the platforms on turk street and other corridors. Weve seen dramatic reductions in crashes including the complete elimination of injury related crashes on places where weve made improvements on terra ball streets. We are capable of making dramatic improvements in the quality of service that all san franciscans experience in the Transportation System. Our budget included a 5year Capital Program. That focused on hundred, really thousand small improvements or many higher ridership muni lines. For more detail on all of those projects, you can google muni sfmta for great deal of information. Or see the detailed Capital Budget program at sfmta. Com bucket of budget. Youll see the details of our vision zero and major streetscape projects. Cars versus pedestrian fatalities continue to be the highest cause of fatalities transportation related fatalities in San Francisco. It requires significant investment in order to improve the reliability of the system including ongoing upgrades in the subway tunnel. Finally, our Capital Program includes significant improvements to our light rail system, completing the purchase of new light rail vehicles that would expand the reliability of our subway system and continue advancing the major improvements that weve made in speed, reliability and comfort on the bus system. We have even in this current financial crises, we will likely continue to have access to a significant amount of capital funding. We are not able to use this money for Transit Service operations. We can use it to advance our core priorities like social equity and safety. Were targeting those investments to the neighborhoods that have been most neglected. Includes advancing our vision zero network, focusing the prop d tax on uber and lyft to advance Quick Build Program that focuses on safety outcomes, along with advancing Educational Campaign to improve safety outcomes. The most controversial topic that we have to contend with in in budget is our bus fares. Muni fares. As many of you know, the sfmta has a policy called indexing. What this means is that every year, we raise fares by a specific percentage. That percentage is basically the average of the cost of living and inflation. So that our fares rise with the cost of delivering service. If we didnt increase fares with the cost delivering service, we would need to cut service in order to accommodate fares being the same. We would end up in a service and financial crises that we would require us to periodically implement a huge increase in fares that would be very painful for all customers. In order to avoid both the service crises as well as the every 5year huge increase in fares, weve decided instead to impose relatively modest increases in fares each year. Weve heard a lot on this topic. Including many calls for free muni for everyone or free muni for certain classes of people or to cap all our fares given the reality of the financial crises that all our riders are facing. There are some challenges, however, to stopping a fare increase. That it impacts our ability to deliver service. One of the things that is quite clear about the San Francisco system is that even though theres what we call a price elasticity of demand for fare. Ridership declines as we increase fares. The elasticity demand is far greater. If we cut service in order to keep fares the same, that the impact on ridership loss will be greater. Ridership loss will be primarily for higher income people who would simply flee to uber and lyft. Lower income will be burdened by less frequent and more crowded service. In listening carefully to the public, weve proposed some different approaches. One of the things that weve discovered is that the demographics of who rides muni varies a lot depending on what fare product they use. [please stand by] o it attracts young people in San Francisco. It also means that kids who forget their card no longer have to contend with fare inspectors. There are a lot of good reasons to extend free muni to youth. This doesnt cost us all that much money. Similarly we are recommending that individuals who experience homelessness also get access to free muni. We expect that these people need to get to their appointments and social services and they require Public Transit in order to get there. This is a program that we feel very confident that we can afford. Were also proposing that for that fare median that our lowestincome people use the most, the singleride fare, that we cap it at 3 for both the next year and the following year. Weve heard fairly loudly from our customers that that is important. That is our recommendation in the green as well as the pink column. In order to pay for that capping, we have two choices. We can either in the green column raise the clipper pass rate slightly. Or in the pink column, we can narrow the discount that discount clipper users get to pay their fare. As you can see below the monthly pass would rise to 81 and similarly the 2. 75 individual clipper fare would rise to 2. 80 instead. We think this is a much more efficient way of allowing us to get the revenue we need in order to retain service, while at the same time being very conscious of our neediest customers. Well look forward to additional feedback from all of you on that proposal. Next slide, please. Were also making a lot of adjustments in our fine policies. Hearing from, again, a lot of people on this topic. We know that our fine policies should be guided by our desire to get compliance in our rules to make the systems fair and efficient. It should not be guided by punitive objectives and should also be equitable across modes of transportation. Were constrained in how we manage our fines, but what we are trying to do is increase fines that are rooted in safety and decrease fines that are rooted in getting compliance particularly for people who are suffering from financial distress. We also want to be aware that, for example, the fine for riding transit and taking up 3 square feet of space should be less than the fine for not paying at your parking meter for taking up 200 square meters of space on a San Francisco street. You can find all of the detail in our budget proposal, but were trying to maximize the possible fine given state restrictions for issues like parking in a bike lane or riding a scooter on the sidewalk, while reducing fines for things like not paying your muni fair, to the extent that that is allowable according to the state law. That is on the next slide as well. Another area that is included in our budget is rethinking our approach to parking meters. As many of you know, in San Francisco the reason we charge for parking is to make sure motorists can find an available parking space, creating availability of one or two Parking Spaces on any block or in any garage or parking lot. We are trying to find the lowest rate that achieves that outcome. If we charge too high a rate, merchants would complain and customers and we would get less revenue. If we charge a rate that is too low, all the spots would be fill, merchants would complain, motorists would have to circle around the block, and we would get less revenue. We want our policy to be about customer availability and Small Business success. The reality is we bring in revenue from our parking meters. So as a result were proposing two significant changes. One is extending the hours of enforcement in neighborhood commercial districts, particularly those where there is a lot of restaurant and entertainment uses, we want to extend the hours to the extent that spaces are full. In order for people to drive to go to a restaurant in a neighborhood commercial district. This would apply only to places that demand is high. The second thing we want to do is look at sunday meter enforcement, at least on sunday afternoons. As many of you know, our sunday meter restrictions are rooted in an era where businesses were closed on sunday. Now businesses are all open on sunday and we want to make sure were supporting those businesses, while at the same time being very aware of the needs of the community. Were proposing to partner with neighborhood commercial districts and faith communities in order to roll that out in a way that is conscious of everyones needs. With that, i think we should probably are we ready to go to questions now . Were ready to roll. Thank you for accommodating our onthefly response to our technology difficulties. Were happy now to take questions. Once again, i would like to remind all of you that there is a tremendous amount of detail that is available at www. Sfmta. Com budget. Just thinking about whats going on with the coronavirus right now, jeff, our economic Prospect Team and obviously the citys budget and sfmta budget is going to be significantly affected. Could you talk to us how we are handling the situation in this asylum of uncertainty. Were working on a budget and we dont know how our budget is going to be affected. How are we dealing with that. This is the craziest time to be developing a twoyear budget, given the massive oment of economic uncertainty. The only certainty we have is that our economic budget is uncertain. That is reason we are moving forward with the budget. We need a Reference Point for making decisions about what needs to be cut. We know significant budget and service cuts are coming and we need to be prepared for that. Thats why we started this conversation about the budget with our values. It is only by having clarity about this agencys values that we will need to be able to make solid decisions about how to make cuts in a way that minimizes damage to the agency and minimizes the effects on the san franciscans we serve and those most vulnerable. I am not pretending that we are going to implement this budget on july 1. We will not have the resources to do so. All of the improvements that were planning in here, none of them are we going to be able to simply fund on july 1. What we need is the starting place for making the decisions about what we fund and dont fund and, particularly, how we make those cuts. This is a very challenging time for all of us, including the budget and policy things in every Government Agency. All of whom need to have a budget set of balances. Very good. Thank you. One of the things you talked about in this slide is the fact that this agency has a structural deficit. What i often hear from different sources is that sfmta has a deficit. Can you break it down. I have spent my entire career in the private sector. I understand how private Companies Operate and ive served a lot of public agencies. So i understand the how budgets work, particularly budgets that are oriented around providing the greatest amount of service at the least cost. One of the things that ive found is that with a few very specific exceptions, sfmta is a remarkably efficient agency. I have not found waste. To the extent that there is waste and we found some, about 5 million worth and this budget includes cuts to those waste categories, thats about it. My predecessors weathered the last storms. It takes a lot of people to run an agency of this side, particularly people like bus operators. They are our biggest single class of personnel and they cost a lot of money in part because we have to pay them a living wage. Most of the greatest service challenges that weve experienced at the sfmta are rooted in our thousand vacancies, to the extent that we have any Financial Flexibility here at the sfmta is because of the vacancies. Vacancies that exist because we have not been as competitive with the private sector at being able to attract and retain talent as we need to be. We have to provide our workforce a living wage, and thats also something i know from the private sector. Delivering any serviceoriented organization is about attracting and retaining talent. So our costs are driven by wages. That also means that our Cost Increases are driven by wages. In order to attract and retain talent, we have to increase wages with the cost of living in this region. All of you know what it is like to live in this region and face rising rents. We have to pay our workforce a living wage, which is not an exorbitant wage. At the same time, our revenues do not increase with cost of living. Our revenues increase with inflation. So in a boom economic cycle, that gap between inflation and cost of living rises, exacerbating our structural deficit. This is a problem that basically every Government Agency in california faces and its one of the things that we are absolutely going to have to be contending with, given the likely Financial Impact of global pandemic. A third factor also is that we need to contend with growth. Even though weve had were in an economic crisis right now. Over the last decade, San Francisco has added about 30,000 Housing Units and about 220,000 jobs. Those 220,000 jobs and 30,000 Housing Units have increased the need for us to deliver transportation services. And because our streets are of a fixed dimension, as the city grows, our cost per person actually increases because the work that we have to do is about making the Transportation System more efficient. We cant just make the Transportation System wider. I know all of this is rather complicated, but its really clear to me coming from the private sector that there is not a lot of waste in this pie. It is a pretty efficient pie and that we need to find a way of growing the pie in order to deliver the service that particularly our neediest san franciscans need. Very good. Thank you. Now that weve covered the basics of structural deficit and why we have it. At the end of the day, our agency needs to have a balanced budget. So you and i know that in order to have that balanced budget, we are going to need to use some of our fund balance. Can you explain what fund balance is and really talk a little bit about whether its appropriate to use the funds right now in this particular economic circumstance that we find ourselves in. Yeah. So public agencies basically have a savings account. Its our rainy day fund. Its a pot of money that we use when were dependant on Revenue Sources that go up and down. Its the thing that allows us to flatten out our budget so we dont have to do layoffs if one of our services is delayed or experiences a downturn. We have fund balance that is there to deal with cost overruns on our Capital Projects and to get us through rainy days. Guess what, it is not just raining, but hailing and storming outside. So now is the time to actually use our fund balance. Weve got to get through not just the next couple of months, but what is likely the next couple of years, depending on how the pandemic impacts the Global Economy and all of the sources of revenue that we rely on. One of the challenges were facing using the fund balance is how much do we spread that out just to keep treading water or to slow down the pace by which we need to make Major Service cuts. Do we do that or do we accelerate spending in our fund balance in order to generate trust with the electorate in order to go after a new funding source. Something that becomes particularly challenging, depending on the overall state of the San Francisco economy. Thats one of the core questions were going to be facing over the next couple of months, what should our rate of draw down be on our fund balance, knowing that our total fund balance is about two months of payroll. Thank you. Now i want to dive into the questions that we are getting online and through email. We have an email asking that we prioritize new lrv4 in our budget. Can you share what were going to do about that and share with folks if we will continue to be sliding in the chair. Thanks to the board of supervisors last week, we now have approval to move forward with purchasing the next round of lrv4s, the new red siemens cars. Were getting 63 of them to replace the breda cars that have the problems with the doors getting stuck and delaying the subway system. Shifting to the new light rail vehicles will be a significant benefit of resolving some of the delays that all of us face practically every morning, given the poor reliability from our older cars. Weve heard a great deal of feedback from our cars. Were changing a couple of the passenger details on those cars, including adding butt divets in the perimeter seating. Those of us who ride the j church when theres significant grade on the train, we get to know each other much more than we should and thats particularly problematic. I shouldnt joke about this, but given social distancing. Having little scoops in the seats will allow people to have great greater distancing. With people with spinal difficulties, having a few forward. Facing and rearfacing seats allows them to have a ride with significantly less spine or bone or muscle or neck pain. So weve done some of those changes as well as some changes to the handle bars and the grips in order to be able to accommodate a whole variety of requests. Were lowering the seats by 2 inches to help some of our shorter riders. Weve gotten some complaints from our taller riders so we will retain some of the higher seats over the wheel wells. I think what were going to do is to maximize happiness, knowing that its not possible to make all of our customers happy. One other comment that weve also heard is complaints about the perimeter seating in general. One of the reasons why weve switched to perimeter seating, like most urban operators around the world is it allows us to fit more people on the trains and allows better circulation on the trains so that standees or people sitting allows people to get out to the doors. This makes more room for people and maneuverability. One of the biggest problems that muni currently faces and likely will for some time is crowding on our buses and trains. As the economy changes, we expect crowding will continue. Very good. Part of this budget i know that we are doing just a tiny bit, but a tiny bit of service cuts. We are eliminating the 83x express bus. And sunny jolly emailed us opposing this change. She felt that the riders need this change and that the 47 would have a hard time picking up the slack and that the commute times would be longer. Can you talk to us about the rationale of eliminating the 83x. If you have no idea what that is, this was in the press a couple of years ago called the twitter express from the cal train station over to basically the twitter building in midmarket back and forth. Its a short line. It runs at peak only and gets about 300 riders a day. I dont know if its the lowest ridership lines, but one of the lowest. Among the ridership lines it has Redundant Service on the 47 as well as other lines, the t and the n lines. People can take the train and the subway. This is an opportunity that we have to get rid of a line that is low ridership and serving primarily an affluent clientele and a line that has abundant other choices, including taking advantage of the new protected bike lanes that we have installed on townsend street, 5th, market, as well as the scooter lanes. There are abundant other alternatives available for the 83x. Excellent. So we talked a lot about fares during your presentation. I have to say that we heard from so many organizations, Transit Riders Union about fares and we listened and addressed some of their concerns. Now i do want to spend a little bit of time talking about fees. So we have an email asking what changes are being proposed to the towing fees. This writer is wondering how are we addressing the challenges around towing folks during these hard times. We talked about towing quite a bit with the public already. So if you can share some of the changes were making as a result of that feedback. Thats right. Weve got hundreds of letters and emails on the topic of towing and weve heard some very passionate testimony at our board and many of the Community Workshops that we did before the coronavirus started. Towing is a difficult topic, particularly for people who are most vulnerable, and especially people who are forced to live in their cars and who have no other place to live. So we took a really close look at our overall towing program, all of the reasons we tow, as well as what are the costs and revenues that we get from the program. To my surprised, we lose money on the towing program. Our tow fees are very high and on every tow, we lose a huge amount of money. One of the things were looking at is to the extent practicable, where its not needed for safety or accessibility reasons, simply reducing the amount of towing were doing. On streets like pine and bush where the parking lane is towaway at peak, do we really need that, particularly with traffic levels so low, given that that is going to continue for some time. Why dont we just eliminate that and save some money. Similarly, for people who are living in their cars, certainly for the time being, we are eliminating towing for people who are housed in their vehicles during the Current Health crisis. And for our proposed budget, once were out of the Health Crisis and into a better economy. We still need a mechanism to get rid of abandoned vehicles or for dealing with people who are creating actual social problems on the street as a result of car encampments. That said, we want to be compassionate to people and identify locations where they can avoid having to live on the street, by instead making do in their vehicles. So were proposing a couple of changes. One of those is creating a new onetime zerodollar fee for people who are homeless who have had their vehicles towed. This is important frankly because were not making any money off this program. There may be times we inadvertently tow somebodys car who is living in that car. We dont need to punish them more. They dont have the resources to pay. We might as well make that free. We have had a program for a discount tow fee for people who are low income. The current fee is 238. We want to reduce that to 100. We want there to still be we dont want people to block driveways or curb cuts. We want there to be a disincentive, but we want that to be merely a disincentive and not a way to make money, reducing it from 238 to 100. Were reducing the lowincome boot fee from 100 to 75. Similarly, were proposing for other folks to make some slight adjustments to the firsttime tow fee to 524. And raising the repeat tow fee to 524. Treating typical income people the same but putting in a reduction for lowincome people. And at the same time trying to reduce towing across the board except for reasons related to health and access to property. Very good. I want to stay with the topic of fees a little bit longer and make sure that we cover and talk about taxis. Theres lots of things going on with taxis. Folks are struggling with the industry. A couple of people have written to us. One person asks, why are there no funds indeed the fiscal year 202122 budget for taxiing. Another person says what are we doing to support the taxi drivers generally and particularly right now in particular given the coronavirus. Yeah, this is, as many of you know, a very, very difficult for our taxi operators. I feel strongly that San Francisco needs to maintain a strong, publicly regulated taxi industry that is positioned to compete well against ride Hail Companies like uber and lift. We have to recognize the challenges moving forward and setting it up for longterm Financial Success and for a whole host of reasons. One is for how much our taxi drivers have invested in the program but how dependant they are for their livelihood. We are really dedicated to doing what we can in order to ensure their success and reasonable livelihood for the operators. Our budget as it currently stands contains a couple of items related to taxis. In the fiveyear improvement item, there is a small bit around taxis that includes 30,000 each year for advertising. Were in coordination for the advocates for taxi operators are looking at using their remaining funds to support advertising, to promote the use of taxis in as a more laborfriendly way of getting around the city. Certainly theres something that i choose when i need a rise is our taxi service. So right now the funds that we have are nearly depleted within but weve got about 300,000 remaining in that fund and trying to find out a way of funding if we spread it out too thinly, but which could support advertising if our board approves. In the short run, we are making sure that we are eliminating driver renewal fees for the extent of the Health Emergency. Drivers can continue working out on the street without paying their renewal fees while were in this Health Emergency. Its the least that we can do in order to support our operators. Were also thinking about if we can waive the taxi fees for the next two fiscal years, given the huge impacts being felt by our taxi operators. Those are things under discussion outside of our budget but which we would likely do. Im going to shift my bicycle gear and move on and talk a little bit about the Golden State Warriors. During this last fiscal year the chase arena was open and we were successful in that opening because this agency partnered with the Golden State Warriors and provided excellent transit and Parking Management and curb management. One of the most innovative and really exciting things that we did was that the muni ticket is included in ticket of your event or Golden State Warrior game. Thats an Exciting Development and i think it has facilitated folks riding transit to the events or to the basketball games. So how do you envasing maybe expanding that program . In particular, are you envisioning partnering with the giants to do something similar . I think the m. T. A. Should be so proud of the work that you did. All that happened before i arrived, i had nothing to do with it. I sat back and watched and was braced for a disaster and instead it was a phenomenal success. You should be proud of that success. Sfmta charges 1. 50 on services on those nights and makes it possible for the arena to function with people coming in and out and without a lot of gridlock. This is an amazing success. So i would love to expand on the success of that program. If anyone from the San Francisco giants is listening, call me. Were ready to expand the success of a program like that. Similarly, if and when our Convention Center is open again for business, and it will be, i would love to have every conventioneer badge be a muni fast pass. I would love all the hotels plastic card keys to be a muni fast pass. For all major employers in San Francisco to chip in to help us deliver the Transit System that we need, particularly given the economic crisis, while at the same time having us deliver free transit to their employees. As an agency, were really eager to make some savvy deals in order to be able to maintain service in these times. And its going to require really, really active participation from the private sector in order to allow us to do that. Very good. One question that we get from time to time is about our crossing guard program. In particular one person asked can we increase the number of hours that crossing guards work. For example, the way it is today, we have crossing guards in the morning for an hour and a half making sure our kids get to School Safely and a shift in the afternoon when everyone is leaving school. Its not a long day. A person or two are curious can we give the crossing guards more hours. What do you think about that . I love our crossing guards. They help me cross the street at harvey milk school. They provide a phenomenal amount of service and keep our kids safe. In our budget, he had a choice to make about whether we expand the program to more schools or expand the hours to individual crossing guards. If we add more hours, we serve fewer schools. If we add for guards, we can serve more schools and enhance safety. We have chosen the latter and have allocated additional budget to hire 20 new crossing guards, but not expanded their hours. In fact, in talking to many of the guards, including the ones i have seen, most of them live in the community. Many of them are older adults. All of them are interested not so much in more hours, but are happy to get out in the Community Every day. We feel more safety for more schools is going to serve San Francisco better than more hours for fewer guards. Very good. Live from twitter, what is the planned schedule for sfmta to hire more supervisors in 2020 . Yes, this is a hugely important question and one of the questions that comes straight out of the Muni Reliability Working Group recommendation. If you want a lot of detail on that topic, search for Muni Reliability Working Group and also look into the detail of our budget. So in order to so back in the last recession, back in 2008, in order to hold onto our core service, the Previous Administration widely chose to slash line supervision, the people who are in charge of making sure that buses are evenly spaced out, that operators leave their terminals on time, when there is a problem there are many places in the system that we have recurring problems. That there is a supervisor there with operational experience that knows how to sort out those problems. In order to improve reliability and to have steadier service, we need to staff up with those supervisors. Those supervisors can also take advantage of the investments that weve made in technology. Years ago people thought that all of the Global Positioning satellite trackers on the buses would allow us to automate supervisor. In reality, what we find is that that data requires a detailed understanding of whats happening out on the street and what buses can and cannot actually do. So what were finding is that having a new array of supervisors allows them to get the data that were getting, which basically is a force multiplier on the supervisors and where were applying the supervisors, were getting huge increase in reliability as well as headway maintenance. This is a question of whether we will actually be able to hire the new supervisors. Im getting a question. Any Job Opportunities offered to recent College Graduates at the sfmta. Ill pipe in and say that we of course have an Internship Program that is amazing at sfmta, truly a trainingground. Many people who have gone through our Internship Program end up working at sfmta. And really people should be looking on our linkedin website and the city website. We post a diverse range of positions. Its important to retain and attract talent. If you google jobs with the sfmta, the jobs portal will come up. Another position that just opened up just today is our transit ambassador program, which is a really fascinating job. Its for entrylevel people, particularly san franciscans, who live in the southeastern neighborhoods to ride our School Tripper services in order to help ensure that muni is civil. Its our alternative to having a police force ride muni. Instead we train people in the community who understand the kids in their neighborhoods and can engage with riders in order to support civil behavior and that we all need to get to what we are getting to. There are 13 of those that were advertising today. Another person from twitter says why is the fine for fare evasion in some cases more expensive than a parking violation ticket . Can sfmta look into the aggressive action that requires payment for fare. This is important to me. It was one that would take too long for our budget conversations, but we are going to take a longer program that may require advocacy at the state level that restrict our ability to manage fares. It is very important to me that we look at our fare Evasion Program not as a way of making revenue off citations, but as a way of encouraging people to pay their fair share. Rather than charging people fines, i would so much rather people who havent paid their fare, instead be required to buy a clipper card that would be the value of that fine, but instead gets them into the business of actually of paying their fare. Or instead of asking them to pay a fine, that it allows them to contribute their time to a Community Service function. The thing that irritates me is the fine for not paying your 3 bus fare for taking up 3 feet on the bus is greater than paying your parking fine for 300 square meters on the street. We need to equalize the fares for the impact they have on the system. There is too much complexity or resolving all of that in this particular budget, but that is something we are absolutely committed to coming back to and revisiting in several phases over the coming year, particularly relative to the legislative effort we want to have at the state with the equity question as well. Very good. Staying with fares, we have a question, do parking permits go up by the same amount as the muni fares. Why is parking so much cheaper than a muni pass if we are transit first . Speaking of things that drive me nuts and require legislative change. Our residential parking fees are currently 144 a year. Were raising them by some tiny amount. A residential parking permit is basically 0. 30 a day to store your car on public property in our neighborhood or at least have a license to do so. The reason it is only 144 a year is that it is illegal for us to charge more for the residential parking permit than it costs us to administer that parking program. So this is really frustrating. Unlike parking meters, which we have a great deal of flexibility in terms of how we set the rate, the Residential Parking Permit Program is fundamentally broken. A result of that is in our urban communities, it is a hunting license. It is not a tool for making sure that residents coming home at night can find a parking space near their homes. Changing that requires significant changes to state law as well as changes to a Court Decision called richardson v. Arlington. We need to figure out whats the optimal way for managing parking in our residential neighborhoods that provides some reasonable assurance that our residents can find a Parking Spaces near their home, at night, in the rain, makes it difficult for commuters to the financial district to park their car in the neighborhood to avoid paying in the garage and at the same time make it is it possible for the employees in our neighborhood commercial districts to find a place that they need to park thats not just in front of the business across the street. Its part of the complete madness of the rules governing that looked only at a single mode at a time. We want to think comprehensively across all modes of transportation and have the tools to manage the entire right of way in San Francisco for the public good. Again, would love to take care of that in this budget, but we really cant. I should add as well, on the parking meter side, again, it is our policy that the parking meter rates achieve a good rate in the communities. If we doubled the parking meter rates, we dont double revenue. Our rates for parking have a much greater impact on the demand for parking than our muni fares. So were trying to have a parking meter rate that optimizes revenue and accessibility to the commercial districts at the same time. These are some of the many things we struggle with as were trying to put together this budget that brings together the budget that we need and that does so in an equitable way for those who travel to San Francisco, whether by foot or bus or skateboard. Moving on to an email. What lowcost measures will muni undertake to improve service. For example, providing Faster Service to make the service cheaper to provide. Is muni willing to give more priority to buses through signal priority as an option or to eliminate bus stops that are spaced too closely together, i would add to that maybe doing transitonly lanes, and so on. This is a program that im so excited to move forward with. Most of that was developed before i arrived, but that we have new tools to move forward really quickly. This is called the Muni Forward Program. You can google that on our website. But just last month, our m. T. A. Board of directors gave us authority to implement our Muni Forward Program so much faster than before. As some of you will know, we have this thing called the Quick Build Program. We applied it to bike lanes where we go in and engage with a community in the corridor and do some pilot implementation with some cheap and easily reversible materials with paint and plastic posts. Youve seen it and some of it looks ugly and slash dash in part because we wanted it to that way. We wanted to get data and make adjustments as we go along. In the corridors where weve made these bike lanes, weve seen huge increases in bike ridership. Weve also been able to generate trust with the businesses and residents in those corridors. Weve also been able to make adjustments in realtime based on the data. We then make a report and decide to make the changes permanent. Then there will be a separate project that uses concrete and trees and nice materials. We want to take all of that success and apply it to muni. Weve already seen the muni forward projects, where we did a thousand small projects, including implementing the five rapid. The result of that was a 60 increase of ridership and a 40 decrease in collisions on the street. This was a success for a relatively lowcost project. That project took us a couple of years to implement. We can now do many of these projects more quickly. Weve been experiments with that on the nine. We want to move faster than in the past. The Muni Forward Program and the new projects that were just approved by the m. T. A. Board on tuesday allow us to move forward. If we have any capital money and can maintain our current staffing levels, we are ready to move forward with dramatic improvements on the muni lines that our riders use the most. I have a specific question asking us when will the fare increases start. So if we get approval in april for the fare changes, those would be in effect on july 1 im sorry, im being corrected. If we get approval in our budget in april, the fare changes would go into effect on september 1. This is going to give us time to actually understand what are the implications of the Financial Impacts of the global pandemic. So again, i want to emphasize why were wanting to approve this budget now. We need a budget that is clear about its values and we need a Reference Point for making changes. Our current budget is not very rooted in values. Its pretty strict and rooted in values. One very important question thats not related to the budget that were getting, but its absolutely critical is from a youtube user asking are we cleaning our buses. Yes. This is definitely a question weve been getting almost every day. Were doing a couple of things. Every night when the buses and trains go to sleep at night, they are thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed and completed desanitized. Were fortunate, given all the guidance from Disease Control and global authorities is that the virus itself is fairly delicate. Its easy to kill the virus with straightforward materials. Were making sure were doing a thorough cleaning and similarly were doing a wipe down using simple chemicals four times a day. As the epidemic has gone on, were also gone on to activate what are Disaster Service workers. All of us who work for the city, one of the things we signed is that in the event of an emergency, we can become endeared to serve essential functions. One of those functions is increasing the sterilization of our vehicles during the middle of the day when operators are taking a break. I am doing my car cleaner trainer duty this friday morning. We feel sorry. We feel very strongly that all of us here at the sfmta are in the service of the public and that were not just going to ask our maintenance crews to step it up even more than they have. In fact, the thing that is making me most proud of serving this agency right now is the way our but operators, maintenance crews, communication teams, station agents, they are all here at basically a 100 level. They understand that they are in service to the public. It is my job and the job of the professionals to serve our operators and other frontline workers, which means we need to step it up to protect our operators and protect our riding public. So i will be serving my shift on cleaning down the vehicles in the coming vehicles and im expecting the same from my other managers. This is the time this agency has to come together and to remind our Service Mission to the public and to our frontline workers. Excellent. As you can see, i feel a little strongly about that. Yes, and im glad that you do. We will be working together and we will get through this very challenging time. Once we do and looking a little bit into the future, i want to talk to you about and bring you back to the budget. We talked about the structural budget and the fact that its going to grow over time. In the long term, were going to need to think about ongoing new Revenue Sources. Can you talk about what work has been done to identify new Revenue Sources, what they look like, and what are your thoughts on that. It was about a year ago, the 2045 work, its not like our structural deficit is a new problem, but an ongoing problem that all transportation agencies in california face. This program investigated all of the various ways that sfmta could either temporarily or, better yet, permanently create a Revenue Program that would close the gap and deliver the service that san franciscans need. There is a long list of those measures. San francisco now has the authority to create a special vehicle license fee that would go to transportation. That is a possibility that has not polled well. Here in california the things that tend to poll the best are sales tax measures for transportation. We could consider doing a special election at any time to put a sales tax measure on the ballot. It is too late for the november 2020 election. Putting something on the ballot requires a huge amount of work and will compete with other priorities. We could go to the voters for a general Obligation Bond that would be particularly useful for capital money, but could also for a certain degree be used for operating support. One mechanism were particularly interested in is a Community Benefits district. This is a district where individual Property Owners vote to tax themselves on their Property Value in exchange for specific Community Benefits programs which could include a expansion of the Transit Service. It is one of the easier taxes to talk about administratively that doesnt have to be tied to a major election. Were not going to be having a major election for a while after november 2020. Another thing that has been talked about as well is changes to the ridehailing tax. Voters approved last november which is bringing in a fair amount of money, but not a lot given our needs. There are different ways of taxes ride hail. This is a fee on using ride hail. So it doesnt tax the way in which ride hail operators drive around empty, which is a significant portion of their time. Another really, really important revenue measure that is currently under study and is arguably, if it is done appropriately, the most equitable and Sustainable Way of closing our revenue gap, is congestion pricing. This is similar to what milan and london and singapore and stockholm have done, which is to say that for every commodity in our society, we use price to balance supply and demand. In mobility we use time to balance supply and demand. So congestion is simply what happens when the demand for mobility equals the supply. And rather than using price to balance supply and demand, we asked people to queue and this reduces the amount of people our Transportation System can serve. It is a huge problem. In 2013, the San Francisco transportation authority, which is our sister authority, did a downtown congestion study that looked at how much revenue could be raised by charging a fee to drive in and out of downtown San Francisco during the peak time. It was focused on revenue and it resulted in many concerns by people who said that this is just a way of taxing the poor in order to allow rich people to drive more easily downtown. That was not implemented. This time around were asking a different question, which is how can we use systematic mobility pricing in order to advance mobility and to allow our streets to move more people. What if we looked more holistically about this pricing and looked at it as rent. I charge 3 on the bus, but its free to drive down the boulevard to get downtown if your office gives you free parking. Why am i charging someone to use our roadways efficiently and making it free for the most inefficient use of our mobility space . Similarly, for example, for a shift worker who works in a restaurant downtown who starts their shift at 5 00 p. M. And has to drive downtown at 5 00 p. M. Because when they get off work at 2 30 in the morning theres no Transit Service. Its cheaper for me to subsidize their drive trip or uber or lyft trip than to invest in better Transit Service at 2 30 in the morning. How can we think about advancing the he could by basically stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor, rather than stealing from everyone to advance the poor. These are complicated questions and i would encourage all of you to follow the sfmta downtown congestion study and get involved in that, particularly as Economic Conditions are changing, to make sure as we think about mobility pricing that were using it in a way that advances equity and makes it easier for everyone to move around San Francisco and that values peoples time, including lowincome people who have the greatest time burdens. Lowincome people are more likely to work multiple and shift jobs. Im not fired when im late for a meeting. Shift workers are fired if theyre 10 minutes late too often for their jobs. This is a way longer answer than you wanted, but its a question thats super important to me. We are at time, but i wanted to wrap up. I went over time. These are important topics, but i wanted to thank everyone for joining us and appreciate the time that you were taking to write and to engage with us. These are important questions so were grateful for everyones engagement. Do you want to offer any Closing Remarks . The engagement that were doing is substantive. Weve got thousands of emails, comment cards, letters, all kind of contributions. I want you to know that we take these comments seriously. Our staff have read every single one of those comments, and i have read most of them themselves, including all of the comments i get on the twitter feed, which is hundreds and hundreds. Im sorry i dont respond personally. Again, i want to emphasize that there is no greater statement of an agencys values than our budget, and thats why were trying to build values into this budget, while being aware that we are in very, very economic times, our balance must balance, and we have deal with tradeoffs, these tradeoffs of fares versus service. We have hard choices to make as i know all of you do. I wish you all the best in these difficult times and that you stay safe and your family stays safe. Thank you so much for listening. [ ] [roll call]